Speech
by Rep. John Mica (R-Florida), May 23, 2000
IMPACT
OF ILLEGAL NARCOTICS (House of Representatives - May 23, 2000)
[Page: H3642]
The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Sweeney). Under the Speaker's announced policy
of January 6, 1999, the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Mica) is recognized
for 55 minutes.
Mr. MICA. Mr. Speaker, I am
pleased to come before the House again tonight to apologize to the staff
that is working late into the evening, and appreciate the Speaker's indulgence
and other Members who are listening tonight.
I always try to come before
the House on Tuesday nights during these Special Orders to bring to the
attention of the Members of the House of Representatives the Congress
and also the American people, the number one social problem that we face,
and that is the problem of drug abuse, illegal narcotics, and drug addiction
in this country.
Over and over, I have repeated
some of the statistics, and the statistics are mind boggling. The National
Office of Drug Control Policy and our Drug Czar Barry McCaffrey have estimated
that, each year, over 52,000 Americans die directly and indirectly as
a result of narcotics abuse in this country; that in the last recorded
report to the Congress in 1998, in fact, 15,973 Americans lost their lives
as a direct result of narcotics abuse. I have not yet seen the 1999 figures,
but I am sure they are even worse.
The situation is basically
out of control with 70 percent of those behind bars in our prisons and
jails, incarcerated across this land are there because of some drug related
offense.
The cost to our economy is
in the quarter of a trillion dollars a year range. The destruction of
lives, not only lost, but those left behind in families torn apart in
the agony of drug abuse, an addiction that so many families have experienced,
is devastating.
Almost every report that we
have that comes before us today in our media, the account of a 6 year
old killing a 6 year old, drugs were at the heart of the problem of that
family, and that 6 year old coming from a crack house. A 12 year old taking
a gun to school and threatening his classmates wanted to be with his mother
who was in jail on a prison charge. A 17 year old who attacks at the National
Zoo during the recent holidays, crowds of people, innocent bystanders,
he comes from a family involved in drugs, a father and gangs involved
in illegal narcotics. This story goes on and on.
We can place the blame on
a weapon or something else, but we do not pay attention, as I have stated
before, to the root problem in many, many of these instances, which is
illegal narcotics, drug abuse, and addiction.
Tonight, I want to pick up
from where I left off last week and talk a bit about some of the impact
of illegal narcotics. Now, we know in our land that nearly half of Americans
have tried some type of form of illegal narcotic, and we know that, in
fact, using some illegal drugs such as marijuana does lead to use of other
types of illegal narcotics. We have seen the results which are devastating
in our communities.
I come from Central Florida.
I represent the area between Orlando and Daytona Beach, probably one of
the most economic prosperous growing areas in our country and one of the
most beautiful areas across our land, and that area has also been ravaged
by illegal narcotics, particularly heroin abuse. Heroin in the 1950s,
1960s, 1970s was somewhat limited to the inner cities, to lower socioeconomic
and minority population abuse. It was intravenously abused by drug addicts.
The availability of heroin was really not that extensive in Central Florida
or in most areas of our Nation, again mostly an inner city problem.
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[TIME: 2310]
Most people did not pay attention
to it.
But in 7 short years of this
administration, we have seen the tide of heroin coming into our States
from the foreign production, predominantly Colombia, in unprecedented
quantities. In fact, in 1992-1993, the beginning of this administration,
there was almost no production of heroin in the country of Colombia, and
today Colombia accounts for 75 percent of the heroin. That heroin is finding
its way into our streets and our neighborhoods, our schools, and now our
young population.
I have a copy of a recent
May 8 headline, and it says Suburban Teen Heroin Use on the Rise. So what
was confined to our inner cities, what was confined to hard addicts is
now really becoming a plague upon our teenagers and those in our suburban
communities.
In my area of Central Florida,
we have had headlines that have blurted out that heroin overdose deaths
and drug deaths now exceed homicides. And the same, unfortunately, is
true in many other areas of our land.
Part of this article, which
is just several weeks old, says, and let me quote, `Heroin is back. It's
cheaper, more potent, and more deadly than ever, said Bob Weiner, an aide
to White House drug policy director Barry McCaffery.' And what he is saying
is, in fact, that the heroin on our streets today, as opposed to the heroin
in the 1970s, even the 1980s, is of a much purer, much more deadly content,
sometimes reaching 70, 80 percent purity.
In my area in particular they
are getting very pure heroin, and that is deadly heroin. That is why it
is killing our young people and others in such incredible numbers.
Unfortunately, this report
talks about teenagers, but, in fact, the spread of heroin has also affected
other parts of our population that have really not seen the ill effects
of heroin in the past. This headline is from May 9 in USA Today and it
says Heroin's Resurgence Closing Gender Gap. This article says that girls
are now becoming the victims. Again, previously, this was limited to inner
city populations and also a male drug of choice.
Let me quote from that USA
Today article, if I may. `Heroin's reemergence comes at a time when girls,
far less likely than boys to drink, smoke marijuana, or use harder drugs,
such as heroin, now appear to be keeping pace with them, says Mark Webster,
a spokesman for the Federal Substance Abuse and Mental Health Administration.
Webster's agency, after finding that existing drug prevention programs
helped reduce drugs only among boys, recently helped create an advertising
campaign called Girl Power to deliver antidrug messages to girls.'
Fortunately, in the billion
dollar campaign that Congress has funded to deal with the emerging narcotics
problem on a multifaceted basis, we are starting to address this. But,
nonetheless, there is an incredible explosion of use among the female
population and also among the youth population.
I also began a week or two
ago citing part of a report, and I wanted to refer to it tonight. It is
an interagency domestic heroin threat assessment that just came out about
a month or two ago from the National Drug Intelligence Center in Johnstown,
Pennsylvania. That interagency domestic drug assessment had some interesting
new data that I would like to make part of the record tonight and also
call to the attention of the American people and the Congress.
First of all, this report
talked about heroin use in the United States of America and particularly
in the West. According to the Drug Abuse Warning Network, which is also
known as DAWN, heroin-related emergency department mentions in the western
United States increased some 28 percent in recent years; heroin-related
deaths between 1993 and 1996 rose in all 12 States of the western region
during that time frame. In Oregon, the State Medical Examiner's office
reports an average of five people a week died of heroin-related causes
in the first 6 months of 1999.
To further look at some of
the more recent statistics and data in this report, and again focusing
on the western part of the United States, the report says that seizures
at the southwest border increased from 52 events and 103.8 kilograms seized
in 1997 to 80 events and 145.9 kilograms in 1998.
What is interesting about
the heroin that we see coming in from this area is not only do we have
the Colombian heroin that almost did not exist at the beginning of this
administration, we now have, in double digits, very strong, very pure,
very deadly black tar heroin coming from Mexico. Mexico, in fact, and
not too many people will publicize this, particularly at a sensitive time,
with elections in Mexico and elections in the United States, but from
1997 to 1998, in the most recent statistics we have of heroin seized in
the United States, Mexican black tar deadly heroin has increased some
20 percent in just a 1-year period, again a dramatic increase in heroin
coming from our neighbor to the south.
According to the Drug Abuse
Warning Network, again the acronym DAWN, heroin-morphine related emergency
department mentions in the southern United States increased 165 percent
between 1990 and 1997. Heroin-related drug treatment admissions in the
southern United States increased 13 percent between 1992 and 1997, according
to DAWN's treatment episode data report.
Heroin use in the north central
United States is also on the increase. So this is not just a regional
problem, a limited regional problem to Florida and the southeast or the
Southwest, but this report also details what is going on in the north
central States.
Heroin-morphine related emergency
department mentions increased some 225 percent in the major cities in
the north central United States in the period between 1990 and 1997. Chicago
heroin-morphine related incidents increased 323 percent in that same period.
[TIME: 2320]
St. Louis morphine and heroin-related
deaths increased some 350 percent from 105 in 1990 to 472 in 1997. And
then this report also details the Northeast United States statistics and
what is been happening with heroin in that area of the country. According
to this report, heroin-related emergency department admissions increased
116 percent between 1990 and 1997 in the Northeast United States.
Heroin-related drug treatment
administrations increased 50 percent between 1992 and 1997 according to
the DAWN episode data report. The most significant increase according
to this report was in Buffalo, New York, where heroin-related emergency
department mentions increased some 344 percent from 106 in 1990 to 471
in 1997.
I think a very interesting
report that does show the dramatic increase of drug use and abuse particularly
heroin across the United States and that deadly substance and what its
effect is having in cities that my subcommittee has examined is quite
remarkable. I want to use tonight the example again of Baltimore, Maryland.
Our Subcommittee on Criminal Justice, Drug Policy and Human Resources
recently conducted an oversight and investigations hearing in Baltimore.
Baltimore is really one of
the most historic and beautiful cities on our eastern coast, and Baltimore
for nearly a decade had a mayor with a very liberal attitude towards illegal
narcotics, a liberal needle exchange program, a lack of enforcement of
narcotics laws that are on the books of not only Baltimore but also this
State of Maryland and a lack of cooperation in going after drug users
and abuser. That type of action has related in an incredible record of
drug addiction in Baltimore.
Baltimore is an example of
a city whose population has gone down, down, and down from over 900,000
to somewhere in the 600,000 range, while the addiction population has
gone from somewhere about 39,000 in 1996 to some estimated 70,000 or 80,000.
In fact, one of the city council members was recently quoted saying that
one in eight individuals, citizens of Baltimore are now addicted and primarily
to heroin.
This is a city whose experiment
is a failure. This is a mayor whose legacy is death and destruction and
addiction. If this was replicated across the United States, we would have
tens and tens of millions of our population addicted. Again, a liberal
policy possibly well intended, but the liberalization in fact did not
work, and it has addicted an incredible percentage of the population of
Baltimore.
I am pleased that after the
hearing that we conducted there and after the testimony of the police
chief, the police commissioner of the city of Baltimore who really had
a lackadaisical attitude towards enforcement and going after open air
drug markets and after his testimony was heard by the mayor and others
that he was, in fact, dismissed. It is my hope that the new mayor, Mayor
O'Malley, and I am pleased to see that he is considering a new policy,
a cleanup campaign for Baltimore that I hope will be unprecedented.
Baltimore has suffered this
level of addiction, has also consistently experienced a high level of
deaths per population, over 300 deaths in each of the last 3 years in
Baltimore. And we compare that to New York City, some 650, 670 deaths,
the last several years. New York City with a zero tolerance policy has
cut the murders by some 60 percent. They cut the overall top felony record
in that city by some 58 percent with Mayor Rudy Giuliani's zero-tolerance
policy.
But, in fact, Baltimore is
an example of a city who attempted a severe legalization and liberalization
of drugs and experienced, in fact, an unmitigated disaster.
That is a little bit of where
we are and an update of what is happening with the heroin across our land.
Again, I would like to point
out to my colleagues and the American people that, in fact, we know what
does work in the area of drug abuse. I am sure the liberal colleagues
all choke when they see this chart come up, because the chart is probably
the most graphic evidence of a policy of success in the Reagan and Bush
administration when there was a real multifaceted war on illegal narcotics.
When we had source country programs, an Andean strategy devised under
the Reagan administration, a Vice Presidential task force lead by former
Vice President Bush, in which they went after illegal narcotics as they
were leaving the source countries in a tough interdiction policy, utilizing
in fact in a war against drugs all the resources of the United States,
and we see that in the Reagan administration.
And again this is untouched.
I have only added the names of the administration and put a little divider
in here to show where they began and ended. But you see a successful multifaceted
war on narcotics. Again, the source country, reduction, interdiction,
use of all of our resources in that effort, a President that said, in
fact, we will have a full war on drugs, two Presidents that said that,
and we see the success.
Now, many will tell you that
the war on drugs is a failure, but I submit that the war on drugs began
failing at the beginning of the Clinton administration, when we saw the
dismantling of the source country programs, the gutting of the Andean
strategy, the dismantling of use of the military against illegal narcotics,
the closedown of surveillance operations that provided information to
our allies in the war on drugs. So we see the total failure and the very
direct closedown of a war on drugs.
If you want to talk about
a war on drugs that was a success, you need only look at the Reagan/Bush
era. If you look at when you had a failure on the war of drugs, it is
when you dismantle piece by piece directly the war on illegal narcotics.
The only change we see here
is with the coming of the Republican-controlled, the new majority in Congress,
that we began putting some of these programs back together again. And
we have only begun to see a leveling off with that effort.
But, in fact, one of our major
problems is that even authorizations by the Congress are ignored by this
administration. Let me just put up a couple more charts, if I may.
Tonight I was talking about
update on heroin, heroin use and its prevalence. Again, you see a leveling
and some decline during the Reagan administration. During the Bush administration,
you see a concerted effort and a reduction. And then you see a dramatic
increase practically off the chart in the Clinton administration. When
you do not have a multifaceted approach, when you do not stop illegal
drugs at their source or before they come to our borders, these statistics
cite what happens and very graphically show why we have an incredible
amount of heroin on our streets, why we have the reports like I just read.
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[TIME: 2330]
The same thing happens with
our young people. This shows 12th grade drug use. The first chart we showed
was lifetime prevalence of drug use. But each of these charts and each
of these lines on the chart in fact show the trends here with illegal
narcotics use. This line, the top line, is lifetime use. The red center
line is annual use. The third line is 30 day use.
Again, if we take this back
to the Reagan-Bush era, we are coming with a reduction in 1992, with the
election of the President Clinton, with the just-say-maybe, with the appointment
of a Surgeon General, the chief health officer of the United States, saying
just-say-maybe, with a White House which had so many people in its employ
that had recent drug abuse histories and problems that the Secret Service
insisted on a drug testing program. That was one of the reasons that they
in fact wanted to do away with some of the background checks for White
House employees, is because they were not passing them, and only after
the Secret Service insisted on instituting a drug testing program for
White House employees did we see any change there. But in fact some of
these people were setting the policy.
You see again upward movement
in all of these areas through the Clinton Administration of 12th graders
in drug use. Here again you see the leveling off, the beginning of the
period in which the Republicans took control of both the House and the
Senate and some of the efforts that were put into place in restarting
some of those programs. So you see a beginning of a leveling off in that
period.
This again is a statistic
that I cited tonight in the news report about suburban teen heroin use,
and gave the headline from a few weeks ago. This shows in 1996, again,
when we took over the House of Representatives, the situation that we
inherited as far as suburban teen use. This is the situation we are now
faced with, a flood of heroin coming in, predominantly from Colombia,
but also from Mexico, as I mentioned. Colombia and Mexico are probably
two of the crowning failures of this administration and resulting in the
incredible volume of heroin coming into the United States.
Time and time again, this
administration has thwarted, as I said, both legislative directives and
appropriations to stop heroin production in Colombia. The entire Colombia
scenario started in 1994 when this administration closed off information
sharing with Colombia. That measure, which was opposed, I must say by
even Democrats and all of the people on my side of the aisle, but it outraged
everyone, because it brought an end to information sharing with our allies,
Colombia, Peru and other countries, and was the beginning of the end of
a policy that had begun to make some dramatic changes in Colombia.
If you remember in Colombia,
steps had been taken to dismantle some of the drug cartels, and we were
on our way to bringing that Nation into some balance. All that fell apart
with the beginning of ending surveillance information sharing.
The next mistake by this administration
was in fact to decertify Colombia without a national interest waiver,
which meant that even equipment and resources which the Congress had appropriated
would be denied to Colombia. In fact, when you do not have any war in
Colombia or effort by the United States to stem the production of illegal
narcotics, when you do not have equipment and resources going in to that
region to eliminate the production of the crop, to eliminate the transshipment
from the source zone, and you do not use the military and others to provide
information and surveillance back to the source country to stop the illegal
narcotics and interdict them as they come out, this is the result that
we see, is an incredible volume of heroin coming into the United States
at lower cost, at higher and more deadly purity levels, and we see now
suburban teen heroin use on a dramatic rise in the United States. Again,
it can be traced to Colombia and also to Mexico.
Another failure in this administration's
policy, which in fact certified Mexico as cooperating when Mexico has
done everything to the contrary but assist the United States, failing
to extradite even a single Mexican drug dealer after dozens and dozens
of extradition requests, failing to sign or negotiate a maritime agreement,
which this Congress just several years ago insisted that Mexico do as
a part of its cooperative effort to eliminate narcotics trafficking, failing
to allow our agents to adequately arm and protect themselves, and also
keeping a limit of just a handful of DEA agents in that country. They
do not want drug agents in that country, because the corruption from the
police level to the President's office and throughout the states of Mexico
has in fact run rampant, and in fact Mexico has thwarted again all of
our efforts at enforcement, going so far as in the largest operation in
the hemisphere, probably the history of this hemisphere, to go after corrupt
money laundering in Mexico, operation Casa Blanca, where Mexican officials
threatened the arrest of United States customs officials and others involved
in bringing to justice Mexican and U.S. and other banking officials who
were involved in that huge money laundering scheme.
So, another failure, a failure
in Colombia, now a source of 70 to 80 percent of the heroin. Again, almost
zero was produced in 1992-1993. Further, Mexico, after giving Mexico incredible
trade benefits, financial benefits, opening our borders to Mexico, in
fact this administration had failed to gain their cooperation in the devastation
that is raining on our communities, and a 20 percent increase in black
tar Mexican heroin on our streets in a 1 year period of time.
Mr. Speaker, as I continue
talking about the drug narcotic problem and I focus some on heroin tonight
and also on teen use of heroin, which we have seen a dramatic increase
in, and also the tremendous volume of heroin coming across our borders,
I wanted to report some of the other statistics that we found relating
to this new phenomena.
[Page: H3645]
[TIME: 2340]
The number of heroin users
in the United States has increased, again, according to the last chart
I showed, from 500,000, half a million in 1996 to 980,000 in 1999; and
we know exactly where that heroin is coming from. We know why that heroin
is coming into the United States.
One of the interesting statistics
in this report was that the rate of first use by children age 12 to 17
increased from less than 1 in 1,000 in the 1980s to 2.7 in 1,000 in 1996.
First-time heroin users are getting younger, from an average age of 26
years old in 1991 to an average age in 1997 of only 17 years of age.
Again, I have cited the failure
of this administration's policy in curtailing some 60, 70 percent of the
heroin coming in, which is produced in Colombia now and, again, almost
none produced there in 1992, through 1993; 17 percent of the heroin in
the United States now coming from Mexico. We know, looking at this map,
we have Colombia, which is the source of most of the heroin; we know that
it is leaving this area.
We also know that since we
have instituted very successful programs in Peru and Bolivia where they
have cut coca production and cocaine production by some 50 to 60 percent
in this area through a successful program set up by the gentleman from
Illinois (Mr. Hastert), the previous Chair of the Subcommittee on Drug
Policy, those successful programs, coupled with the failure of the administration's
program to institute the same type of actions in Colombia, again, even
though the Congress appropriated funds; even though the Congress directed
those programs to take place in Colombia, we now have some 80 percent
of the cocaine produced and coca produced in Colombia. So we know we need
Colombia covered as far as surveillance information, as far as knowing
where drugs are coming from, as far as going after drugs at their source.
Unfortunately, in May of last
year, the surveillance flights stopped from our major forward operating
location in the Caribbean, that was in Panama, and of course the United
States, it is now history, was forced to remove all of its operations,
turn over $10 billion in assets to Panama, close down its antinarcotics
flights from that area. This chart that I have here shows the patchwork
that is being put together by the administration in trying to replace
what we had in Panama. Panama had a strategic location and could cover
all of this region with flights out of that area. Unfortunately, between
1992 and 1999, one of our more recent reports that we requested showed
that the administration had cut these flights some 68 percent. Additionally,
maritime actions and surveillance operations were cut by some 62 percent.
So that is why we have a flood
of heroin coming into this area. We do not have these locations that are
starred here and circled here, which we intended as substitutes for the
Panama operation in place or fully operational. At this time we have in
Manta, Ecuador an air strip. We have just signed a 10-year agreement after
a year delay; but unfortunately, there is somewhere in the neighborhood
of $80 million to $100 million in work that has to be done, and an outdate
of the year 2002 before this operation will become fully capable of functioning.
We have in Curacao and Aruba a limited amount of coverage from that location,
and the star here in El Salvador, we have no operations in that location.
We are just in the process of concluding an agreement which must be presented
to their legislature.
When we get through with this,
we are probably looking at $150 million. Now, we lost $10 billion in assets
to Panama, were kicked, basically, out of Howard Air Force base, so we
have no drug operations in that location. We only have a fraction of the
former drug surveillance flights, so there is a fraction of the
information getting to stop
illegal narcotics. Of course, we know the history of the administration
blocking aid and equipment to Colombia. Repeated requests for 5 years
to get Black Hawk helicopters to Colombia which can operate in high altitudes,
eradicate crops, go after drug traffickers, and we know that the narco-traffickers
who were involved in drug production are also financing the civil war
in that country in which some 35,000 people have been slaughtered; 5,000
police, elected officials, supreme court members, members of their congress
have been slaughtered; and yet we have not been able to get even basic
equipment in there in the form of helicopters that have been promised
for some number of years now. Even when that equipment was delivered at
the end of last year, after numerous delays, it was delivered there without
the proper armoring and without the proper ammunition.
Mr. Speaker, we found that
some of the ammunition that we had been requesting for years to get down
to Colombia to go after the drug traffickers was, in fact, delivered to
the loading dock of the State Department during the Christmas holidays;
and now we find, even more disturbing, that some of the bulk of the ammunition
that has been supplied to Colombia is outdated, possibly dangerous, 1952
ammunition that was purchased by the State Department in a bungled procurement.
This is a very sad picture,
but it is a very true picture of what has taken place. Again, this is
not in place, this is what is proposed, but this accounts for the flood
of heroin coming into the United States out of that transit through Mexico,
through the Caribbean. Much of it, we found in recent hearings, is transshipped
through Haiti. Here is another incredible failure of this administration,
spending some $3 billion, one of the most farcical foreign policy adventures
in the history of the entire Western Hemisphere.
Mr. Speaker, after repeated
pleas with President Clinton, I came to this floor many times saying,
we cannot impose an economic embargo on a country where people are making
less than a dollar a day, where the country is basically operating with
60,000 to 80,000 manufacturing jobs by U.S. businesses who have invested
in that country, imposing an embargo that closed down industry, manufacturing,
private sector activity through the entire population on to a Clinton-style
welfare program which we are now supporting, and Haiti is a country in
which taxpayers of the United States not only got into this subsidization
and welfare because the Clinton policy destroyed the economy, but we now
see Haiti as the major transshipment point through the Caribbean in a
lawless society which, just within the last number of hours, has conducted
an election and we will see how that goes. In the meantime, the puppets
that we have put in place have slaughtered people in unprecedented numbers;
and chaos reigns on the island, which is now open to drug traffickers.
[Page: H3646]
[TIME: 2350]
We had before our subcommittee
some videotapes of drug traffickers landing at will and transshipping
heroin and other illegal narcotics, cocaine, through Haiti, again where
we spent hundreds of millions of dollars supposedly building judicial
institutions, police forces and other expenditures to so-called nation
build that have been a complete failure.
So this is why we have unprecedented
quantities of heroin coming into the United States. It would be bad enough
if we just had heroin and cocaine, but these charts which I showed last
week, I would like to bring up again tonight, and again I did not produce
them. The administration's own Commission on Sentencing brought these
to our subcommittee and it shows crack in yellow and the darker color
here is methamphetamine and it shows 1992 almost not on the charts. The
prevalence in 1993 begins to increase with the advent of this administration;
1994, it becomes an even broader pattern across the United States; 1995,
spreads even further. One would think this was something put out by the
Republican National Committee here as propaganda but, in fact, these are
the charts that were given to us by the administration's own Sentencing
Commission.
Look at the prevalence of
crack in 1996 and methamphetamines, 1997; 1998 reaching epidemic proportions.
We not only have heroin epidemics in parts of the country, an increase
as a result again of this huge influx coming from Colombia and also from
Mexico, two major failures of U.S. foreign policy, some of it through
Haiti, another failure of policy, we now have an incredible meth and crack
epidemic in many parts of our country. The chemical that helps produce
this, and meth gangs in our hearings have produced some incredible results
and documentation, the meth dealers and the meth product is coming out
of Mexico to communities like Iowa and we will be going out there to do
a hearing shortly, our subcommittee. We held hearings in Sacramento, in
that area of the State, and San Diego. Meth epidemics, incredible tales
of how methamphetamines destroys people's lives, causes them to abandon
their children. It is far worse than the crack epidemic that we had in
the 1980s, and meth does incredible damage to people, causes them to commit
bizarre acts.
What was interesting, again
these two charts show the meth epidemic and crack epidemic across this
country, is that we have had in our Subcommittee on Drug Policy criminal
justice drug policy scientists who show us what meth does to the brain.
Tonight, as we get towards
the end, I wanted to show a little bit to the Members of Congress and
others who are watching what takes place. This is a scientific brain scan
presented again to our subcommittee. It shows the normal brain here, and
we see a lot of the yellow here. This would be the normal brain pattern.
Then it shows a gradual reduction in dopamine, which is so important to
brain function, because of meth use. This is additional methamphetamine
use. The only thing a habitual methamphetamine user has differently from
this last brain scan, if we look at that, is a tiny bit of brain capability
left. The last scan is severe Parkinson's's disease. So meth destroys
the brain and brain function. It is not something that regenerates, according
to the scientists.
This is a very graphic illustration
of the destruction of the human mind, the brain, and it accounts for the
incredible acts of violence, the spouse abuse, the child abuse, the abandonment
of family and life as we know it when people become addicted and their
brain is destroyed by methamphetamine.
Unfortunately, as I said also,
heroin, which has such a glamorous connotation today, is more deadly than
it has ever been. In the 60,
70 percent purity levels, when mixed with other substances, it is accounting
for incredible record numbers of deaths across the United States. When
used sometimes by first-time users it results in fatalities and drug-related
deaths at record levels. The only thing that has kept our level of heroin
deaths at a gradual increase in deaths and not even higher records is
the ability now to provide anecdote medical treatment, emergency treatment.
However, admissions for overdoses are, in fact, soaring, as I cited, throughout
every region of the United States. Unfortunately, it is not a very pretty
picture. Unfortunately there have been some serious mistakes made by this
administration, by the Congress when it was controlled by the other side
from 1992 to 1994.
It is a difficult task to
pick up humpty-dumpty, so to speak, and put it back together. It is a
difficult task to conduct a war on drugs after a war, in fact, has been
dismantled.
I am pleased that the Republican-controlled
Congress has dramatically increased the funding of programs across the
board in a very balanced fashion. The success that we knew in the Reagan
and Bush administration when drugs were going down, according to charts
not produced by me but universities and others, very competent sources,
showed that that was a successful program. So this Republican-controlled
Congress has increased source country programs back to the 1992 levels,
the 1991 levels.
Interdiction, we are trying
to bring the military back in to this program. The military does not arrest
anyone. It merely provides surveillance information. And reinstitute forward
operating locations which have been dismantled under this administration
and allowed that incredible volume of hard, deadly, more pure drugs come
in to our border.
We have begun a billion dollar
unprecedented match by a billion dollars in donated time; a national media
campaign which is one year underway; and we are working to improve that.
We are trying to fund treatment and prevention programs at an unparalleled
level, in fact have dramatically increased the Federal funding for treatment
programs and again put in place hopefully a balanced approach to the problem
of illegal narcotics.
It is my hope, Mr. Speaker,
that we can work, as we conclude the 13 appropriation bills, in funding
a real effort against illegal narcotics, a real war against illegal drugs
as a multifaceted project in the Congress because we have 13 appropriation
bills and many of them deal with pieces of this puzzle. Putting it back
together, in fact, is important. We have stalled in getting the money
to Colombia and that is a horrible mistake and shame on both sides of
the aisle. Shame on this administration and this President for not getting
that package here in a timely fashion and acting on it. We know that heroin
is coming from Colombia and Mexico and we must stop illegal narcotics
at their source.
END
As of May 24, 2000, this document
was also available online at http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/z?r106:H23MY0-815: