Speech by Rep. Mark Souder (R-Indiana), July 8, 2003

Speech by Rep. Mark Souder (R-Indiana), July 8, 2003

Mr. SOUDER. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Arkansas (Mr. Boozman) and thank him for his leadership in the meth issue. I know that is very important in northwest Arkansas. We are trying to work out doing a hearing on a new initiative on that possibly next week partly because of the gentleman's leadership in encouraging us to do that. We are all trying to deal with cocaine and heroin, meth, and Oxycotin hitting our districts.

Mr. Speaker, let me put this in context. From the world map, Members can see South America just south of the United States. Panama is connected to Colombia, and at one time in the Andean countries, which include Peru and Bolivia straight south of Colombia, that was at one point nearly 100 percent of the world's coca production and a large percentage of the heroin production. The other parts of the world that heroin is predominantly coming from, a little bit from Mexico and a little from the Golden Triangle, that is still significant in Afghanistan and that region kind of northwest or to the left of India, the far part of the map, that Hamas and Hezbollah are using to finance their efforts. Most of the heroin on that side of the world is flowing to China and Europe. But all of the coca in the world is coming out of this region. At one point it was fairly evenly split between Peru, Bolivia, and Colombia with Colombia being mostly a processing country; but it is increasingly concentrated in Colombia, taking one of South America's oldest democracies and turning it into a battle zone.

One other thing we can see from this is why we have a Plan Colombia and an Andean Initiative. If we look at that as a funnel, as it comes out of Colombia, if we do not get it when it is being grown and it gets to the border, it can go to the north side of Colombia into the Atlantic or to the southwest side of Colombia into the Pacific. Once it gets up to the United States border, it becomes even harder to stop. Or it can go across the

Atlantic Ocean to Europe, across the Pacific Ocean to Asia, and the farther one gets from the actual poppy and coca fields, the harder it becomes, which is why we have dedicated and made Colombia the third largest recipient of foreign aid in the United States behind Israel and Egypt because the drug problem in the world right now is centered in that zone; and if we cannot tackle it there, it becomes far more expensive and far harder to tackle the problem as it moves out of Colombia.

Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from Illinois (Mr. Weller), who has been leading an effort for Members of Congress to learn Spanish. The gentleman has taken an aggressive interest in that region along with the gentleman from North Carolina (Mr. Ballenger), the subcommittee chairman.

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