Special order speech by Rep. John Mica (R-Florida), September 21, 1999

Special order speech by Rep. John Mica (R-Florida), September 21, 1999

ILLEGAL NARCOTICS IN AMERICA (House of Representatives - September 21, 1999)

[Page: H8459]
The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Isakson). Under the Speaker's announced policy of January 6, 1999, the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Mica) is recognized for 60 minutes.

Mr. MICA. Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to come before the House tonight to address my colleagues again on what I consider one of the most important topics facing Congress and the American people, and that is the problem of illegal narcotics in this country, not only the problem of illegal narcotics as it affects us as far as our role as Members of Congress in providing funding for various programs, but the effects of this dreaded plague on our country that have many significant dimensions.

Tonight I would like to again talk to the House about this topic and discuss a number of areas, and first of all provide my colleagues and the American people with an update on some of the recent happenings as to how drugs and illegal narcotics destroy lives and affect the lives of people, not only in my district but across this Nation.

I will talk a little bit about the situation and the policies that got us to where we are today with the problem of illegal narcotics. Then I would like to talk a little bit about Colombia, which is in the news.

The President of Colombia is now in the United States and addressed the United Nations. He has made proposals, along with this administration, about resolving some of the difficulties that relate directly to illegal narcotics trafficking in our neighbor to the south.

I would also like to talk a little bit about the history of the policy as it developed relating to Colombia, and some of the proposals that are on the table now to resolve the conflict that has been created again by these failed policies.

But tonight I would like to start out by first providing an update to my colleagues on the cost of the problem of illegal narcotics. I always start at home and the news from my district.

I come from Central Florida. I represent the area just north of Orlando to Daytona Beach, probably one of the most prosperous areas in the Nation. We do have our problems: problems of growth, problems of expansion, problems of providing education. We are very fortunate that we have a very high education level, high income level, a very low unemployment level, so we are indeed one of the 435 districts of the country that has had fortune shine upon us in many ways.

We have also been the victim of the problem of illegal narcotics and hard drugs and the terror that they have rained not only, again, across the Nation, but on our district in Central Florida. Many people equate Orlando in Central Florida to Disney World and entertainment and fun. But unfortunately, we have been the victims, like, again, many other areas across the Nation, of the ravages of illegal narcotics.

Let me read from an Orlando Sentinel story just in the last few hours that was released. It says, `Deaths this past weekend brought the numbers of confirmed and suspected heroin-related deaths in Orange and Osceola Counties to 34.' Orange and Osceola Counties are around the Orlando metropolitan area.

`At the current rate, Central Florida likely will break last year's record of 52 heroin-related deaths.' Many of these deaths are among our young people. In fact, the 52 deaths in just Central Florida, in that little small geographic area, I found outnumber the number of deaths in some countries from heroin. It is really an astounding figure.

Again, unfortunately, Central Florida is not the only area that is experiencing both the numbers of deaths and the tragedies that we have experienced.

The article goes on and puts a human face on what happens in some of these cases. It says, `Early Friday a 12-year-old boy found his 46-year-old father lifeless at their home on Bayfront Parkway near Little Lake Conway,' near the south of Orlando. `A packet of heroin, a syringe, a spoon and matches were found near the body, according to sheriff's records.'

More news from my county, also on Friday. `A 34-year-old Orange County man collapsed from a suspected overdose of opiates, the Medical Examiner's Office reported. He died on Sunday,' this past Sunday.

On Saturday, `A 30-year-old woman from Orlando died in a vacant house on Gore street.' That is in the downtown area. `She collapsed about 8:30 a.m. after she had smoked crack cocaine, a friend told deputies.'

Again, the misfortunes of Central Florida are felt across this Nation. We have had over 14,000 drug-related deaths last year, and that is just the reported deaths in this country. Unfortunately, many deaths related to narcotics do not even get reported.

Let me point out, if I may, just a news article that appeared in the past month that was in the Los Angeles Times. This dealt with the bus crash that killed 22 people on Mothers Day. Twenty-two elderly individuals were killed in New Orleans, and it now is made public, according to this news report, that the driver, who died of a heart attack, used marijuana 2 to 6 hours before his full bus of mostly elderly women veered off a highway and smashed into a concrete abutment.

These elderly victims probably will not have it listed in their cause of death as being drug-related, but here we have an instance of supposed casual drug use and the taking of 22 lives.

[TIME: 2100]

Another instance that does put a human face on the tragedy of illegal narcotics must be the news report that we had in the last week coming out of Tampa. I know several years ago people from around our state and our area and the Nation were all bereaved when they heard the news of a 5-month old baby supposedly taken from its parents, Baby Sabrina the child was known in many media accounts.

It now appears that investigators had taped the family after the disappearance, and part of the conversation was released in the media. This is in the Orlando Sentinel, September 10, a few days ago. The conversation, according to a Federal prosecutor, included this quote, `I wished I hadn't harmed her. It was the cocaine.' This statement was allegedly made in the recording by the father.

We see so many tragedies of child abuse, of child neglect, spouse abuse, deaths. I am not sure how this child, this infant's death will be listed in the final investigation. Again, these are alleged facts, but again surfacing as the problem of illegal narcotics.

The problem of illegal narcotics across our country reaches just every segment of activity. It is not just folks in the ghetto areas. It is not folks in the lower income, socioeconomic income. This problem of illegal narcotics use and its impact on our society is reaching all aspects of our American population.

There is a report from the Associated Press last week that I want to quote from. Seven in 10 people who used illegal drugs in 1997 had full-time jobs. This is a recent report that stated also, about 6.3 million full-time workers age 18 to 49 or 7.7 percent of the workers admitted in 1997 using illegal drugs in the preceding month. Workers in restaurants, bars, construction, and transportation were more likely than others to use drugs, the report said.

Forty-four percent of drug users were working for small businesses, those with fewer than 25 employees down from 57 percent in 1994, but still the largest category.

So whether, again, we see social problems such as child abuse, such as murder, such as robbery, theft, we also see in common ordinary working Americans the problem of illegal narcotics use. That does have a dramatic impact.

In fact, the statistics are somewhere around a quarter of a trillion dollars. That is over $250 billion in lost productivity, cost to society, cost to our judicial system, incarceration. In fact, today we have nearly 2 million Americans behind bars and there because of some drug-related offenses.

I know many people who I come into contact with say that we should release these folks because it is not good to have casual drug users behind bars. But, in fact, every statistic, every report that we have seen, every charge that we have looked behind finds that these aren't casual drug users that are in our Federal prisons and state prisons.

These, in fact, are individuals who have committed felonies while either under the influence of narcotics or committed a crime while attempting to secure money or drugs and committing illegal acts. So there is a real myth.

In fact, we had before my Subcommittee on Criminal Justice, Drug Policy and Human Resources one of the authors of a recent study in New York, which debunked the theory that we have people who are casual drug users, in fact, behind bars. In fact, the report indicated that one really had to try hard, one had to commit a number of felonies to be incarcerated in New York and behind bars and involved with illegal narcotics.

So the facts do not support that casual drug users

are behind bars, that in fact serious offenses are committed, whether again it is murder, whether it is a crime to obtain drugs or cash. Again, there is tremendous costs on our society, somewhere around a quarter of a trillion dollars a year.

In addition to the problems that I have cited about illegal narcotics and some of the myths that surround illegal narcotics, I wanted to also talk about another myth that I heard repeatedly during the August recess and even during the past weeks.

I hear these media accounts that the drug war has failed, that the war on drugs is a failure. I do not think that people really understand what happened when we had a war on drugs and when we closed down the war on drugs.

It is absolutely incredible that people do not realize that during the Reagan administration, we began a real war on drugs. That was continued into the Bush administration when we had a real war on illegal narcotics.

What happened in 1993 with the election of the Clinton-Gore administration was basically a close down of the war on illegal narcotics, the war on drugs as we have known it. The phrase was coined in the 1980s, and it was indeed a war on drugs. It was a multifaceted war against illegal narcotics.

I served as an aide in the U.S. Senate under Senator Paula Hawkins, and she was involved with the development of various laws, legislative strategies, working along with them, at that time the Vice President and members of the Reagan administration, in developing administrative approaches and programs to deal with, at that time, cocaine that was coming into the United States.

That program, in fact, those efforts and that war on drugs were, in fact, very successful. There was dramatic decrease in the use of illegal narcotics among our teens. The Vice President, at that time it was George Bush, created a task force on illegal narcotics.

The ANDEAN strategy was developed to interdict and to stop drugs at their source, which must really be the most cost effective way of stopping illegal narcotics. If we know where they are grown, if we know where they are produced, and we can stop them at the source, then in fact we can do it very cost effectively. That has been proven, and that has been done. It was done in the war on drugs in the 1980s, and in fact it worked.

Then, of course, we had national leadership which we have not had since 1993 on the issue of illegal narcotics. Even the First Lady she took a national lead, developed a program that was really ingrained in our young people. It was a simple message, `Just Say No.'

The President appointed Drug Czars who helped formulate policy and programs that actually went after illegal narcotics. We had a tough enforcement policy. We had a tough interdiction policy. We began for the first time to utilize the military in the war on drugs. The Coast Guard was also employed and other United States resources committed in a war on drugs.

Now, all that stopped, for the most part, in 1993 with the beginning of the Clinton-Gore administration. Let me just put up this chart, if I may. This first chart does not show back before 1989, but as my colleagues can see in this chart, this is 12th grade drug use. It shows lifetime, annual, and also 30-day in these colors, use by 12th graders.

What is interesting is we can see from the start of the chart here in 1989 that there is a decline in drug use. This is, again, when we had a war on drugs, when we had a national message against illegal narcotics. Among our teenagers and our young people, if we took this chart out, we would see this dramatic decline to 1992, 1993.

Then we had the election of this President. No

emphasis on national leadership. The first thing that this President did was in fact fire almost everyone. There were only a few folks left in the Drug Czar's office. In fact, the first thing President Clinton and Vice President Gore did was cut the staffing at the National Office of Drug Control Policy. It was cut 80 percent. The exact figures, which are public record, are from 147 Drug Czar employees and staff to 25.

That was the beginning of the end of the war on drugs. There is a line here that delineates a success and the beginning of a failed policy. It could not be more graphic than this chart displays.

I will show some even more telling graphic descriptions of what has taken place in just a few minutes. But, again, the leadership was lost. The opportunity was lost.

What is interesting if we come back and look at this, the Democrats controlled the House, the United States Senate, and the White House in this period. They very purposely dismantled all of the war on drugs in a number of areas, and I will point each of them out.

But my colleagues can see, up until when the Republicans took over the House and the Senate in 1995 here, 1996 my colleagues see the first leveling off. We have seen that, under the leadership provided first by Mr. Zeliff, who lead the House effort to begin to restart the war on drugs, and then Speaker Hastert who was Chairman of the Subcommittee on National Security, Veterans Affairs and International Affairs. I served with the gentleman from Illinois (Mr. Hastert) at that time.

We see this leveling off on the beginning of a decline with, again, the Republicans taking over the issue and providing the leadership and trying to get a war on drugs restarted. There is no question, again, but this multifaceted effort of eradication, interdiction, tough enforcement, and also education and treatment, and I will talk about the education program, too, that we have started, which is unprecedented, all of these things have made a difference in a restart. This is in a shutdown.

So anyone who tells my colleagues that we have had a war on drugs, please tell them that it stopped in 1993 with the Clinton-Gore administration.

Now, that chart is interesting to show what has happened among our young people. This chart is labeled International Spending. I brought this chart out tonight because it graphically shows again the end of the war on drugs in 1992, 1993.

This is where, again, the Democrats took over the House and the Senate and the White House. Of course they controlled the House before that, but they controlled all three bodies. They did incredible damage in a very short period of time.

This chart is labeled Federal Spending: International. Now, this is, this goes back to the source country programs, international programs are source country programs; that is, stopping drugs at their source and in the fields where they are grown and going into the country and working with the country in a very cost effective manner to stop illegal narcotics.

[Page: H8461]

[TIME: 2115]

The war on drugs stopped in 1992, 1993. And if we look at the drug use, the chart went up this way as spending on international went the other way. So the war on drugs, my point is, stopped. Again there were not the programs that were started in the 1980s under President Reagan. And this would be the Andean strategies, the international strategies.

They cut the money and funding going into Colombia, and we will talk about the consequences of not assisting Colombia and the wrong policy adopted, the cost-effective programs of putting a few dollars into them. And these are actually very few dollars. If we look at 1991 and 1992, we are spending about $660 million, $650 million, in that range of dollars. In a $17 billion drug budget, that is a very small amount.

Actually, if we look at what Clinton and Gore did, and again with the control of this Congress, they reduced spending greater than 50 percent. It gets down to $290, which is certainly less than half of the $633. So they reduced spending on international programs; cut these international program's spending to cost-effectively stop illegal narcotics at their source. So this is one part of the ending of the war on drugs, and exactly how they did it.

The next part would be interdiction. And first of all, we talked about international and source country programs stopping drugs very cost effectively with a few dollars; working with other countries and stopping them at their source. Our next opportunity to stop illegal narcotics is as they leave the source country. And we try to get the illegal drugs before they even get near our border.

Here again is a very telling chart. Again we can see in 1992, 1993, with the beginning of the Clinton-Gore administration, the interdiction programs. The war on drugs. If we want to talk about our war on drugs, it ended right in this 1993 period, just as the international programs ended, just as involvement in interdicting drugs at their source ended. Now, they cut the money, and that did a tremendous amount of damage. Because what it did was it allowed drugs to come from the source to our borders.

We had previously been using the military, the Coast Guard, other assets that we have out there anyway involved in stopping drugs before they reach our borders in a cost-effective manner. What was even more damaging, not only did the Democratic-controlled Congress and the White House do this damage in stopping the war on drugs, but they did even more damage. They adopted policies which have caused incredible damage. And there is no other way to describe it.

One of the policies they adopted, for example, was to stop information-sharing to our South American allies who were working with us, Colombia, Peru, and Bolivia. And the United States has great capabilities, with U2, with surveillance, with forward-operating locations, to obtain information. We can tell when a plane takes off. We can track trackers on the ground. We can really get incredible amounts of intelligence and information about what is going on with illegal narcotics.

Well, one of the first shutdowns as far as policy in this war on drugs, and this is funding, closing down financially the war on drugs, was sharing that information with these countries. So we stopped some of that information sharing. We also stopped information that allowed these countries to identify these aircraft, warn these aircraft as they took off from these clandestine strips; and then these countries, some of them, adopted shootdown policies. They were to identify themselves. If they did not identify themselves, they were given warnings, warning shots were fired, and,

finally, they were shot down.

Of course, with the Clinton-Gore administration, we destroyed the first part of the policy and then the second part of the policy. And just in Colombia in the last year have we begun to restore that effort. So when someone says that the war on drugs is a failure, the war on drugs was a success, and it started in the 1980s under Ronald Reagan and it went through George Bush. The shutdown on the war on drugs took place in 1992, 1993. The financial reports identify this. The charts, as far as drug use among our children, identify this.

This administration also destroyed what was known as the drug czar's office in dramatically cutting 80 percent of the staffing. Not only did they gut the drug czar's office, again closing down the war on drugs, but they appointed an individual by the name of Joycelyn Elders as the chief health officer of the United States. Not much more damage in the policy that I described, closing down on the war on drugs, could be done then to hire as a chief health officer for the country an individual who told our young people `just say maybe' to illegal drug use. Eventually, the individual was replaced, but a tremendous amount of damage was done.

And the damage, again, is right here. This is not a chart I just pulled out of a hat. We can see Joycelyn Elders, the close-down on the war on drugs, just say maybe, and the skyrocketing of illegal narcotics use among our teenagers. So, again, to people who say that the war on drugs has been a failure, I say there had been a war on drugs until 1993. Not only have we had a liberal approach from this administration on the subject of illegal narcotics, a total lack of national leadership, a close-down of the major problems, taking the military out of the war on drugs, stopping the cost-effective source country programs, if that was not enough damage in all of those ways; but they also had allies in this war on drugs.

I hear so many people say, well, let us legalize drugs. It does not matter. Let kids smoke dope; let people use heroin, have needle exchanges. We need to be more liberal, more tolerant. Everybody does it. A third of Americans have used some kind of illegal narcotics at some time. Just go ahead and do it. If it feels good, do it. This liberal policy has caused this situation that we are in now, with my area experiencing 52 heroin deaths this past weekend. I just cited three more drug overdoses, two heroin, one cocaine. We have epidemic methamphetamine use.

We had 14,000 Americans who died last year in drug-related deaths, and thousands and thousands more, as I pointed out just from a couple examples tonight, who have met their maker as a result of murder, mayhem, or whatever, committed under the influence of illegal narcotics. That alone is one reason to continue this effort.

But let me tell my colleagues the vision of America under this liberal policy of if it feels good, do it, and drugs are no harm, and needle exchange programs, and we have to make everybody happy on drugs. This weekend my wife and I had an opportunity to visit Baltimore. The ranking member, when I chaired the Subcommittee on Civil Service, is a fine gentleman, the gentleman from Maryland, (Mr. Cummings), who represents Baltimore. I have had many discussions with him about his community. I really was impressed by Baltimore and the people that I saw when I was there Saturday. A wonderful community. It seems vibrant on the surface, but that does not tell all of the story. I have heard some of the problems described by the gentleman from Maryland (Mr. Cummings) and the great empathy he has for his city. But Baltimore is a city, and fortunately the mayor, whose name is Schmoke, is leaving, but he adopted a liberal policy

towards illegal narcotics.

This particular little chart was provided to me by a former United States drug enforcement administrator, Tom Constantine. He made this in a presentation to our subcommittee, my Subcommittee on Criminal Justice, Drug Policy and Human Resources. It is a very telling story about liberalization of illegal narcotics. And, again, it can set the stage for what can happen in countless other cities as they look towards liberalization and our country looks towards liberalization of illegal narcotics.

In 1950, the population of Baltimore was 949,000. In 1996, the population dropped to about two-thirds of that, to 675,000. In 1950, there were 300 heroin addicts in Baltimore, and that was one heroin addict per 3,100 individuals in that community. In 1996, there are 38,985 heroin addicts with a population of 675,000, or one out of 17. Now, this is the figure that Mr. Constantine showed and gave us. The gentleman from Maryland (Mr. Cummings) has told me that he believes the figure is closer to 60,000 heroin addicts.

I have a news report from Time magazine of just last week, the beginning of September here, and let me read from that about the liberal approach, the liberal policy and what it can do, what it has done for Baltimore and what it can do for the rest of America:

`Maryland's largest city seems to have more razor wire and abandoned buildings than Kosovo. Meanwhile, the prevalence of open-air drug dealing has made `no lotering' signs as common as stop signs. Baltimore, which has a population now of 630,000,' it shrunk again, `has sunk under the depressing triple crown of urban degradation: middle income residents are fleeing at a rate of 1,000 a month; the murder rate has been more than three times as high as New York City's; and 1 out of every 10 citizens,' there is the latest we have from 1999, `is a drug addict.'

This Time article from just a week ago says: `Government officials dispute the last claim of 1 out of 10 citizens in Baltimore being a drug addict. It is more like,' and I am quoting, `it is more like 1 in 8, says veteran city councilman Rikki Spector, and we've probably lost count.'

This is a city that adopted a liberal narcotics policy, needle exchange, do it if it feels good. And if the results are not evident, I do not know what can be. Again, the toll in human tragedy in Baltimore is incredible. In 1950, there were 81 murders in the City of Baltimore with a population of nearly a million people.

[Page: H8462]

[TIME: 2130]

In 1997, there were 312 murders in Baltimore. And again the estimates of drug users in that city are now one in eight by the estimate of one of their council members. This is again the pattern that people say we should go toward. The liberal policy to allow illegal narcotics and needle exchanges really promotes addiction and treatment. And again the social costs, the economic costs of this has to be dramatic but it could be if we tried hard enough repeated throughout the United States.

By contrast, we have the city of New York. In the 1980s, when I was a staffer for Senator Hawkins, I had an opportunity to work with an individual who is the Associate Attorney General of the United States. He was not well-known at that time. He was from New York. It was a fellow by the name of Rudy Giuliani. I remember sitting down many times with Rudy Giuliani, in fact flying to Florida with him.

Florida, as my colleagues may recall, in the 1980s had a terrible problem with illegal narcotics, which President Reagan and President Bush dealt with and developed policies toward. And the individual who helped develop some of those policies was the Associate Attorney General of the United States, Rudy Giuliani.

He was tough on illegal narcotics and crime in the early 1980s. He helped develop policies that changed the direction of crime and illegal drugs during the Reagan administration. And again you saw the dramatic figures, the decline in drug use and abuse among our young people.

Rudy Guiliani, of course we all know, went on to be mayor of New York. As opposed to the Baltimore model, which was liberal, providing again almost accommodation to illegal drug use, the mayor of New York City, who was elected in recent history here, and we have got an entire history of the murder rate of New York City, but with the election of Rudy Guiliani, this graphically shows the decline in the city's murder rate.

And we will just take from 1990 to 1992, they were averaging about 2000 murders. Through a zero tolerance policy, through a tough enforcement policy, through again a conservative approach as opposed to the Baltimore liberal approach, we have seen in that period of time dramatic decreases. The murder rate in New York dropped dramatically. The number of murders dropped from an average of 2,000 now down to the 600 level.

In a dramatic reversal of crime, drug use, and in this instance murder, I do not think we could have a more graphic display of how a zero tolerance, tough enforcement, and I will also say alternative program, some of which we have looked at that New York has adopted more effective programs in treatment, giving those who are found with an offense the opportunity and access to treatment and other programs that we examined that are very effective. But it all starts from a conservative and tough enforcement policy as opposed to the Baltimore model.

So again we find this pattern repeated in the United States in jurisdictions where they have a tough zero tolerance policy, and we find the Baltimore model repeated, in fact, where we have a liberal policy.

In addition to talking about what took place with the Clinton-Gore Administration and the ending of the war on drugs and with the election of this President and Vice President, it is important that we not only look at successes and failures as far as our communities but what has taken place in the larger picture.

Right now, as I pointed out, visiting the United States is a close ally of the United States, president of Colombia, President Andres Pastrana. He is here asking assistance, and the reason he is here asking for assistance is because of the failed drug policy and foreign policy of this administration.

I pointed out the dramatic decreases in source country programs under the Clinton Administration. Let me put that chart back up if I can. Again, the most effective way to stop illegal narcotics, if possible, is to stop them at their source.

This administration and again this chart shows that this dramatically cuts spending in international or source country programs. No country suffered more as a result of those cuts and that policy than the country of Colombia. Colombia is an international disaster zone. The statistics on Colombia make Kosovo look like a kindergarten operation.

Just in 1 year over 300,000 people were dislocated. Over a million have been dislocated from their homes in Colombia. The tragedy and total in deaths in Colombia is incredible. Over 40,000 individuals have been slaughtered in the civil war there just in the last decade. That includes 4,700 National Police, hundreds and hundreds of members of Congress, judges, Supreme Court members, journalists, prominent individuals who have spoken out have been slaughtered in Colombia.

Colombia could be a very remote problem for the United States if it did not have as a result of the conflict some serious consequences to our Nation.

First of all, as far as international security and strategic location, Colombia is at the heart and center of the Americas. A disruption in Colombia is a disruption in this hemisphere. Colombia was one of the most thriving economies of South America until the narco-terrorists or guerilla Marxist forces began their insurgency against the legitimately elected Government of Colombia and began the slaughter, which is now spreading even beyond the borders of Colombia. It is disrupted again not only with tens of thousands of deaths in Colombia, but the entire region has the potential for destabilizing Central America. Now some of the Marxist narco-terrorist guerillas are intruding further into Panama. Panama is at risk because the United States, as we know, has been kicked out of the canal zone. And that action will be complete in just a few more months.

All of our drug forward operations closed down May 1. All flights ended there. We have lost access to the naval ports and those went out on legitimate tenders and now Chinese interests control both of the ports in Panama. But one of the greatest threats to Panama now is the disruption in Colombia. So we have a disruption in our normal access to the canal and that strategic area of the hemisphere.

Additionally, we have the disruption of Colombia, which Colombia and that region supplies about 20 percent of the United States' daily oil supply. So from a strategic mineral and strategic resource to the United States as far as military accesses also in the war on illegal narcotics, Colombia is now a disaster zone.

How did we get into the mess in Colombia? That is an interesting history. Again in 1992, 1993, in closing down the war on drugs, one of the first victims of the Clinton-Gore Administration was Colombia. This administration, first of all, decertified Colombia in the war on drugs.

Now, Colombia may have deserved decertification, but having been involved in the development of that law, the law is a simple law. It says that the State Department and the President will certify each year to Congress what countries are cooperating with the United States to stop the production and trafficking of illegal narcotics, a simple law. And if a country is decertified it is not eligible for foreign aid for trade and financial benefits, again a simple law linking their cooperation in the war on illegal drugs to our United States benefits, benefits of this government.

Having helped draft that law in the 1980s again when Ronald Reagan was president, it was a good law that helped tie our aid and our efforts to these countries and ask them for their assistance in combatting illegal narcotics, again in return for specific benefits.

The law was developed with a national interest waiver provision that the President of the United States could have used to make certain that Colombia got the assistance it needed to continue combatting illegal narcotics. Unfortunately, President Clinton, through bad foreign policy and a bad interpretation of the certification law, decertified Colombia without a national interest waiver. And what we saw was the beginning of the end of Colombia as we know it.

The disruption in that country went from a horrible situation to the current situation which may not be repairable. The failure to provide a few dollars then in strategic assistance is now bringing the United States on the verge of tremendous financial commitment requested by this administration to help bring stability to Colombia and that region.

We are now talking the latest figure we had when General McCaffrey appeared before my subcommittee probably talking close to $1 billion in foreign assistance being requested.

But that is only the tip of the iceberg. Again, I have described tonight how we have not had a war on drugs, how we closed down the war on drugs. And no place has had a more direct impact as far as a failed policy or a closing down on the war on drugs than Colombia. Again, aid was cut off through a policy.

Also, as I mentioned, the strategic information that was provided to Colombia under the prior administrations in combatting illegal narcotics and even in combatting narco-terrorism and terrorist acts was withheld from Colombia.

Colombia, in 1992-1993, produced almost zero cocaine. It actually was a transit country. It was a country that processed from the coca from Peru and Bolivia, and that cocaine came into Florida and the United States in the 1980's.

In fact, let me put that little chart that shows the trafficking pattern from Colombia in the early 1990s.

[Page: H8463]

[TIME: 2145]

Again cocaine was not grown, coca was not grown in Colombia before the 1990's in any quantities. It all came from Peru and Bolivia.

The policy of the Clinton-Gore administration managed to change that since 1993, and we have reports now in the last year. Colombia is now the largest producer of cocaine in the world. That, again, is a direct link to a policy of stopping assistance, resources, equipment getting to Colombia during this period.

In 1992 to 1993, Colombia produced almost zero poppies or the base product for heroin. The Clinton-Gore administration in, again, closing down the war on drugs and stopping the aid and assistance to Colombia has turned, in 6 or 7 years, Colombia into the largest source of heroin now in the United States.

Remember, in 1992 to 1993 there are almost no poppies or heroin produced in that country. Clinton-Gore administration stopped the aid, the assistance. That is why President Pastrana is here asking for that to be restarted.

The source of heroin, we know from this 1997 signature program; heroin can be traced just like DNA can trace a source through blood. We can trace through this heroin signature program the source almost to the fields where the heroin is grown. In 1997, 75 percent of the heroin entering the United States came from South America, almost all of that from Colombia. There is some Mexican, another 14 percent; and Mexico was also off the charts in 1992 to 1993. Almost all of the heroin was coming in through southeast Asia.

So in 6 or 7 years through a failed policy of this administration, we have managed to turn Colombia into the biggest producer of cocaine, the biggest producer of heroin, into an international disaster zone, 30 to 40,000 people killed, 5,000 police, complete disruption of the region, a million refugees in our own backyard; and this was done again through very direct policy decisions of the United States.

The cost, as we will see this week as President Pastrana meets with myself, with President Clinton, with other leaders in Washington, the initial price tag that we have been given is a billion dollars. In addition, we have been given a price tag; we will probably spend another fifth of a billion on replacing Panama, our forward-operating locations which we got kicked out of after our negotiators failed to come up with allowing our forward-surveillance drug flights to continue from that Howard Air Force base in Panama. So we are up to 1.2 billion to move, again 200 million probably, to move from Panama to Manta, Ecuador, and to the Curacao and Aruba stations in the Antilles region.

The cost of these failed policies continues to mount. We are left as a Congress with no other alternative but to probably pick up the pieces, try to put Humpty Dumpty back together again.

But the point of my special order tonight has been that indeed there are direct consequences when you close down a war on drugs. Since 1993 with the Clinton-Gore administration there has not been a war on drugs. The source country programs have been cut. The interdiction programs using the military, the Coast Guard, other assets have been cut. The aid that was promised to Colombia repeatedly, not only after Congress begged the administration and approved funding for equipment and resources to go down to Colombia to fight the war on illegal narcotics and the narco-terrorists' disruption of that region, the equipment, the resources did not get there.

All of these actions, all of these failed policies have consequences. The price tag is now, as I said, 1.2

billion and mounting. We hope to hear from President Pastrana this week on his initiatives. He has taken some very strong initiatives to develop an anti-narcotics force. 50 U.S. personnel have been training that force; but he does need the equipment. The equipment sat on tarmacs here until just recently. Six Huey helicopters were finally delivered. Then to add insult to injury, when they were delivered, they were not delivered with all the equipment that made them usable in this effort.

We have heard repeatedly in the media that Colombia is now our third largest recipient of aid. The Congress, in fact, appropriated $287 million under the leadership of the gentleman from Illinois (Mr. Hastert), who is now the Speaker of the House, who was chairman of the drug policy subcommittee that was then titled National Security and International Affairs. I inherited that responsibility. It is now Criminal Justice and Drug Policy. He started really the restart of the war on drugs with those funds.

What is absolutely amazing, in checking, most of that $287 million still has not gotten to Colombia, and they are knocking at our door for more funds.

We do have a responsibility as a Congress to carefully review why the administration has not gotten the resources, why the policies of this administration have blocked equipment, resources, assistance to Colombia, how we have gotten ourselves into this international pickle. It would almost seem humorous if it did not have such incredibly damaging effects, and as I started out tonight speaking, the deaths in my hometown where a 12-year-old found his father dead from a heroin overdose, where another woman was found, a young woman in Orlando, dead of an overdose of cocaine.

Most people do not even realize the problem that we face with the heroin and the cocaine coming into the United States today. Ten to 15 years ago that heroin, that cocaine had a very low purity. Today it is deadly, 80 to 90 percent. It provides death and destruction. We must turn this situation around.

END

As of March 13, 2000, this document is also available at http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/z?r106:H21SE9-575: