Speech by Rep. John Mica (D-Florida), July 13, 2000

Speech by Rep. John Mica (D-Florida), July 13, 2000

ILLEGAL NARCOTICS AND OUR NATIONAL DRUG POLICY (House of Representatives - July 13, 2000)

[Page: H6042]
The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Simpson). 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, usually on Tuesday I come as chairman of the Subcommittee on Criminal Justice, Drug Policy and Human Resources to talk about the subject of illegal narcotics and our national drug policy.

Tonight is Thursday night. Most of the Members are heading back to their districts; but I have an opportunity to continue sort of, as Paul Harvey says, tell the rest of the story that I left off on on Tuesday, this past Tuesday night and also to kind of update the Congress, my colleagues, and the American people on some of the threats that we face as a Nation from illegal narcotics.

Tonight, I have a little bit different focus, but I am going to try to highlight some of the failures of this presidency and this administration. I have done that before. I do not mean to be critical other than deal with the facts of the situation and deal with the legacy of this administration as it relates to illegal narcotics and the problem with our society.

In just a few minutes, Americans across the country will turn on their nightly news and see, I am sure, clips, Mr. Speaker, of today's talk by the President before the NAACP in Baltimore. Tonight, the American people will hear his speech. I have got a copy of his speech. What is incredible about his speech is what is left out.

Once again, the President, who has only talked about a war on drugs, and I think I have the exact figures, eight times mentioned the war on drugs in 7 years, according to the Nexus research that we conducted on the number of times the President had talked about a war on drugs.

But if one takes the President's speech from today before the NAACP, he does not talk about the war on drugs. The President paints a rosy picture and, again, a copy of the speech that was given to me says `Today we are releasing an annual report on the status of our children. According to the study, the teen birth rate for 15- to 17-year-olds has dropped to the lowest. The birth rate for African-American adolescents has also dropped.'

The President talks about everything but one of the most impacting problems that has faced our minority community. What the President is not going to tell the NAACP or recite to the American people are the statistics that have been given to our Subcommittee on Criminal Justice, Drug Policy and Human Resources.

The President will not tell us that according to the national household survey on drug abuse, drug use increased some 41 percent from the beginning of his administration in 1993 to 1998 among young African Americans, an astounding increase.

According to that household survey on drugs, also, another minority population that has been dramatically impacted is the Hispanic minority population with young Hispanics experiencing an increase from 1993 to 1998 of 38 percent. These are facts that should startle every minority parent in this country and were left out of the President's address today in Baltimore.

It is incredible that the NAACP would meet in Baltimore and that the President would speak to them in Baltimore, because I always use Baltimore as the prime example of a failed policy relating to illegal narcotics. That failed policy is the direct result of the mayor that was elected there.

I took from a 1996 book by Dan Baum, Smoke and Mirrors, that he is very critical on the war on drugs, and he is very laudatory towards those that promote legalization. In 1998, Kurt Schmoke was the candidate and was elected despite his liberalization policy. This is from that book written in 1996. It says, `Kurt Schmoke, however, dodged the bullet.' In other words, he got elected. `Written off politically in 1988 for suggesting the legalization of drugs, Mayor Schmoke approached his first election campaign in 1991 with trepidation. But every time one of his opponents, either in the primary or general election, tried to blast him as the legalizer, the shot went wild, and it never became an issue having won office in 1987 with 51 percent of the vote,' and he calls him this, `Legalizer Schmoke won reelection with 58 percent.' This is touting electing a mayor who has a liberalization policy, a nonenforcement policy of illegal narcotics.

The President met in Baltimore today and spoke before the NAACP. These are not my words, a Republican majority Member of the Congress. This is a report from Time Magazine, and I will read it verbatim, from September 6, 1999. The legacy of the mayor that adopted this policy favorable towards narcotics. Let me read.

`Maryland's largest city seems to have more razor wire and abandoned buildings than Kosovo. Meanwhile, the prevalence of open air drug dealing has made no loitering signs as common as stop signs. Baltimore, which has a population of 630,000 has sunk under the depressing triple crown of urban degradation. Middle-income residents are fleeing at a rate of 1,000 a month. The murder rate has been more than three times as high as New York City's, and 1 in 10 citizens is a drug addict.'

`Government officials dispute the last claim.' I am reading from this article in Time. `It is more like one in eight, says veteran City Councilwoman Rikki Spector. And we have probably lost count.'

This is the legacy of a failed policy. The President did not talk about that in Baltimore today. What is sad is that nearly two-thirds of the population of Baltimore is minority and African American, the victims of what has taken place.

Let me also read a little bit about what this article says. I do not want to again give my opinion at this point, but let me state what was in the Time Magazine. `How did Baltimore get here? Smokestack economy that was the lifeblood of the city for decades has died and drained its money and its soul. In 1940, half of Baltimore's population lived and more importantly worked in Baltimore. Today only 15 percent live there.' My colleagues just heard the statistics of the flight.

`Meanwhile, increasing incompetent political factions have elbowed each other for State handouts. The reign of current Mayor Kurt Schmoke, an Ivy League educated African American, was supposed to restore the power of the mayor's job and the health of the city. And Schmoke has spent his 12 years ineffectively lording over an increasing mess.'

This is where the President and the NAACP met today. This is what the policy, again a liberalized policy, of legalization, nonenforcement, has led to. Repeatedly, deaths, over 300. When one stops and thinks of this, this is Baltimore, a population, and we see the population went from nearly a million to 675,000.

What is absolutely incredible is the number of addicts, and this is 1996. The addicts were 39,000, a part again of this policy. They have gone from 39,000. If we take the figures one in every eight, according to the City Councilperson, we are looking at somewhere in the neighborhood of 80,000 heroin and drug addicts in Baltimore.

The President of the United States, when he spoke in Baltimore, did not tell us about the legacy of this community. What is interesting is the policy of Mayor Schmoke is the policy that the Clinton administration has attempted to adopt on a national scale. That is why we see a prevalence of illegal narcotics coming into the country. Non or lack of enforcement. Do not stop the drugs at their source. Do not go after the dealers.

My colleagues think that possibly I am making some partisan statement. This is the record of the Clinton administration on individual defendants prosecuted in Federal courts. Drug prosecutions, 1992 to 1996, they went from 29,000 to 26,000. Instead of tougher enforcement, the President and the Attorney General and the Department of Justice under their leadership went to fewer prosecutions. So we have hounded the administration since 1996 to increase prosecutions, and they are starting to edge up.

Now, my colleagues possibly could not believe this, but they have managed to also divert the intent of Congress, and they have managed to bring sentencing down. So first they tried this nonprosecution. Now they are trying to blame us by not being tough on sentencing. So first they were making a joke out of prosecution for these offenses; now the sentences are down. Convictions also are a concern, the convictions. We also see the same trend down.

Now, my colleagues might say, well, the tough zero tolerance policy does not work. There could be nothing further than the truth. The President cited figures today in Baltimore before the NAACP. But he did not tell us that those figures are impacted by jurisdictions with tough prosecutions.

The murder rate in New York City was averaging 2,000 murders in New York a year when Rudy Guliani took office and instituted a zero tolerance policy in that city. He got tough on narcotics arrests. This chart so dramatically shows that, as one increased the arrests for narcotics, one decreased the crimes. The murder rate dropped 58 percent in New York City.

Again, this is Baltimore. Baltimore, the deaths continue over 300. In New York City, we had in the mid-600 range number of murders in the last 2 years down from 2,000, a 58 percent decrease.

This is the liberal policy again that the President did not talk about, but the policy of tolerance, a policy of not going after criminals who are dealing in death and destruction. We see what they have done, not by my words, but by the words of the media to a great and historic city.

[Page: H6043]

[TIME: 1830]

This is interesting also. We conducted a hearing in Baltimore about a month ago, after Mayor Schmoke, thank God, left office and a new mayor, Mayor O'Malley, was elected. We went into the community and the Subcommittee on Criminal Justice, Drug Policy and Human Resources conducted a hearing there; I believe it was on a Monday. The mayor came and testified, and I thanked him for that. He heard the police chief testify that he was going to make a lame effort at going after open-air drug markets. There was also testimony at that hearing that the police chief and others in the administration had made a decision not to participate with the high intensity drug traffic effort in cooperation with the Feds and other agencies.

Thank goodness when the Mayor heard this, he dismissed that police chief, and he has appointed a new chief who has adopted a zero tolerance in that city. That is the bright spot. But, again, the President did not talk today about the death and destruction. These deaths and this destruction, the 312 in 1997, 312 in 1998, and 308 in 1999, they all have faces on them. These are wonderful human beings that God created and this only shows the tragedy of death.

Imagine what it is like to have a population of a city like Baltimore with one in eight, according to the city council person, not me, or even one in 10 if we want to use that statistic, are drug addicted. A young person drug addicted, a father or a mother, a wage earner. Imagine the toll. Imagine transposing this policy on the United States of America. Fortunately, it is limited to a jurisdiction like Baltimore.

Others jurisdictions, like Rudy Giuliani in New York and others who have adopted a zero tolerance policy are in fact making great progress. And the progress that the President spoke about today is due to some of those efforts. In fact, it is so dramatic, these statistics for New York and some of the other zero tolerance and tough enforcement policies are so dramatic, the effect of them, that they are affecting our national statistics.

The Baltimore Police Department estimates that 95 percent of the street gangs in Baltimore are dealing in drug trafficking, specifically heroin and cocaine. Former Mayor Schmoke's nonenforcement policy led to, in 1996, Baltimore's leading the Nation in drug-related emergency emissions, which grew to 785 per 100,000 population. Of 20 cities analyzed by NIDA, which is our National Institute of Drug Administration, the city of Baltimore ranked second in heroin emergency admissions, and Baltimore accounted for 63 percent of all of Maryland's drug overdoses.

This is again the legacy that the President of the United States did not want to talk about, but the NAACP heard other statistics today, even touting the progress that we have made, and much of it under, again, zero tolerance efforts around the country. Even with decreasing crime since 1960, total crimes have increased by more than 300 percent. Since 1960, violent crimes have increased by more than 550 percent. Ninety-nine percent of Americans will be the victims of a theft at least once in their lives.

What is interesting, when we talk to the law enforcement people, whether they are in Baltimore, Orlando, or in New York, they tell us that 70 or 80 percent of the crimes committed are drug related; people who are stealing and maiming and killing because they are on illegal narcotics or trying to gain resources to obtain illegal drugs. The violent crime rate in the United States is worse than any other industrialized country, and we can again trace it back to drug abuse.

Never in the President's speech today did he talk about the effect of illegal narcotics before the NAACP and the minority population of our country, which, unfortunately, is the most victimized, victimized in death, victimized in social destruction, victimized in every way imaginable, in the criminal justice system unfairly victimized.

And we will hear people say, well, we just need to treat folks and we need to spend more money on treatment, and I will talk about that in just a few minutes; but treating only the wounded in battle is never the answer if you are in battle and really waging an aggressive fight.

Teenagers are more than twice as likely to be the victims of violent crimes as all adults combined. And fewer than 10 percent of all criminals commit about two-thirds of the crime.

Again, I show the statistics of this administration and their record for prosecution as it dropped. And then we got them to go after prosecution from 1996 on, when we took the majority and put pressure on them. Now they are dropping sentencing, the amount of time that these hardened criminals are facing behind bars. I submit, my colleagues, that the wrong Americans are behind bars. It is the parents and the citizens of Baltimore. It is the wonderful citizens of Washington, D.C.

Our Nation's capital is another example of a horrible situation ignored for 40 years under the control of the other party, where I would come to Washington week after week, and every week read of death and destruction, and almost all of it drug related. Fortunately, this Republican administration in the Congress brought some balance to the District of Columbia. We literally had to seize the District and put a control board in charge of the District.

But when we inherited the District of Columbia, stop and think of what this majority inherited. It is just like what they did to the country as a whole. This District of Columbia was running three-quarters of a billion dollars a year in deficit, and we have just about balanced that. Of course, we did have to put in a board of control and, unfortunately, had to deny some temporary constraints on home rule. But we inherited a horrible situation. Again, the President of the United States did not talk about what 40 years of Democrat administration did to the people of Baltimore or Washington, D.C., our Nation's capital.

I always save some of these articles about again what took place, and I do not want to divert too much from the narcotics issue, but I cannot resist mentioning for the benefit of my colleagues the policy that really almost destroyed our Nation's capital and national treasure. Here are a few of these articles. The trauma care center, when we took over the Congress in D.C., in grave danger. It was basically nonfunctional. The housing authority was bankrupt when the Republican majority took over. The job training program in 1 year spent $20 million and did not train one person in our Nation's capital. This is what the new majority inherited.

I will never forget the articles in the paper about the morgue and the air conditioning having broken down and bodies were stacked up because the District, under the Democrat control, had allowed the District to operate in an unmanageable fashion. What happened was they could not even pay to have the indigents buried in the city, and they were stacked like cord wood in the morgue, and the morgue had no air-conditioning.

The City's water system was failing. We had to give it over. Basically 40 years of administration and misadministration led to this. And the stories go on and on. They are unbelievable; and I know people, unless I brought the actual articles, people would think I would be making them up.

The foster care system wears out employees. This is a lady who said as she was quitting because this is worse than Guam, she worked in Guam, what they did in the District of Columbia. Again, primarily a majority of African Americans. But the President did not talk about this in his chat before the NAACP, what they did. But he did take credit for, I think, some of the changes that we have made. And how sad for the neediest of the needy.

Even in public housing an article from the Washington Post. Let me read it. It says the Department of Public and Assisted Housing, which has had 10 directors in the last decade, suggested that it was rife with corruption, mismanagement and waste. And this is, again, what we inherited but what the President did not talk about in Baltimore today. And affecting who? The minority population. And the weakest link in the minority population, those without housing; those subjected to social services. And the list, again, goes on and on.

I think in the last 4 years, as good stewards, the new majority has turned some of that around. But the President would not talk about that, just took credit for statistics and used them to his advantage.

Unfortunately, the legacy of this administration goes beyond Baltimore; it goes beyond Washington, our Nation's capital. Again, I have said this before, it is not rocket science. We know where these drugs are coming from. We have done everything; I have done everything I can do since I came to Congress, since I was involved in the effort back in the Reagan administration, back in the early 1980s when I helped to develop the drug certification law and worked on some of the Andean strategies and other things to stop drugs cost effectively at the source. But we have watched this administration dismantle those cost effective programs.

Again, we know exactly where the illegal drugs are coming from. Right now we know that 70 to 80 percent of the cocaine and heroin is coming out of Colombia. Now, how in heaven's name could we get that percentage of cocaine coming out of Colombia? And I want to say it was not easy. This is not a guessing game, either. The DEA has what is called the DEA Signature program.

The DEA provided our subcommittee with these pie charts. This is the most recent, 1998. This shows us exactly where heroin is coming from. This shows us that heroin is coming, 65 percent of it, from South America; 17 percent from Mexico. Actually, up some 20 percent in 1 year from Mexico. They know this because when they seize the heroin, it is tested; and it is almost a DNA process where they can tell almost from what fields it came from. This is all Colombian. The red here is all Colombian.

In 1992-1993 there was almost zero heroin coming from Colombia. But this administration, through an incredible series of direct policies and failures, has managed to make Colombia the center of 70 to 80 percent of cocaine coming into the United States, and another 65 to 70 percent, depending on which year, and we do not have 1999, of heroin coming into the United States. We know that.

There was almost no cocaine, coca, produced in Colombia in 1992 at the beginning of this administration, but they have managed to make it a producer. Now, how could they make it a producer? This chart shows, and again these are statistics provided even by the administration, but they show Federal drug spending on the international, that would be stopping drugs at their source, this shows in the end of the Bush administration, and then we had a Democrat-controlled White House and Senate, that they immediately gutted the international programs. That meant that the source country programs were cut dramatically.

We see here the international programs since the Republicans took control in 1996, and it takes about an extra year because the budget we do is in advance, but we can see that we are getting back to the 1991-1992 levels right now in 1999-2000.

[Page: H6045]

[TIME: 1845]

But they gutted the programs. When the Republicans took control, that is as far as source is concerned, and then the next thing that is cost effective in getting drugs, once they get to the streets, it is a que pasa activity for our law enforcement. It is very tough. But it is tough and it is costly and you have to have incredible expenditures for police force.

So the second most cost effective thing is to stop drugs as they are coming from where they are being produced, cocaine and heroin, for example, and here we look at interdiction. Interdiction. And there is no real extra cost for the military. There may be some extra flight hours and things of that sort but you already have the hardware, you have the planes, you have the military engaged and you have the military conducting exercises. The military does not do any enforcement, they just provide surveillance information and then the information is given to the country where the drugs are produced.

This administration did not think that was a good idea, so they stopped information sharing, they stopped information sharing, they stopped resources getting to Colombia. Those actions have very direct results. I remember in hearings in 1993, 1994 and before the House of Representatives, saying to not stop the information sharing to the countries. In fact, many of the countries involved would shoot down the drug traffickers and go after them. But again this administration said, `We can't do that.' Heaven forbid we should go after a drug trafficker or provide any information. In fact they even got an attorney who had been in the Department of Justice and transferred I believe over to DOD to give that opinion and the entire Congress had to act to overturn that opinion that we could not share information.

They are at the same game again. U.S. Officials Cite Trend in Colombia. Lack of Air Support Hindering Drug War. The same thing is happening again and this is in fact confirmed by the administration's ambassador from Peru. The administration's ambassador from Peru chided the administration and I received the report, it says Drug Control, DOD Contributes to Reducing the Illegal Drug Supply. Their assets have declined. I requested this report independently conducted by GAO provided to me the end of last year, the beginning of this year. GAO found that according to the U.S. ambassador appointed by this administration, warned in an October letter to the Department of State that the reduction in air support could have a serious impact on the price of coca. The President did not tell you today that he is directly responsible for the policy that cut interdiction, that cut source countries and that cut off Colombia from receiving assistance and turned Colombia into a disaster, into an international basket case. This is exactly what happened.

Having been involved when the new majority took over the House and the other body, we began 4 years ago trying to put Humpty Dumpty back together again, the strategy that worked so well in the 1980s and they will tell you the drug war is a failure and I will disprove that in just a moment. But we went down. Mr. Hastert, the former chair with responsibility of this subcommittee for drug policy, went down with Mr. Zeliff who was also involved, and I was on the subcommittee as a junior member. We talked to the officials in Peru and Bolivia. We got their cooperation and we gave them a tiny bit of financial assistance from the Congress. Look what happened to Andean cocaine production, down 60 percent in Peru, 55 percent in Bolivia. Look what happened with the administration's policy towards Colombia. Stop helicopters, stop information sharing, stop resources, stop any assistance. Dramatic increase. I told you about heroin. This is cocaine. There was no heroin produced at the beginning of this administration. You can see almost no cocaine. This is a policy of failure and destruction.

I can trace the cocaine on the streets of Washington, D.C. and New York back to Colombia. I can trace the heroin back to Colombia. And I can trace it back to this policy, this policy, and even when the Congress, even when we as a new majority funded assistance to increase again interdiction of drugs, which is our national responsibility. I mean, we are not police men and women and we do not provide that service. That is done mostly by local and State. We do have some Federal agencies. But we cannot do that. What we can do is stop the illegal narcotics before they come into our borders. In fact, this report provided to me also says the number of flight hours dedicated to detecting and monitoring illicit drug shipments declined from approximately 46,000 to 15,000. It declined 68 percent from 1992 to 1999. So even when we were ramping up, attempting to ramp up to get funds to go after the drug dealers, this report also shows that the administration diverted assets.

We had AWACS that actually gave information on the

growth in traffickers, AWACS planes. The Vice President when he spoke to the NAACP did not tell you that he diverted those planes to Kosovo. I am sorry, actually he was personally, I understand, responsible for diverting the planes to Alaska to look at oil spills while the children of Baltimore are dying by the dozens, while the children in our Nation's capital were getting slaughtered. And the diversion of assets went on and on. Money that we had asked to go down to Colombia and South America, tens of millions ended up in Haiti in failed nation-building attempts which now have turned into an even bigger disaster with one corrupt government succeeding another, and now Haiti, the latest reports we have, is a major transit area for illegal narcotics. Most of the administration's efforts in nation-building went into building the legislative and judicial and enforcement structure and it has turned, with the millions and millions of taxpayer dollars, billions, into the biggest transit zone.

The situation only gets worse. This is something the President did not talk about today in his report. He did not tell you that he diverted two AWACs airborne control systems aircraft that were on the counternarcotics mission that were stopping the death and destruction, 15,973, remember that, our latest figures on deaths as a direct result of illegal narcotics, drugs in this country in 1998. But he committed two of the AWACS to reassign them in January of 1999 to support the Iraq no-fly zone. Then in April 1999 for the Kosovo crisis. If you wonder why our cities, our communities, our young people are being deluged with illegal narcotics, you can just look at the administration's record.

This report also shows in addition to air flights down dramatically, some 68 percent, that also maritime efforts, U.S. maritime efforts to go after suspected maritime illegal drug shipments declined 62 percent under this administration. So if you wonder why our children are getting drugs cheaper, more available, addicted to them and dying in unprecedented numbers across the land, it is no wonder.

Again, it is not just Baltimore or it is not just the Nation's capital that is affected by this. Here is a report just a few days ago by ABC News, July 10. It says less than 2 percent of young people age 12 to 17 have ever tried heroin. Incidentally, I think it is a 92 percent increase during this administration in use of heroin among that youth class, another legacy of this administration. This report says, but the drug now is cheaper, more accessible and more potent. How did it get more available? When you close down a war on drugs and you only concentrate on treating the wounded, you can see where that incredible supply is coming into the country. It says it is more accessible and more potent and is fast surpassing cocaine as the drug of choice in many communities. It says Portland and Seattle, heroin has reached unprecedented levels in some cities like Portland, Oregon and Seattle where the number of fatal overdoses has continued to climb year after year in the last decade. This is a startling figure.

In 1999, Portland experienced the highest number of heroin-related deaths, overdose deaths, 114. I come from Central Florida. We have exceeded our past year which was a disaster of heroin-induced deaths. The cocaine legacy strikes every family. Everyone in the whole country I know was grieving with Dr. J, actually his son, Dr. J is a resident of my district and we watched as the family looked for his son and his son unfortunately had been victimized by cocaine and in today's paper we have a report that test finds cocaine in the teen's body. We do not know if that is a direct result yet of his tragic death but we know the horror that that family experienced. We know the grief that that family experienced. We know the torment that that young man went through and how a national hero, a legend and his family have been so affected and our heart goes out to them. But unfortunately every family in America today is affected by illegal narcotics. We see the statistics over and over.

This administration adopted a policy to keep helicopters, to keep surveillance information, to keep any kind of assistance going to Colombia until just last year. And suddenly they woke up and found, and I think it is reported they also did a survey and found people were absolutely appalled at what was going on, but last year the drug czar declared this an emergency. This Republican Congress acted immediately. The White House and the President did not submit a Colombia aid package until the 7th of February, 2000. He waited and waited and dillied and dallied. On March 30, this House of Representatives passed a supplemental and just a few days ago both the House and Senate acted and passed a supplemental containing the aid to put the rest of this picture back together. It will work. We know it works. It has worked. It has other elements in it other than interdiction and source country, a good package. Instead of talking about this today or taking that bill and signing it before the NAACP and saying, `I'm going to stop the killing of your children,' the President as far as I know today has not signed the bill. It is awaiting his signature and it is my hope that that will be signed if it has not been signed, again to correct the situation. It is unfortunate we have to spend over $1 billion now to deal with the disaster that has been created.

[Page: H6046]

[TIME: 1900]

Let me talk about the emphasis of this administration. You hear it on the floor repeatedly. During the Colombia debate, they just said we have to have treatment on demand. We have many people who need treatment.

I support treatment. I would vote for any amount of treatment for anyone addicted to narcotics. But when you get to the point of addiction, it is very difficult to save anyone. This is not like cigarettes, it is not like alcohol. When you are addicted to some of these hard drugs, you completely become victimized by it, and we do not have any cure. Sixty or 70 percent of those who go into public treatment programs are failures, and repeated failures, over and over again.

You hear that we have been putting money in the war on drugs or the war on drugs is a failure, fighting drugs, and they should be legalized. This is in fact the record. We have more than doubled the amount from 1992, when this administration changed the policy, closed down the source country, stopping drugs at their source, the interdiction, we have more than doubled the amount going in. I have records of treatment and research, drug prevention, all of the different categories, demand reduction. Almost all of them doubled. So while they were cutting the source programs and the interdiction and other programs, they in fact, and we were, even the Republicans since 1995 have increased treatment some 26 percent. So it is a fallacy to say that we have not put money in treatment.

The problem we have, and I chair the subcommittee, is we do not know what will work. We have programs. The programs actually that are most successful are the non-government. They run 50, 60 percent success rates. Most of them are faith-based, and we are trying to see if we can support them in some way, given the restrictions that we have, mixing public money with religious funds.

So it is a fallacy to say we are not putting money in treatment. Again, I know this makes the other side of the aisle cringe, and this is not a chart that the President brought to Baltimore to show the NAACP, this is not the chart that those will tell you that the war on drugs is a failure.

Now, this is a failure, that you have a decline in drug use during the Reagan and Bush administration? This is the chart that shows the long-term trend and lifetime prevalence of cocaine use. We have it for drug use. Let us get this overall. That is just cocaine. This is overall. They will tell you again this is a failure, that it was declining here. That is a failure. If you have fewer young people using drugs, that is a failure. Get that now, it is a failure. But this is a success, the Clinton Administration policy.

I wish I had an overlay to show where they closed down the source country, they closed down the interdiction, they cut the Coast Guard, they cut the military involvement, they cut the Drug Czar's staffing in this period.

This is the direct result, an increase. It is almost ironic that you see this little bleep here, and that is where we took control and started our efforts. There is some slight leveling off, but that is, unfortunately, not totally successful, because, again, one of the major conduits of illegal narcotics, hard narcotics, heroin, high purity cocaine, is Colombia, which has now become the major producer.

This is also the heroin record under the Clinton and Bush and Reagan administrations.

The statistics during that administration are quite interesting. Based on national household survey data, illicit drug use, and that is the same survey that I cited with current statistics and it is nice to compare, to use comparative studies, the same studies over comparative times, based on national household survey data, elicit drug use declined 50 percent from 1985 to 1992.

Now, that is a failure, you see? This is a failure, because it declined. You had a President who, under President Reagan, he had a tough Andean strategy, a source zone strategy, an interdiction strategy. You had a President, President Bush, the reason they went after Noriega is because he was involved in drugs and illegal profits from drugs and he sent our troops in.

The opposite is the case with the retreat of the Clinton Administration, and you see the direct results. Again, if we could do an overlay, we would show as they cut these programs out, in 1992 you see again a trend, an increase in drug use, and this is for all. This is lifetime, annual and 30 day measurements.

Again you see a leveling off, where we began our efforts, where we passed an extensive drug education and prevention program, one of the most extensive in history. We differed with the administration. We thought that broadcasters should increase and donate their time. The administration wanted to spend taxpayer money. We felt it was so important that we did reach a compromise, so we have a $1 billion program over 5 years matched by $1

billion in donations. But, again, if you did an overlay, you would see as this administration instituted its policy of failure. You in fact see an increase in drug use among our youth.

One of the other things that is disturbing is the entire effort of the United States to curtail illegal narcotics. We know that heroin and cocaine and even methamphetamine and even the heroin that is produced in Mexico now is in increasing volume.

We had in Panama up until May of last year the headquarters for our forward operating location. Unfortunately, the administration bungled the negotiations. Of course, we were sort of destined to lose Panama and the $10 billion in facilities, and we have lost two ports to some Chinese interests through illegal tenders.

Put all that aside, but we still should have been able to negotiate the lease or use of these in anti-narcotics efforts, and the State Department failed miserably. Now we are scurrying around at great cost, and I think in the supplemental package it is over $120 million to put in new installations in Ecuador, in Aruba and Curacao, those two agreements have finally been signed, 10 year agreements, but we are going to have to spend that money upgrading bases and airfields to do our surveillance operation.

In the meantime, we have exposed ourselves to incredible volume. You will see it in the streets, the schools, with our young people, of these illegal drugs. What is interesting, and we predicted it, and I have a recent article here that shows even Europe is now becoming victimized by cocaine which is coming in. They are producing so much, there is an oversupply. The price is so low in the United States and it is so available that this week's paper, one of these articles, shows that now it is coming into Europe in incredible volume.

So we have basically closed down our surveillance operation. Taxpayer money is going to have to be spent to put that back in place. It will be 2002, according to the latest reports that we have.

What concerns me, and Republicans make mistakes just like Democrats, and I guess I cannot refer to the member of the other body who is proposing this, but they are now trying to penalize, and it is someone of my own party, Peru. Peru has President Fujimoro, and you heard his record of success, cutting 63 percent of the cocaine production. Instead of rewarding him, we are going to penalize him because, again, some of those are not happy with the election. He is in his, I believe, third term.

But he has done a remarkable job, and because his opponent wanted to call off the election, imagine, okay, Bush is ahead, we are going to call off the election, or Gore is ahead, we are going to call off the election. This candidate could not even decide on a date certain when an election should be held.

But we have Members of Congress who now want to penalize Peru, who has done a great job, and I am sad to hear that. We should be assisting them and applauding them for cutting off the supply of deadly narcotics coming into the United States, instead of cutting assistance to them.

Mr. Speaker, as we wrap up tonight, I tried to talk about some of the things that the President of the United States did not talk about before the NAACP in Baltimore. It is really sad what has not been said.

It is sad that a great and historic city like Baltimore has fallen victim, to where one in eight of its population, some 80,000, are drug and heroine addicts. It is sad that in the last 10 years, hundreds and thousands of African American young people were slaughtered on the streets of this city, our Nation's Capital, when they let this community really be neglected.

It is sad, too, that sometimes my side of the aisle offers tough love, and it is not as warm and fuzzy and cozy as cuddling and go-have-another-enjoyable-do-it-yourself-time, no consequences.

We do not say that. We say you have to be responsible. The government has to be responsible. We cannot let the Nation's Capital fall into disrepair, nor can we let the Nation's finances fall into disrepair. Some of that has been tough love. It is a lot easier to vote for things here, and it is a lot easier to say we are going to be lax and we are going to let everybody do their thing.

But we have to be responsible. The President of the United States, unfortunately, I think has left a legacy that is going to haunt us for many years.

I can tell you, I have never faced a greater challenge than working with my colleagues, the gentleman from New York (Mr. Gilman), the gentleman from Indiana (Mr. Burton), the Speaker of the House, others in the other body, in trying to put this coherent national drug policy back together. So much damage has been done that it will take years and years to get us back to where we were, even in 1991.

I told you the record of success, which they call failure, 50 percent reduction. We have 90 percent and 100 percent increases in some drug use, illegal narcotics abuse, and use in some substances in a short time in this administration.

But I look forward to working with my colleagues. It is a tough battle. It is not a partisan battle. Republicans make mistakes, Democrats make mistakes, but we must learn by the mistakes of this administration and never let them happen, and seize back our community, seize back our children, and not let another family or child or parent or loved one in this country be victimized by illegal narcotics.

Mr. Speaker, I wish to thank the staff and you for being tolerant for my second one hour presentation this week, but I feel very deeply about this, and I am committed to do whatever I can as one Member of Congress to help us do a better job.

As of July 18, 2000, this document was also available online at http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/z?r106:H13JY0-1013: