Speech by Sen. Mike DeWine (R-Ohio), June 21, 2000

Speech by Sen. Mike DeWine (R-Ohio), June 21, 2000

Mr. DeWINE. Mr. President, I rise in reluctant opposition to this amendment that has been offered by my friend and colleague from Minnesota. I commend him for his commitment to drug use reduction. He and I serve on the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee. We have worked on a number of bills having to do with this very topic, including the Safe and Drug Free Schools Program.

Ultimately, however, this amendment is, I am afraid, attempting to reallocate resources from one part of our antidrug strategy to another. The amendment raises important questions about the effectiveness of our entire strategy and opens, I believe, an important and necessary discussion about our drug control policy in this country.

The sad fact is that since almost the beginning of the last decade, our antidrug strategy has not worked. More children are abusing drugs, and with an abundant supply, drug traffickers are seeking to increase their sales by targeting children ages 10, 11, 12, and 13. This is certainly an assault on the future of our children, an assault on our families, and an assault on the future of our country. This is nothing less than a threat to our national values and, yes, a threat to our national security.

All of this, though, begs the question: What are we doing wrong? Clearly, there is not one simple answer. However, in 1998, a bipartisan group of Senators--myself; the Senator from Georgia, Mr. Coverdell; the Senator from Florida, Mr. Graham; the Senator from Iowa, Mr. Grassley; and the Senator from California, Mrs. Feinstein--worked together to deal with this problem. We came to the conclusion that our overall drug strategy simply was no longer balanced. I want to talk about this because I am afraid what my colleague is doing is not helpful as we attempt to balance our antidrug strategy.

We have been working together since 1998 to restore that balance. The emergency assistance antidrug package for Colombia contained in this bill is part of that effort to restore this balance, but even with this, we still have a long way to go.

The fact is, to be effective, our national drug strategy must have a strong commitment in three different areas: No. 1 is demand reduction which consists of prevention, treatment, and education. The Federal Government in this area shares responsibility to reduce that demand, along with State and local governments, local community groups, nonprofit organizations, and families.

When you are dealing with education, when you are dealing with treatment, you are dealing with something that is a shared responsibility between the Federal Government and the local communities.

The second component is domestic law enforcement. Again, in this area, it is a shared responsibility among the Federal Government, the local communities, and the States. Again, the Federal Government has a shared responsibility to use law enforcement resources, along with the State and local governments, to detect and dismantle drug trafficking operations within our borders.

We witnessed a successful return on that investment last week on what was called Operation Tar Pit, when the Justice Department announced it had worked with State and local law enforcement agencies in 12 cities, including 2 in the State of Ohio, to dismantle a major Mexican heroin trafficking organization. They did a great job, in a coordinated effort.

The third component in any successful antidrug strategy is international eradication and international interdiction. This is the sole responsibility of the Federal Government. States can't help. Local communities can't help. We are the only ones who can do this. I am afraid my colleague's amendment strikes directly at our attempt to do this.

Like our national defense and immigration policies, only the Federal Government has the authority, only the Federal Government has the responsibility to keep drugs from ever crossing our borders. If we do not do it, no one else will. No one else can. The buck stops in this Chamber.

These three components are all interdependent. We need to have them all. A strong investment in each is necessary for them to work individually and to work collectively.

For example, a strong effort to destroy or seize drugs at the source or outside the United States both reduces the amount of drugs in the country and drives up the street price. As we all know, higher prices do in fact reduce consumption. This, in turn, helps our domestic law enforcement and demand-reduction efforts.

As any football fan knows, a winning team is one that plays well at all three phases of the sport: Offense, defense, and the special teams. The same is true with our antidrug strategy. All three components have to be supported if our strategy is to be a winning one.

While I think the current administration has shown a clear commitment to demand-reduction and domestic law enforcement programs, the same, sadly, cannot be said for our international eradication and interdiction components. This was not always the case.

I think these charts I have will show how our commitment has changed.

In 1987, a $4.79 billion Federal drug control budget was divided as follows: 29 percent for demand-reduction programs, 38 percent for domestic law enforcement, and 33 percent--one-third--for international eradication and interdiction efforts. This is the way it should be. This is a balanced program. This is what we had in 1987.

Now we fast forward to 1995, and you will see that this balance goes out of whack. We no longer had that balance. We no longer had that balance today.

The balanced approach worked. It achieved real success.

Limiting drug availability through interdiction drove up the street price of drugs, reduced drug purity levels, and as a result reduced overall drug use.

From 1988 to 1991, total drug use declined by 13 percent, cocaine use dropped by 35 percent, and overall drug use by American adolescents dropped by 25 percent--results. We began to see results.

This balanced approach, however, ended in 1993. By 1995, the $13.3 billion national drug control budget was divided as follows: 35 percent for demand reduction, 53 percent for domestic law enforcement, but only 12 percent for international interdiction efforts. International interdiction efforts have gone down to 12 percent from 33 percent.

Though the overall antidrug budget increased almost threefold from 1987 to 1995, the percentage allocated for international eradication and interdiction efforts decreased dramatically. This disruption only recently has started to change.

We have put together, on the floor of the Senate and in the House of Representatives, a bipartisan group--a bipartisan group of Senators--who have said: We cannot have this imbalance. We must begin to restore the balance we had a few years ago in 1987. We have to do it.

Let me go forward, if I may, to this current budget year, the budget year 2000. In the budget year 2000, 34 percent has been allocated for demand reduction, 51 percent for domestic law enforcement, and 14.4 percent for international interdiction efforts.

We are slowly moving in the right direction. Even in this year's budget we have a long way to go, with only 14.4 percent for international interdiction efforts. We have more work to do, more work, such as the assistance package for the Colombians that we are debating on the floor today. But we are starting to see some modest progress.

But what really matters is what these numbers get you, what they buy us as a country, what they buy in terms of resources. The hard truth is that our drug interdiction presence--the ships, the air, and the manpower dedicated to keeping drugs from reaching our country--has eroded dramatically over the course of the last decade. We are just now starting to restore those valuable resources.

In fact, with the modest improvements we have made in our international drug fighting capability, we have seen progress. In 1999, for example, the U.S. Coast Guard seized 57 tons of cocaine with a street value of $4 billion. By the way, that is more than the total operational costs of the Coast Guard. These operations demonstrate we can make a big difference, a very big difference, if we provide the right levels of material and the right levels of manpower to fight drug trafficking. It worked before. It can work again.

The emergency assistance package we are talking about today, along with investments included in the Senate-passed military construction appropriations bill, is designed to build on that success. The amendment of the Senator from Minnesota, while it is very well intentioned, simply, effectively robs Peter to pay Paul just as Paul is getting back on his feet again. Just look at the example I mentioned earlier.

Through my visits to the Caribbean, Colombia, and Peru in the last several years, I have seen firsthand the dramatic decline in our eradication and interdiction capability. The results of this decline have been a decline in cocaine seizures, a decline in the price of cocaine, and an increase in drug use in the United States.

We have to turn this around. This is why we need emergency assistance to Colombia. We need to dedicate more resources for international efforts to help reverse this trend. We have to restore the balance.

I want to make it very clear, as I have time and time again, that I strongly support our continued commitment to demand reduction and to law enforcement programs in the United States. No one is a stronger supporter of these. It has to be a balanced program where we have money for treatment, where we have money for education, where we have money for domestic interdiction and law enforcement.

My concern is not that this amendment is not well intentioned, not that we should not be putting more resources in this area. My concern is what this does to the other side of the component, and that is international drug interdiction.

Let me make it clear. We do need this balanced program. I believe that reducing demand is the only real way to permanently end illegal drug use. However, this is not going to happen overnight. That is why we need a comprehensive counterdrug strategy that addresses all components of this problem.

Let me say again, if the United States does not make an effort to stop drugs before they reach our borders, no one else will. It is the Federal Government's responsibility. I remind my colleagues that our antidrug efforts here at home are done in cooperation with a vast number of public and private interests. Only the Federal Government has the ability and the responsibility to help deal with the problem at the source level overseas. Only the Federal Government has the ability to stop drugs in the transit routes. This is our responsibility; the buck stops with us.

It is not only an issue of responsibility. It also is an issue of leadership. The United States has to demonstrate leadership on an international level, especially in our own hemisphere, if we expect to get the full cooperation of source countries where the drugs originate, countries such as Colombia, Peru, Bolivia, as well as countries in the transit zones, including Mexico and Haiti.

In conclusion, ultimately what we are striving for is a balanced, effective antidrug strategy. I agree with the Senator from Minnesota; we can and should do more to reduce demand but not at the expense of our sole responsibility to stop drugs abroad. That would not result in the balanced approach we are looking for today. That is what we need to aim for, balance and effectiveness. It worked before; I believe it can work again.

If my colleague from Kentucky will indulge me, I will respond to a couple comments that have been made by my colleague from Minnesota. This bill is full of human rights, if I may say it that way. It is full of attempts by the U.S. Government to condition the money we send to Colombia and the money that will be spent in the antidrug effort. We have doubled the money for human rights monitoring. We have established conditions before the money can be released, including the fact that human rights violations must be prosecuted in civilian courts pursuant to Colombia law; troops will be vetted for abuse.

Ultimately, the question my colleague from Minnesota is raising is a fundamental question: Will we back away from our responsibilities in this hemisphere--our responsibility to a fellow democracy, our responsibility to our own citizens to protect us from drugs coming from Colombia into the United States? Will we back away from that, wash our hands of it and say we don't want to get involved in this, or will we become involved only in the sense that we condition the money that we send to Colombia on very tough conditions, great respect for human rights, and see what we can do in that arena?

I think we are better off staying. We can have more impact; we can have more influence; and it is the right thing to do. It is in our national interest. With this bill, my colleague from Kentucky brings to the floor a balanced approach, a logical approach, an approach that is very concerned about human rights, a bill that is concerned about our obligations to ourselves and our obligations in this hemisphere.

I thank the Chair and yield the floor.

As of June 25, 2000, this document was also available online at http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/z?r106:S21JN0-36: