Special order speech by Rep. John Mica (R-Florida), November 2, 1999

Special order speech by Rep. John Mica (R-Florida), November 2, 1999

ILLEGAL NARCOTICS AND AMERICA'S NATIONAL DRUG CONTROL POLICY (House of Representatives - November 02, 1999)

[Page: H11359]
The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Riley). 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, it is good to come to the floor again tonight to talk about a subject which I try to address the House on each Tuesday, if possible, but at least once a week, to come before the forefront of the House of Representatives and the American people what I have as a congressional responsibility, and that is the issue of illegal narcotics and our national drug control policy.

In this session of Congress, I have been responsible as chairman of the Subcommittee on Criminal Justice, Drug Policy, and Human Resources for helping to bring together a coherent national drug policy, and also carry forward a program started by the new majority to restart the war on drugs.

I will talk about what has happened with the so-called war on drugs in my remarks tonight. I will try to review a little bit of some of the current controversy concerning the war on drugs, and how to attack the problem of illegal narcotics and drugs, and then to trace some of the history and problems we were not able to get into last week, particularly on how we got ourselves into this situation with Colombia and the current situation with Panama that has made the news with many of our operations being closed down there, not only from a military standpoint, but also from the standpoint of trying to curtail illegal narcotics from their source from Panama as a forward operating location.

Tonight I feel a little bit caught between the left and the right on the issue of illegal narcotics. I took over the chairmanship and responsibility of trying to develop a policy that would be more effective, and inherited that responsibility, as I said before, from the gentleman from Illinois (Mr. Hastert), who is now the Speaker of the House, who did a tremendous job in restarting our national effort to combat illegal narcotics.

I took on this responsibility without a whole lot of preconceived notions, but again, a philosophy that is probably on the tough side of the agenda in dealing with illegal narcotics. But I found myself again this week sort of attacked a little bit from the right and a little bit from the left on the issue, both by some national columnists and some local columnists.

We have done our best to provide an open, honest forum in our subcommittee hearings to intelligently discuss the options at hand and look at things that we have done in the past relating to illegal narcotics and our approach, and see what went wrong and how we go forward, because this problem does have an incredible social cost.

As I have said, it is not just dollars and cents, but there is a human cost in tragedies across this Nation. There are hundreds of thousands of people, nearly 2 million Americans, in jail, and some 70 or 80 percent of them are there because of illegal narcotics crime activities. There have been 15,200-plus deaths, up almost 8 percent over the previous year, drug-induced deaths.

The social cost is estimated at a quarter of a trillion dollars, a tremendous social cost in the problem of drug abuse and illegal narcotics, and then the cost to our judicial system, our health care system, our economic system, with lost unemployment, not to mention lost opportunities for so many Americans.

But as I said, I am trapped a little bit tonight between the right and left. Some are saying that we have to learn to live with drugs, such as Ethan Nadelmann, who wrote this story which actually appears today in the Washington Post, I think it is a national column.

Mr. Nadelmann is director of the Lindesmith Center, a drug policy institute with offices in New York and Chicago. I am told he is funded by Mr. Soros and some others who have advocated a little bit more liberal drug policy approach.

He does attack the current approach to illegal narcotics, and he says in his article, `Let's start by dropping the `zero tolerance' rhetoric and policies and the illusionary goal of drug-free societies.'

I think we have only to look at comparing, and I have done this before, a zero tolerance tough enforcement approach versus a more liberal approach, laissez-faire, towards illegal narcotics. We have good examples in the United States, and I have cited them before.

One, of course, is Baltimore. I have had this chart up several times before. Baltimore adopted sometime ago a very laissez-faire, liberal drug approach, much as has been advocated by the administration in this budget battle that we have had in the past few weeks in funding the District of Columbia, one of the 13 appropriations

measures we must pass to fund the government, and a Federal responsibility.

But tucked in within that legislation to fund the government were provisions to liberalize needle exchange, to liberalize some of the approaches to marijuana, and a more liberal approach towards what are now illegal narcotics.

We cite, again, a great example of Baltimore, which in 1996 had almost 39,000 drug addicts. This is the liberal approach. Now, they have gone from 39,000 in 1996 to somewhere in the range of 60,000 today. So today we have one in 10, and a city council person whom I have quoted before from Baltimore on the city council there has estimated that the real figures may be closer to one in eight.

If we took this model, and we have a population of the United States we will say rounded off to 270 million, 280 million people, and if we had one in 10, our Nation, using this model, would have some 27 million to 28 million people addicted to drugs.

Not only do we have the problem of drug addiction, we have the continual problem of death and other incredible costs, social costs. Baltimore is one of the few major cities that did not have a reduction in deaths. In fact, it remained the same from 1997, and in 1998 the figures were 312 deaths in the city, for a liberal policy. So we had a huge increase in addiction with the liberalization. This is an example of that liberal policy.

The zero tolerance policy, which is bashed in Mr. Nadelmann's column today advocating, again, dropping this zero tolerance rhetoric, zero tolerance, Rudy Giuliani, the mayor of New York, has employed that, and it has worked very well. We have gone from over 2,200 deaths to 629 deaths. Again, think of Baltimore, which has a small population, 600,000, and 15 times that population in New York City, and half the deaths in Baltimore, 312 in one year versus 629 for a city of a multi-million population. This is the zero tolerance policy Mr. Nadelmann would like us to drop in his article today on the liberal side.

I think this is part of the flaw of his reasoning on this. Again, we have some pretty hard evidence here. He goes on, and I would like to also cite his article in today's Washington Post.

He says,

With some foresight today, drug policymakers might finally grasp that their relentless efforts to eradicate coca crops have little impact on availability, price, or use of cocaine anywhere in the world.

This is his statement today, November 2.

I just wanted to share with my colleagues and the American people the latest information I have today. This chart actually was provided to me this afternoon by the vice president of Bolivia, who was visiting Washington. He met with me this afternoon. He presented this chart, again, the same day this article appears. He says, `. . .the policymakers might finally grasp their relentless efforts to eradicate coca crops have little impact on the availability.'

Well, here is a project that the gentleman from Illinois (Mr. Hastert) started several years ago when the Republicans gained control of the majority. As we can see in the early nineties, we saw some decrease. This is under the Bush administration, the end of the Bush administration. We see the beginning of the Clinton administration, where we see the increase in coca cultivation.

What happened here is that the international programs were cut by the Democrat majority. Now, they had a complete majority to do basically anything they wanted to in the House of Representatives and in the Senate, and President Clinton controlled the executive agency, so what they did in fact was slash the budgets for the number one responsibility, which was stopping the production at their source, the most cost-effective. So we saw an increase in production in the Clinton years, 1993 over here to where the Republicans take over in 1995.

It took us from 1995 to 1996 really to get in place a very cost-effective program. I asked the vice president, how much American money would you estimate that has gone into coca eradication and alternative crop programs? And it is about $30 or $40 million over the past several years.

So with very few dollars out of $17.8 billion, $30 or $40 million in several years, and again, if we go back to what happened in the Bush administration, we could trace this back to the Reagan administration, in very few years we have cut, for almost no money in comparison to what we are spending these huge amounts on for other efforts, we have cut coca cultivation.

Again, Mr. Nadelmann is wrong. His facts are wrong. The production in just Bolivia is cut some 50 percent in 2 or 3 years, and we have a program working with them now with very few dollars to eradicate the production.

Now, if I put up Peru, Peru and Bolivia, they accounted for about 90 percent of all the coca

cultivation back in the beginning here, in the 1992 area, when the Clinton administration took over. Bolivia has had a 50 percent reduction, Peru has had a 60 percent reduction. Both have tough zero tolerance policies, and both with a little bit of help from their friends, very little U.S. money, but a determination for a zero tolerance for going after coca cultivation.

The only chart that we would show where there has been an increase in cultivation would, of course, be Colombia, where the administration blocked assistance, aid, and stopped everything for a number of years. We saw that soar, until just the last year they have awakened to the problem that they have created through their policy of not stopping drugs at their source.

Again, we have been able to affect this. We have also been able to affect the consumption and use of cocaine, which has dropped, and again, another chart shows the long-term prevalence of cocaine use here. We saw in the Reagan administration this levelling out, a dropping under Bush, the Bush administration, and again, the beginning of an increase when President Clinton took over, and now we see a drop in 1998 for the first time. We are seeing a drop again because of the decrease in availability of cocaine, particularly from Peru and Bolivia, where we have been successful.

However, we have been unsuccessful in Colombia, where the administration has fought every attempt to get resources and assistance there for the past several years, and turned Colombia from a non-producer, it was a transit and processing country, into a producer of cocaine.

So I think both of these charts demonstrate exactly what has happened when you have a tough policy, and when you have eradication programs that are cost-effective in countries such as the Bolivia model here and the Peruvian model, which would be very similar to what is shown here and presented by the vice president of Bolivia to me today.

[Page: H11360]

[TIME: 2145]

So, again, hit from the left by Mr. Nadelmann, we do search for the most cost effective means to deal with this problem. But I think he has missed the point, again, based on the facts and information that we have.

Then a good friend who is a local columnist, but also a national columnist, Charlie Reese, who is well respected from the conservative side, last week, he gave us a broad side on the narcotics issue. He said, what do prohibition and drug war have in common, is his question. Sure failure.

One of his comments is, if we ended the war on drugs, legalized these drugs, and allowed people to buy them by prescription or from carefully licensed and regulated dealers, would everyone in the United States go to Haites and everyone become an addict?

Well, again, I will cite one of the best examples we have of a liberal policy, which I think will soon be changed after this election in Baltimore because of the devastation that it has done in that community. But we have seen an addiction problem turn from a small problem into an incredible problem where 1 in 10 are some of our official statistics, but 1 in 8, again according to elected local official there, are now addicts.

Now, addicts do not come cheap. They have a tremendous cost on the health system, on society dealing with their addiction. I would imagine if we compared the cost of dealing with someone who is addicted and has an addiction problem and, again, their lost productivity, their health problems, supporting their addiction, loss to their families, and employment, economic opportunity, I think we would see a very serious charge in cost to society. We have seen that with the degradation of the community, both from an economic standpoint and from a life-style standpoint in Baltimore.

So I can answer the question for Mr. Reese, does everyone become an addict? No, everyone will not become an addict. But 1 in 10 might become subject to addiction under this liberalized policy.

There are some countries where they have tried to liberalize some of the access to drugs like marijuana; and I would cite here the Netherlands. The Netherlands has legalized in small quantities, they did try this, marijuana. It is sold across the counter in limited quantities, as I said.

In talking with officials recently from the Netherlands, we found, first of all, they have reduced the amount that is available. Secondly, they have not only reduced the amount, but they have increased the penalties. They have gotten tougher on enforcement because they found that the liberal approach did not work. And others that took advantage of this situation, they found themselves also with higher addiction rates.

So we have one example of one narcotic, both with tremendous problems, and both with trying it and then backing off from it. That is just dealing with marijuana.

Mr. Reese in his article goes on to say there is nothing inherently evil in morphine, heroin, marijuana, or cocaine. They each produce certain effects just as other drugs do. But those effects do not cause people to commit crimes.

Here again, I would have to differ with my good friend and columnist on the conservative side, Mr. Reese. We know that these drugs do cause some very serious side effects. I try to cite, not only the statistics in the drug-induced deaths, some 15,200 we were up to last year, the societal costs, which I have cited again tonight, but then some of the other cases that are not reported.

We took the case, I believe it was Baby Sabrina, where the father allegedly was high on cocaine, according to some tapes that were obtained. The baby, everyone in Florida and around the country was concerned about its disappearance, and we find that the child may, in fact, have been a victim of a parent who was involved with cocaine.

The Sheppard case which is so celebrated, the anti-gay case in Wyoming is another case, if one reads below the lines, the individuals involved there admit to being high on narcotics and alcohol. I am certain that that influenced their action.

The New Jersey bus driver we cited who was under the influence of marijuana and some 20-plus people died in that bus accident. Plus we have seen what crack cocaine and the effects of other illegal narcotics have upon people.

So I would have to disagree with Mr. Reese that the effects do not cause people to commit crime. He says what causes the crime is drug prohibition. Again, I would have to disagree with him.

Not to mention the tremendous problem we have with growing illegal narcotics, which is methamphetamine. Now methamphetamine is so common that it has become epidemic through the Midwest and through the West, much of it produced, we have found through our subcommittee hearings and investigations, in Mexico and finding its way into

the United States.

But we find that, in fact, methamphetamine and some other drugs, where they have done these brain scans, a normal brain as shown here, a brain on meth for a short period of time, one can already see the change in some of the brain activities. The next figure here shows meth after some continued use. It almost patterns the last image here which is Parkinson's disease.

So we know that certain illegal narcotics, and that is why they are illegal, have very serious damage to the bodies and the brain. This is what can happen. So we do have this problem in dealing with illegal narcotics.

So I am a little bit hit from the right, a little bit hit by the left on the issue. We are trying to find out what are viable solutions. We have looked at the questions of decriminalization, of treating some of the drug problem more as a health problem. But that has very serious cost implications.

We have also seen that, as we take the liberal turn, we have increased addiction. We have a serious problem with our treatment programs in that very few of them are effective the first time around, and sometimes the second and third time around, and sometimes not at all.

So we increase the level of addiction. We increase the level of potential people who cannot be helped and who have become wards and charges because of their addiction to the State and to the Federal Government, of course to communities and families throughout the country.

So we do take a very serious look at trying to find alternatives to the current way we go after illegal narcotics and drug abuse. But, again, nothing can be more effective than stopping illegal narcotics at their source and stopping the production at their source and then stopping illegal narcotics before they get to our borders. Once they get to our borders, it is pretty much a tough situation for law enforcement.

One time a DEA agent described this to me when I was visiting in South America, he said, `Mr. Mica, this is a little bit like having a garden hose and having a sprinkler with a 360-degree radius.' He said, `You can get cans and go out and try to catch all of the sprinkles from that 360-degree sprinkler or', he says, `you can come up here to the hose, and you can choke the water at its source, and it stops.'

That is a little bit of what our Federal responsibility is, with limited number of dollars, we try to stop the illegal narcotics first at their source; and then, as they leave the source, once it gets to the streets and into the communities and schools, neighborhoods, it is almost impossible for our enforcement people to handle.

But we do find that where we do have the zero tolerance policies that we have a much better success rate in dealing with the problem and stemming addiction, stemming illegal activity with again zero tolerance as opposed to the liberalized policy which has been advocated.

Now, that brings us to the point that I also raise about what has taken place. The war on drugs basically was closed down in 1993 with the advent of the Clinton administration, with the advent of a majority in both the House and Senate.

If we look at the areas, again, that I have talked about tonight, the international areas of spending, we see, again, the first responsibility and most cost effective way to deal with illegal narcotics is to stop them at their source.

This chart shows, again, 1991, 1992, in the Bush administration, advent of the Clinton administration, the cutting of international programs. Federal drug spending on international programs, that is stopping drugs at their source, declined 21 percent in 1 year after the Clinton administration took office. Federal drug spending decreased from $660 million in 1992 to $523 million in 1993. This chart shows exactly what took place there.

Now, this is one key element to stopping drugs at their source. The other one, as I said, is the interdiction program; and that is, stopping drugs as they come from the source.

The same thing happened. Again, we have in the beginning of this chart here the expenditures during the end of the Bush administration, the beginning of the Clinton administration, the Clinton administration, the Republican Congress. In interdiction, Federal drug spending on interdiction declined 23 percent 1 year after the Clinton administration took office. Federal drug spending decreased from $1.96 billion in 1992 to $1.5 billion in 1993. So basically we closed down the two primary areas of Federal responsibility.

We cannot have State and local governments and other communities really dealing with these source countries or getting drugs stopped at the border. That is clearly a Federal responsibility.

What is interesting is if we took these charts and

we took drug use, and I have had this chart up once before that our staff produced, but these are exact statistics, again, the Reagan administration, it says Reagan administration right here, we go into the Bush administration, a decline in the prevalence of drug use. This is all drugs.

Then we see the Bush administration ending and the Clinton administration, the change in policy, the change in stopping drugs at their source from coming into the country, we saw a flood of drugs coming in. We saw the end of programs to stop drugs at their source. That was a Federal war on drugs. That basically ended. We see this dramatic increase.

This chart, again, every American and every Member of Congress should be aware of, we get to the beginning of the Republican administration where we have restored money back to the 1991, 1992 levels, and small amounts of money in comparison to an $18 billion program. This is maybe 5 percent, 10 percent of that entire program expended on a source country and also on interdiction.

[Page: H11361]

[TIME: 2200]

But this shows, without a doubt, that that policy does not work; that we did not have a war on drugs; that when we have a war on drugs, we see a decline and when we do not have one, we see an increase. When we have more of a zero tolerance policy, the same thing, the same pattern occurs.

So, again, in those areas, we have not met our responsibility, or at least the old majority did not meet their responsibility. The new majority did. And we are trying to put things back to the 1991-1992 level as far as our efforts to keep illegal narcotics coming into our country.

What is interesting is we often hear, and some of the liberal columnists and the liberal side also say that we should just spend more money on treatment. And that was part of the mantra of the Clinton experiment that failed. Federal drug spending on treatment programs increased 37 percent during the Clinton administration in 1992 to 1993. We went from $2.2 billion to $3.2 billion.

Now, I will say that I believe treatment is very important. We have had problems with programs not having high success rates, and with high failures rates we do need to sort through that. There is nothing wrong with spending every available dollar we can on treatment programs. But, in fact, that was the policy that we had here, and we see the decreases in the two areas which I mentioned that are so important, and then the emphasis on just treatment.

Federal drug spending on treatment increased 12 percent from 1993 to 1995. Even under the new Republican administration, and we are accused sometimes of reducing spending too much, in this important area we have had a 12 percent increase from the time we took responsibility here to the current funding year. So we have continued to put money into treatment all through this period, but again a change in emphasis.

So those are some of the points that I wanted to make about the war on drugs being a failure, again being attacked by the right and being attacked by the left and some of those folks in between. But we have, as a new majority, tried to act responsibly. We have put some of these programs back together under a Republican-controlled Congress. Under the new majority, Federal drug spending on interdiction was increased 84 percent from 1995 to 1999, and that was to get us back to the level of 1991 and 1992 spending.

Federal drug spending on international programs, stopping illegal narcotics from their source to our borders, was increased 170 percent during the Republican-controlled Congress from 1995 to 1999, again, getting us back to the levels that we were at when we so effectively dealt with the problem of illegal narcotics.

Now, we all know that we have been able to curtail some illegal narcotics coming into the United States, and I demonstrated tonight two examples, very cost-effective examples, both in Bolivia and Peru. I have also spoken about Colombia. Right now about 70 percent of the illegal cocaine and heroin coming into the United States comes from Colombia. How did we get into a situation where Colombia, which some 6 years ago was really not even on the radar screen as far as production of coca, for cocaine, or production of heroin? In fact, there was almost no heroin produced in Colombia.

I think it was a series of very strategic errors by this administration that got us to the situation we are in. And let me cite a little bit of the history of how we got to where we are with Colombia now being the source of about 70-plus percent of the hard narcotics coming into the country.

In 1994, the Clinton administration stopped providing information and intelligence to the Colombians regarding drug flights tracked by the United States, which eliminated the effectiveness of Colombia's shootdown policy. So a very sharp directive by the Clinton administration, a change in policy, first stopping in 1994 the providing of information-sharing.

The Colombians were using information and intelligence we gave them to go so far as to shoot down those trafficking in illegal narcotics. This is the first step in the beginning of the disaster that we are now inheriting, and the American taxpayers will have the tab for in a few more weeks, once we get passed this current appropriations discussion and resolution.

The next step in this failed policy of bringing Colombia to the forefront of illegal narcotics production and activity was in 1996 and 1997. The Clinton administration distorted the certification law that Congress had passed back in the mid-1980s and decertified Colombia because the administration said Colombia was not doing enough in the fight against drugs, effectively stopping all United States anti-narcotics assistance to Colombia.

Now, we passed in the mid-1980s a law that was called the decertification law that basically says that each year the administration must assess if countries are

assisting in, one, stopping the production, and, two, stopping the trafficking of illegal narcotics. That is what must be certified. If they are certified as cooperating, then they are eligible for United States foreign aid, financial assistance, and trade benefits. However, we provided in that law, and I remember working on the law with Senator Hawkins and others in the mid-1980s when it was passed, a national security interest waiver.

And certainly it is in the national security interest of the United States to make certain that assistance to a country like Colombia, which was producing illegal narcotics and was a source of illegal narcotics, might be decertified because some of their officials were not cooperating. But also we could grant a waiver, which would allow us to continue giving resources just for the fight against illegal narcotics.

So a law that was carefully crafted to take into consideration situations like Colombia was ignored by the administration. In 1996 and 1997, the administration blocked every bit of assistance into Colombia. So first we had the 1994 shootdown policy and information-sharing policy fiasco and then in 1996 and 1997 a distortion and misapplication of the decertification law by the Clinton administration.

What did that harvest? What were the results? What we did here, after a tremendous amount of effort in 1998, last year, after pressure from many Members of Congress on both sides of the aisle, when we saw what was happening, we finally got Colombia certified with a national interest waiver so that equipment and resources could go to Colombia to fight the war on drugs there. And again, we have to remember that they stopped all of the assistance going into Colombia from basically 1993-94 to 1998.

The results were devastating for Colombia. In fact, according to a New York Times article, published October 25, a few weeks ago, 35,000 Colombians have been killed in the past decade because of the country's internal conflict. And the conflict there is Marxist terrorist groups financed by illegal narcotics activities. According to an Orlando Sentinel article published October 10, 23,000 people were slain in Colombia in 1998 alone.

So if we look at the results from 1996 to 1998, when we stopped all of the aide and assistance, we had 23,000 people killed in Colombia alone in that 1 year. The Colombia National Police reported that since 1990, approximately 4,600 Colombian policemen have been killed in the line of duty, and many of them in fighting against the illegal narcotics trafficking. Again, we withheld aid and assistance for many years.

According to The New York Times, another recent article, 1.5 million Colombians have been misplaced in the last decade because of the country's internal conflict. And I am told in 1 year, over 300,000 were displaced, a tragedy, a disruption of a society equal to Bosnia, equal to the conflict that we have seen in the Balkans, in Kosovo, not only in number of lives taken but in displaced individuals from their homes and their communities.

Now, my colleagues might say, and I have heard some people say this, that I need to tell what the Republicans have done to deal with this. As I said, we put tremendous pressure last year on Colombia. But to go back to 1994, we urged the change in the policy, the shootdown policy and information sharing. We finally did get some minor changes in this. And just in the last few months, the administration has gone back to a policy of providing information sharing. But repeatedly, time after time, we requested the administration to go back to providing assistance.

What was very sad is during this period of time, even resources that we appropriated, the President took some of the money, we know, and diverted it to Haiti. Some of it was diverted to Bosnia. The Vice President, I am told, directed U-2 overflights, which provided information so they could go after drug traffickers and the rebel activity there, he ordered those U-2 planes sent to Alaska to check for oil spills. In the meantime, thousands dead, a civil war financed by illegal narcotics, profits raging, and tremendous disruption.

So Republicans, at every juncture, and since we took the majority, have provided funding, assistance, and requested the administration to move forward. Last year, we provided $287 million to Colombia. This morning, I was to have a meeting with representatives from the Department of State, Department of Defense, National Security Council, and others, who are involved in expending this money and making certain that it gets to Colombia, for a report on where that money has been spent. Unfortunately, that was canceled by the administration this morning.

I think their strategy is to keep as quiet as possible about how the money has been spent, to not come forward and answer questions as to why equipment, resources and what the Congress, the Republican majority, provided to deal with that situation, what has been done with those funds and how that has been expended and what has not been done.

There is also a great reluctance to talk about the $1.5 billion plan that was presented but not officially introduced to the Congress some weeks ago to deal with the escalating problems now that the administration faces.

[Page: H11362]

[TIME: 2215]

We face a Bosnia and Kosovo right in our own backyard here with Colombia financed again by narco-terrorists.

What is sad is I held hearings as recently as August of 1999 and found that helicopters, riverine patrol aircraft, crop spraying aircraft, and support equipment that were supposed to be delivered still had not been delivered. And again, under the Republican Congress, we provided resources and hard dollars that should have been there.

As of October 1999, only a fraction of that assistance has been delivered. Unfortunately, again the administration canceled a meeting today to report on what they have done with the balance. I think that is partly due to trying to get the Congress out of town before they present the Congress officially and the American people with a multi-billion-dollar tab for their mistakes and errors in Colombia.

This is a big business, though, for the guerillas in Colombia. They earn, according to a Reuter's report, up to $600 million a year profits from the drug trade. So the Marxist terrorist guerillas are disrupting this country and the region by fueling it and financing it through the profits of illegal narcotics.

In fact, General McCaffrey, who is our drug czar, has said that there is no line and no distinction between the terrorists and narco-terrorists' illegal drug activities. So we have now seen what has turned from a minor problem at the beginning of this administration that could have been contained with the proper policy into a major problem and a disruption of the entire region.

General McCaffrey, again our drug czar, stated in a hearing that we had, `The United States has paid inadequate attention to a serious and growing emergency.' I would like to echo his statement.

Unfortunately, now the huge bill and tab comes forward; and, unfortunately, now to this date, we still do not have before the Congress a solid plan to deal with that. And I think they are embarrassed because of the current budget battle and appropriations battle of coming forward with that plan at this point. But we are looking for probably a $1.5 billion tab on those mistakes.

This situation is so serious that last week we had an estimated 2 million people in Colombia who went into the streets and demonstrated for peace. I wish I could tell those Colombians that our policy had not gotten them into this situation but, in fact, it has. And now we are going to pay very dearly.

What is sad about the situation in Colombia, and let me put this up here, we have Colombia down here and we have Mexico through here and we see that narcotics are coming up in Colombia through the Isthmus of Panama, Central America into Mexico. This is, basically, the pattern that we see today.

I have a little better chart showing Colombia specifically and Panama. This shows some of the guerilla activity. But here is Panama right here, a very strategic location. Colombia, the darkest areas are the opium growing areas here. A little bit lighter areas here cocaine.

Now, again, in 1992 there was almost no production. This was mostly a transiting and a processing country. And now we see these production areas. Again, I think all beneficiaries of a failed policy. But we see the strategic location with Panama. And again, if I had the other chart up here, we would see the transiting through Mexico into the United States and the sea routes and these circles here showing the guerilla activity, and now they control about two-thirds of the land area in Colombia.

What is of particular concern to some of us who have responsibility in this area is that this whole problem is now escalating and affecting the region. This region produces, I am told, about 20 percent of all the oil consumed in the United States comes from this region.

Panama, who has been a strategic location, and we have as of today this headline in the Washington Post. It says, `U.S. Air Force Leaves Panama. A little quiet, but finally yesterday the last wave of U.S. airmen and women pulled out of Panama yesterday when Howard Air Force Base reverted to Panamanian control closing eight decades of U.S. air power.'

Now, we had all of our forward operating drug locations out of Panama right in this area. We have lost that capability in Panama. What is of concern are the reports that I am getting.

Here is a report from a news account last week. It says, a leading Panamanian clerk says continuing incidents along the border of Colombia could affect future Panama Canal operations.'

And this clerk, again his name is Romulo Emiliani, a Roman Catholic bishop, said, `If Panama falls into instability, the Panama Canal could lose its users.'

Well, in fact, yesterday with a news account that I read, we did lose our base at Howard Air Force Base, not only the strategic military location, but this was the site of 15,000 annual flights into South America, into Central America over the drug producing region. Again, we provided information, sharing, to the Colombians, the Bolivians, the Peruvians and others to interdict illegal narcotics at their source and we were restarting these again in Panama.

One of the problems we have is we have lost this installation. Yesterday, the last Air Force folks moved out. May 1 all flights stopped. That did not come at any small price to the taxpayers. The United States is surrendering 70,000 acres of land to Panama as they assume control of the canal.

The United States has also lost 5,600 buildings to Panama and the resources at the canal. The United States is, in fact, surrendering in the next few days here some 10 to 13 billion dollars in infrastructure to Panama.

There is a great contrast between what the Republicans have done on the narcotics issue in Panama and the Democrats. It is ironic to know that some 10 years ago George Bush sent American troops into Panama because Mr. Noriega, the Panamanian leader, was we know involved in illegal narcotics trafficking and drug smuggling through this region. We sent troops in there and actually Americans died taking back this area and arresting him, and he now is in prison.

This year the Clinton administration is turning back the Panama Canal. What is sad is they have turned the Panama Canal back to primarily red Chinese dominated firms. And that would be bad enough by itself, but in fact almost everyone who has looked at this say they were illegal or corrupt tenders that allowed the Panamanians to give the control, both the Pacific and Caribbean port access, to again red Chinese interests, a great contrast again between what the Bush administration did and what the Clinton administration is doing in the next few weeks here.

What is also a particular concern is that again the instability from Colombia, and this cleric does cite that, will influence Panama has caused destabilization on the Venezuelan side. And even Equador is having difficulty in keeping these narco-terrorists from invading into their border.

So we see what has turned into a small problem a big problem. The price of moving our forward operating locations from Panama now down to Manta, Equador and up to Caracas, Aruba is also of great concern to me as

chairman the Subcommittee on Drug Policy. It is a concern because right now we only have a fraction of the previous overflights and information, so we have the possibility of more illegal narcotics coming into our country when we are trying to, in fact, restart these programs.

What concerns me is the administration came forward with their first proposal with $70-plus million to move these locations. Of course, we just lost 10 to 13 billion dollars in getting kicked out and losing 5,600 buildings. So now we have to replace that with infrastructure and expenditures in Equador and also in the Netherlands Antilles. But again, we have the administration having failed to negotiate any long-term agreements with either the Antilles or with Equador.

We have a short-term agreement with one for several more months and another one that expires in April. Then the administration came back after asking for $70-plus million and asked for another $40 million.

I sent some of our staff down to look at what the cost would be, and we may be at a quarter of a billion dollars, according to our staff report and their investigation of this situation, plus not operating at anywhere near full capacity in this arena, which is so important now in trying to keep some of this activity curtailed and on the verge of spending $1.5 billion that the administration, we expect, as the November surprise after Congress exits stage right and resolves some of the financial problems that we have right now.

So that is a little bit of the situation we find ourselves in tonight. It is not a pretty scene. It is complex both in addressing the drug abuse and illegal narcotics activities in the United States, let alone the international problems and challenges we face.

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to be joined by the gentleman from Indiana (Mr. Souder), who is a member of our subcommittee who has done incredible work at great personal sacrifice, tremendous time and effort on the illegal narcotics problem, one of the stars of our subcommittee.

Mr. Speaker, how much time do I have remaining?

The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Riley). The gentleman from Florida (Mr. Mica) has 1 1/2 minutes remaining.

[Page: H11364]
Mr. MICA. Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to yield to the gentleman from Indiana (Mr. Souder).

Mr. SOUDER. Mr. Speaker, I wanted to congratulate the chairman on his leadership and his diligence in coming down here to the House to keep America informed as to this process.

I was privileged to join the chairman when we were in Colombia, Bolivia, Peru, Panama again this last winter, as we have been multiple times.

This week we finally have Blackhawk helicopters going into Colombia that we fought 4 years to get there. It has been a very frustrating process, and I commend the persistence of the gentleman.

The President is quick to make promises to Colombia, as he did to President Pastrano when he was recently here when the cameras were going. But when the rubber hits the road and we are in the budget negotiations, all of a sudden there is not any money for their anti-narcotics force.

I really appreciate the leadership of the gentleman to keep that pressure on, and it is a privilege to work with him and his subcommittee.

Mr. MICA. Mr. Speaker, reclaiming my time, I thank the gentleman for his efforts and others in the Congress, both sides of the aisle. Some serious mistakes have been made in the past. We cannot afford to make them in the future. A lot of hard-earned taxpayers' money is going into this effort, whether it is eradication, interdiction, treatment, enforcement, whatever the expenditure. And then we have an incredible loss of human life and resources that are in this country. So we will continue our efforts.

[TIME: 2230]

END

As of March 13, 2000, this document is also available at http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/z?r106:H02NO9-1118: