Speech
by Rep. John Mica (R-Florida), May 9, 2000
ILLEGAL
NARCOTICS AND DRUG ABUSE (House of Representatives - May 09, 2000)
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The SPEAKER pro tempore. 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 again on a Tuesday night to address the
topic that I normally address on Tuesday night before the House and to
the American people on the subject of illegal narcotics and drug abuse
and its effect upon our Nation and the responsibility of this Congress
to address that terrible social problem that we face.
Tonight, I would like to provide
an update. We were in recess during the spring work period, and I would
like to update the House and again the American people on some of the
things that have happened relating to illegal narcotics. When I make these
presentations, I try to look at what has been in the recent news and highlighted,
sometimes violence which is highlighted, unfortunately, in our newscasts
about what is happening in our society. Again, I think there is no greater
social problem facing this Nation than that of illegal narcotics. It has
a dramatic impact on our communities and our children.
Before we left for recess,
I addressed the House and spoke about the untold story. The untold story
of a 6-year-old bringing a gun into school and shooting a 6-year-old and
all of the attention focused on the gun. We did look a little bit behind
the scenes and found that the 6-year-old was the victim of a crack house
family that was disjointed; drugs and narcotics prevalent. I believe the
father was in jail on a narcotics charge.
Again, if we look at the root
problem, we see narcotics, we see again a dysfunctional family, and societal
problems. The gun was the means by which this 6-year-old committed a terrible
act, a murder, but the root of the problem is, I think, what this Congress
and the American people must focus upon in their attention to correct
the situation.
Then I think the American
people were focused and the news also riveted in on a 12-year-old who
brought a gun into school and had his classmates I believe at bay with
a weapon, and again, if we look behind the scenes, and I related to the
Congress, we found that the child, the 12-year-old had taken a gun to
school and attempted to get attention and get arrested because he wanted
to join his mother, who was in jail on a drug charge.
Another incident of illegal
narcotics being at the root of the problem, the gun manifesting itself
again is certainly a very serious problem, a problem of bringing a weapon
into school, but again, a child with many problems, illegal narcotics
at the root of some of his family problems. Then, during the holidays,
right at the season of Easter and Passover, I think the entire Nation
and the world was focused on Washington, D.C., our Nation's Capital, which
has some of the strongest gun control legislation and laws on the books
of any locality in the United States. In fact, it is almost illegal to
own a weapon that is unregistered and there are very tight control laws.
Yet, a 16-year-old terrorized a family day at the National Zoo here in
the District of Columbia. The report, of course, focused on the young
teenager who was using a weapon and fired into the crowd. But the rest
of the story was not told.
Let me just cite a little
bit about this young man, a 16-year-old by the name of Jones who was actually
the son of an enforcer in the District's biggest drug gang, his father
was one of the biggest drug gang participants in the 1980s, and this young
man, again, was the victim of illegal narcotics, and what it had done
to his family. He was brought up as really the product of illegal narcotics
and crime that emanated from illegal narcotics. His father, this article
went on to say, James Antonio Jones, was already in jail, a source to
the family confirmed. The elder Jones, 43, is serving a life sentence
in a Federal maximum security prison in Beaumont, Texas, after a 1990
conviction for his role in the drug hierarchy run by Raphael Edmond, who
was a notorious drug dealer and head of a crack cocaine gang here in the
District of Columbia.
Mr. Speaker, in almost every
one of these instances I have cited and others that we see on the nightly
news with the attention of the media, in fact, all of these cases have
illegal narcotics at the root of their problems. Some 70 to 80 percent
of those in our prisons, in our jails, in our Federal penitentiaries are
there because of drug-related offenses.
Many would have us believe
that these folks are in prison for possessing small amounts of marijuana
or some other drug. The fact is, most of these people are there for repeated
felonies. Some of them, in fact, have been on drugs when they have committed
these repeated crimes. Many of them have repeated their crimes time and
time again, are multiple offenders. Most of the people in our prisons,
in fact, have two or more felony convictions in our Federal penitentiaries
and State penitentiaries, according to the studies that our staff from
our Subcommittee on Criminal Justice has undertaken.
So there are a lot of myths
about what is going on, there is a lot of misinformation about who is
committing crime and these illegal acts. In fact, we try through these
weekly presentations before the House of Representatives to get the facts
to the American people and the Congress.
Again, this is the worst social
problem that we face. It is a horrendous problem. The toll is not only
those behind bars, but those who die annually.
The most recent statistics
that we have on deaths, direct deaths from illegal narcotics are 1998
figures, and that is 15,973 Americans died. If we take all of the other
deaths related to illegal narcotics, people driving under the influence
of illegal narcotics, people who die as a result of illegal narcotics,
not necessarily an overdose, but some other act, total, according to our
National Drug Czar, Barry McCaffrey, more than 50,000, almost as many
in one year as killed in some of our international conflicts.
So this, indeed, is a great
problem. It is a problem that can cost our society as much as a quarter
of a trillion, $250 billion a year. That is in dollars and cents, not
in heartaches to mothers and fathers and sisters and brothers and parents
and grandparents who have children and sons and daughters involved in
illegal narcotics.
During this past recess, it
was my privilege to talk to some of the local law enforcement people in
my community. I have cited the impact of illegal narcotics in central
Florida, and I represent probably one of the most tranquil areas in the
country and in the State of Florida and on the East Coast, and that is
the area between Orlando and Daytona Beach.
Central Florida has had a
heroin epidemic. I have cited that before on the floor of the House. In
the past several years, we have had in the neighborhood of 60 deaths from
drug overdoses. We have had a record number of heroin overdoses and deaths.
Unfortunately, I have had to meet with many of the parents who have lost
young people to heroin overdoses, and they die a horrible death. It is
none of the glamour that is portrayed by Hollywood or by films or the
word of mouth that heroin is a great experience. It is a horrible experience
and a horrible death, and any of these parents will testify to that. I
brought before the House rather gruesome pictures of the results of overdoses
of heroin and they are not pretty pictures.
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I hate to bring them back
up here again, but there is no glamor in death by heroin. The heroin that
we have on the streets of the United States today is not the low purity
heroin that we had in the 1980s, now some of the heroin is 80, 90 percent
pure. It is as deadly as any substance can be, particularly when used
with other drugs or alcohol, and first time users unfortunately do not
survive.
In meeting with some of the
local law enforcement people, we are matching our deaths in central Florida.
Again, our deaths are record in number. Our deaths by heroin overdoses
now exceed our homicides, according to the latest statistics, which is
absolutely alarming. In fact, we find the situation getting worse, not
only in central Florida, but across the Nation.
In meeting again with these
local officials, they told me that while the deaths are equal or slightly
above previous years' death count, the only reason they have not shot
off the charts even at an even greater rate is the ability of our emergency
medical personnel to provide better attention, quicker attention, and
better medical survival equipment available to save more of these individuals.
The problem we have, though,
is we are seeing more and more incidents, emergency room incidents of
heroin overdoses. We are just able to save a few more folks, and the deaths
continue to spiral. One of the headlines that was in the newspaper just
this week in the Washington Times here, which always does such a good
job in reporting, I brought a copy of this tonight, suburban teen heroin
use on the increase.
This is the headline that
blurted out. This is an absolutely shocking statistic that was presented,
and this is part of a study that was done. I have a copy of the study
here. It is an interagency domestic heroin threat assessment, and these
statistics on the increase in illegal narcotics is, again, quite remarkable.
If we look at 1996, we had
suburban teen heroin use, and we are looking at about a half a million
young people using heroin, that figure has doubled just about to 1 million,
980,000 according to this report.
In a very brief period of
time, we have had a near doubling of the number of heroin users in the
United States, teenage heroin users. The rate of first use by children
aged 12 to 17 increased from less than 1 in 1,000 in the 1980s to 2.7
per thousand in 1996. First time heroin users are getting younger, from
an average age of 26 year olds in 1991 to an average of 17 years of age
by 1997.
Again, some of the statistics
from this report are startling. Again, we see teen heroin use on the increase.
What I also wanted to address
tonight is the question of where this heroin is coming from and how did
we get into a situation where we have a doubling of the amount of teenagers
in our country on heroin. Unfortunately, the chart that I present now
shows a rather sad record for the Clinton/Gore administration on the question
of long-term prevalence and use of heroin. This chart was prepared by
monitoring the future study at University of Michigan. It is not something
I made up in a partisan fashion.
If we look at the chart for
a minute, we see the percent of 12th graders, and if we look at this record
here, see pretty much stable, some downturn, some slight increase and
then a dramatic downturn under the Bush administration.
It is pretty level and in
some cases there are reductions, some valleys, mostly leveling out and
valleys from the Reagan and Bush administration. Actually heroin was not
quite as much of a problem because President Reagan had developed a methadone
strategy, an interdiction strategy, source country programs, many of which
were eliminated in this period from 1993 forward. In 1993, and I have
not touched the chart in any way or doctored it, you can see a dramatic
increase in heroin use.
We actually see some stabilization
here, that stabilization and a slight decrease is right after the Republicans
took over the House and Senate and began an effort to restore some of
the source country programs, the interdiction programs. We have also had
a tremendous problem in heroin, and I will talk about that, but part of
the problem that we have is, again, a lack of attention to heroin and
its production and entry into the United States.
In fact, in the same period
we have since the beginning of the Clinton administration doubled the
amount of money on treatment, but we have again the situation that we
see here.
We know where the heroin is
coming from. If we can put this chart up here, in 1998, we know today,
according to this DEA, Drug Enforcement Administration chart which they
have provided me, that 65 percent of the heroin that is seized in the
United States comes from South America, and probably 99 percent of that
comes from Colombia. We know this for a fact. They can do a chemical analysis,
almost a DNA analysis, and find out almost to the field where the heroin
comes from. The heroin that is seized across the country, samples are
sent in to DEA and they perform this analysis, so we know pretty well
the picture of where heroin is coming from. It is coming from Colombia.
We also see it coming from Mexico. The bulk of it, of course, again is
from Colombia.
If we had this chart for 1992,
1993, we would see almost no heroin coming from South America. In fact,
heroin was not produced in Colombia until the beginning of the Clinton
administration, for all intents and purposes. Heroin was probably in the
single digits from Mexico. It has crept up a bit since even the last report
we had in 1997. It was at 14 percent. It is now at 17 percent.
Mexico, who we have given
incredible trade advantages to, this administration has certified repeatedly
as far as cooperating in the drug wars, now in 1 year increased production
by some 20 percent of black tar heroin. Again, we know exactly where this
is coming from, according to the tests that are conducted.
This is where heroin is coming
from in 1992, almost none of the heroin produced in Colombia and single
digit in Mexico, and dramatic increases in both of those countries, from
both of those countries.
We know the pattern of drug
traffickers. Let me take this down. This is the pattern of drug traffickers.
We know since 1992, 1993, with the election of the Gore and Clinton team
that there was a change in strategy; that they wanted to in fact close
down the Reagan and Bush programs for source countries, stopping drugs
at their source, and also interdicting drugs as they came from the source,
and they effectively did that. They closed down most of the international
programs, slashed the budgets by some 50 percent.
We know the pattern of heroin
coming out of Colombia now because we can identify it by the signature
program. We also know that Colombia, which was not producing but a small,
small percentage, probably again in single digits of cocaine, is now the
world's major producer of cocaine. Some 80 percent of the cocaine in the
world is coming out of Colombia. This is also since the inception of the
Clinton-Gore policy, where they dismantled these source country programs.
During the past 4 or 5 years
of the Republican administration, we have made a concerted effort to put
back together some of the programs that the Clinton-Gore team and the
Democrat-controlled Congress in 2 years did incredible damage to. It is
a monumental effort. It took President Reagan most of his term and President
Bush to get the illegal narcotics problem in the right direction, and
that is on a downward trend.
Again, these are not doctored
in any way. These are not partisan charts. This chart, also produced by
the University of Michigan, shows the record, and it is a very clear record.
I know this drives the Clinton-Gore people crazy, and it drives the people
on the other side of the aisle, the liberal side, who changed policy crazy,
but this shows very clearly that with President Reagan, we see the long-term
trend and prevalence of drug use.
This really is the major measure
of what is going on with illegal narcotics. We see it going down in a
steady fashion under President Reagan. We see a dramatic drop under President
Bush, an incredible job here done.
Then again, undoctored, and
we do not play with any of these charts, but the facts are very clear,
that again, with President Clinton, with the close-down of the interdiction
programs, the source country programs, taking the military out, cutting
the Coast Guard budget, all this was done in a very short period of time,
but the damage has been absolutely incredible.
When the Republicans took
over, having participated in this, we knew that this policy needed to
be reversed. Under the leadership of the now Speaker of the House, the
gentleman from Illinois (Mr. Hastert), who chaired the subcommittee that
I now chair, actually, the responsibility for drug policy, it was a different
title, it is now titled the Subcommittee on Criminal Justice, Drug Policy,
and Human Resources, but the gentleman from Illinois (Mr. Hastert) was
the one responsible, along with his predecessor, Mr. Zeliff, who left
the Congress, in restarting the war on drugs.
This is basically the war
on drugs, and we will hear people say the war on drugs was a failure.
Mr. Speaker, if this is a failure, I am either reading the chart wrong,
and we can bring back the heroin chart. We also have them for cocaine
and other narcotics. This is pretty dramatic and pretty evident of a successful
program. Again, the use of illegal narcotics is going down, down, down.
This certainly has to be a patent failure with the Clinton-Gore administration,
by any measure.
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[TIME: 2145]
It is interesting that, if
we looked at the resources that were committed, again, this chart is not
doctored. It shows the exact figures in the millions of dollars for international
programs. Now, when we think about drug programs, we spend billions and
billions in drug program, it costs us billions and billions of dollars.
Here we have a chart that starts out with about $600 million in international
source country programs. These programs were started under President Reagan
and President Bush to stop drugs at their source, because it really is
the most cost-effective way.
Where drugs are produced by
peasants in Peru, Bolivia, Colombia, these peasants get very few pesos
or the equivalent of dollars for their harvest. And we know that 100 percent
of the cocaine comes from Peru, Bolivia and Colombia. One hundred percent.
Maybe I should say 99.99 percent. Maybe there is a little bit on the slopes
of Ecuador or some other bordering country, but it all comes from that
region.
We know that the programs
under President Bush and President Reagan worked. We know that the programs
under President Clinton have not worked in eliminating international drug
programs or slashing them.
Here we can see from this
chart, 1992-1993 here, and again with a Democrat-controlled Congress implementing
their policy and gutting the international programs to less than half
of what they were. We see increases with the advent of the Republican
Majority. We are back up to, and if we take this 1999 dollars and put
it into 1991 dollars, we are just about back at 1991 levels.
But this is a clear pattern.
If we took this and did an overlay with the previous chart, we can see
that as they cut drug use here, they had those programs in place, as they
took the programs for international out of place, the drug use started
to soar and that is because we had an even greater supply coming.
This chart shows Federal spending
for interdiction also gutted by the Democrat-controlled Congress. Gutted
here in 1993. It looks a little delayed, but we have to remember that
we start a fiscal year a little bit later, like we will start the next
one in October of this year. But we can see the devastation of the cuts
in interdiction programs here. And we see, getting back to the equivalent
of the 1991 figures, actually, if we look at this little peak that we
have gotten to here, it coincides with the slight downturn that we have
seen here in drug use.
Also, if I got the heroin
chart out, we would see some stabilization. The problem we have in heroin
is that heroin is now produced in Colombia in incredible quantities. The
quantity is completely uncontained as far as coming into the United States.
Because the Clinton administration has thwarted every single attempt,
up to, I would say, last October when the situation in Colombia got totally
out of hand.
Colombia is about to lose
its country. We sent the Drug Czar down, we have sent other officials
down. But the policy of the Clinton-Gore administration, the Democrat-controlled
Congress, was one of one error after another in Colombia.
First, we stopped information
sharing with Colombia back in 1994, which brought the outrage even from
Democrat Members of the Congress. That was information sharing which we
provide through interdiction. And we can see if we look at this interdiction
chart, we see the gutting of the interdiction program.
Our military does not get
involved in an enforcement manner in the narcotics issue. It is prohibited
from actually conducting law enforcement by the Constitution. We do not
want the military in law enforcement. But what the military does is surveillance
in the international
area outside our borders.
If we had missiles coming
in that were killing 15,973 citizens in one year, 100,000 in 7 years,
and 50,000 deaths related to that action, we certainly would use our national
security forces. What we do is we use the military to conduct surveillance.
Our planes provide that information to other countries. We, again, through
the Republican new majority, started programs for source country, for
interdiction, restarted them in 1996 and 1997 for Peru and for Bolivia.
Mr. Speaker, those programs
have been phenomenally successful. The amount of cocaine has been cut,
production in Bolivia has been cut some 55 percent. In Peru, we are up
in the 65 percent, 66 percent range. The only change that we have seen
is further cuts of providing this interdiction and surveillance information
to Peru, and there have been some downturns in the United States providing
that information. We immediately see some increase in drug trafficking
or drug production. It is almost guaranteed to happen according to, again,
all the research and evidence and information that we have.
So, where we let up, we in
fact have illegal narcotics coming into this country. Nothing is more
evident than Colombia. Again, in 1994, the administration stopped information
sharing. The next thing they did was they decertified Colombia without
a national interest waiver, which meant that we could not send assistance
to Colombia to fight illegal narcotics.
In Colombia, illegal narcotics
and the narcoterrorist activity that has caused tens of thousands of deaths
and disruption of that country are synonymous. The narcoterrorists fund
their terrorist activities through narcotics trafficking. That is well-known.
The right and the left, extreme right and extreme left in that civil war
fund their activities through narcotics trafficking, narcotics taxes and
income from the production of narcotics. We know it, our Drug Czar has
stated that many times.
That is why it has become
in the United States' national interest to provide assistance to Colombia
to stop the narcotics trafficking, stop the terrorist activities that
are going on there. Not to provide any troops or any active military participation
there. We have agreed to provide some training.
But year after year since
1993 with the Clinton-Gore administration, they have stopped resources
getting to Colombia. The results are very evident. We have, again, production
from no production in Colombia of heroin to now producing some 65 percent,
probably closer to 70 percent of the heroin, where there was almost none.
Cocaine. We have some 80 percent
now being produced in Colombia. Before it was being transshipped through
Colombia from Peru and Bolivia. And we do know that the program instituted
by the Republican Majority has worked very well in those countries to
cut production.
But right now the reason we
have this report on heroin flooding our streets, young people being victimized
and dying at incredible numbers from heroin, is the sheer quantity, the
sheer supply.
Now, it is bad enough that
we have this record of all of these activities being stopped here which
has allowed some of this to happen. But what is even worse is the reaction
of the administration to provide assets. If we are going to fight a war
on drugs, or if we are going to fight a war, we need assets and we need
to have those assets committed to that war effort.
Mr. Speaker, this chart is
part of a report that was prepared at my request by the General Accounting
Office in December of 1999. What this chart shows is the various assets.
Some of these are DOD. This is the DOD assets, which have been dedicated
to the war on drugs. And we see this decline from 1993 here, this continuous
decline of DOD assets to the
war on drugs.
The next little triangle,
the yellow triangle, the Customs Service assets declining. Some beginning
of increase with the Republican Majority, and the gentleman from Illinois
(Mr. Hastert) was responsible for this. We see the beginning of the return
back to this 1992 level. The Coast Guard, we see steady decline.
If we took the budgets for
these various agencies, we would see them gutted by the Clinton-Gore administration
and also by the Democratically controlled Congress. So if we have a war
on drugs, we must commit assets.
The report that I had conducted
said that flight hours have been reduced 68 percent for fiscal years 1992
to 1999. So this is flying hours dedicated to tracking suspect shipments
of illegal narcotics in transit to the United States. The number declined
from 46,264 to 14,770.
So I submit that the war on
drugs was a success, but basically closed down by this administration
and this is pretty good evidence.
The other area, if drugs are
not shipped by air, they ship by sea. I also asked GAO to look at trafficking
patterns and also what we were doing as far as providing assets in the
war on drugs as far as maritime activities.
If we look again from some
of these highs here, we see DOD in the red declining and a steady decline
of ship days. If if we look at the Coast Guard, we see some slight increase.
This follows the other pattern, and the total overall is still below what
it was in 1992.
In fact, the report given
to me indicates that assets that were used in shipping and going after
illegal narcotics declined some 62 percent during this period from 1992
to 1999. So the ship days for going after illegal narcotics and those
resources in a war on drugs declined dramatically during that period.
One of the other problems
that we have had in the war on illegal drugs is the failure of this administration
to negotiate with Panama the location and continued operation of our anti-narcotics
operations centers, which were located in Panama. These are known as FOLs,
forward operating locations. In order to conduct a war on illegal narcotics,
we need information and surveillance from the area where illegal drugs
are produced and also shipped out of that particular setting.
In May of 1999, of course,
the United States was forced to stop all flights. The administration bungled
the negotiations with Panama. We encouraged them to at least negotiate
an arrangement where we could continue our narcotics tracking flights
out of that area.
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Since May of 1999, we have
seen, not a total shutdown, but a dramatic increase, again, as documented
by this GAO report. Our illegal narcotics, heroin, cocaine are coming
in from Colombia in unprecedented volumes. It is absolutely mind boggling
the sheer amount of heroin and cocaine that is coming in.
But one sees that we do not
have the locations. Now, this chart shows coverage with potential FOLs,
and this chart was given to me as showing the Congress and our committee
what would be done to relocate those operations for surveillance and important
interdiction information.
One of the locations proposed
was in Manta, Ecuador. The other was in Curacao and Aruba. Unfortunately,
the Manta location in Ecuador and also the location in Aruba Dutch Antilles
took longer than anticipated to negotiate final agreements.
The cost, by the time we are
through with relocating here, will be $128 million since the Manta air
strip is not adequate to land the heavy planes and equipment that we have.
Aruba will have to build additional facilities.
But we have dramatically cut
the number of flights, the number of surveillance missions because we
do not have these two locations in operation. It may be 2002 before actually
both of these are up and running at full capacity. That is why we have
the report of incredible amounts of heroin and still cocaine coming into
the United States. We have nothing in place to stop it.
Today I met with the representatives
of the Department of Defense and various agencies involved in trying to
put together a program to put Humpty Dumpty back together again to try
to get us back to the 1992 levels in this fight.
We now have recently signed,
but not fully approved by the El Salvador legislature, a third location.
This will cost us another $10 million or $15 million in addition to losing
the Panama location and $5 billion worth of assets there. We will now
pay to relocate these operations.
But nothing will stop narcotics
quicker than either eradicating them at their source or getting them as
they come from their source. It is proven effective in Peru. It is proven
effective in Bolivia. It will prove effective in Colombia and the surrounding
areas and stop some of the incredible supply that is driving down the
price and making more of the drugs available to our young people.
Again, my colleagues saw the
figures of a doubling in just several years of heroin abuse. But this
is where it is coming from. Unfortunately, all of this will not be in
place for several years to get us back to where we were in 1992 in our
operations in the antinarcotics effort.
What is sad, too, is that
this administration continues to thwart the will and recommendations of
Congress. We have attempted for some 4 or 5 years, I know since we took
over the majority, in every fashion, including granting appropriations,
to get resources to Colombia and to the area where illegal narcotics are
coming from.
But this GAO report also outlines
that DoD is not providing assets that are requested. When we question
the various agencies where these assets are, in fact, the assets are going
to Bosnia, the assets are going to the Middle East, the assets are going
to Kosovo, they are going to the record number of deployments under the
Clinton-Gore administration.
This is quite telling because
SouthCom, which is the Southern U.S. Command in charge of basically our
war on drugs and our antinarcotics effort, has been requesting assets.
These are assets, DoD assets, towards the war on drugs. This is in the
blue. The red shows what they got and what was provided as far as assets
in this effort. We see that this is the request, and this is what they
got. In 1999, this is the request, and this is what they got.
So if my colleagues are wondering
why they have heroin on their streets, if they are wondering why they
have record number of teenagers using heroin and illegal drugs, this is
because, even though the Congress has appropriated funds and resources,
we cannot get those resources into this program.
I do not know if it is the
Secretary of Defense, but I fear that it is even higher in the administration
because, again, every effort to get resources to stop these drugs and
the sheer incredible supply coming into our country every effort is thwarted.
It has almost reached comical proportions as I cited, and it would be
funny if there were not so many people dying as a result of this.
The helicopters that we requested
for the Colombia National Police for some 4 or 5 years now finally got
there late this past fall. Unfortunately, as we now know, the ammunition
for those helicopters was delivered to the back door of the State Department
in a bungled operation rather than to Colombia. It would almost be humorous
to find out that those helicopters were sent to Colombia and they were
not properly armored so they could not be used in the antinarcotics effort.
Finally, I believe we now
have those resources in place. The administration did become aware of
the destabilization of the area and what was going on in Columbia and
finally asked for a supplemental package. Unfortunately, the President
did not submit finally to Congress until the time of our budget, and that
was several months ago, a request; and that, unfortunately, now is being
handled through the regular funding process, although it is necessary
to move that package forward to get these assets in place.
One of the things that does
disturb me is some of the liberalizers out there and those who would legalize
and propose that the solution to all this is just legalize what are now
illegal narcotics, and all of our problems will be solved.
I think that an article that
I read by a professor at Pepperdine University, James Q. Wilson, had some
interesting information. I just wanted to cite him tonight. He said,
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Advocates of legalization think that both buyers and sellers would benefit
by legalization.
People who can buy drugs freely and at something like at free market prices
would no longer have to steal to afford cocaine or heroin. Dealers would
no longer have to use violence and corruption to maybe obtain their market
share. Though drugs may harm people, reducing this harm would be a medical
problem. And you always hear the legalizers say it is a medical problem,
not a criminal justice one. Crime would drop sharply.
But there is an error in this
calculation. Again, this is what Professor Wilson is saying.
Legalizing drugs means letting
the price fall to its competitive rate plus taxes and advertising costs.
That market price would probably be somewhere between one-third and one-twentieth
of the illegal price, and more than the market price would fall.
As Harvard's Mark Moore pointed
out,
The risk price, that is all
the hazards associated with buying the drugs, from being arrested to being
ripped off would also fall; and this decline might be more important than
the lower purchase price. Under a legal regime, the consumption of low-priced
low-risk drugs would increase dramatically. We do not know by how much.
But the little evidence we have suggests a sharp rise.
Until 1968, Britain allowed
doctors to prescribe heroin. Some doctors cheated, and their medically
unnecessary prescriptions helped increase the number of known heroin addicts
by a factor of 40. As a result, the government abandoned the prescription
policy in favor of administering heroin in clinics and later replacing
heroin with methadone.
When the Netherlands ceased
enforcing laws against the purchase or possession of marijuana, the result
was a sharp increase in its use. Cocaine and heroin create much greater
dependency. So the increase in their use would probably be even greater.
The average user would probably
commit fewer crimes if these drugs were sold legally, but the total number
of users would increase sharply.
A large fraction of these
new users would be unable to keep a steady job unless we were prepared
to support them with welfare payments. Crime would be one of their major
sources of income; that is, the number of drug-related crimes per user
might fall even as the total number of drug-related crimes increased.
Add to the list of harms more
deaths from overdose, more babies born to addicted mothers, more accidents
by drug-influenced automobile drivers, and fewer people able to hold jobs
or act as competent parents.
I think that this observation
by professor Wilson is quite interesting.
It is also borne by the facts
where they have tried liberalized policy in the United States. I bring
out the chart provided to me by DEA, our Drug Enforcement Agency, which
shows that heroin addict population of Baltimore.
Now, Baltimore, until just
recently, had a very liberal mayor, Mayor Schmoke. He actually turned
his back on enforcement of some of the illegal narcotics trafficking and
use and abuse in his community. The results were incredible. The number
of deaths in 1997, 1998 were 312; 1999, when we got these figures, the
end of last year, were 308. It will probably reach 312 because people
die as a result of some wound inflicted on them. But the deaths are pretty
much stable.
But what has happened in Baltimore
with this liberal policy is absolutely astounding, and it is confirmed
by what Professor Wilson had outlined in his statement of what happens.
If we look at Baltimore, in the 1950s, it had almost a million population.
In 1996, it was down to 675,000. We will know what the population is now,
but we think it is down lower, around 600,000.
In 1996, it had 38,985 heroin
addicts. Again, this is during the period of the liberal attitude towards
illegal narcotics. That estimate is now, 1999, somewhere in the neighborhood
of one in eight citizens. This is not something I have made up, it is
something a city council person has said, one in eight are now addicted
in what is left of Baltimore.
So exactly what the experience
was in England, we see an increase, dramatic increase in the addiction
population. If this was multiplied across the United States and we had
one in eight people in the United States addicted to heroin or illegal
narcotics, we would have a disaster on our hands. This is, again, the
model of a liberal approach, a liberal approach that failed, both in deaths
and addiction. I do not think one can have more horrible results.
What is interesting and most
people like to ignore, particularly the liberal crowd or those that want
to gang up on Rudy Giuliani these days, is the tough enforcement, the
zero tolerance policy. Does it work or does it not work? If my colleagues
will look in the early 1990s when Rudy Giuliani took over as mayor, they
see about 2,000 plus deaths from murders, the crime rate in New York City.
[Page: H2768]
[TIME: 2215]
The zero tolerance has brought
that down to the mid 600 range, an absolutely dramatic decrease in murders
in that city. What is amazing is not only the murders have decreased but
in every other major crime area, crime is down by some 50 percent to 1999
during his tenure.
And what is interesting is,
I know that people pick on Mr. Giuliani and say that there is overenforcement,
and our subcommittee did hearings and we updated that information. We
did hearings a year ago when he was accused of some of his police force
being overzealous in their enforcement and we found that there were in
fact fewer incidences of police firing on individuals under Rudy Giuliani.
We found there were fewer incidences of complaints against police. And,
actually, that was while Mr. Giuliani had increased the police force by
some 25 percent in numbers. So, actually, the number of police on duty
had increased and there were far fewer complaints under Mr. Giuliani than
there were under the former administrations of the city.
Again, the figures for the
New York City Police Department are absolutely incredible. Zero tolerance,
tough enforcement, does work. In 1993, there were 429,000 major felony
crimes committed. In 1998, we have 212. An incredible record.
The liberals would have us
believe that the legalization is the answer. In fact, the liberalization
has almost devastated the city of Baltimore and other settings where they
have attempted a liberal policy. The tough enforcement, the zero tolerance,
in fact, does work and does result in dramatic decreases in crime across
the board.
I am very pleased that the
Republican majority has increased the source country programs that are
so effective in stopping illegal narcotics at their source. We are getting
them back to the 1991-92 funding levels for the programs of interdiction,
of stopping drugs cost effectively as they come from those source country
areas where they are produced. The Republican majority has instituted
and funded through appropriations a billion dollars a national drug education
program, unprecedented in the history of this country, and we have, again,
dramatically increased the amount of money for treatment and other programs.
So I am proud of our record
and will continue next week to cite the drug problem that we have facing
this Nation.
I have run out of time, so
I will yield back, Mr. Speaker, first thanking those who are working tonight
for their patience.
END
As of May 10, 2000, this document
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