<DOC>
[105th Congress House Hearings]
[From the U.S. Government Printing Office via GPO Access]
[DOCID: f:42191.wais]
OVERSIGHT OF THE 1997 NATIONAL DRUG CONTROL STRATEGY
=======================================================================
HEARING
before the
SUBCOMMITTEE ON NATIONAL SECURITY,
INTERNATIONAL AFFAIRS, AND CRIMINAL JUSTICE
of the
COMMITTEE ON GOVERNMENT
REFORM AND OVERSIGHT
HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
ONE HUNDRED FIFTH CONGRESS
FIRST SESSION
__________
FEBRUARY 27, 1997
__________
Serial No. 105-22
__________
Printed for the use of the Committee on Government Reform and Oversight
U.S. GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE
42-191 WASHINGTON : 1997
____________________________________________________________________________
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COMMITTEE ON GOVERNMENT REFORM AND OVERSIGHT
DAN BURTON, Indiana, Chairman
BENJAMIN A. GILMAN, New York HENRY A. WAXMAN, California
J. DENNIS HASTERT, Illinois TOM LANTOS, California
CONSTANCE A. MORELLA, Maryland ROBERT E. WISE, Jr., West Virginia
CHRISTOPHER SHAYS, Connecticut MAJOR R. OWENS, New York
STEVEN H. SCHIFF, New Mexico EDOLPHUS TOWNS, New York
CHRISTOPHER COX, California PAUL E. KANJORSKI, Pennsylvania
ILEANA ROS-LEHTINEN, Florida GARY A. CONDIT, California
JOHN M. McHUGH, New York CAROLYN B. MALONEY, New York
STEPHEN HORN, California THOMAS M. BARRETT, Wisconsin
JOHN L. MICA, Florida ELEANOR HOLMES NORTON, Washington,
THOMAS M. DAVIS, Virginia DC
DAVID M. McINTOSH, Indiana CHAKA FATTAH, Pennsylvania
MARK E. SOUDER, Indiana TIM HOLDEN, Pennsylvania
JOE SCARBOROUGH, Florida ELIJAH E. CUMMINGS, Maryland
JOHN SHADEGG, Arizona DENNIS KUCINICH, Ohio
STEVEN C. LaTOURETTE, Ohio ROD R. BLAGOJEVICH, Illinois
MARSHALL ``MARK'' SANFORD, South DANNY K. DAVIS, Illinois
Carolina JOHN F. TIERNEY, Massachusetts
JOHN E. SUNUNU, New Hampshire JIM TURNER, Texas
PETE SESSIONS, Texas THOMAS H. ALLEN, Maine
MIKE PAPPAS, New Jersey ------
VINCE SNOWBARGER, Kansas BERNARD SANDERS, Vermont
BOB BARR, Georgia (Independent)
------ ------
Kevin Binger, Staff Director
Daniel R. Moll, Deputy Staff Director
Judith McCoy, Chief Clerk
Phil Schiliro, Minority Staff Director
------
Subcommittee on National Security, International Affairs, and Criminal
Justice
J. DENNIS HASTERT, Chairman
MARK SOUDER, Indiana THOMAS M. BARRETT, Wisconsin
CHRISTOPHER SHAYS, Connecticut TOM LANTOS, California
STEVEN SCHIFF, New Mexico ROBERT E. WISE, Jr., West Virginia
ILEANA ROS-LEHTINEN, Florida GARY A. CONDIT, California
JOHN M. McHUGH, New York ROD R. BLAGOJEVICH, Illinois
JOHN L. MICA, Florida CAROLYN B. MALONEY, New York
JOHN B. SHADEGG, Arizona ELIJAH E. CUMMINGS, Maryland
STEVE LaTOURETTE, Ohio JIM TURNER, Texas
BOB BARR, Georgia
Ex Officio
DAN BURTON, Indiana HENRY A. WAXMAN, California
Robert Charles, Staff Director
Sean Littlefield, Professional Staff Member
Ianthe Saylor, Clerk
Mark Stephenson, Minority Professional Staff Member
C O N T E N T S
----------
Page
Hearing held on February 27, 1997................................ 1
Statement of:
McCaffrey, Gen. Barry R., Director, Office of National Drug
Control Policy............................................. 3
Letters, statements, etc., submitted for the record by:
McCaffrey, Gen. Barry R., Director, Office of National Drug
Control Policy, prepared statement of...................... 7
OVERSIGHT OF THE 1997 NATIONAL DRUG CONTROL STRATEGY
----------
THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 27, 1997
House of Representatives,
Subcommittee on National Security, International
Affairs, and Criminal Justice,
Committee on Government Reform and Oversight,
Washington, DC.
The subcommittee met, pursuant to notice, at 12:35 p.m., in
room 2154, Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. J. Dennis
Hastert (chairman of the subcommittee) presiding.
Present: Representatives Hastert, Mica, Souder, Shadegg,
Barr, Barrett, and Cummings.
Staff present: Robert Charles, staff director; Sean
Littlefield, professional staff member; Ianthe Saylor, clerk;
and Mark Stephenson, minority professional staff member.
Mr. Hastert. This meeting of the House Government Reform
and Oversight Committee, Subcommittee on National Security,
International Affairs, and Criminal Justice, will come to
order.
Good morning and welcome. This morning's hearing focuses on
a topic that touches every American, and I do mean every
American. That topic is drugs. By ``drugs,'' I mean drug abuse
of every form, including the recent rise in drug abuse by
America's youth. But I also mean the growing national security
threat posed by wealthy, powerful, and violent drug cartels on
our southern border.
We are privileged to have with us today a true leader in
this increasingly violent war and a decorated veteran of two
other wars. I want to welcome Gen. Barry McCaffrey, a friend
and dedicated servant of the American people and our Nation's
drug czar.
Before I turn to the President's latest drug strategy,
however, I'll review the problems that we face in the drug war.
We face exploding teenage willingness to try high-potency
marijuana, often laced with PCP or crack. We face record-level
teenage overdoses, like the heroin overdose that killed the
Smashing Pumpkins' keyboard players last year. Heroin that only
reached 10 percent purity in the late-1970's can now reach 95
percent purity. Kids do not usually get two chances with heroin
that pure.
There are other new drugs threatening our kids and teens,
including new stimulants, over-the-counter inhalants like Glade
air freshener, and LSD marketed with pictures of the ``Lion
King.'' Let me point out the obvious: The drug traffickers are
not trying to sell the ``Lion King'' to 16-year-olds; they are
now targeting 8-year-olds with LSD.
We, of course, must still contend with our primary nemesis,
cocaine. We are faced with 400 tons of cocaine entering the
United States every year undetected, and 150 tons of
methamphetamine, also known as ``speed,'' that crosses our
Southwest Border.
We face cocaine possessed by the Cali Cartel in Colombia,
processed by that, and then the drugs that have caused more
than 3,600 Colombian police officers to lose their lives in
recent combat with the drug-trafficking guerrillas there.
We face the drugs that are linked to homicides in this city
and every other American city, and increasingly, to murders,
assaults, and rapes, and burglaries in rural America.
This hearing, like the other three that we have already
held this session of Congress, is dedicated to two main
purposes: First, shining a bright light on the national threat,
a tragedy which the DEA reports is taking more than 10,000
American lives annually; second, to help build a national
consensus that together, we, as a Nation of Republicans and
Democrats, urban and rural communities, parents and kids, can
turn back this riptide of drug abuse.
Before turning to our distinguished witness today, let me
say that Congress will take action to help solve this problem.
We will encourage parents to talk to their kids about the
dangers of drugs. We will work together in communities across
America. In fact, I will soon be introducing legislation with
Congressmen Portman, Rangel, and Levin to spur the creation of
community anti-drug coalitions to bring communities together to
stop this scourge.
As we turn to examining the National Drug Strategy, I will
ask Gen. McCaffrey to begin his testimony. I will do so with
great respect for the General, his work, both as an officer in
the Army and as a Director of the ONDCP; and my respect and
friendship certainly will lead to cooperation. But we will
continue to keep a critical eye to evaluate that drug strategy.
It is my duty and that of all of my colleagues to ensure
that we pursue the best strategy possible to fit the American
needs and to fight the scourge of drugs in our country.
I am pleased to turn to my colleague, the subcommittee's
ranking minority member, Tom Barrett of Wisconsin, for any
opening remarks he may have.
Mr. Barrett. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and welcome, Gen.
McCaffrey. You are a good man, and you have been a very
effective Director the past year, and we are very happy to have
you here today.
However, as you are far more aware than anybody else in
this room, you face one of the most difficult and challenging
jobs in this entire country. Before the hearing, a couple of us
were talking up here, and I said, this guy has one tough job;
and I applaud you for the enthusiasm and energy you put into
your job.
The problem, of course, is that despite some encouraging
signs, we are unfortunately seeing that the problem of drug use
is getting worse in America, especially among America's youth.
According to the 1997 National Drug Control Strategy released
this week, the use of illegal drugs among eighth-graders is up
150 percent over the past 5 years, with more than half of all
high school students using illegal drugs by the time they
graduate.
The use of cocaine by eighth-graders has doubled to 4.5
percent in 1996, and almost one in four high school seniors
used marijuana on a past-month basis in 1996, and it is being
used by younger and younger children.
I was at the White House earlier this week, when you talked
about the fact that a child who stays drug and alcohol free
between the ages of 13 and 21, will most likely stay drug free
his or her entire life, and I hope that you talk a little bit
about that today, because I think that it puts the spotlight
where it has to be, and that is on our Nation's youth and how
important this fight is for all of us today.
Clearly, there must be more done if we are to prevent a
future drug epidemic. This year's strategy and budget
submission by the President provides some hope. It requests $16
billion. That is $818 million more than fiscal year 1997, a 5.4
percent increase, and the innovation of developing a 10-year
strategy also strikes me as a good way to get a handle on long-
term solutions to this problem.
Also of obvious concern, I think, to all of us here today
is the recent revelations of corruption in the Mexican
Government, and I am sure that that is going to come up a
little bit today.
I look forward to hearing from you on these and other
important issues. Thank you.
Mr. Hastert. Without objection, we will ask that all
Members put their opening statements in the record, and so
ordered. I would like to welcome Gen. McCaffrey, the Director
of the Office of National Drug Control Strategy; and, General,
as always, we are pleased to have you here. Would you stand and
raise your right hand. The committee's rules require me to
swear you in.
[Witness sworn.]
Mr. Hastert. Let the record show that the witness responded
in the affirmative.
Thank you, General, and please proceed with your opening
statement.
STATEMENT OF GEN. BARRY R. McCAFFREY, DIRECTOR, OFFICE OF
NATIONAL DRUG CONTROL POLICY
Gen. McCaffrey. Mr. Chairman, thanks very much for the
opportunity to appear in front of your committee to lay out
some of our own thinking and, perhaps more importantly, respond
to your own interests and questions. Let me also thank
Congressman Tom Barrett for joining this leadership effort, and
I look forward to working with you and the minority members of
the committee.
I would be remiss if I did not very specifically
acknowledge that many of you on this committee and certainly
others in the House have been instrumental in my education and
support in the way that we have developed this process over the
last year. Rob Portman and Charlie Rangel, in particular, I
need to publicly comment on as they have been very instrumental
in a leadership role. I would also, if I may, acknowledge
Elijah Cummings, who has taken me to Baltimore and tried to
show me what drug abuse and its consequences really look like
in an urban environment, and I thank you, sir; Steny Hoyer; Ben
Gilman, who has done tremendous work in helping orient us on
the problems of the interdiction zone and the source countries;
Congressman Livingston, who pulled together the leadership,
along with you, Mr. Hastert, to give us the largest drug budget
in history last year; Frank Wolf; Jim Kolbe; and David Obey.
I would also, if I may, publicly comment that Maxine Waters
and the Congressional Black Caucus have been very involved in
an oversight role on how this strategy has been developed. I
have also consulted with Mr. Waxman.
Finally, the strategy that I have put in front of you today
is clearly the work of a team effort. Although we have, by law,
the responsibility of writing the annual drug strategy and
pulling together and certifying the budget, there is no
question that the big three people in my life are the Attorney
General, Janet Reno; Secretary of Health and Human Services,
Donna Shalala; and Education Secretary Dick Riley.
A bunch of the other 14 significant officers of Government,
though, took key roles in this: Bob Rubin; the former Secretary
of Defense, Dr. Perry; and others. We have certainly had the
continuous involvement of the law enforcement national
leadership, which we are really blessed to work with: Tom
Constantine, Louis Freeh; and over in Treasury, Jim Johnson.
Let me, if I may, Mr. Chairman, point out what I have
offered for the record, a statement that we have done
considerable work on, and I apologize that we had this down
here later than your staff would have liked. But that is on the
floor for you to consider.
I have also included copies, if I may for the record, of
the drug situation that I will portray on these briefing charts
over to my left. Finally, I think Dr. John Carnevale in my
office has put together a very useful piece of paper, the
Fiscal Year 1998 Drug Control Budget. Now, there is a thicker
book of this, but this tries to lay it out and show you how we
are recommending for other congressional committees to consider
the funding to make this strategy happen.
The strategy itself; there are two volumes, Mr. Chairman,
that I have laid out. There is a third one that is classified.
The first volume really is the one we ought to focus on, in my
judgment. It is smaller; it is cleaner. We think it is a first
rate piece of work. It took 4,000-some-odd sources of input to
write this over the last 9 months. We think it is a guide to
action and will be a useful way for us to organize our thinking
conceptually over the next 10 years.
Also, by law, we submit the budget summary and other
related documents required in the 1988 act, and I think that
will be a source of good background information for many of
you.
Finally, for the first time we have been able to complete
and put into play a classified annex to the National Drug
Strategy, and attempt to do the law enforcement-sensitive
information and guidance to DOD or other overseas interdiction
actors, and that is certainly available for your consideration.
Before giving you a very brief overview, I wonder if you
might allow me to introduce Dr. Hoover Adger, who is sitting
behind me; and Dr. Adger--sir, if you would stand up--has now
joined us as my Deputy. That slot, of course, was authorized by
the Congress last year and salary funded. I will submit it for
congressional consideration as a Senate-approved position.
Dr. Adger comes with enormously distinguished credentials
as a Johns Hopkins pediatrics professor of medicine with a
lifelong specialization in adolescent addiction. He is very
widely published, and I think he will be a tremendous source of
strength and knowledge to all of us, and I wanted to publicly
tell this committee that he is joining the team.
Very quickly, Pancho, if you would pull some slides here,
there are five brief points I would make, and then I think I
will just respond to your own interests. The first is to say
that, look, America, 265 million of us, have walked away from
drugs over the last 15 to 20 years. We were up at 25 million
regular users. We are down to 12 million. Essentially, adult
use of drugs is stable or declining; and, indeed, cocaine use
is plummeting. It is down, we say, some 72 percent.
This is true, whether you look at the absolute number of
casual users, at those who are new initiates, or whether you go
to the 12th-grade population.
Now, it is hard for a police officer, a narcotics officer,
an emergency room doctor to believe this, because we are also
saying that the tonnage consumed in America has remained
relatively stable. So emergency room admissions and crime and
sickness and the consequences of this dreadful drug are
increasing.
Here is a problem: eighth-graders. I capture this because
they are at the front end of the most sensitive part of their
nervous system development, their emotional development, their
social progress. Drug use among eighth-graders, and it really
started to turn around in 1989, we think, on the value systems,
has gone up some 150 percent. When you look at kids in general,
the peak year was probably around 1990, when disapproval
started to go down, disapproval rates by young people.
In 1991, we saw the drop in the risk perception by youth,
and then in 1992, actual drug use by young Americans started to
go up. It has gone up every year since then. It is now only
half as bad as it was in 1979. It will get worse if we do not
get better organized.
Now, finally, let me announce that the drug situation is
not static. Cocaine use may be plummeting, but new drugs are
appearing, new, higher purity heroin; but a new drug,
methamphetamine, I would put on the table as a potentially
worse threat to America than the crack cocaine epidemic of the
1980's. It is not just a West Coast threat now; it is out in
rural Iowa and Missouri and Utah and Idaho and other places.
Finally, a quick note on the cost of all this. Emergency
room admissions of drugs, as I have said, are going up, and so
the medical and social consequences are getting worse.
Finally, many would argue, we have been willing, and I
think correctly so, to stand firm on violent crime in the sales
of drugs, but it has resulted in an explosion of incarcerations
in this country. We are up to 1.6 million Americans behind
bars, the highest per-capita incarceration rate, many would
argue, on the face of the globe.
We can project potentially that the figure will get 25
percent worse in the coming years. When I point this out, not
to decry our appropriate confrontation with violent crime, but
to underscore that if we do not back concepts like the drug
court system, ``Break the Cycle,'' and effective treatment
methodologies, that we are consigned to enormous recidivism
rates and increasing incarceration, which cost us as taxpayers
a fortune. That is a $17 billion-a-year bill to pay for that
system. I might add, it is so massive that the prison
construction budget in the United States now exceeds that of
the U.S. Armed Forces.
Finally, a comment: Interdiction is important. Cocaine; we
strip off--``we,'' meaning Peruvian cops, the Colombian Air
Force, the Mexican Army, law enforcement in the United States--
probably a third of the cocaine produced each year. We also get
a good bit of the heroin. Worldwide, we say, some 32 metric
tons gets seized.
The U.S. law enforcement agencies get 1.3 metric tons. Now,
having said that, what we have got to face up to is though the
devastation caused by drug abuse is enormous--we say $70
billion a year and 16,000 dead--in fact, there is a reasonably
small number of us abusing these drugs. That 3.6 million
Americans' demand is a fraction of the world's total needs. So
heroin, we say, perhaps 360 metric tons, on up to 450 metric
tons available; we use 10 metric tons. Cocaine, we estimate
potentially we are using 240 metric tons, but the world may be
producing more than 800 metric tons. I might add, it is going
up dramatically in Colombian production.
So, to end with a restatement of the National Drug
Strategy, it focuses on education and prevention for 68 million
American children. We are aware we have to manage the
consequences of addiction for 3.6 million chronic addicts in
America. Finally, we have an equal responsibility to construct
appropriate Federal agencies to protect our air, land, and sea
borders and to create international coalitions of cooperative
democracies.
Drugs are not an American problem; it is not a Colombian
problem; a Thai problem; it is a global problem, and I think we
are going to have to work in a full partnership with these
international actors.
Now, having said that, Mr. Chairman, you gave us some $15.6
billion last year. We are asking for about $16 billion this
year for bipartisan support. We have written 32 objectives that
lend themselves to performance measurement for those five
goals. We are pretty far advanced. We have 126 working groups
around the Government trying to define how we will come down
here and demonstrate to you that we are taking this strategy
and trying to achieve output functions with the money Congress
gives us.
On that note, if I may, Mr. Chairman, let me end the formal
remarks and respond to your own interests.
[The prepared statement of Gen. McCaffrey follows:]
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Mr. Hastert. I thank you very much, General. One of the
things that I just want to, for the record, we are not going to
recess. We are going to try, for your convenience and everybody
else to move through this, and there will be other Members
coming back after they vote. There is a vote going on right
now.
Let me kind of break this down. I see four areas. There is
treatment that you have to address; there is the prevention
issue that you have to address; there is intervention, trying
to stop this stuff on our streets and interdiction at our
borders; and then there is a foreign source, trying to stop
this stuff by working with foreign countries so it actually is
not grown, is never created, and never comes to us.
Our job, along with you, is trying to work to see how we
expend funds in the wisest and best ways, and somewhere that
magic formula is out there that we can keep drugs away from our
children, that we can see a downward trend continuing in drug
use in this country, and to stop that blip or sometimes very,
very devastating increases that we see in drug use increases.
As you know, we can put a lot of charts up, but we know that
after 1991 or 1992, the increase among our children, especially
our youngest children, in drug usage started to go up, and we
need to find the strategies to stop that.
One of the things that we heard yesterday from
representatives of 12 leading civic and youth-serving volunteer
organizations was that it was brought to our attention that
over 50 million adults and youth belong to one of these
organizations or participate in these organizations, which are
doing, I think, tremendous jobs with young people. How do you
see the White House facilitating a relationship with these
organizations, which apparently has not existed in the past?
Gen. McCaffrey. Well, I could not agree with you more. At
the end of the day, this problem in America is going to get
solved at the community level, not Washington, DC. So the $16
billion has to make sense, has to support parents, educators,
local law enforcement, local coalitions. There is a fellow, Jim
Copple, who is from CACDA. He and his organization have done
magnificent work trying to support more than 4,300 community
coalitions across America. They are getting organized and
energized again because our children are at risk.
In addition, these great civic organizations which you have
mentioned--Elk, Kiwanis, Lions, Optimists, religious
organizations--also deserve our visibility and support. We are
going to propose, I might add, on the reauthorization act for
my small agency. You have got us at 154 people. I am going to
try and reorganize and make it more obvious that one of our
three elements in ONDCP is responsible for intergovernmental
affairs, meaning responding to local State government and
organizations.
Now, in addition, I think we have made pretty significant
progress this year, though, in listening to these people and
trying to respond to their own activities, whether it is PRIDE,
D.A.R.E., Boys' and Girls' Clubs, or these civic organizations.
But, Mr. Chairman, I agree with your point, they are essential
to our future.
Mr. Hastert. Let me talk and move to another area, and that
is certainly the area of interdiction and foreign-source
countries. You say that we are able to take off the market
about one-third of the cocaine that is produced, and about two-
thirds of it moves into this country that was meant for this
country; there is more going to other places.
Some of it is done in our borders, some of it is done in
our streets, some of it is done on the high seas, some of it is
done in the air, and our strategy with Peru, with the
cooperation of their President, has been somewhat successful.
We had talked privately and also openly that your strategy is
going to be to try to increase that cooperation. Basically, 70
percent of the cocaine that comes into this country has, at
least its growth origin, becomes a commodity in that country,
and then moves up through the Andean Chain into Colombia and
Mexico and into this country.
What more can we do in Peru? One of the things is really a
function of economics, that if you can shut off the supply
lines, there is a glut of cocaine. The price is pushed down. It
is no longer attractive for the campesinos to growth this
product--it is also the strategy in Bolivia--and then that
there is just less of it there, and the prices are so low that
it does not pay them to grow. Is that one of the courses or one
of the strategies that you are going to continue to pursue?
Gen. McCaffrey. It is really a tough challenge. One of the
things in Peru we are going to have to face up to is there are
200,000 people living on the land--campesinos, who are not the
enemy--and they are out there because this is an impoverished
country trying to develop alternative economic models. They
would rather grow legal crops, in the viewpoint of the Peruvian
leadership, than they would live a life of warfare between drug
cartels and the Peruvian Armed Forces.
So we believe that the President and his government are
committed to trying to move coca production out of the Peruvian
economy. For the first time in 7 years, coca production is
dramatically down anywhere in the world, and that is in Peru,
minus 18 percent. We need a big idea. We need to support Peru's
thinking on this, and in my judgment, over the next 5 to 10
years, we can probably make a dramatic impact.
Mr. Souder. Thank you. I guess I got the designated runner
award to go over and vote and get back.
I had a number of questions. I hope I can continue to catch
my breath here. One, in a direct followup with that, in the
budget that you have proposed, I am glad to see that you
increase the interdiction proposal over where it had been. Do
you have any nonrecurring costs in there for radar systems or
other things like that?
Gen. McCaffrey. The interdiction piece deserves further
analysis and work with your committee and others. There are
continuing debates. One of the problems we had this year, to be
blunt, was that terrible embassy crisis in Peru, which I think
cautioned us from moving ahead as aggressively as we might have
liked to.
There are significant increases. There is $40 million on
the table now for Peru. There is some new thinking. Gen. Wes
Clark, CINC SOUTHCOM, is looking at river and coastal
interdiction operations. The Peruvians are aggressively trying
to work land-smuggling routes to respond to the tremendous
success they and the Colombian Air Force have had in the air
bridge, but we need to analyze it carefully.
Specifically, as you look at the 1998 budget, Mr.
Congressman, that we turned in, there are about $168 million of
nonrecurring costs, that if you take it off the 1997 budget,
shows there has been a modest growth in interdiction of some
$28 million. Last year, you gave us $250 million minus some,
and we went out with DOD money and forfeiture money and bought
some equipment that is going to stand us in good stead.
So interdiction is slightly up $28 million over last year's
1997 budget.
Mr. Souder. I know we will continue to have some questions
about moving into Brazil and the Amazon Basin to try to avoid
the radar and detection in Peru and Bolivia. I was over in
Thailand just after you were. We were voting, and so I was not
able to piggy-back with you the couple of days before that,
which I was hoping to do. But, clearly, the way the heroin is
moving out of that area, it is almost impossible, unless we get
it at its source point, because it is going both directions
around the world, and we need to look at that issue, and we
will continue to do that.
I also wanted to make a brief comment and see what your
reaction was on it. You had one chart there that showed 1989
being the peak of disapproval, and then the least usage, it was
12th-graders, I believe, being in 1991. I wanted to make a
point with this, that I was working for Senator Coats at that
point, and specifically was in charge of hiring. We put seven
staff people on the drug issue alone. Multiple attorneys and
Ph.D.'s worked with the Drug Czar at that point and passed lots
of legislation.
Really, the peak of national attention was in 1989 and
1990, when we were reacting. We saw the funds go through going
into 1991, but the political phrase at that point was, the top-
three issues were drugs, drugs, and drugs. There was not a
second issue in 1989.
Our campaign consultant for this campaign, at that point,
was Dick Morris, and we tested. There was nothing in the
country that tested like that, and we were all making a
concerted effort. This, more or less, through the 12th-graders
shows that when there is a concentrated effort, we, indeed, can
make that kind of impact.
Now, part of my concern is, is that we do not get--I have
seen some of your statements, which I agree with. Interdiction
alone will not work. At the same time, interdiction is
certainly a starting point and one we can get our hands on
because the truth is, treatment alone does not work either
because, as we get into treatment, we will find out, and I am
on the subcommittee that oversees treatment programs--we do not
have a really good success program with that, either.
I am on the oversight committee that has education, both
the Education Committee and the Reform and Oversight Committee,
and we have a mixed track record. The program that I think is
best, which is D.A.R.E., has a mixed track record as the
studies are going through, and it is very hard to sort this
thing through.
I am concerned that a wrong signal is not accidentally
sent, because I agree that we have to get prevention in the
treatment, and if we can get the users off, but that
interdiction is at least an equal partner in this. We cannot be
perceived as backing off of interdiction because unless we are
doing all three of those, and that is most clearly the
congressional role, because even in your budget I think you
have $3 billion for treatment and only about $1.5 for
interdiction.
It is not as though we cannot give the impression to the
general public that we are focusing on interdiction solely,
because that is not the truth. The part that has been cut is
the interdiction, and the other parts have been rising.
Do you have any reactions to that?
Gen. McCaffrey. Well, basically I agree with your point. We
have got to do interdiction. We have got to defend our air,
land, and sea borders regardless of whether it is going to be a
war winner. We owe the American people a decent organization of
our 2,000-mile Southwest Border. Last year, we put about a 25
percent increase in funds into it. Last year, Congress gave us
the money for 1,500 additional personnel. This year, the 1998
budget, we are asking for another 500 Border Patrol agents,
100-some-odd DEA, 50-some-odd FBI.
So your point is a good one. We have got to do that. We
cannot get rolled on defending our own land, air, and sea space
by criminal activity.
I think the balance point is one that I will have to listen
carefully to your views on. I do not think we have done enough
on source country operations in Peru, as an example. I think
that is a good place to go and work seriously.
Finally, I would share your view: Heroin is the hardest
thing to sort through. Worldwide production is up, double. It
is in Afghanistan; it is in Burma; it is in Laos; it is in the
Bekka Valley.
Mr. Souder. Nigerian trafficking is almost impossible to
control.
Gen. McCaffrey. It tends to be most of a problem where
Government has the least control. So you cannot go to the
Government of Afghanistan and try to take sensible,
cooperative, multinational measures.
Mr. Souder. One brief comment. I want to have one other
question. The comment is, I first want to congratulate you on
your aggressive stance on the myth of the medicinal use of
marijuana and the willingness to stand up, because while we are
trying to fight a drug war, we have another group of citizens
that are undermining the very thing that we are trying to do. I
very much appreciate your standing up because I think some of
the death statistics are wrong. I am hearing from prosecutors
and sheriffs that the crimes are 70 percent, that kind of
thing.
I know in my district there are numerous automobile wrecks
that have been reported as non-drug-related, and I hear from
the kids that there was drug use involved, if not immediate,
the night before or other things, and they are not being
reported as drug deaths. The marijuana and cigarettes are the
gateway drugs, but marijuana, in particular, in the potency,
you are to be congratulated, because a lot of other people
wavered in public in this battle.
My question is, and this is an obvious question today,
could you describe, have you been part of the decertification
question on Mexico? Are they taking your input? Do you have any
comments on that process? Also, one other followup with that is
we heard the other day in the hearing about whether any
information was compromised, what kind of discussion did you
have with the Drug Czar in Mexico who has been part of the
cartel?
Gen. McCaffrey. Mr. Chairman, let me thank you for your
comment on the medical use of marijuana. I might add that what
we are now doing, ``we,'' meaning Secretary Shalala, Attorney
General Reno, and the other 12 cabinet officers that were
involved in that decision approved by the President of the
United States, is we are supporting the viewpoint of the
American Medical Association, the California Medical
Association, the American Cancer Society.
We have the best medicine on the face of the earth. Part of
it is due to the fact that we certify safe and effective agents
through a scientific medical process done by the National
Institutes of Health and the Food and Drug Administration. As
long as we do that, the American people will not face
thalidomide, laetrile, or quack medicines.
We have said there is no ideology involved in this kind of
a decision. A Schedule I drug is methamphetamine. Cocaine is
used for eye surgery. There is no ideology, but the American
people must get a scientific medical system. So Dr. Harold
Varmas, our brilliant, Nobel Prize Laureate, NIH Director, will
focus on that issue. I have asked an independent American
Academy of Science, Institute of Medicine, to look at what do
we know and not know in scientific literature.
We have synthetic THC available right now, and if other of
the 400-plus compounds in smoked marijuana show promise as
therapeutic agents, I am sure they can be made available for
the American medical establishment.
I thank you, sir, for your comment on that.
A quick response on the certification issue in Mexico, and
I would ask for your permission. Of course, as you are aware,
in accordance with the law, this is not a policy decision;
these are a matter of public law, and the Secretary of State
should be allowed to form her own viewpoint, which she will
have to do really by Saturday. I will be involved in that
discussion and try and join other senior officers of Government
providing sound advice.
Mexico and Colombia are obviously special cases. I mean, in
Mexico, 100 million people to our south, our third-biggest
economic training partner; there is no border between the
United States and Mexico. There are 85 million cars and trucks
that come back and forth each year; 230 million people cross
that border. We are culturally, economically, and politically
integrated, and these brave men and women in public life in
Mexico are now--and I am just putting this in context, my own
view, as somebody who has dealt with foreign systems for 32
years, they are trying to move Mexico into a multiparty
democracy, a First World economic alliance of NAFTA partners,
and to create modern institutions of government.
I do not know about the certification issue, but I am
persuaded that our children will be better off if we work with
them in partnership. Partners demand concrete results, not just
good feelings. So we ought to look for ways in which both
nations can confront this absolutely incredible situation.
Mexico has had 25 major assassinations in the last year,
potentially more than 200 police officers murdered.
The institutions of democracy in Mexico are under internal
attack, and I would suggest that it is our own judgment--and I
would be remiss to not publicly say this--where we identify men
and women of courage and dedication, if we believe President
Zedillo and his senior officials of Government are trying to
move the Mexican people into the future and protect them, we
ought to stand up in public and say so, and I have been honored
to do that.
I also, obviously, have carried a gun and worked with
foreign governments for a long time. I am not unaware that
violence and corruption are the twin tools that are being used
against Colombia, Peru, the Cayman Islands, Panama, and the
United States. We prosecuted 18,000 people in the Federal
system last year. But I think they are trying, and I think they
have suffered a grave disappointment with the alleged
uncovering of a criminal organization involving their head drug
cop.
Now, what did he get out of his couple of months in public
office? I do not know. Constantine and others are going to have
to very carefully assess that; certainly, the Mexicans are
right now.
The easy one is when he was here in Washington, he did not
get anything. But having had 2 months' access as the principle
law enforcement officer involved in the drug system, we should
view this as a major blow to our partnership on this issue.
President Zedillo and his officers are going to have to move
forward on the issue.
Mr. Souder. I would now like to recognize my friend and the
distinguished ranking member from Wisconsin, Mr. Barrett.
Mr. Barrett. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Again, I thank you,
General, for coming here today. I, as I indicated before,
attended the announcement earlier this week concerning the
goals of the 1997 National Drug Control Strategy and had the
opportunity to talk to some members of my local media following
that, and I was somewhat saddened to sense that the general
reaction was one of cynicism, almost, OK, here we go again;
another war on drugs.
So it would be helpful for me, and I have got a few
questions specifically, as to how you can help the public
understand the importance of this and why this is not just
another one-shot media hit and that there is something here.
My first question is, what is your office doing to improve
the effectiveness of the Safe and Drug-Free School Program?
Gen. McCaffrey. Mr. Congressman, it seems to me that the
principle problem we do face is cynicism or low expectations.
There are a lot of responsible women and men in city counsels,
State legislatures, and, indeed, in the U.S. Congress who think
this is hopeless, who think this is a 1-year spin operation. I
do not share that viewpoint.
I mean, in reality, the American people, when they say
enough is enough, get organized and make a difference, and we
have seen drug abuse in America come down dramatically in the
last 15 years. These are artificially high rates of drug abuse.
We have got to remind ourselves, most Americans do not use
drugs. A bunch of them have tried them; we say 50 to 72 million
Americans have used illegal drugs and have walked away from it.
The problem is our children and those who are chronically
addicted, and we have simply got to step up to the plate and
say to the parents, to the educators, to the police chiefs that
we recognize that if we can get these young people through
their 21st birthday, not just with threatening them with
``brain on drugs'' ads, but giving them positive options, by
mentoring, by Boys' and Girls' Clubs, by sports activities, by
religious activities, that they can indeed, and will in larger
numbers than now reject drug abuse.
We have also got to remind ourselves that 80 percent of our
kids today have never touched an illegal drug. The problem is,
one out of five high school seniors has and is currently using
illegal drugs. The problem with that is not only do they act
like jerks and they get involved in teen pregnancy, traffic
accidents, failure to learn, and dropping out of sports; not
only do they mute their social development; many of them go on
to become addicted to substances over time.
So we believe that, you know, Jim Burke from the
Partnership for a Drug-Free America, can track the national
attention on this issue through the news media and show that it
can make a difference. That is why we put on the table what we
think is a useful tool of $175 million a year, with an equal,
matching amount out of the advertising industry over 5 years to
talk to children who watch 15,000 hours of television before
they finish high school. I think your sense of our challenge
about cynicism is a correct one.
Now, Safe and Drug-Free Schools; we put some more money in
that program. If you look at the goals, Goals 1 through 5, the
biggest increase in funds, percentage-wise, was Goal 1, a 21
percent increase. A little bit deceptive, because the single
biggest percentage of the budget still, hands down, is law
enforcement and prisons, and that is OK. But the increase, the
$800-some-odd million dollars, the largest increase went into
demand reduction among children, and Safe and Drug-Free Schools
was a big part of that.
We owe you, as Congress, a performance measure that allows
me to come down here in future years and explain what we
achieved out of spending that money. It has been inadequate in
the past. The GAO went out and did a study, which I am sure was
appropriate, and found that the money was not properly managed.
But that program is essential. The Department of Education, we
think, can manage it, and it can give us some really important
outcomes.
Mr. Barrett. Thank you. On another question related to the
program, several weeks ago, I had the good fortune of being up
between 3 and 4 a.m., because we have a 3-week-old baby, so I
got to see some of the shows and some of the public service
announcements that were occurring at that time. Part of the
initiative that you just referred to as a $175 million
initiative for public service announcements which would be
matched by the private sector, I am curious as to whether the
networks have bellied up to the bar and are going to be part of
this or whether this is just $175 million that we are turning
over to the networks.
More importantly--and, again, this goes back to the
cynicism I faced in my district was, oh, great; you are going
to be running TV commercials. How is that going to work?
Gen. McCaffrey. Yes.
Mr. Barrett. If you would address those issues?
Gen. McCaffrey. Well, we know how important advertising is,
and we watch $6 billion in the cigarette industry and a couple
of billion dollars in the beer industry, and it does have an
impact on people; there is no question about it. We are the
best in the world at it, and I personally watched us take the
volunteer Army and go to this creative industry and help move
us out of a draft environment and get the best young men and
women in America to step forward and volunteer to serve in the
armed forces.
So we do have confidence in it, and there is some history
there. Again, Partnership for a Drug-Free America and the
American Advertising Council knows a lot about this. Now, we
have gone out and started consultations with the entertainment
world, the news media, and advertising. We think right now they
provide a little over $2 million a year pro bono advertising,
but it is coming down dramatically. It dropped 30 percent in
the last few years, and the economics of the industry are
causing some problems.
So my guess is they will support us; they will get
involved. They are responsible people. ABC has done a
tremendous program that is going to saturate the air waves in
the coming months. This starts next week. I went out to
Hollywood and had a very useful 2 days and challenged the TV
industry and the movie industry to join us in this effort, and
I think there was a very positive response, and I met with the
NBC leadership.
So I think there is some confidence in what we are going to
try and do.
Mr. Barrett. OK. Thank you. Finally, one question that my
colleague, Congressman Tim Holden, asked me to pose to you. You
visited the Southwest Border on several occasions, and on
Tuesday of this week, the chief of the Border Patrol testified
before this subcommittee on the violence toward law enforcement
officials and the increasing amount of illegal drugs crossing
the United States-Mexican border. What technical assistance
have you provided to the U.S. Border Patrol for its protection
of their agents and better surveillance of illegal activities
along the Southwest Border?
Gen. McCaffrey. The first thing I did was I sent a
reconnaissance representative along the Southwest Border last
March, and then I went back, and I went with Doug Kruhm, the
Border Patrol Chief, and Tom Constantine, the DEA Chief, and I
have been to many of the places along that border and been
tutored by Customs, INS. I have been to Joint Task Force 6. I
have gone and worked the intelligence problem. I have crossed
the border and listened to the Mexican side of it. I have a
decent grounding on what the challenge is.
We have an inadequate U.S. Federal law enforcement
establishment, and we have an inadequate intelligence system
focused south on the drug threat. We owe the President, by next
summer, a better concept. We have got an initial one now. We
have clearly got good men and women along that border.
The Border Patrol is one of the most professional law
enforcement operations on the face of the earth. That is what
Mexican ranchers and U.S. ranchers trust, and they are doing a
tremendous job, but they are inadequately sized. They have got
a five-phase strategy they have thought out, but I would argue
that before we are done with this, rather than 5,700 people on
the Border Patrol, we are more likely to have 20,000, and you
cannot build cops like you can surge the armed forces. They
have to be older. They have to get grounded. It takes 5 years
to build a good cop, and we need a Customs Agency that has high
technology instead of 4,000 National Guardsmen unloading trucks
of lettuce.
Now, last year, you gave us 11 mobile, x-ray machines. What
a tremendous step forward. We get those out there, and we are
going to start deterring drug smuggling through our 38 ports of
entry.
Now, there is a lot we can do, and we need to do more. We
have got some people at threat living on our border, and that
is unacceptable.
Mr. Barrett. Thank you very much.
Mr. Hastert. Thank you. Before I pass the questions down
the row here, let me just ask you, you talked about the
National Guard, but the National Guard has been pretty
supportive, haven't they? They have been in other areas. I know
we had testimony out in California last year about what the
National Guard was doing.
Gen. McCaffrey. Thank God for the National Guard. I mean,
on a given day, there are 3 or 4,000 of them in the State
supporting law enforcement. Of course, they are non-Title X
forces, so their flexibility is considerable. Right now, they
are manning Air Force Guard ground-based radar stations in
Latin America. They are flying F-16's out of Panama. They are
running intel operations. They provide intelligence translators
for the FBI and DEA.
If you go into the Los Angeles Police Department
Deconfliction Center, there is a National Guard sergeant in
there. They are in my office, so they are doing a tremendous
piece of work.
Mr. Hastert. I just did not want to leave the impression
that all they did was unload lettuce, but they are doing other
things.
Gen. McCaffrey. No. That is right.
Mr. Hastert. The gentleman from Florida, Mr. Mica.
Mr. Mica. General, you are in charge of our war on drugs or
our efforts to stem the increase in use of illegal drugs for
the country, and I think you were in January. Is that correct?
Gen. McCaffrey. Indeed.
Mr. Mica. In January, you made statements lavishing praise
on the Drug Czar of Mexico, Mr. Gutierrez, and I think you
called him, ``a guy of absolutely unquestioned integrity'' and
also gave praise for him during his appointment, I think, last
December.
I am completely baffled at the lack of intelligence, the
lack of information that you have as drug czar, or had as drug
czar, in making those statements.
Can you tell me what the problem is?
Gen. McCaffrey. Well, I think the problem is the Mexicans
selected a general officer from field command, put him in a
very responsible position, and then are apparently learning--we
are going to watch this very carefully in the weeks to come--
that he was actually part of a protection operation for one of
the drug criminal organizations.
So he had developed a tremendous reputation for
aggressiveness in the field, had actually made three of the
biggest busts in Mexico, but possibly we are going to learn in
the coming weeks--we will have to watch, of course, as evidence
is laid out--possibly we will learn that he was really a tool
of another criminal organization.
So Mexico made a terrible choice. They are disappointed,
and our intelligence also did not pick up on that.
Mr. Mica. But you were not informed as our drug czar. You
had no idea of the history or the drug connections of this
individual. Is that correct?
Gen. McCaffrey. No. I would go beyond that. I had an
incorrect opinion that he was a guy----
Mr. Mica. That just really disturbs me even more because of
the importance of intelligence in the drug war.
I met this morning briefly with the chairman of the
Intelligence Committee of the House of Representatives, Mr.
Goss, and I asked him this morning, and I am going to followup
today with a written request, for a complete investigation of
the matter, because we could have, in fact, jeopardized many
lives. We could have jeopardized what I consider national
security in this situation.
Now, you testified a few minutes ago that you did not
transmit any confidential information to Gen. Gutierrez when
you met with him; and that is correct?
Gen. McCaffrey. Right.
Mr. Mica. But it is my understanding that you also briefed
the Attorney General, Lazano, in the past. Is that correct?
Gen. McCaffrey. That is correct.
Mr. Mica. What concerns me is I understand that all the
files that Gen. Lazano----
Gen. McCaffrey. Attorney General Madrazo--it was actually a
Madrazo visit, with Gutierrez Rebollo with him.
Mr. Mica. But on previous occasions, it is my information
that the Mexican Attorney General, Lazano, had confidential
information and that, in fact, those files had been turned over
to Gutierrez, and that concerns me. I am concerned that, first,
we do not have the intelligence, the information-gathering
capability to inform our drug czar to not put you out on a limb
to make statements like this.
So, I am calling for that investigation by the House
Intelligence Committee, even though your agency is
overlooking--I'm sorry--is looking over that--it may be
overlooked, but it is a very serious situation. I want to point
out a couple of things.
First of all, I do not know if you realize it, but in your
report on page 53, this chart, I think, is incorrect. The
chart, I think it was put in in an averse manner. If you get
today's report from GAO, which has the same sources, published
this report correctly, and I wish that would be changed in your
report.
Furthermore, we also heard testimony here this week from
Ambassador Gelbard, who is in charge of State; Tom Constantine,
who is in charge of DEA; about their roles in the drug war.
They said that they are having trouble with the administration
taking action and getting equipment to Colombia and to Peru. In
fact, we have list of some of the information that has been on
a list of equipment to be provided to those countries that has
not been provided.
Now, what assurance can you give me that you are
coordinating efforts to get that equipment on the front line
for things that had been appropriated or approved in the past--
and they referred to some of this as ``off the shelf,'' and we
have a two-page list of it--let alone, our subcommittee and
Congress appropriating more funds to put up more equipment that
is not getting into the war of drugs?
Gen. McCaffrey. I would be glad to look into it. The
Colombia situation has been very complicated over the last
year. When they were decertified, there was essentially a
commitment that we would continue counterdrug cooperation in
accordance with the law.
One of the, I thought, unfortunate drawbacks was that it
did affect our 614 drawdown authority with Colombia and,
indeed, FMF sales of equipment to Colombian police and
military, and that has been a problem.
Mr. Mica. Now, 614 authority has a clear authority for
waivers, and when that information was brought up by Mr.
Gelbard, Ambassador Gelbard, I produced a document that showed
614 waivers that were given to Somalia, that were given to
Haiti, that were given to others in the national interest. If
it is not in the national interest to get this equipment into
the hands with a waiver from the President of the United
States, I do not know what is in the national interest.
Gen. McCaffrey. Basically, I share your viewpoint, Mr.
Mica, and I think what we need to do is produce such a 614
drawdown authority and support these various courageous police
and military officials in Colombia. I think you are right.
Mr. Mica. Is that going to be forthcoming? Is that a
recommendation to the President?
Gen. McCaffrey. Without question.
Mr. Mica. Thank you.
Mr. Hastert. The gentleman from Arizona, Mr. Shadegg. The
gentleman from Maryland.
Mr. Cummings. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Gen. McCaffrey, it
certainly is good to see you again. I thank you for your
efforts. I also want to thank you for coming to Baltimore to
see firsthand a city where out of a population of 691,000, we
have documented over 50,000 addicts, which means 1 out of every
14.
I guess what I am trying to figure out today, you know, I
listened to the news conference the other day with the
President, and I certainly applaud what the President is doing,
and I think that everybody who sits up here wants to do
everything in our power to help you. I guess the question
always becomes, what is most cost-efficient and effective? The
President said he wants to put out a certain amount of money
for advertising and things of that nature.
You may have said this while I was out of the room, and if
you did, I am sorry; and I am sure that is your aim, too, cost-
efficient and effective. Can you tell us the basis of what went
into this strategy right here, say, for example, advertisement?
You have a lot of people who are sort of skeptical, saying,
``Well, wait a minute. How do we know that that is going to
work?''
I know that in some instances you cannot say something is
definitely going to work, but I think what the American people
want and I think what all of us need is to have some kind of
feeling that whatever we are doing, whatever money we are
putting forth, whatever efforts we are putting forth are going
to likely have results that are favorable.
As I listen to my colleagues on both sides of the aisle,
there just seems to be some skepticism, a lot of skepticism
about what we are doing. I know you have not been in office but
so long, but apparently a lot of research must have gone into
the President's proposal the other day. I am trying to figure
out exactly how you all came to the conclusions, how you came
up with your priorities, and what effect you think, if all of
that is carried out, will have.
Gen. McCaffrey. First of all, I think skepticism is
appropriate, and that is a healthy way to go into this. I had
to put up a strategy, define objectives, do performance
measures, and then be held accountable over time to achieve
results, and to throttle back on programs that do not work and
increase those that do. So, I think that is entirely correct.
Having said that, I would also like to differentiate
between a strategy and its funding. That is a strategy. That is
based on 4,000-plus people and their input, and I read every
one of them, and I have got a brilliant group of people that
borrowed from models around America, people who know what they
are talking about. So, I think this is pretty sensible stuff.
Now, each year, it seems to me, we have got to come down
and debate the resources that go into that strategy, and then
we ought to adjust them. This is not a 10-year, cookie-cutter
solution, and I think we need a 5-year budget. I do not think
you can have a debate over the coming budget year and see the
tradeoff between a little over $3 a head on drug prevention
money per child in America and $17 billion of law enforcement,
prison construction and operations. So, I think we have got to
get our headlights out a little bit farther.
Now, when you come down to something specific like
advertising: Will it help? What is cost effective? It is not
helpful to argue from anecdotal data instead of baseline
studies. But if you go to Miami and look at the ASPIRA program,
and if you have a survey instrument that tells you who
children-at-risk are, and if you bus them into a high school, a
4-year high school at $2,000 a head and get a dramatic change
from kids who do not become addicted, we suggest, Mr. Taxpayer,
that is $2 million a child you saved in societal costs.
We are saying that it is a lot more cost effective than
busting the young woman or man 3 years after high school and
locking them up for 15 years at what we say is $22.6 thousand a
year to incarcerate a person in America, in the average Federal
system.
Those are cost-effective solutions. Now, go to advertising,
$175 million times two. We want half of it for free. We know
Americans spend $49 billion a year on illegal drugs. If you can
keep them off that behavior through age 21, they will not join
that enormous threat to America.
I think this will work. It works on every other product.
Why can't we sell young Americans on a healthy, spiritually
involved, productive life?
Mr. Cummings. I also want to thank you for selecting Dr.
Adger. He hails from Johns Hopkins, which is, of course, in my
district, and I think you made a wonderful selection. I am sure
that he will add a lot to what you all are doing.
Gen. McCaffrey. Yes, sir.
Mr. Cummings. Thank you very much.
Mr. Hastert. The gentleman from Arizona, Mr. Shadegg.
Mr. Shadegg. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Gen. McCaffrey, I
want to focus on where we are allocating our dollars and our
efforts and where I see differences between the priorities
established by the President and the administration and those
which appear to be the priorities established by the Congress.
As I look at these numbers, and I just want to see if you
agree with me generally, the Congress over the past 3 years, 2
years, at least, has focused on interdiction and prevention
efforts. The President, by contrast--and I include in
interdiction international efforts, that is, efforts at source
countries--the President, on the other hand, has focused more
on drug abuse treatment. You would agree with that?
Gen. McCaffrey. No, I would not. I think part of the
problem is how we categorize and discuss these issues. By law,
we tell Congress we spend money in two areas: demand reduction
and supply reduction. I think it is very distorting in its
impact. Most of the money we spend in America on drug efforts
are law enforcement and prisons, period.
Mr. Shadegg. Well, let us put law enforcement and prisons
aside----
Gen. McCaffrey. That is most of the money, and then go on
to the next one. Right.
Mr. Shadegg. Let us look at the four efforts that the
chairman focused on at the beginning, which are treatment,
interdiction, international efforts, and prevention. If you
look at page 22 of this report, which I guess is your report,
and I tend to look at the numbers, if you look first at
interdiction, and you begin in 1991----
Gen. McCaffrey. Right.
Mr. Shadegg [continuing]. At that point, it was 19 percent
of the total. In the budget you are requesting for this year,
it has dropped to 10 percent of the total. That is a 21 percent
decrease in moneys dedicated to interdiction.
If you then look in the second column at prevention, an
area I am interested in because I would like to see kids not
get hooked in the first place, it is the second column, again
beginning at 1991 as the base year and looking at the request
for 1998, you see it is going from $1,479 million to $1,916
million. That is a slight increase, so it is a 24 percent
increase for prevention as compared to a 21 percent decrease
for interdiction.
But then, if you look at the line right above that, you see
that from 1991 to now, there has been a dramatic increase in
treatment dollars. Again, looking at the base year of 1991, we
are talking about $1,877.3 million versus your request for next
year, which is $3,000, $3.5, a 38 percent increase.
So it appears, at least from these numbers, to me quite
dramatically that the administration is continuing to emphasize
treatment and, to a lesser degree, 38 percent growth in
treatment dollars; a 21 percent growth in prevention dollars,
which are going to the kids that I worry about; and a 21
percent decrease over that same time period in dollars
allocated to interdiction.
I see a fundamental disagreement here, and I guess my
question is, on what basis do you tell the American people that
that is an appropriate policy and why?
Gen. McCaffrey. Well, let me, first of all, suggest that I
share your concern for prevention, and at the heart and soul of
the strategy, it seems to me you focus on 68 million children.
You have got a subset of 39 million, age 10 and below. If you
can get that 39 million through age 21, we have saved ourselves
enormous agony down the line. So I basically share your
viewpoint on that factor.
I also think your concern about interdiction is
appropriate. How much is enough? The peak year was in 1991; you
are entirely correct. It got up around $2 billion. It dropped
to a low point in about probably 1993. We are now building it
back up to where it is around $1.6 billion, and I would
certainly be open to further discussion on whether that is
enough.
DOD has got a very tight budget, and they are reluctant to
throw money at Aegis cruisers in the Caribbean and AWACS flying
hours unless we can see a payoff.
Mr. Shadegg. Well, my home State is Arizona, and I am
worried about the border with Arizona and the developments in
the press lately. So, I am not so concerned about aircraft
carriers as I am doing something about a very serious threat
immediately south of the United States.
Gen. McCaffrey. We put a ton of money into the Southwest
Border in the 1997 budget. There is more of it in the 1998
budget, and your point is entirely correct. We owe the American
people a Southwest Border effort with the appropriate law
enforcement capabilities and intelligence.
Mr. Shadegg. Let me go at this percentage, at this issue of
what the low point was. Again, looking at that chart on page
22, at least as a proportion of our total effort, you can argue
that we hit a low point in 1995. It actually climbed slightly
last year. In 1995, it became 10 percent of the effort. In
1991, it was 19 percent of our effort. It climbed last year to
11 percent, a slight increase; but the numbers you have
requested would take interdiction back down to only 10 percent
of our effort. Again, just a slight decrease----
Gen. McCaffrey. Yes.
Mr. Shadegg [continuing]. But it looks to me like the low
point, the world is kind of at the low point on interdiction.
Gen. McCaffrey. Well, I think what you can also say, and I
have got a chart here to display it, we have had interdiction
and the source country strategy money going up since 1993.
Mr. Shadegg. It did get dramatically cut prior to that.
Gen. McCaffrey. But you are talking a percentage of the
whole effort. Right now, at $1.6 billion, that is an increase.
It was an increase last year. It was an increase the year
before that. So the 3 years in a row, we brought it up; and at
the Southwest Border, more specifically, there has been a
dramatic change in manpower, technology, and funding, and there
ought to be more to come.
Mr. Shadegg. I guess let me just conclude by saying, if you
look at, at least for the last 3 years in a row, the Congress
has put more money into interdiction than the President
requested, and I do not think we are only at this level of 10
percent interdiction right now not because of the President's
request, but because of the Congress's request.
Indeed, look at the younger drug potential abusers,
focusing on youth, Congress for the last 3 years has increased
money for interdiction and for the last year has increased
money for both source countries, and for prevention. By
contrast, the President has tried to put more money into
treatment, and I guess, again--and I know my time has expired--
I am interested in the President justifying and you justifying
to the country why we ought to be----
Gen. McCaffrey. Yes.
Mr. Shadegg [continuing]. Increasing our allocation for
treatment as distinguished from those efforts which I think
focus on youth, which include interdiction, source country
efforts, and prevention.
Gen. McCaffrey. The search for the truth and who submitted
what budget and what action was taken is a tough one. Let me
tell you what I think is the case, and I have got a chart that
I can share with you to display it.
What, in fact, has happened since 1991, I will assert, is
that each year until the 1995 budget, the administration,
whether it was Republican under Bush or Democratic under
President Clinton, submitted an interdiction-INL combined
budget. In every year, it was cut by the U.S. Congress, whether
it was controlled by the Democrats or the Republicans, until
the election-year budget.
In fact, that is what happened. Then we started up in the
election-year budget, on the 1997 budget, and on the proposed
1998 budget. So, I would suggest to you that the President's
requests for 3 years in a row was what we got funded. We got an
additional $250 million out of you this last year, which was
great. Let me just, if I can, show you the numbers.
Mr. Shadegg. No. My time has expired. If you just said that
only in the election year did the Congress increase funding for
interdiction, that is flat not true, because the Congress----
Mr. Souder [presiding]. We will come back to a second
round. We can follow this up in the second round if there was a
questionable statement in that, because the budget that we had
to deal with in our first year was already through when we got
in.
Gen. McCaffrey. I agree. Agreed.
Mr. Souder. Mr. Barr, from Georgia.
Gen. McCaffrey. Mr. Congressmen, I still basically agree
with your point. Prevention, Southwest Border; I am entirely in
agreement with your central argument. Thank you.
Mr. Souder. Mr. Barr, from Georgia.
Mr. Barr. I just do not know where to start, General. You
all are masters of understatement, I will tell you that. We had
a Deputy Assistant Attorney General here 2 days ago, who says
that the extent of corruption in Mexico is not fully known. Now
we hear that our intelligence did not pick up on this problem.
What an understatement.
I think we have got some serious problems here, but let me
try and start with this document. I hope you all do not
distribute this to the officers who are putting their lives on
the line fighting the war against drugs, the Spanish word for
which is ``guerra.''
It was used the other day, General, up here by generals
from Colombia who are, indeed, fighting a war, a war in which
their citizens are being murdered; in which their military and
police are being murdered; in which equipment built in this
country and furnished to them to protect themselves is being
shot out of the skies.
We had an officer here from, I think, the Border Patrol the
other day who was telling us about men and women under his
command that are being shot. Where, in heaven's name--and I
would like to know who, on page 5 of your report, says that
this is not a war--where in God's name did that notion come
from and that language? Is that yours? That is unbelievable,
General, to talk in this report that a metaphor of a war on
drugs is misleading.
Maybe it is only misleading because it is not strong enough
to send a signal to the American people and to law enforcement
officers, both on our side of the border as well as in Latin
America that people affected by drug abuse in this country are
victims and ought to be helped, that this is not a war on
drugs, that that is too harsh a term, it is not hard to
understand why I think this administration's drug policy is an
abject failure.
I do not think that the figures that we are seeing are
artificially high. When I talk with police officers and parents
and school children about the extent of drug usage, which is
going up among young people in many categories, I do not walk
away from those discussions, General, that these figures are
artificially high. I think they are very accurate, and if
perhaps anything, perhaps not quite accurate enough in terms of
the tremendous increases that we have seen in some areas.
We have heard other testimony, General, earlier this week
and 2 weeks ago from Mr. Gelbard over at State. State
apparently does not even recognize that in Colombia there is a
union between the formerly terrorist organizations and the
narcotics traffickers, and, indeed, the term ``narco-
terrorism'' is a very realistic term.
We see in Mexico a case very much like the Ames case in our
country here, where all of the signs were there for an extended
period of time that something stank--bank accounts, lavish
living, and so forth--and we apparently either just turned a
blind eye to it in an effort to make it appear as if Mexico was
really doing a lot more than it was perhaps to justify loaning
them billions of dollars. I do not know, but all of the signs
were there, and then to say our intelligence did not pick up on
this problem is a rather slight understatement.
You mentioned, General, that you had traveled to Hollywood
for 2 days, and that is certainly a component of this, to talk
with the people out there about the glorification of drugs in
our society. I would like to see some of our people travel down
to Colombia instead. It may not be quite as nice as Hollywood;
it may be a little more dangerous.
But we have heard from the men and women who do believe
that this is a war, and I think they are accurate in their
assessment, who put their lives on the line. We have heard from
them, and they have told us that we are not helping them nearly
to the extent that we should or that we have promised them.
Colombia, in particular, I am talking about. The
decertification of Mexico, contrary to what our Government
leaders told the Colombian leaders, the men and women in the
military and in the police are, indeed, fighting the war
against drugs down there. Contrary to what we told them, the
military assistance, the support has, indeed, slowed down
tremendously, and they have told us it is hurting, hurting
their effort, both systemically in terms of erosion of their
morale of their officers, as well as their ability to actually
fight the war on drugs.
I have a letter here, dated February 25 of this year, from
the Colombian national police general, Gen. Serrano, to the
House International Relations Committee. I do not know whether
you have seen it, but I suspect you know what it says, and that
is that we are not helping them to the extent that we can or
that we promised.
I am just phenomenally disappointed in what is going on
here. I think we have an absolute failure of leadership on the
part of our Government, and this business with Mexico is just
one little example of it. We apparently have not only no
strategy in dealing with this problem, but we have members of
our own Government, and we had several of them here the other
day, they do not even know who is on the damage assessment
team.
I would appreciate some thoughts. I know there is a lot in
there, but it is very heartfelt, and it represents the views of
an awful lot of citizens in this country who, I think, would be
as disappointed as I am if they saw this book.
Gen. McCaffrey. Well, Mr. Barr, if I may, let me, first of
all, tell you, I share your own sense of sadness about the way
Mexico has developed over the last certainly several years. It
is a great tragedy. It is something that we probably have to
work with for a decade to come to address.
I certainly share your viewpoint on the nature of warfare
in the source country zone: Colombia; Peru; Bolivia, to a
lesser extent; Mexico, certainly. I must remind you, if I may,
quite publicly now, you are dealing with a guy that has been
wounded in combat three times. I know all about war.
Mr. Barr. Let us not get into that. Nobody is questioning
your patriotism, and I am not saying that it is just a war down
there; I am saying that it----
Mr. Barrett. Mr. Chairman, regular order.
Gen. McCaffrey. Yes. Mr. Barr, I just wanted to make sure
you understood that I have been in Colombia, I have been in
Mexico, I have been in Peru, and I do know what I am talking
about. Now, the problem in Mexico and Peru deserves our
support, but I am not too sure that you and I ought to see
ourselves as personally responsible for the outcome of
selection of their government officials.
Now, let me, if I may, directly respond to your concerns. I
might add, you misunderstood something I said. The figures that
are artificially high means we do not need to tolerate drug
abuse rates at the level we currently have. Twelve million
Americans regularly using drugs is too many, and we can make it
lower than that. That is what I mean by ``artificially high.''
I am well aware, having been in most urban areas in America and
in rural, Midwest communities, that those figures are accurate
and, indeed, are getting worse.
I would also suggest I join your own viewpoint that police
and military forces in Colombia and elsewhere deserve our
support, and they will get it from me, and they have had it in
the past. I know these people, and I visited them, and
understand what their concerns are, and will fall in line to
try and move them forward.
Now, Mexico is in a very tough situation. They are under
internal assault from violence and corruption. That $30 billion
came out of our communities. That is what is helping destroy
Mexico.
They are trying to move to a modern economy, to a
multiparty democracy. We believe their senior leadership are
honest men and women. We were wrong about Gen. Gutierrez
Rebollo. There are others we will see in the future who will be
affected by this corruption, but where we find people of good
will, we deserve to stand with them and to publicly state we
have that viewpoint.
Now, finally, if you will, we may just have a difference of
conceptual organization. The language on not using the ``war on
drugs'' comes directly from me. Now, I borrowed that basically
from having a 32-year involvement in the U.S. Armed Forces in
which we went through the seventies where the armed forces
almost got wrecked by drug abuse, and we worked our way out of
it, and I can assure you it was not by arresting people and
kicking butt.
We tried to use drug education prevention programs. We
focused on treatment programs. We had an advantage over civil
society of sergeants, of people who got involved with young
people and treated them with dignity and gave them meaningful
work. Because of that and drug testing and the commitment of
people like me, after 10 years of hard work, we are a drug-free
institution today, and that is the kind of commitment I would
like to bring to America.
So if you are concerned about the metaphor of a cancer, we
will try and make sure your worries are taken into account. I
know you are committed to this issue, as I am, but I really
would urge you to understand that this is not a cop-out; this
is a dedication of a 10-year confrontation with a serious
issue.
Mr. Hastert. The gentleman's time has expired.
General, I think one of the things, we are getting in a war
over words, and we need to have a war over action, I would
think. To me, a war is something ultimately that you win or
lose, and I hope whatever this action is, it is something that
we can win. Our country depends on it, our children depend on
it, and certainly our future depends on it.
I just want to lay out some parameters, and I am going to
have to vacate the chair here in a few minutes. But I want to
lay some parameters that I think concerns us and certainly
reflects my views and the views of a lot of people that you and
I have both talked to.
We look at your chart here, the chart of the National Drug
Control Budget, and I know the budget does not always reflect
exactly all the activity that goes on because there is
resources that are already in place, resources that we have to
replace, resources that have built up over the years. So there
are other activities going on.
But certainly the domestic law enforcement, which includes
DEA and FBI and INS and the joint task force and Justice and
everybody else, you know, those are the people who are out on
our streets day in and day out fighting that war or that
action, whatever kind of terminology you want to call it. I
cannot say that it is enough or not enough. We need to make
sure that they have that support and the means to carry out the
job they have to do.
The next issue of treatment. I guess that is where the real
question is, and I have talked to a lot of folks across this
country. Treatment is important. We need to take those people
who have made mistakes and have gotten involved in drugs and
try to turn their life around. The fact is, at least most
statistics of people tell me, about 80 percent of those people
go back to using drugs again.
Maybe that means we need a better program, we need to find
new ways to do that, but to a lot of folks it means that it is
important to do this, and it is certainly important to try to
help people who have made mistakes, but we have spent a lot of
money sometimes to no avail there.
The other issue is the interdiction issue, and we look at
real numbers there. For instance, the treatment has gone from
about, I believe, $1.8 billion a couple of years ago to about
$3 billion in your budget today; and, again, you cannot reflect
everything by dollars, but there has been a pretty good
increase there.
When you start to look at interdiction, we have gone to a
high in the early 1990's of $2 billion to a low of $1.2
billion, and now we are coming back up to about $1.6 billion.
We have never reached the level that we were at one time.
To a lot of us, the interdiction is being able to take that
stuff off the streets, to stop it at the borders, to stop it
coming in by boat or by plane or by carrier. Or the x-ray
machines that we need at the border. We talk about 11 x-ray
machines. We probably need 111 x-ray machines. I do not know. I
am just pulling numbers out of the air, but, you know, we need
a lot of stuff to be able to do the interdiction.
We need the people to do it, and that is an area that I
think if we can stop drugs coming across the border at a cost
of $2,000 a kilo before they get on the streets and they cost
$200,000 per kilo or at some market price or whatever numbers
you want to pull out, that is an effective way to do it. But
even more so, when you get down to the international
operations, you talked about Peru. I think that we have the
potential to be very, very successful there. We need to talk--
and we have not even scratched the surface--we need to talk
about what we are going to do in Southeast Asia.
Quite frankly, because we do not have the kind of
relationships diplomatically with some countries like Minmar
and China, that we cannot get our DEA agents or will not let
our DEA agents or our intelligence in there to help them solve
their problems or crop replacement situations, we need to have,
and I think you agree with us, a regional strategy there that
we really seriously need to talk about, because cocaine is one
thing; heroin is something else.
Now, heroin comes from Colombia, but also a lot of it comes
from the Golden Triangle and the environs around there. We need
to talk about that, and I do not think we have even scratched
the surface.
That is all part of that international effort that I think
we need to beef up and put the dollars in so we can stop the
stuff, for instance, cocaine, at $200 a kilo. It is certainly
pretty effective to stop it at that price rather than to stop
it at a huge price on our streets. If you would, take a couple
of minutes and kind of reflect on that, if you would.
Gen. McCaffrey. The support for law enforcement is
absolutely essential. This budget has gone up. It is an $800
million increase. It still reflects the dominant commitment to
saying that drugs are wrong, drugs are disapproved, they are
against the law, and we will support law enforcement, and we
will lock people up where they sell them or become involved in
violent crime. We ought to do that. We ought to pay the bill up
front. That is not an option; that is an obligation to the
American people.
Now, let me talk briefly about treatment. If you would like
to understand the contribution of effective drug treatment in
America, you have to go ask a narcotics officer in Los Angeles,
New York, rural Iowa, or wherever, because there is not a
police officer in this country or someone involved in the
American Correctional Association that does not understand that
we cannot just lock people up, put them in the slammer for a
month to 7 years, and put them back on the street.
We also have got to take into account this is a chronic,
relapsing disorder. Cures, like smoking addiction, do not come
easy, but it is relatively easy, if you have a treatment
methodology and a follow-on program, to reduce the consequences
of crime, violence, AIDS, spouse abuse in America. I would just
tell you that there is a tiny number of Americans, percentage-
wise, who are devastating our society, 2.7 million chronic
addicted; and they consume 80 percent, some argue, two-thirds
to 80 percent, of the drugs in America. You have got to go into
that community.
Some of them are alleged to be committing crimes of as high
as 300 felonies a year. So, when I talk to police officers,
they are the ones that talk to me about treatment alternatives
to crime. I think we have just got to go that route. We have
got to make sure we are spending our money wisely. I think your
point is a good one.
I think the notion of getting enough interdiction is
unarguable. We have got to get technology and common sense and
better organization into our Southwest Border. We have got to
create the Customs, Border Patrol, and Coast Guard that we need
for the next century, and INS. We have got to get better
organization of our intelligence service, and I owe you
continuing responses on that.
Peru, we need a big idea. If we want to do something
dramatic about cocaine, Peru is the place to go, even though
Colombia has now edged out Bolivia as the second largest nation
in the world on hectarage under cultivation. Cocaine seizures
in Colombia are down, and cultivation is up by 32 percent, but
Peru is where 70-some-odd percent of the cocaine in America
comes from.
I think one of the really fundamental points you made, Mr.
Chairman, is what do we do about heroin? If you want to solve
heroin, you have got to recognize we have such a low part of
the worldwide consumption, that Colombia alone and Mexico could
provide all of our requirements. Then we look at this
incredible production of opium in Burma, Afghanistan, and Laos,
which are the top three nations in the world, and what are we
going to do about it?
I think you are entirely correct. Your trip over there was
very useful. We are going to have to try regional cooperative
efforts and not think that we can do this, the United States,
unilaterally. The Chinese must understand that they are more at
risk from Burmese heroin than Baltimore is. They have got a
million addicts or more, and it is a threat to our Vietnamese,
Cambodian, Laotian, Thai, and other regional partners.
What I would also, though, remind all of us is we look at
what comes in and out of this great country, the richest
country on the face of the earth. It is 340 metric tons of
cocaine, 10 metric tons of heroin. It is at most a millionth of
the annual movement of tonnage in and out of this Nation. It is
a tiny BB hidden in a bale of hay, and we are just going to
have to do better with technology and intelligence, not
manpower. There is a pretty important BB in that bale of hay,
and we are going to have to work together if we are going to be
able to find it; whether it is a needle in a haystack or a BB
in a bale, we need to work at that.
One other comment on that. I understand that there are 2.7
million people who are the problems and the recidivists in the
treatment programs. I hope that we can help them. We have also
got 10 million kids at risk that we need to make sure that they
cannot get their hands on this stuff or it is awfully tough to
get their hands on this stuff.
Mr. Hastert. I thank you for your testimony. I pass on now
to Congressman Barrett.
The gentleman from Indiana, Mr. Souder.
Mr. Souder. Only a small percentage of the baggage going on
airplanes are guns and bombs, so we have to get them all. It is
not easy and it is expensive and that is one of the problems we
have when we are trying to balance the budget.
I am curious. You were commander of SOUTHCOM in Panama. Did
you ever know Gen. Gutierrez in that capacity?
Gen. McCaffrey. No, I did not. I made one trip into Mexico
during that period of time with Dr. Perry, but Mexico is not
part of the SOUTHCOM area of responsibility.
Mr. Souder. Had you ever heard anything about him prior
when you were in that command? I understand that it is not
completely logical, in my opinion, that it is not a part of
SOUTHCOM, but that is another question. Had you ever heard
anything about him or concerns or----
Gen. McCaffrey. Well, before we went down to Mexico, I
think we went down and met him on a high-level contact group in
December. Before we went down there, I had an intelligence
briefing on our viewpoint, again, on the Mexican leadership I
would be dealing with, and that certainly included the Attorney
General, Madrazo, and Gen. Gutierrez Rebollo. So I went down
there, having read our assessment of these two people.
Mr. Souder. Our assessment at that time was positive?
Gen. McCaffrey. Indeed. Our publicly stated opinion
essentially reflected what we said in private, and we retain
our viewpoint that the Attorney General, Madrazo, is a noted
legal scholar, a human rights activist, a man of high integrity
and dedication to Mexico. The assessment on Gutierrez Rebollo,
based sadly enough, on his splendid performance against
selected drug criminal organizations, was that he was a real
hard-nosed field soldier. It was sadly mistaken. The Mexicans,
of course, are horrendously disappointed by this blow to their
own national security.
Mr. Souder. One other curiosity. You mentioned twice
earlier in your testimony to it being alleged and saying facts
will unfold, which we all understand, except it does not seem
to be being denied that he was in Fuentes's apartment. There
are some facts that are in dispute and some facts that are
pretty irrevocable already on the table. Would you not agree
with that?
Gen. McCaffrey. I am not trying to be legalistic, Mr.
Souder. You know, what I need to understand is that in
Colombia--I already know that the President of Colombia is
alleged to have been elected with $6 million in drug money;
that the Minister of Defense that I dealt with down there,
Botero, is in the slammer; that several others--Medina, the
campaign chairman--are under indictment. I am aware of the
corrosive power of $30 billion of drug money on democratic
institutions.
So what we are going to try to do in Mexico is try and
support this President and his senior officers as they roll up
this latest corrupting influence to their police forces, but we
have got to keep a very objective eye on what is happening.
Mr. Souder. Our concern, and just so you understand that it
is intense in Congress right now, and if you were in our shoes,
you would understand it as well as in your own shoes, and that
is, is that I am not one who is particularly defending Colombia
at this point other than that their Attorney General and their
national police and their defense are dying on the front lines,
and they could have been removed by Samper. I think we need to
keep the pressure on Colombia because they are letting these
people sit in prison and operate their cartels, but they are
moving.
The question, however, comes when we come back to Mexico is
that we heard at the hearing earlier this week that there are
concerns about up to 90 percent of the police force in Tijuana
and Baja California, and we pulled back agents; that there are
concerns about two of the Governors of Mexico; that we have the
drug czar going down, apparently as part of a cartel; we have
seen assassinations all over the country; one of the Governors,
if, indeed--and I do not know enough about it, and the evidence
here is still sketchy on the Governor, Sonora, but he is
clearly the man, if not one of the key men, behind President
Zedillo's election, which has not come out as much in the
media; that the core question here is, on what basis, other
than we met with President Zedillo, we have met with the
foreign minister numerous times.
I think they are wonderful men, but quite frankly, you
thought all these other people were good men. Our intelligence
briefings said they were good men. Gen. Gutierrez, for example.
There were others in the process that we dealt with in that
period of time who turned out--I mean, we have touted the
Salinas administration, which certainly had a lot of questions
with it.
Gen. McCaffrey. Yes.
Mr. Souder. Colosio is dead. That we are looking at this
type of thing and saying, we want to believe you, we want to
believe them, but you are telling us that our intelligence is
lousy, if it exists at all.
Gen. McCaffrey. Well, I really did not say that, Mr.
Souder. I said our intelligence was wrong and confirming that
the Mexicans had made a drastic mistake in selecting this
general officer as their head cop.
Mr. Souder. One of the questions here is that we seem to be
getting surprised a lot lately.
Gen. McCaffrey. Well, let me also tell you that there ought
to be a twofold approach, in my judgment, in dealing with
foreign governments like the French, the Israelis, the
Mexicans, and the Canadians. In public, I think what I ought to
do is publicly state those ethically correct ways that we are
working with a foreign government and praise their leadership
where we see honest men and women in public life, and privately
we ought to push to make changes.
That is what we do with other major nations, and that is
what we have done with Mexico. But I would urge you to
understand that we focus a lot of attention on these countries,
and we have got people all over them. I listen to the DEA, the
FBI, the agency military attaches. I have traveled there. I
know these people. I do not have a three-piece suit. I have
spent most of my life banging around the world. I speak
Spanish, and I am not naive. I am committed to defending the
American people.
Mr. Souder. One of the concerns I have, that in your report
you say that, or you testified earlier today, that we should be
looking at a new concept for enforcement in intelligence by
next summer. Did you mean the summer of next year or the summer
of this year? Wouldn't you, having been a veteran in the Gulf
war, if you had gotten this kind of intelligence information,
heads would have been rolling already?
Well, we can argue whether it is a war or a cancer; I think
it is both.
Gen. McCaffrey. Yes.
Mr. Souder [presiding]. But this is pretty upsetting.
Gen. McCaffrey. Well, it should be. I think we have got
tremendous law enforcement agencies at work in the Southwest
Border and supporting Mexico right now. They probably need much
better conceptual structure to it. I think our intelligence
system facing south can be reviewed.
Now, I would not want to say that it is a failure. I have
been working with the Agency for the last 4 years, looking
south, in DIA and DEA and the other people that try and pay
attention to our southern neighbors. We know a lot more, sadly
enough, about criminal activity in the Chapare Valley than we
do about drug addiction in Baltimore.
So I think that there is a lot of very capable, dedicated,
and stable view of what is going on to the south. I do not
think we ought to overreact. We made a mistake in accepting the
judgment of the Mexican administration, but they are doing as
good as they can. We are just going to have to buckle down and
do better.
Mr. Souder. Well, with that set up for Baltimore, we will
go to the gentleman, Mr. Cummings, from Maryland.
Mr. Cummings. Thank you. Gen. McCaffrey, you said something
a few moments ago that really kind of struck my interest in
answering a question. You talked about the military and the
efforts that have been made in the military to rid this
institution, that is, the military here in the United States,
of a drug problem.
Just from the way you answered the question, I take it that
there are some strategies that were used to accomplish that
that you assume can be used in the bigger picture, and I am
just trying to figure out how did the military do it. I guess
when I look at the military, I look at an institution that is
sort of restricted.
In other words, when you are talking about the greater
society, you have got people everywhere, but when you have got
military bases, you have got certain controls there; and I am
just trying to figure out how it was done, and of those
strategies what can be used to address this problem that we
have in the United States all over our country?
Gen. McCaffrey. Mr. Congressman, I think it is a legitimate
question. It is one I am somewhat uneasy sometimes to answer
because I am keenly aware that the tools that the U.S. Marine
Corps uses or the 82d Airborne are not necessarily appropriate
for a free and open society with a fundamental commitment to
rights to privacy and due process and, indeed, a sense of leave
us alone.
Now, having said that, the best thing we can learn out of
the military's experience in the seventies and eighties is
these are the same beautiful, young women and men that are in
Baltimore that are in the 82d Airborne and on ships at sea.
So I came into this position with a sense of optimism and a
faith in American young people, and I think that when they have
options and are treated with respect, when they have meaningful
work to do, when people say ``zero tolerance for drugs'' and
set the example, not people that say--like 72 million Americans
who have used an illegal drug--not people who say we have never
used drugs, but we are not going to use them anymore. But if
you stay at that process for a long time--in this case it was
probably a decade--you end up with a lot less drug use.
Now, because of the military and we had the drug testing
system, we ended up with darn-near zero. Now, that may be
unrealistic, zero. We have still got an alcohol abuse problem
of significant proportions in the armed forces. We have got too
many people smoking cigarettes, but we have done an incredible
piece of work. So has the New York City Police Department. So
have the faculties of a lot of colleges. So has a lot of big
business. There is a zero tolerance for drug abuse in most of
large, corporate America.
I am not persuaded that sensible drug prevention and
education programs cannot produce dramatic results over time. I
believe they can.
Mr. Cummings. I am sure you are familiar with this concept
of--I forget the author's name, this guy that wrote ``Fixing
Broken Windows,'' talking about zero tolerance and his
philosophy that you have to start with the petty offenses and
be hard on the petty offenders so that problems do not increase
and escalate. I assume that you have contact with police
departments all over the country, and you just talked about
zero tolerance.
Do you agree with that concept of fixing broken windows?
Gen. McCaffrey. I have been fascinated with watching the
incredible success in Miami, San Diego, Los Angeles, New York
City, Commissioner Safir and his people. It is simply awesome
what U.S. law enforcement is doing now on their own, to a large
extent, with community policing, with getting in there and
getting involved with measuring the right things. The New York
Police Department does not measure the number of arrests. They
do not measure the number of kilograms of drugs seized. They
measure and hold their precinct captains now responsible for
the reduction of crime that wrecks the quality of life in New
York City. It has taken them 5 years, and they are achieving
incredible results.
I see it in other cities. Miami is probably half as bad off
as it was a decade ago. So I think community policing is a big
contribution. We can do more to support their efforts. This
High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area program that Congress has
now put $140 million into; we have 15 HIDTAs. You just
designated five new ones in the last budget. This is a
contribution to America's law enforcement, prosecution,
treatment, sensible policy, so I think there is some real
progress.
Mr. Cummings. There was a show on last night, one of the
national shows, that was talking about we are spending so many
dollars incarcerating such a large portion of our population
and that as we spend those dollars incarcerating people--and
they showed a parallel how money is being taken away from
schools, from educating young children.
When I look at the charts and I look at the money that we
are spending with regard to domestic law enforcement, it just
kind of concerns me that some kind of way we have got to get to
that small population that you talked about a few minutes ago
that are using the drugs, committing the crimes, filling up our
jails, and literally taking dollars away from our children.
Gen. McCaffrey. Sure.
Mr. Cummings. It is sad.
Gen. McCaffrey. I might add, though, that at that point you
have lost. When you are dealing with 2.7 million chronic-
addicted Americans, it is a painful situation at best. We can
reduce the damage they do to themselves or families and their
communities, but it is not an easy way out. It seems to me the
investment up front in understanding, the solution is parents,
educators, ministers, coaches, local law enforcement, and
positive options for young Americans. That is the cheapest way
to address a $70 billion damage to American society out of drug
addiction.
Mr. Souder. Thank you, Mr. Cummings. I also want to make a
brief comment, an invitation to work together. One of the
things that we have done is formed a new Empowerment
Subcommittee that I am going to be chairing to work on a number
of these issues, because in addition to the drug problem, we
have to look at the economic development, the school, the
juvenile justice questions, and I would welcome you sitting in
and helping us as we go through----
Mr. Cummings. Mr. Chairman, I accept your invitation. I
will do that.
Mr. Souder. The gentleman from Florida, Mr. Mica.
Mr. Mica. Thank you. Could one of you gentlemen put the
chart up that refers to cocaine casual use?
Mr. Drug Czar, I hate to criticize your report and your
charts, but I think that your report is trying to put a pretty
face on some pretty ugly statistics. To put that chart in there
with that title is a little bit offensive to me, for several
reasons. Next to it, it shows the dramatic increase by our
youth of cocaine, and I looked through the charts to see about
heroin, which is, as you know, and you have been in my
community, heroin use is off the charts.
I submit to you that cocaine use is down because heroin is
so damned cheap you can buy it almost as cheaply as cocaine and
that it is becoming more available. The production in your
statistics show that it is available, so I am not pleased with
the presentation that shows our drug policy is working, casual
use is down. If it is down and so great, we look at every
statistic, cocaine has flattened out a bit, heroin coming off
the charts, and marijuana, according to your charts, is
increasing.
So I think that you have given us an accurate portrayal of
what is happening with these charts.
Gen. McCaffrey. Well, I am not quite sure that I follow
your point. In fact, cocaine use is down. It is really
unarguable. It has gone from a little under 6 million----
Mr. Mica. It is being supplanted by heroin.
Gen. McCaffrey. No, probably not.
Mr. Mica. Well, in my community they are dying----
Gen. McCaffrey. Well, let me, if I may, give you----
Mr. Mica [continuing]. In middle-class suburbs on the
streets.
Gen. McCaffrey. Well, let me give you what we think is the
case. What I will also grant you, though, is that our numbers,
which I use with great confidence, are just the best numbers I
can get, and they are subject to debate, and we owe you better
statistics in the future.
But having said that, heroin use in America, the problem is
there is a lot more of it available, it is higher purity, it is
lower cost, and new populations are trying it, young people, a
lot of young, white Americans in suburbs, with a tremendous
increase in the number of folk getting in trouble because they
are using such high-purity stuff.
But heroin use so far, thank God, has not yet gone off the
charts. It probably will if we do not get organized. Now, your
area, which I was grateful to visit and listen to their
problems, has had nine youngsters die of heroin overdose in the
last year, greater than the city of Los Angeles. You are in the
absolute center of the storm of Colombian heroin, which is
showing up on the Eastern seaboard, aggressively marketed by
the same criminal organization that is pushing cocaine.
Mr. Mica. Again, the charts, we can produce these charts,
but it is the perception, too; and I am telling you that
Americans fear going to sleep at night in their own
neighborhoods. I live part of the time in Washington, DC, and I
fear going to sleep in this community for the first time, and
in central Florida. Your statistics, to me, just do not jibe.
There are encouraging signs. The last 5 years, drug-related
emergency department episodes did not rise significantly, and
then you still show a rise here on drug users burdening our
system. There is a steady decline in drug-related homicides
between 1989 and 1995. If you take out New York City and some
of the other places where there have been some local efforts,
it is still a disaster.
Washington, DC--399 people killed last year. Last night,
they blew away a couple of more, and there is a couple, I saw
on the news this morning, in critical condition. It is
everywhere; it is not just my community.
Federal drug prosecutions; I do not see a damn thing about
them in here. Excuse my language, but I get a little bit
excited about it. Federal drug prosecutions are down, and I do
not see this as part of the strategy.
Now, if you said that New York City, one of the reasons is
zero tolerance, if you said that for 10 years if you have a
zero-tolerance policy in your chart--we do not see the rest of
this chart, but if you look at the statistics for 10 years
under the past administrations, it was going down, down, down,
and comes off the chart in 1993--tough prosecution does work,
and the Federal prosecution is diminishing.
Gen. McCaffrey. Well, you know, what I think of your
frustration on the terrible impact of 3.6 million addicts on
Orlando, Florida and rural Iowa, and Missouri, I could not
agree more. There are more people sick, and their age rate is
up, and violent crime is disastrous.
Mr. Mica. Methamphetamine is rampant. One of your charts
shows that. They are in the little communities.
Gen. McCaffrey. We have tried to portray that. I could not
agree more.
Mr. Mica. One last point, and let me say a couple of
things. First of all, you mentioned that we do not have a
border between Mexico and the United States. Well, I tell you,
when they murdered Enrique Camarena, we had a border between
the United States, and we had some leadership from the Federal
level, and we closed down that border. If it is necessary and a
policy of the United States, we should close down and tighten
that border, and a lot is going to depend on what you all do in
the next few hours, as far as your policy toward certification.
You go back and see what Willie Von Robb did in closing
down the borders and tightening up. So it is part of the
national policy.
The other thing, too, is I salute your education. You know
I will spend any amount of money we need for enforcement,
education, for treatment, as long as it is successful. But I
ask you, the $180 million or $175 million you have put in for
public advertising; who owns the air waves in this country?
Gen. McCaffrey. Right now, if you want to buy TV time----
Mr. Mica. Who owns the air waves? Who issues the licenses?
In your own report here, you give us information that public
service announcements have dropped 20 percent. In fact, the
people own the air waves. A license and franchise is given by
the Federal Government, and up until a few years ago, the
media, in fact, television and radio, who take a license and
franchise from the people, were giving free PSAs back in the
1980's, and that has dramatically declined.
I submit that they should also be given this public
franchise back, and if necessary, we should have a requirement
that they participate in this because it is in the national
interest--they hold the public franchise--and not rip off the
taxpayers in this manner.
Mr. Souder. I wanted to make a brief comment on this chart,
too. What we see often is typical of a lot of different things,
and that is, is that middle- and upper-class people adjust when
they see the harm and when we start a crusade. To some degree,
that is what has happened in cocaine, the kids in the crack,
the methamphetamine.
In Fort Wayne, in 1992, we had 39 hits of LSD taken. In
1994, 9,790 hits of LSD. It is the most vulnerable, least
educated, and the poorest who are getting left behind, and the
only point I think we are trying to make with this is while we
need to say we are pleased with some of the success, we cannot
beat our chests too much, because we are drowning in the
highest risk areas.
Gen. McCaffrey. I agree with you, Mr. Chairman. That chart
is meant to say exactly what it says: Drug use in America is
down by half. Cocaine use is down by 75 percent, and new,
dynamic drug threats are emerging, including methamphetamine.
Our children and the addicted of America are destroying our
cities, our communities, and our work places. It is a very
serious problem. It is $70 billion and 16,000 dead, and that is
why I am over here.
Mr. Souder. Mr. Barrett from Wisconsin.
Mr. Barrett. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I agree with the
chairman that we should not be beating our chests, but I also
do not think we should be beating you over the head, General.
I think that you have done a very good job today. I think
that you have been very honest, you have showed us where there
are problems. You have not tried to sugar coat anything. You
have explained to us that this is a serious problem, and as I
said in my opening statement, I think you have one of the most
difficult jobs in this entire country.
If you ask the American people whether drug abuse is a
Democratic problem or a Republican problem, they would say,
``We do not care; it is an American problem.''
Gen. McCaffrey. I agree.
Mr. Barrett. I think it is a serious mistake for us, if we
decide, well, just because the Democrats are in the White House
and you were appointed by a Democratic President, that somehow
we are not winning the war or the cancer battle or whatever you
want to call it. This is too serious a problem to just play
politics with, and we can have some legitimate differences of
opinion, and we do have some legitimate differences of opinion
as to priorities pertaining to treatment, to prevention, or
interdiction, or how many dollars we should put into police
officers or prisons.
But I think that this, more than virtually any other issue,
is an issue where we have to work together. I think that you
have provided the leadership on a very nonpartisan basis, which
I think it has to be. I would not want you in here being a
Democratic hack. I think that would be a huge mistake, but I
again want to commend you for the job that I think you are
doing; and I do not want your job, because I think it is too
hard a job.
I think it is far too hard a job, and as I also indicated
in my opening statement, Americans are very cynical about this
battle because they have not seen the drug use, and they have
seen people whose lives have been ruined. So I think that we
have to combat the cynicism, and I do not think that we as an
institution should be increasing that cynicism.
So, again, congratulations, and anything I can do to help
you, I will do to help you.
Gen. McCaffrey. Thank you.
Mr. Souder. Mr. Barr of Georgia.
Mr. Barr. Thank you. General, I would suspect that you and
I would speak for probably everybody in this room and everybody
in the listening and viewing audience that we do not want kids
to smoke cigarettes. But the problem that I have--and you all's
strategy is replete with references of drugs, tobacco, alcohol,
drugs, tobacco, alcohol, drugs, tobacco, alcohol--and I think I
understand perhaps at least what you are trying to say, and
that is that, to some extent, perhaps behavior that is bad at
the beginning becomes worse as kids get older. They use tobacco
and they know they are not supposed to and it just gets worse.
That is a good point. I disagree with making that point in
a way that--and this is the danger that I think linking those
three really will result in. Young people do not see these
things as rationally as we do, and if we, as the administration
is doing, are putting out a strategy that links these three
things constantly, and I have heard the President say it also--
he is very adept at that; he will get two or three words, like
the business we had last year with the balanced budget, the
environment, children, and elderly, and he just repeats it, and
that is the message that gets out there.
The thing that I worry about is if we constantly keep
talking about drugs, tobacco, and alcohol, we are not going to
raise the level of seriousness and the kids' perception of how
serious tobacco use is, we are going to lower their perception
of how dangerous illicit drugs are.
To my way of thinking, and we have heard from some of the
law enforcement officials from both sides of the border here
during the past couple of weeks, the problem is not tobacco
usage. There are no tobacco traffickers out there that are
killing people, that are shooting the helicopters out of the
sky and so forth. It is drugs; that is where the immediate
problem and crisis is.
I just think it can be somewhat self-defeating to link
these three because there are a lot of people that are going to
see that different from the way you and I see it. They are
going to say, ``Ah, ha, illicit drugs are no worse than
tobacco.'' I know that is not what you are trying to say, but I
would caution again, in setting out a strategy, because this is
what the President talks about. He does that, and a lot of, I
think, young people are going to see that, and I think it can
be problematic.
With regard to, if I could, a couple of specific questions,
we have talked, and a number of Members have talked this
morning and this afternoon, about the problem with Gen.
Gutierrez. Are you aware of any intelligence that was coming
into our Government that indicated there was a problem with
this man?
Gen. McCaffrey. Let me, if I may, address your point on
smoking cigarettes and alcohol and say that I got your concern.
What I can promise you is that my own focus ought to be in
accordance with the 1988 law that Congress passed that told me
what the Agency should focus on, and that does not include the
responsible use of alcohol or smoking cigarettes by people over
21 and 18, respectively. So that will not be part of our focus,
even though I am aware, as you are, as rational Americans, that
we killed 440,000 people with cigarettes last year and 100,000
with alcohol.
But I agree, I basically ought to stay on my portfolio, and
that is off the table. Alcohol is a mildly addictive drug. Most
Americans do not have a problem with it. It is unfortunate that
it has produced 10 to 18 million alcoholics in the Nation,
hands down the worst drug problem we face. It is not my
responsibility, and I am not going to do it.
Now, to get back to the responsibility I do have, though,
on Goal No. 1, which is to America's youth to reject drug
abuse, alcohol, and tobacco, those are illegal activities; they
are against the law. If you look back over the history of this
Agency, starting in 1989, with the Bush administration, they
clearly got the point that if you smoke cigarettes, if you
abuse alcohol, if you use marijuana or other illegal drugs, you
are involved in gateway behavior to addictive problems in life.
That is really the difficulty with cigarettes, alcohol, and
pot.
So we know that we have got a tremendous challenge.
Cigarette use in this country is down across the board, except
with children it is up. It has gone up dramatically. Three
thousand kids a day are starting smoking, and a thousand of
them will die from it. Now, more importantly, if you are
smoking pot as a 12-year-old, your chance of ending up using
cocaine--this is just math; there is no defined causal
relationship--goes up 89-fold. If you are smoking cigarettes as
a 12-year-old, your chances of having an addictive problem
later in life go up five-fold.
So we are persuaded we ought to tell our kids, zero illegal
drug activity--no booze, no cigarettes, no marijuana, heroin,
et cetera. I think we will do that, and we will help the
country out.
To respond to your second question, I believe it would
probably be useful for you, if you would care to, I would be
glad to share with you the Agency and other intelligence
sources that I used and use over time in assessing these
foreign leaders and who I am dealing with; and I would be glad
to show you the two classified biographies on Gutierrez Rebollo
I used.
Now, subsequent to that, there is some further discussion
on whether other data bases might have had hits on him. It
would not be helpful in this public environment to discuss it
in detail, except to say that in this case, Mexico's senior
leadership made an error of judgment and feel betrayed by
treasonist activity and that we did not pick up on it either.
Mr. Barr. Is there an inter-agency damage-assessment team
operating at this point to assess the damage occasioned by this
latest problem?
Gen. McCaffrey. Yes. The Department of Justice and other
elements are watching the situation about as closely as you can
imagine.
Mr. Barr. I am not talking about is there a group of people
watching it. Is there a damage-assessment team, an interagency
damage-assessment team that is focusing and meeting
specifically to assess the extent of damage occasioned by
Gutierrez's revelations?
Gen. McCaffrey. Tom Constantine is doing a formal
assessment of what he thinks came out of all this.
Mr. Barr. I know, in his agency.
Gen. McCaffrey. Right.
Mr. Barr. Is there an inter-agency damage-assessment team?
Gen. McCaffrey. I am not sure I am giving you the right
answer, but, yes, there is. Each of the elements of the United
States Government who are involved in supporting the Mexican
counter-drug operations are trying to understand----
Mr. Barr. I know. I know each agency is. Is there an inter-
agency, coordinated effort, specific effort by our Government
to assess one of the most problematic breaches of intelligence
in the entire history of our war on drugs, and if there is not,
there is not. I am just asking if there is a coordinated,
inter-agency, damage-assessment team.
Gen. McCaffrey. Well, I am not sure I can give you an
answer to that. Yes, I am the guy on the spot to make sure that
each of these various departments of Government, that there is
some oversight of what they are doing, and so I would be glad
to serve as your focal point on that. There is a very serious--
--
Mr. Barr. I do not need anybody to serve as my focal
point----
Mr. Barrett. General order.
Mr. Barr. Fine, fine.
Mr. Souder. We are going to go to one more round on each
side, not a full round, but 5 minutes on each side, because we
know we have had you here a long time, and we appreciate it
very much.
Did you have a question, Mr. Mica? I have a couple of
points I wanted to make.
Mr. Mica. Yes. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Did you want to go
to the other side first for fairness? I will wait. I can always
hold my question.
Mr. Souder. They have no questions.
Mr. Mica. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. One of the things that
concerns me is another chart that was in this report, and it
talks about youth attitudes determine drug use, examples of
marijuana and 12th-graders, and it says perception drops, risk
perception drops and use rises, and it clicks in in about 1992.
Who do you believe these young people look up to?
I think that we are still suffering from the appointment in
the last administration of a surgeon general who said ``Just
say maybe'' and that we are still suffering from a President
who said maybe if he had it to do over again, he would inhale.
I think that this chart also shows that we continue to have
this problem. We still continue to have a President who has not
spoken out on the issue of legalization.
I do not think he has spoken out once on that. I know you
have spoken out on it. This is the question of marijuana, and I
wrote you a note, as a matter of fact, on congratulating you on
speaking it out.
But the President made over 2,600 speeches and interviews
between 1993 and 1995, and mentioned drugs 23 times and has not
mentioned anything on this legalization. If the President of
the United States, the chief health officer of the United
States, is not helping to set this, then how can I tell my 17-
year-old that there is risk. If they say it is OK and their
risk perception drops, which this chart shows, and usage
increases, we are not getting the leadership at the national
level that we need to turn this around.
Now we are going to do paid advertising, which, if we have
to do, we will do; but I still do not think that provides the
leadership. When is the President going to speak out?
Gen. McCaffrey. Well, the chart, Mr. Mica, on youth
attitudes is University of Michigan data, and we think it is
pretty good. It goes back to the 1960's. Dr. Lloyd Johnson and
his team up there really helped, I think, a lot of us
understand how youth form attitudes on the consequences of drug
abuse.
We combined it with a lot of very serious work done by
Columbia University, Joe Califano and his associates, Dr. Herb
Kleber and others. We think we do understand why youths form
their value systems, and principally, they listen to their
parents. They listen to their homeroom teacher, they listen to
their ministers, the coach, the people who they have respect
and love for and engage with them.
In this country, values are formed by ordinary people. Now,
you can get a cross-cutting problem if you have entertainment
figures in music and TV and other things that are discordant
notes, but essentially what we are is what our parents and
those who love us told us to do.
That is the problem right there. It seems to me that we not
only saw a drop-off in TV coverage, we not only saw a change in
the amount of energy that we put into some of these drug
prevention programs; we ended up with a population of parents
that came along who had used drugs, many of them, 50 to 70
million, and they are trying to sort out what message to give
their children.
Now, in addition, we have got parents who are dual-income
families, they are not home 3-to-7, they are not home on
weekends, and that is another change. So we are going to have
to organize ourselves to address that problem.
If my two daughters are going to be professional women and
involved in the work force, and thank God they are, then we
have got to have an organizational scheme to engage our kids.
To respond to your note on the President, look, by law, I
am a non-political officer of Government. I was honored to take
part in this whole operation. I was honored to be present
yesterday when the President, the Vice President, the Cabinet
of the United States, the Attorney General, the Secretary of
Health and Human Services, Donna Shalala, the chairman of the
JCS, and the rest of us stood up to put the strategy in front
of the American people, and the President articulated what we
were going to try and do. He said it during his State of the
Union speech.
I think he and others in this Government share your view,
Mr. Mica, that we are committed to a non-drug, non-stoned
America, and we are willing to work at it. I very much
appreciate the bipartisan support that I have gotten out of
this Congress in the last 2 years, whether it was money or
tutoring or whatever, and I think we have got to start working
partnership and stop counting the number of words in speeches.
That is not the problem; the problem is kids and drugs.
Mr. Mica. So national leadership is not a problem on the
issue or has not been a problem.
Gen. McCaffrey. I am quite proud of the support, to be
blunt, that I have gotten out of the President and Vice
President Gore and Janet Reno. Two of the most important women
in my life nowadays are Donna Shalala and Janet Reno. I think
they are serious, dedicated, intelligent folks; and Dick Riley
is absolutely engaged, and Bill Perry is one of the finest
public servants I have ever encountered. So, to be blunt, I am
very positive. They have given me the money I asked for and the
support.
Mr. Souder. I also want to thank you on behalf of this
committee for having worked with us. Since you came on board,
we have worked aggressively with you in this committee in a
bipartisan way, and hopefully we can continue to do that,
because having everybody focused is important.
Mr. Barrett, do you have any questions?
Mr. Barrett. Thank you again, and you will get your reward
in heaven.
Mr. Souder. Mr. Barr.
Mr. Barr. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. General, I would like to
turn to a topic I do not think we have really touched on today
but that worries me as well, and that is found on pages 58 and
59 of the Strategy regarding legalization of marijuana.
I hope that we are in agreement here that marijuana is,
indeed, a mind-altering drug, that it does things to the human
mind and the human body that inherently pose a danger to
society. It affects people's ability to perceive the world
around them and to react properly to it.
People take marijuana for the same reason they take cocaine
or heroin, and that is to alter their mind. That is why they
are mind-altering drugs, and that is why they are illegal. I
know that there have been efforts. We saw unfortunately the
results of well-funded campaigns in two Western States this
past year to obscure that fact.
There are continuing efforts to legalize marijuana, and the
title of this section of your paper says ``Countering Attempts
To Legalize Marijuana,'' and you make a statement in here that
we must continue to oppose efforts to legalize marijuana, but
there is nothing in here at all about what we are doing and how
we propose to do that.
There is no strategy whatsoever; it just says we are going
to continue to counter attempts, and that particularly bothers
me is not even so much that there is no specifics and no plan
laid out for doing that, but the entire last, lengthy paragraph
in that section very clearly leaves the door opened that maybe
we will--we are spending taxpayer money, you state here, to
review the possible therapeutic effects of marijuana.
Frankly, I do not give a damn what therapeutic effects
marijuana may or may not have; the fact of the matter is, it is
a mind-altering drug, so whether or not it has any therapeutic
effects, it is still a mind-altering drug. Why, in heaven's
name, would we want to open the door to legalize its use for
medical purposes? Your paper here seems to contradict itself.
Also, I mean, I really would appreciate--I do not
understand what is going on here, because there is nothing here
about countering attempts to legalize marijuana; there is only
a great deal of detail about maybe there is a medical use for
it that may lead to some sort of legalization. How much money
is this study going to take?
Gen. McCaffrey. Well, Mr. Barr, let me, first of all, join
you completely in your viewpoint that America is better off
with marijuana being a Schedule I drug. No good has come out of
it. A bunch of Americans have tried it. It led to a lot of
difficulty. It is a major problem in the universities today and
high schools: failure to learn, teenage pregnancy, stoned
driving and death. We know, although we cannot demonstrate the
scientific causal relationship, we know the statistical
correlation between pot use among adolescents and later
addictive problems is overwhelming.
We are opposed to the legalization of marijuana, and that
strategy, that is just a marker point. We will actively follow
that issue. Without being paranoid, there is a very well
organized, determined, heavily funded, national legalization
strategy with law firms and polling firms and political
operatives, and that is what happened to a large extent in
California and Arizona.
Now, they have also recognized the American people are not
going to support the legalization of marijuana. That is what
the polls are telling us. That is what parents are telling us,
police officers, and ministers. Now, I think they have gone
after some other approaches that suggest medical use, growing
hemp, et cetera.
Now, medical is an easy one. Intellectually, there is not a
bit of problem. We use cocaine, methamphetamine, demerol, and
other very powerful, dangerous drugs, the Schedule II drugs. We
have enormous trust in the American medical establishment, but
they all have to get passed as safe and effective medicines. If
you can make the case, pass peer group review, go to the NIH
and the FDA, great, you can become a medicine. If you are a
laetrile or thalidomide, you do not get through the gates.
What we did in the 1980's, looking at the history of it,
there were hundreds of studies of smoked dope, and out of that
they said we need to provide doctors THC, one of the active
components of the cannaboids. Since 1985, it has been in a pill
form, Marinol. It is used by some physicians for nausea for
certain discomforts. It is basically no longer very effective
compared to other, much better medications.
Mr. Barr. Could I just interrupt, not to stop you, but
since my colleague on the other side gets upset if I go a
little bit too long, and mention one other thing that you could
crank into your final remarks here.
With regard to the use of marijuana, on the one hand,
getting back to my question previously about tobacco, we have
seen this administration very clearly is engaged in a very
concerted public relations effort against tobacco usage, trying
to use the FDA sort of as its hammer in that effort, a very
aggressive program, and yet we are at this very same time, we
are funding efforts to see if maybe there is a good use for
marijuana.
Even if that were a good idea, which I do not think, I just
disagree absolutely with doing that, in the great scheme of
things aren't there better things that we could be using that
money on to fight the war on drugs right now?
Gen. McCaffrey. I think if we are going to be
intellectually honest with ourselves, we are going to have to
pay attention to the viewpoints of the medical research
community when they claim they want smoked dope to use to
manage chemotherapy nausea or claim that it is a pain-
management tool or claim that it is a glaucoma treatment. The
appropriate way to do that is to not get it into politics. Take
it to the NIH and the FDA--we have got brilliant men and women
over there--and let them look at it in a scientific manner.
That is what we are doing, and I think we will end up--again,
we have an open mind on it.
If some of those 435 compounds in marijuana have medical
benefit, we will isolate more of them, and these brilliant
people in NIH and the pharmaceutical industry can make it
available for American medicine. Other than that, it will not
be a medicine, so I think we are doing the right thing, a very
sensible approach, Donna Shalala, Dr. Harold Varmas, Dr. Alan
Leshner, and we will not get tricked on this issue.
Mr. Souder. That is really important, and we are going to
be watching that closely because we know the politics of
science as well----
Gen. McCaffrey. Yes, sir.
Mr. Souder [continuing]. And this is too critical.
Mr. Cummings.
Mr. Cummings. General, I will be very brief. I just want to
do three things.
No. 1, I want to thank you for what you are doing. I really
want to thank you. I agree with Mr. Barrett, you have to have
one of the toughest jobs in the world, not just America, but in
the world. I also want to thank you for when you came to
Baltimore. You do not know it, but you went into the streets of
Baltimore, no guards. You stood there with young men who had
been addicted but who had gotten off of drugs. You put your
arms around them and told them that they could make it.
So often I think what happens is people sit in towers and
look down and never come down to where the troops are, you
might say, or where the battle is really being fought, but I
just want you to know that one of those young men said to me
the other day that it meant so much to him that you took the
time to spend hours in Baltimore with them, to talk to them and
encourage them to get beyond where they are and in the
difficult circumstances that they found themselves; and I thank
you for that.
Finally, I want to encourage you. I want to encourage you.
I know this must be very, very difficult at times, when you are
trying to rid our Nation of a problem that touches so many
people, and it really does, in so many ways. But I just wanted
to encourage you to continue on with what you are doing.
I think it was Winston Churchill who said, ``Never give up,
never, never, never.'' I know sometimes it may get very dark,
sometimes the end may seem very difficult to see, but I feel
real good about what you are doing, because when I looked at
those young men that day that you came to Baltimore a few
months ago--and these are street guys, and they had this guy--
there is this white guy, a General, of all things, to come in,
and they trusted you. They trusted that you were giving it the
very best that you had, and these are the kind of guys you
cannot fool too easily.
So I just want to, you know, encourage you and thank you.
Gen. McCaffrey. Thank you for those words, Mr. Congressman.
They mean a lot to me.
Mr. Souder. I think that Mr. Mica had a point of personal
privilege.
Mr. Mica. Just a quick point of personal privilege.
General, I do want to admit to being, without a doubt, probably
one of the harshest critics of the administration policy over
the past 4 years, but I do want to say that I will do anything,
and we have worked together despite differences, to get you the
resources that you need to bring attention to this problem to
do whatever this Congress needs to do to effectively address
the problem.
So I renew my commitment to you. If we have had problems in
the past, I am not interested in the past; I am interested in
the future. We will deal with the past, but I thank you for
your efforts. I thank you for making this a national priority,
and for working with this subcommittee the way you have, and we
will continue to work with you, and we also will continue to
keep an eye on your job and the other jobs done by the
administration in this effort.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Souder. I want to reiterate that we focus on
interdiction here and that we have more jurisdictional
authority over the Defense Department, and those areas, than we
do over the other areas, although because we have jurisdiction
over your office, we get into prevention and treatment. But as
I challenged you last time you were here, we intend to, and
need to, at several committee levels, look at the prevention-
and-treatment programs just as critically as we look at the
interdiction programs.
There is not one of us who has not met people in every
urban area, suburban area, and rural area who have figured out
the hustle of how to go to treatment programs. I have met many
people in homeless shelters and runaway shelters, kids in
schools, who have been through as many as 7 to 10 programs, and
they know how to get through them.
The zero tolerance that we talked about earlier today and
trying to do the drug testing, and hopefully you do that in
your office as well, the random drug testing, those type of----
Gen. McCaffrey. Starting with me. Right.
Mr. Souder [continuing]. Modeling ourselves and asking for
the drug dogs in the schools. That is not the ultimate solution
to the problem, because the reason that people are turning to
drugs has to be addressed as well, and they are multiple. They
could be health reasons, they could be family problems, and we
understand that, but our immediate problem is to address the
drug question and to lower the risk.
We have boosted these treatment dollars tremendously
without any corresponding real evaluation and tough evaluation
of insurance questions, of a whole array of issues.
But I want to thank you for your very good testimony today.
The amount of time you take here, this is really just the
beginning. To many of us, you are kind of the Gen. McArthur of
the drug war. We very much appreciate this, because in this
area you came in, you got everybody focused again.
This committee has been on the point with hearings all over
the country and here to help try to move the money. We want to
continue to try to do that and make sure that that money, in a
time of declining budget deficits, hopefully, we make every
dollar count. To do that, we need your help; and, once again,
we very much appreciate your time today.
With that, the Subcommittee on National Security,
International Affairs, and Criminal Justice is adjourned.
[Whereupon, at 2:07 p.m., the subcommittee was adjourned.]
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