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Last Updated:5/10/00
Speech by Rep. John Mica (R-Florida), May 9, 2000
ILLEGAL NARCOTICS AND DRUG ABUSE (House of Representatives - May 09, 2000)

[Page: H2763]
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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[TIME: 2130]

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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[TIME: 2200]

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,


[Page: H2767]
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.


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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 was also available online at http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/z?r106:H09MY0-748:
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