Special order speech by Rep. John Mica (R-Florida), November 16, 1999

Special order speech by Rep. John Mica (R-Florida), November 16, 1999

ILLEGAL NARCOTICS AND DRUG ABUSE (House of Representatives - November 16, 1999)

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The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Cooksey). Under the Speaker's announced policy of January 6, 1999, the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Mica) is recognized for the time remaining until midnight.

Mr. MICA. Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to come before the House. Although the hour is late, I think the subject is extremely important, and some of it will continue upon a dialogue that was begun in the last hour by the gentleman from California and the gentlewoman from Wisconsin on the subject of Colombia.

I do chair in the House of Representatives the Subcommittee on Criminal Justice, Drug Policy and Human Resources, and have attempted this year, almost on a weekly basis, to come to the floor of the House and spend part of a Tuesday evening, when we have the extensive time granted to Members to discuss issues up until the magic hour of midnight. I have used that time to speak on what I consider the biggest social and criminal justice and health policy facing our Nation, and that is the problem of illegal narcotics and drug abuse.

Just as a wrap-up tonight, discussing some of the activities of our subcommittee, and I think it has had a very effective and also full schedule during 1999, we have held almost 30 hearings, and almost 20 of them on the topic of drug policy.

I remember coming to Congress in 1993. From 1993 to 1995, when the other side controlled the House of Representatives, the White House, and the other body, during that period of time only one hearing was held in an oversight capacity on the topic of our national drug policy, and that is part of how we got ourselves into the situation we are in today with the dramatic increases in drug-induced deaths resulting from illegal narcotics and also from the incredible numbers we have in prison and also the societal problems and costs that we see that are incurred not only by Congress but to American families and parents throughout our land.

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So we have had, as I said, a full list of hearings. We have tried to cover a number of topics starting last January in my own district to assess the problem in central Florida and the area that I serve.

I have repeatedly mentioned that central Florida is a very prosperous area of our Nation and it has been ravaged by illegal narcotics. Their headlines have blurted out this past year that drug deaths now exceed homicides. And the situation continues to be critical in spite of some of the solutions that we have put in place and steps that we have taken. It is a very difficult problem to solve. We have seen that.

We do know that in some jurisdictions through some efforts there have been successes; and, in others, there have been failures.

In February of this year, we asked one of those success stories to be heard before our subcommittee and we conducted a hearing that featured New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani. And certainly of all the examples of successes in this country, no one has been more successful or more effective in curtailing illegal narcotics, crime, and certainly bringing the murder rate under control than Rudy Giuliani.

In fact, when he became Mayor of New York some years ago, the average annual murders were around the 2,000 mark, in fact, in excess of 2,000. A 70 percent decline in the murder rate there has been achieved through a zero-tolerance and tough enforcement policy that has worked. Hopefully, the success story that we heard about there is being replicated. And we know that it is being replicated in other communities; and where it is, we have seen also some dramatic decreases in crime, violence, and narcotics use.

Also important to our subcommittee and in developing the House's strategy for dealing with the problem of illegal narcotics, narcotics trafficking, is looking at the areas that bring drugs forth into our country into our borders; and we have spent several hearings back in February looking at the situation as far as Mexico.

Seventy percent of the illegal narcotics coming into the United States transit through Mexico. We conducted a rather thorough review and oversight of our policy toward Mexico in advance of the President's requirement under law to certify Mexico as cooperating under again a Federal law that requires that certification that Mexico is cooperating with the United States to stop both the production and trafficking of illegal narcotics.

In return for that certification and cooperation, a country under that law, whether it is Mexico or other countries, is eligible to receive benefits of the United States, either foreign assistance, financial assistance, financial support, votes in international organizations, and also they receive certain benefits as far as trade from the United States. That is once they are certified as fully cooperating.

We did review the previous year's experience with Mexico and found some of their efforts lacking, in fact, reductions in seizures of both heroin and cocaine, and not really addressing some of the requests that the Congress had made some 2 years ago, including extraditing major drug kingpin traffickers; signing a maritime agreement, which they still have not done; allowing our DEA agents to protect themselves in their country, and that was based on the experience we had with one DEA agent murdered some years ago; and also enforcement of Mexican drug laws that were passed and money laundering laws that were passed that were, unfortunately, passed but not fully executed.

We looked at all of the range of requests that this Congress had made 2 years ago to see if Mexico, in fact, had complied; and we found, in fact, their cooperation
lacking.

In fact, one of the most disturbing reports that we had from that hearing was, in fact, that Mexico, according to our United States Department of State, continues to be the primary haven for money laundering in Latin America.

One of the things that was most disturbing about the actions of Mexico was that, while we had asked them to execute and enforce the laws that they had passed dealing with money laundering, we found instead hostility towards an investigation that the United States began in that country.

That investigation was probably the largest money laundering investigation in the history of the United States Customs and certainly on the international scene and involved hundreds of millions of dollars that we know came from drug money laundering. This undercover operation was the largest money laundering sting in the history of the United States.

As it ended up, 40 Mexicans and Venezuelan bankers, businessmen, and suspected drug cartel members were arrested and 70 others indicted as fugitives.

The United States officials at the time of our preliminary work on this investigation and during the investigation, did not fully inform Mexican counterparts of the operation because they feared Mexican corrupt officials might endanger our agents' lives. However, they were kept abreast generally of the operation.

Three of Mexico's most prominent banks, Bancomer, Banc Serfin, and Banc Confia, were implicated in this investigation. This investigation also revealed some startling facts about what is going on in Mexico.

One of our senior United States Customs agents who led the Casa Blanca probe declared that corruption had reached the highest levels of the Zedillo government, the current government, when he implicated the Minister of Defense of Mexico, Enrique Cervantes.

In June of 1998, the Mexican Government advised the United States it would prosecute United States Customs agents and informers who took part in Operation Casa Blanca. So rather than cooperate with the United States, Mexico threatened to indict and arrest the United States officials involved in that operation.

In February of this year, 1999, a Mexican judge denied the extradition of five Mexican bankers that the United States had requested for their role in operation Casa Blanca.

In fact, extradition continues to be a very sore point in relations between the United States and Mexico.

Last week, I reported that we met with the attorney general and the foreign minister of Mexico here in Washington in what was, I believe, the seventh high level working group that included our drug czar, other high level officials in our administration, the secretary, under secretary for international narcotics matters, and officials from various United States agencies and numerous Members of both the House and the other body.

At the top of our request list again to Mexico was a question of extradition, not only in the Casa Blanca case, but to date United States officials have 275 pending requests for extradition with Mexico.

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To date, Mexico has not extradited a single kingpin drug or illegal narcotics trafficker despite requests. Mexico has only approved 42 extradition requests since 1996. Of 20 of the extradition requests that Mexico has approved, there has only been one of those who has been a Mexican citizen. No major drug kingpin from Mexico who is a Mexican national again has been indicted to date.

In June of this past year, our subcommittee did hold another hearing on Mexico's cooperation on the question of extradition. The title of that hearing is, Is Mexico a Safe Haven for Murderers and Drug Traffickers? Particularly we looked into the case brought to the attention of the subcommittee and the Congress of a suspected murderer, Mr. Del Toro, who was suspected of murder, very heavily implicated in the death of a Sarasota, Florida, woman, a terrible death in which this woman was murdered and the body was left with her two young children. That individual, even though his name is Del Toro, was a U.S. citizen, fled to Mexico and was granted temporary refuge there. I am pleased that after our June 23 hearing, that Mexico did extradite Mr. Del Toro and he is now sitting in jail in Florida awaiting justice in our system. We have made some progress, but again to date not one single major drug kingpin who is a Mexican national has been extradited.

This is all in spite of the fact that on November 13, 1997, the United States and Mexico signed a protocol to the current extradition treaty. Now, this protocol, basically the outline and agreement for extradition, has been ratified by the United States Senate but is currently still being delayed by the Mexican Senate. They have failed to act on that and, as I said, they also have failed to act on the signing or reaching a maritime agreement of cooperation.

I am pleased that this year we have some indication of increased seizures of cocaine and heroin by Mexican officials, in cooperation with the United States officials. That is some good news. Some bad news is that we have just received additional information on the signature heroin program. I have had before this chart that showed, and I think we can see it here, 14 percent of the heroin coming into the United States, was coming, in 1997, from Mexico. We know this is pretty accurate, because these tests that are done by DEA are almost a DNA sampling and can almost trace this heroin to the fields from which the heroin originates. Unfortunately, I just received this chart last week of the 1998 seizures of heroin in the United States. This shows that Mexico has jumped from 14 to 17 percent of the heroin entering the United States, comes from Mexico. That does not sound like much, 14 to 17 percent, but it is about a 20 percent increase. What is startling, too, is in the early 1990's, we were in the single digits in production, primarily black tar heroin from Mexico. The other scary thing, of all the heroin that is coming into the United States is the purity levels that were in the low teens, as far as the purity of heroin is now coming in from both Mexico, South America and other sources is a very high purity level, sometimes 80, 90 percent. So what we have is more production from Mexico, more production from South America, in particular Colombia, and more production of a very deadly heroin, and that is one reason why we have the epidemic of heroin deaths both in my district and throughout the United States.

We do have some serious problems with Mexico. We will continue from our subcommittee to monitor their cooperation. We have that responsibility. Our primary responsibility, of course, is stopping drugs at their source, interdicting drugs before they come into the United States. That really is something that we have tried to closely examine, how effective that has worked.

In the past, and I have held up some of these charts before, particularly in the Reagan administration and the Bush administration, the United States Federal Government, as we can see by this chart, up to 1993 with the Clinton administration, had continually addressed proper funding and spending for international programs. International programs are stopping drugs at their source. Basically what happened is the War on Drugs was closed down in 1993 when the other side took over the House, the Senate and the White House, and Clinton policy really gutted all of these programs. That meant crop alternative programs, stopping drugs at their source, anything that dealt on the international level which again is a primary responsibility of the Federal Government was either slashed dramatically or these programs eliminated. Only now, in 1995, with the advent of the new majority have we really gotten ourselves back to the Reagan-Bush dollar levels of funding for the international programs. We can see some immediate success in several areas, particularly Peru and Bolivia where they have cut production of cocaine in Peru by some 60 percent, in Bolivia by over 50 percent just in several years. The one area where we have not had a reduction in narcotics trafficking and production, of course, is Colombia.

The previous speakers, the gentleman from California, the gentlewoman from Wisconsin, talked about Colombia, and I think in somewhat nostalgic terms. I believe at least one of the speakers had participated in our Peace Corps and both are familiar with Colombia. We have a very serious problem with Colombia today. That problem did not happen overnight. That problem is a direct result of a policy, I believe, and we held a number of hearings in our subcommittee on the subject, and in the Congress there have been some 16 hearings on that subject that I am aware of, both in our subcommittee and other committees, including International Relations, on the problems relating to Colombia. Colombia is another example of the United States changing policy with the Clinton administration, ending the War on Drugs. They stopped the international programs, they stopped the interdiction programs, and this would be stopping drugs from the source to the United States borders. Again, we do not see a change in this policy getting us back to the level of funding that we had under the Reagan and Bush administration until up to the new majority taking control. Otherwise, we see a complete slash in stopping drugs at their source. And also interdicting drugs as they came from their source.

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In fact, one of the first actions of the Clinton administration was to cease providing intelligence information to Colombia on May 1, 1994. That was the beginning of our problems with Colombia, and from the time of this bad policy adoption, things have gone dramatically downhill in Colombia.

That policy change created a gap that allowed drug flights and transit areas that were once denied to drug traffickers to open wide open. Only after the United States Congress intervened and identified this misstep did the Clinton administration, after some very harmful delays, resume intelligence-sharing.

What is interesting, the next step was removal of some of the overflight and surveillance information, and I believe the Vice President was involved in some of those decisions to take some of our AWACs planes and other information, surveillance aircraft, and move them to different locations. Some, of course, went to other deployments of the Clinton administration. It is my understanding one AWACs was sent by the Vice President over Alaska to check for oil spills, as opposed to taking care of providing information to go after drug traffickers.

In addition to going after drug traffickers, the other important thing has been to stem some of the violence, the narco-terrorist violence in Colombia. It is important that we pay attention to human rights, and that human rights violations do not go unpunished.

President Pastrano, the new president of Colombia, has made incredible progress. Very few human rights violations by the military have been reported. The United States is also providing training to their military so that they are aware of human rights violations, and that they do conduct themselves as far as their military activities in compliance with international standards and basic human rights.

However, the human rights of 30,000 Colombians were ignored in this period of time. That is how many Colombians have met their fate and their death as a result of narco-terrorism in their country, so tens of thousands have died. Over 4,000 police, public officials, and everyone from Members of their Congress to their Supreme Court, have been slaughtered, murdered, in what has taken place as lawlessness, and this terrorist insurgency has taken hold.

What is even sadder is that 80 percent of all cocaine and 75 percent of all the heroin in the United States today comes from Colombia. If we looked at a chart back in 1992, 1991, we would see very little cocaine produced in Colombia. This administration, through its policy, again, of stopping information, of stopping resources getting to Colombia, and of denying assistance to Colombia to combat illegal narcotics, has allowed in some 6 or 7 years for Colombia to now become the largest cocaine producer in the world.

It also went from almost a zero production of heroin or poppies to now providing, and I think the charts show, some 60 percent to 70 percent of all of the heroin coming into the United States we can very definitely identify as coming from Colombia. All this took place under the Clinton administration, and in spite of repeated pleas from both the minority, when we were in the minority, and since we have taken over, the majority to make certain that resources and assistance got to Colombia.

What is absolutely incredible, as I stand before the House tonight, we still find ourselves faced with aid that we requested some years ago, with assistance that we appropriated in the previous fiscal year, still not getting to Colombia.

If I have heard one thing once, I have heard it a thousand times. I have heard that the country of

Colombia is the third largest recipient of the United States foreign aid. That is based on a supplemental that was provided last year by the Republican majority, initiated by, in fact, the former chair of this subcommittee, the gentleman from Illinois (Mr. Hastert), who is now Speaker of the House.

I worked diligently to make sure Colombia had the resources, and we passed, under our watch, a supplemental to make certain that the resources got to the source, the primary source, of illegal hard drugs, cocaine and heroin, coming into the United States.

It is absolutely incredible, again, to report that the House, the findings from closed-door sessions we held for the last 2 weeks, we find that in fact it was not $300 million in total that went to Colombia. That got whittled away. So $42 million ended up actually, of $230 million, $42 million went to Peru and Bolivia.

Additionally, we have been requested or we were requesting since 1995 that helicopters which have been requested by Colombia be sent to Colombia to deal with eradication and to deal also with the insurgency that was financed in cooperating with narcotics, illegal narcotics in that country.

What is again absolutely incredible is that to date, we have in Colombia six of nine Huey helicopters that are operating. We expended $40 million on that, so two-thirds of what we requested as far as Huey helicopters are operating, so that is six total Hueys at a cost of $40 million.

One of the other helicopters that has been requested was Black Hawk helicopters, which have both combat capability and also high altitude capability, which we need, and flexibility for Colombia, which has mountainous ranges where coke and poppy are grown and also trafficked.

What is absolutely incredible is that out of the three or out of six that we funded for Colombia, only three have been delivered. Of the three that have been delivered, in fact, none of them are operational at this point because all three of them lack proper floor armoring, and additionally, they do not have ammunition.

Now the ammunition we requested, and I know I have been involved in that for several years, and mini-guns to go to Colombia, we had testimony, again behind closed doors, that in fact, as of November 1, that ammunition and those mini-guns had been shipped, but we did not have confirmation as of last week whether or not they had been delivered.

So we have actually only six operating Huey helicopters out of nine and six would be 15 requested, and three of the Black Hawks are not operational.

Now, if we also look at the dollars involved, we take out $42 million for Peru and Bolivia and we are down to $190 million, and we find that the Black Hawk helicopters really accounted for a great deal of the balance of the residual funds, the super Hueys and several other activities.

What in fact we find out is that of the $232 million above, there was $176 million in fact set aside for Colombia, but only one-half of this has actually been delivered or is operational.

What is even more startling is the administration announced with great fanfare that the President was going to take surplus equipment, again in the previous fiscal year, in 1999, and we are now in 1999-2000, but this is called 506 A drawdown. It is off-the-shelf equipment.

To date, not one single piece of equipment or assistance has been provided to Colombia at this juncture. However, the administration admits now that we have an emergency situation. General Barry McCaffrey, who is head of our antidrug effort and our national drug czar, described Colombia as, and I will quote him, as an `emergency situation' at a hearing before our Subcommittee on Criminal Justice, Drug Policy, and Human Resources on August 6 of 1999.

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Now, I believe that the administration is somewhat embarrassed to come to the Congress in these final days as we debate the 1999-2000 normal budget and request additional funds. Anyone who looks at this, and details the amount of money appropriated by Congress initiated in the House of Representatives for Colombia and then sees what has actually been delivered would be shocked and I think somewhat embarrassed to come here and start asking for a billion to $2 billion.

And I might say that we are not opposed to additional funds on our side of the aisle for Colombia. We have a situation out of control. We have a region that is in danger. We have a neighbor that is just a few hours away from Miami. We have an instability that is being created now all the way up to the Panama Canal over into the Caribbean and through Central and South America by this situation that has grown out of control.

General McCaffrey also went on to state, `The United States has paid inadequate attention to a serious and growing emergency.' That probably will go down in history as one of the understatements, particularly given the latest information that we have and, again, the disruption to the whole region that we see.

Mr. Speaker, it is interesting to note too that General Serrano, who is the Chief of the Colombian National Police, he stated to our subcommittee that 90 percent of the anti-drug missions the Colombian National Police must conduct are required to be conducted by helicopter, again, given the terrain of the country. I know it is nice to think that just good things will happen if we wish and hope, and I respect the opinion of the other Members who spoke in here before on the floor. But I think we know that some tough measures are needed and that this insurgency must be brought under control by President Pastrana, or there never will be peace in Colombia or there never will be peace in this region.

The latest information that we have just a few months ago is that the FARC, which is the guerrilla forces financed by illegal narcotics activities, earn up to $600 million per year in profits from the drug trade. United States officials believe that the area under drug cultivation in Colombia has spiralled from some 196,000 acres last year from 79,000 acres, and this, again, is a problem I think created by inattention by this administration by stopping the resources, by decertifying Colombia in the improper manner in which it was decertified without a national interest waiver to make certain that these long-sought-after pieces of equipment and in some cases ammunition, helicopters, arrived there to help in bringing this pattern of devastation and left-wing guerrilla activity under control.

A recent United States-based General Accounting report said cocaine production in Colombia has increased by 50 percent just since 1996, making it again the number one cocaine producer in the world. It is interesting to note that the year before the administration began its efforts to make certain that none of the equipment and resources that the Congress was trying to provide got to Colombia.

So, again, the history of Colombia is interesting. Even this past week and, in fact, in the newspaper, we have a report of the Colombian rebels making certain demands to the current government. And this story is dateline Bogota, Colombia. The country's largest guerrilla group said it would reject a year-end truce offer unless the government stopped extraditing drug suspects to the United States. That is one of the major conditions they put forth.

And I will say that last week Colombia, as opposed to Mexico where we have had inaction, did vote for the extradition of major drug traffickers. Now we have the

Marxist guerrilla group financed by drug traffickers threatening to hold the peace process in abeyance if Colombian officials go forward with the extradition of the major drug kingpin traffickers.

We will be back, I am sure, next year to the topic of Colombia, even though we wind up in the next few days here our budget in Washington.

Mr. Speaker, let me turn a moment to the situation in Washington. As most people who observe the Congress know, we are in the process of winding up our year-end responsibilities and that is funding all of the activities of the Federal Government. That process takes place through the adoption of 13 bills, each of which funds our Federal Government.

Today, we have passed about eight of those and we have about five in contention. One of those in contention is the District of Columbia. The President has vetoed the appropriations measure for the District of Columbia. What is really interesting at this juncture, we have passed a balanced budget. The new majority brought the country's finances into order. We have a basic agreement. We set up terms of that agreement so that we must stick to the budget agreement in terms. We are doing pretty much that, even within the District budget.

Mr. Speaker, we have to remember the District budget, when we took over control of the House of Representatives after 40 years of control by the other party, the District of Columbia was in shambles. The year we took over, they were short in debt just for one year about three-quarters of a billion dollars. That means the taxpayers from across the country were underwriting the largesse and wild spending not only of the Federal Government and its agencies but also the District of Columbia.

That situation has been brought under control by the new majority, just as we brought into balance the Federal budget. We did that by eliminating some of the employees. They had the largest number of employees of any governmental body probably outside the former Soviet Union. They had 48,000 employees, which meant that about one out of 10 in the District of Columbia worked for the District of Columbia, not mentioning the contracts that were let.

We got that down I believe to around 33,000. The issue is not about spending this year, because we have brought into control the operations of the District. We brought in new management. Fortunately, one of those individuals is now the Mayor. And the District, just like our national budget, on an annualized basis, of course we have debt, but on an annualized basis is in fairly good order.

The reason the President has vetoed the bill is not dealing with dollars and cents, it is dealing with policy. The Clinton administration has championed a needle exchange program for the District of Columbia.

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That has been one of the bones of contention. The other, of course, is a liberalized drug policy with regard to referendum to legalize certain drugs in the District of Columbia.

So part of the fight on the floor of the House has been about policy and liberalization of drug policy. I have shown many times this chart of Baltimore where Baltimore went in 1996 from 38,000, almost 39,000 heroin addicts to today above 60,000 heroin addicts. That is just in this period. That is through adoption of a liberal policy, a needle exchange policy and liberalized drug policy.

Deaths also remain constant in Baltimore, 312 murders in 1997 and 312 in 1998. A liberal policy of failure. I have said, if we have to have this bill vetoed, the District bill, with liberal provisions on drug policy 10 more times, so let it be. But that is part of what the debate is about here.

That is in spite of people like General Barry McCaffrey who is our national Drug Czar appointed by the President, he said `By handing out needles, we encourage drug use. Such a message would be inconsistent with the tenure of our national youth oriented anti-drug campaign.' So the Drug Czar himself has said that we should not liberalize the policy in the District. He does not support this move.

We have others who have attempted a needle exchange and found that they did just the opposite of what they intended to do. A Montreal study showed that IV addicts who use needle exchange programs were more than twice likely to become infected with HIV as IV addicts who did not use needle exchange programs.

Another study in 1997 in Vancouver reported that, when their needle exchange programs started in 1988, HIV prevalence in IV drug addicts was only 1 to 2 percent, and now it is 23 percent.

Again, we believe, at least on our side of the aisle that these issues, these policies are worth fighting for. It is unfortunate that the Congress just a few days before the Thanksgiving holiday is here. But, in fact, it is important that we are here. It is important that we do not allow our Nation's capital, which should be the shining example, to return to its former state or to adopt a failed policy of liberalization. If the Nation's capital does not set the example, then who does?

We have taken the District a long way in 4-plus short years. It was not a shining example when we took over. It was a great example of big government going bad. That is the same problem we have with many of the other programs.

Public education. There has been a tremendous amount of discussion about improving education across our land. The Federal Government today only provides 5 cents of every dollar towards education. Most of it is provided by local real estate, property, and State taxes, about 95 percent from local and State sources, 5 percent by the Federal Government.

There has been a debate in the Congress here and one of the reasons we are here is how additional money would go to education. Should it be through more Federal programs? We had 760. We have gotten that down to 700 since we do not want to spend money on administration. We want to spend it on the classroom.

The question of spending it in the classroom, 80 to 90 percent of the money under the Democrat regime went for everything except basics, except for the classrooms. We have tried to turn that around and say that we want at least 90 percent of that money in the classrooms.

The biggest problem we have in addition to liberal policies being promoted in the Washington arena with drugs is just the same problem we face in education where

they want the control, they want the ability to dictate, they want the ability to administer and maintain control in Washington. That policy has just about been the ruination of public education and also made it most difficult for the teacher to teach in the classroom, to have control over the classroom, to have some say over the classroom and over the students.

So with 5 percent of the money, the Federal Government has given us 80 percent of the regulations and 90 percent of the headaches. Again, we do not want that policy adopted either in education programs that come from Washington or in programs that dictate how the District of Columbia will operate in the future.

As I close tonight, I think that it is important that we realize, and this may be the last special order on the drug issue, but we realize again the impact of illegal narcotics on our society, not only the 15,700 who meet their untimely death by drug-induced deaths, and that is the latest statistic, in the last, 6, 7 years since I have been in Congress, there have been 80,000 and 90,000 people that meet their death and final fate through drug-induced deaths, a startling figure, almost as many in any recent war of this Nation's history.

The statistics go on to relate the problems that we have. I share with my colleagues some of them as I close, and these are from our National Drug Control Policy Office. According to that office, each day, 8,000 young people will try an illegal drug for the first time. For many of them, it will be the last time. Because of those 15,700 deaths, many, many of them are young people, even teenagers today who fall victim to these high purity hard narcotics and unfortunately do not survive.

According to the Office of National Drug Policy Control, 352 people start using heroin each day across the United States. Today, we have seen also, according to the same office, a record number of heroin deaths, not only in central Florida, but throughout this land, and again, particularly among our young people. So we face a great social problem, a great challenge.

I am pleased that we have been able to conduct during the past year a number of hearings. We are up to some 18 hearings on the narcotics issue and some 30 hearings we will complete by the first week in December with our subcommittee. I appreciate the fine work of staff and Members.

Tomorrow, our subcommittee will hold a hearing at 10 a.m. on the subject of Cuba and its involvement in illegal narcotics trafficking. The administration this past week and the President did not include Cuba in the list of major drug traffickers in spite of some evidence to the contrary.

We will hear both the gentleman from Indiana (Mr. Burton), chairman of the Committee on Government Reform and the gentleman from New York (Mr. Gilman), chairman of the Committee on International Relations on investigations they have conducted by their respective committee staffs on the question of Cuba's involvement and complicity in international drug trafficking, and also the designation by the White House of those countries who have been designated as major drug traffickers, again with the exception of Cuba and with specifically excluding Cuba from that list.

So that will be our responsibility. Then next year, we will continue on our quest to find some answers to very serious problems that the American people and certainly the Congress of the United States face.

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