Speech by Sen. Mike DeWine (R-Ohio), June 30, 2000

Speech by Sen. Mike DeWine (R-Ohio), June 30, 2000

Today, we are sending to the President more than just an assistance package to Colombia --we are sending a blueprint of a partnership with Colombia and other countries in the hemisphere to reduce illegal drug production and distribution. This is partnership among democracies in our hemisphere.

No one denies that an emergency exists in Colombia . The country is embroiled in a destabilizing and brutal civil war--a civil war that has gone on for decades with a death toll estimated at 35,000. The once promising democracy is now a war zone. Human rights abuses abound and rule of law is practically non-existent.

The situation in Colombia today bears little resemblance to a nation once considered to be a democratic success story. But today, the drug trade has threatened the sovereignty of the Colombian democracy and the continued prosperity and security of our entire hemisphere. And, tragically, America's drug habit is what's fueling this threat in our hemisphere. It is our own country's drug use that is causing the instability and violence in Colombia and in the Andean region. When drug deals are made on the streets of our country, they represent a contribution to continued violence in Colombia and in the Andean region.

The sad fact is that the cultivation of coca in Colombia has doubled from over 126,000 acres in 1995 to 300,000 in 1999. Not surprisingly, as drug availability has increased in the United States, drug use among adolescents also has increased. To make matters worse, the Colombian insurgents see the drug traffickers as a financial partner who will sustain their illicit cause, which only makes the FARC and the ELN grow stronger.

A synergistic relationship has evolved between the drug dealers and the guerrillas--a relationship bonded by the money made selling drugs here in the United States. Each one benefits from the other. Each one takes care of the other. This is not a crisis internal to Colombia . It is a crisis driven by those who consume drugs in our country, and a crisis that directly impacts all of us right here in the United States.

It is a crisis that has flourished in part because the current Administration made a significant and unwise policy change in its drug control strategy in 1993. When President George Bush left the White House, we were spending approximately one-quarter of our total federal anti-drug budget on international drug interdiction--spending it either on law enforcement in other countries, on Customs, on the DEA, on crop eradication--basically on stopping drugs from ever reaching our shores.

After six years of the Clinton presidency, that one-quarter was reduced to approximately 13 to 14 percent, a dramatic reduction in the percentage of money we were spending on international drug interdiction.

Fortunately, in the last few years, Congress has had the foresight to recognize the escalating threats in Colombia , and has worked to restore our drug fighting capability outside our borders. In 1998, Congress passed the Western Hemisphere Drug Elimination Act (WHDEA), which not only has begun to restore our international eradication, interdiction and crop alternative development capabilities, it contained the first substantial investment in Colombia for counter-narcotics activities in almost a decade.

Today, we are building on that effort with a more focused plan to eliminate drugs at the source and to reduce the financial influence of drug trafficking organizations on the paramilitaries and insurgents within Colombia . In short, Mr. President, we are reversing the direction of our drug policy for the better. Congress saw what the Administration was doing. We said the policy has to change; we need to put more money into interdiction and source country programs; and that's exactly what we did.

We must not lose sight of why we are providing this assistance. The bottom line is this: The assistance package we put together because Colombia is our neighbor--and what affects our neighbors affects us too. We have a very real interest in stabilizing Colombia and keeping it democratic and keeping it as a trading partner, and keeping its drugs off our streets.

As we consider the great human tragedy that Colombia is today, we must not lose sight of the fact that the resources we are providing to Colombia now are an effort to stop drugs from ever coming into our country in the future. And ultimately, the emergency aid package is in the best interest of the Colombia -Andean region. It is in the best interest of the United States. And, it is clearly something we had to do.

As of July 18, 2000, this document was also available online at http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/z?r106:S30JN0-436: