<DOC>
[108th Congress House Hearings]
[From the U.S. Government Printing Office via GPO Access]
[DOCID: f:20084.wais]
LAW ENFORCEMENT AND THE FIGHT AGAINST METHAMPHETAMINE
=======================================================================
HEARING
before the
SUBCOMMITTEE ON CRIMINAL JUSTICE,
DRUG POLICY AND HUMAN RESOURCES
of the
COMMITTEE ON
GOVERNMENT REFORM
HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
ONE HUNDRED EIGHTH CONGRESS
SECOND SESSION
__________
NOVEMBER 18, 2004
__________
Serial No. 108-287
__________
Printed for the use of the Committee on Government Reform
Available via the World Wide Web: http://www.gpo.gov/congress/house
http://www.house.gov/reform
LAW ENFORCEMENT AND THE FIGHT AGAINST METHAMPHETAMINE
LAW ENFORCEMENT AND THE FIGHT AGAINST METHAMPHETAMINE
=======================================================================
HEARING
before the
SUBCOMMITTEE ON CRIMINAL JUSTICE,
DRUG POLICY AND HUMAN RESOURCES
of the
COMMITTEE ON
GOVERNMENT REFORM
HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
ONE HUNDRED EIGHTH CONGRESS
SECOND SESSION
__________
NOVEMBER 18, 2004
__________
Serial No. 108-287
__________
Printed for the use of the Committee on Government Reform
Available via the World Wide Web: http://www.gpo.gov/congress/house
http://www.house.gov/reform
------
U.S. GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE
20-084 WASHINGTON : 2005
_____________________________________________________________________________
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COMMITTEE ON GOVERNMENT REFORM
TOM DAVIS, Virginia, Chairman
DAN BURTON, Indiana HENRY A. WAXMAN, California
CHRISTOPHER SHAYS, Connecticut TOM LANTOS, California
ILEANA ROS-LEHTINEN, Florida MAJOR R. OWENS, New York
JOHN M. McHUGH, New York EDOLPHUS TOWNS, New York
JOHN L. MICA, Florida PAUL E. KANJORSKI, Pennsylvania
MARK E. SOUDER, Indiana CAROLYN B. MALONEY, New York
STEVEN C. LaTOURETTE, Ohio ELIJAH E. CUMMINGS, Maryland
DOUG OSE, California DENNIS J. KUCINICH, Ohio
RON LEWIS, Kentucky DANNY K. DAVIS, Illinois
TODD RUSSELL PLATTS, Pennsylvania JOHN F. TIERNEY, Massachusetts
CHRIS CANNON, Utah WM. LACY CLAY, Missouri
ADAM H. PUTNAM, Florida DIANE E. WATSON, California
EDWARD L. SCHROCK, Virginia STEPHEN F. LYNCH, Massachusetts
JOHN J. DUNCAN, Jr., Tennessee CHRIS VAN HOLLEN, Maryland
NATHAN DEAL, Georgia LINDA T. SANCHEZ, California
CANDICE S. MILLER, Michigan C.A. ``DUTCH'' RUPPERSBERGER,
TIM MURPHY, Pennsylvania Maryland
MICHAEL R. TURNER, Ohio ELEANOR HOLMES NORTON, District of
JOHN R. CARTER, Texas Columbia
MARSHA BLACKBURN, Tennessee JIM COOPER, Tennessee
PATRICK J. TIBERI, Ohio BETTY McCOLLUM, Minnesota
KATHERINE HARRIS, Florida ------
MICHAEL C. BURGESS, Texas BERNARD SANDERS, Vermont
(Independent)
Melissa Wojciak, Staff Director
David Marin, Deputy Staff Director/Communications Director
Rob Borden, Parliamentarian
Teresa Austin, Chief Clerk
Phil Barnett, Minority Chief of Staff/Chief Counsel
Subcommittee on Criminal Justice, Drug Policy and Human Resources
MARK E. SOUDER, Indiana, Chairman
NATHAN DEAL, Georgia ELIJAH E. CUMMINGS, Maryland
JOHN M. McHUGH, New York DANNY K. DAVIS, Illinois
JOHN L. MICA, Florida WM. LACY CLAY, Missouri
DOUG OSE, California LINDA T. SANCHEZ, California
JOHN R. CARTER, Texas C.A. ``DUTCH'' RUPPERSBERGER,
MARSHA BLACKBURN, Tennessee Maryland
PATRICK J. TIBERI, Ohio ELEANOR HOLMES NORTON, District of
------ ------ Columbia
BETTY McCOLLUM, Minnesota
Ex Officio
TOM DAVIS, Virginia HENRY A. WAXMAN, California
J. Marc Wheat, Staff Director
Nicholas Coleman, Professional Staff Member
Malia Holst, Clerk
Michael Yeager, Minority Deputy Chief Counsel
C O N T E N T S
----------
Page
Hearing held on November 18, 2004................................ 1
Statement of:
Bundy, Sheriff Steve, Rice County, KS, Sheriff's Department;
Lonnie Wright, director, Oklahoma Bureau of Narcotics and
Dangerous Drugs; Lieutenant George E. Colby, division
commander/project director, Allen County Drug Task Force,
Allen County, IN, Sheriff's Department; Joseph Heerens,
senior vice president, government affairs, Marsh
Supermarkets, Inc., on behalf of the Food Marketing
Institute; Dr. Linda Suydam, president, Consumer Healthcare
Products Association; and Mary Ann Wagner, vice president,
Pharmacy Regulatory Affairs, National Association of Chain
Drug Stores................................................ 65
Burns, Scott, Deputy Director, State and Local Affairs,
Office of National Drug Control Policy; Domingo S. Herraiz,
Director, Bureau of Justice Assistance, Office of Justice
Programs, U.S. Department of Justice; and Joseph
Rannazzisi, Deputy Chief, Office of Enforcement, Drug
Enforcement Administration................................. 18
Letters, statements, etc., submitted for the record by:
Bundy, Sheriff Steve, Rice County, KS, Sheriff's Department,
prepared statement of...................................... 68
Burns, Scott, Deputy Director, State and Local Affairs,
Office of National Drug Control Policy, prepared statement
of......................................................... 20
Colby, Lieutenant George E., division commander/project
director, Allen County Drug Task Force, Allen County, IN,
Sheriff's Department, prepared statement of................ 87
Cummings, Hon. Elijah E., a Representative in Congress from
the State of Maryland, prepared statement of............... 11
Heerens, Joseph, senior vice president, government affairs,
Marsh Supermarkets, Inc., on behalf of the Food Marketing
Institute, prepared statement of........................... 112
Herraiz, Domingo S., Director, Bureau of Justice Assistance,
Office of Justice Programs, U.S. Department of Justice,
prepared statement of...................................... 29
Rannazzisi, Joseph, Deputy Chief, Office of Enforcement, Drug
Enforcement Administration, prepared statement of.......... 44
Souder, Hon. Mark E., a Representative in Congress from the
State of Indiana, prepared statement of.................... 5
Suydam, Dr. Linda, president, Consumer Healthcare Products
Association, prepared statement of......................... 118
Wagner, Mary Ann, vice president, Pharmacy Regulatory
Affairs, National Association of Chain Drug Stores,
prepared statement of...................................... 124
Wright, Lonnie, director, Oklahoma Bureau of Narcotics and
Dangerous Drugs, prepared statement of..................... 79
LAW ENFORCEMENT AND THE FIGHT AGAINST METHAMPHETAMINE
----------
THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 18, 2004
House of Representatives,
Subcommittee on Criminal Justice, Drug Policy and
Human Resources,
Committee on Government Reform,
Washington, DC.
The subcommittee met, pursuant to notice, at 10:05 a.m., in
room 2154, Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. Mark E. Souder
(chairman of the subcommittee) presiding.
Present: Representatives Souder, Mica, Carter, Tiberi,
Moran, Cummings, Norton, and McCollum.
Staff present: J. Marc Wheat, staff director and chief
counsel; Nicholas Coleman, professional staff member; Pat
DeQuattro, congressional fellow; Malia Holst, clerk; Michael
Yeager, minority deputy chief counsel; and Jean Gosa, minority
assistant clerk.
Mr. Souder. The subcommittee will come to order.
Good morning, and thank you all for coming. Today we
continue our subcommittee's work on the problem of
methamphetamine trafficking and abuse, a problem that is
ravaging the entire Nation and putting a severe strain on law
enforcement agencies, particularly at the State and local
levels. Many of my colleagues have proposed legislation to help
beleaguered law enforcement agencies deal with the meth
trafficking threat. Today we hope to examine some of those
proposals.
Meth is one of the most powerful and dangerous drugs
available, and it is also one of the easiest to make. It can be
``cooked'' using common household or agricultural chemicals and
simple cold medicines, following recipes easily available on
the Internet.
Meth comes from two major sources of supply. First, most
meth comes from so-called ``superlabs'' in California and
northern Mexico. By the end of the 1990's, these superlabs
produced over 70 percent of the Nation's meth supply. Superlabs
are operated by large Mexican drug trafficking organizations
that have used their established distribution and supply
networks to transport meth throughout the country.
The second major source of meth comes from small, local
labs that are generally unaffiliated with major trafficking
organizations. These labs have proliferated throughout the
country. The total amount of meth actually supplied by these
labs is comparatively small; however, the environmental damage
and health hazard they create makes them a serious problem for
local communities, particularly the State and local law
enforcement agencies charged with the duty to uncover and clean
them up.
In my home State of Indiana, for example, more than 20
percent of the labs raided by police were discovered only after
the labs had exploded and started fires. Children are often
found at these meth labs and have frequently suffered from
severe health problems as a result of hazardous chemicals used
in drug manufacturing. Robberies and violence in local
communities as drug dealers and other people seeking money, the
addicts, continue to commit criminal acts in order to obtain
precursor chemicals and also money to fund their habits. So
this has been closely related to other crime in the local
communities, much more so than the superlabs.
During this Congress, we have held hearings here in
Washington, but we have also held field hearings across the
country--in Indiana, Hawaii, the deep south, the northwest--
examining the meth epidemic. Everywhere we go, we hear about
many of the same issues. In particular, we have heard about the
high costs and long hours required for law enforcement agencies
to hunt down, investigate, and clean up dangerous meth lab
sites, while dealing with the heartbreaking cases of children
exposed to drugs and chemicals and in need of emergency medical
care and a safe place to go. Where meth is a problem, this drug
is probably the single biggest drain on local law enforcement
resources in the country.
We will need to take action at every level--Federal, State,
and local--to respond to this problem. At other hearings we
have addressed the question of treatment and prevention, and
Congress will of course need to deal with them. At this
hearing, however, we intend to focus on the law enforcement
side, specifically what we in Congress can do to help sheriffs
and police departments across the Nation deal with meth. The
whole meth process started in this subcommittee about probably
close to 6 years ago in California, where we started with the
superlab problem, and we have increasingly moved to look at the
local law enforcement problem, which will be a little more the
focus of this hearing.
Congressional proposals to assist local law enforcement
have taken two basic forms: first, regulations designed to
reduce the supply of precursor chemicals used to make meth;
and, second, direct financial assistance to State and local
agencies to support anti-meth enforcement. I will briefly
discuss each of these concepts.
First, what is the best way to reduce the supply of meth
precursor chemicals, such as pseudoephedrine? Presumably, if we
can substantially reduce the availability of meth components,
the number of small meth labs will be reduced as well. There
are several proposals currently on the table intended to do
just that.
One idea is to eliminate the Federal ``blister pack''
exemption for pseudoephedrine sales. Under current law,
retailers can sell unlimited quantities of pseudoephedrine, as
long as it is packaged in ``blister packs.'' Sadly, these
blister packs have not been much of a hindrance to meth cooks.
I believe the exemption should be eliminated, and have proposed
legislation (H.R. 5347) which would do just that.
A second approach is to put pseudoephedrine and similar
chemicals on Schedule V of the Controlled Substances Act. This
would force retailers to sell cold medicines and similar
products from ``behind the counter,'' and may also force
consumers to show identification and sign a register when
purchasing such products. It may also prevent non-pharmacists
from selling cold medicines. Oklahoma recently enacted this
approach in the law, and several other States are planning to
do the same. In this session of Congress, Oklahoma Congressman
Brad Carson proposed legislation which would do this on a
nationwide scale.
Finally, a third approach takes aim at the importation and
sale of bulk quantities of pseudoephedrine. According to a
recent report in the Oregonian newspaper, most of the world's
supply of pseudoephedrine comes from just a few factories in
Europe, where, by the way, this subcommittee has been both at
Rotterdam and Antwerp, and pressured aggressively European
authorities to crack down on the pseudoephedrine shipment,
which has traditionally been our supply, as well as working
with the Canadians.
But much of this has now moved to India and China. It might
be possible to stop most chemical diversion even before these
products reach the shores of the United States and the stores
in the United States if we can put pressures on the trade.
Import quotas, international cooperation, and regulations of
the wholesale markets are all possible ways of reducing the
availability of precursor chemicals to meth traffickers.
With respect to any new regulation of meth precursors,
Congress needs to ask several questions. First, how effective
will the new regulation be at reducing the supply of precursors
and the number of meth labs? Second, what will be the impact on
legitimate sellers and consumers of these products? How much
inconvenience do we want to impose on people who just want to
buy cold medicines? And, finally, how effective will the
regulations passed only in one State be if all the other States
don't follow suit? Do we need a national standard?
The second set of proposals involves Federal grants and
other financial assistance to State and local law enforcement
agencies. Currently, the Federal Government provides
significant assistance to State and local agencies through
several grant programs, including the Byrne Grants and the COPS
``Meth Hot Spots'' grants, administered by the Department of
Justice, and the High Intensity Drug Trafficking Areas [HIDTA]
program, administered by the Office of National Drug Control
Policy [ONDCP].
State and local law enforcement officials have repeatedly
told me and my staff that these grants are vital to their drug
enforcement, and particularly their meth enforcement efforts.
Several Members of Congress, including Missouri Congressman and
Majority Whip Roy Blunt and my subcommittee colleague from
California Doug Ose, have proposed expanding these programs to
deal with the meth threat. The administration, however, has
proposed significant cuts in these programs particularly the
Byrne Grants. Before deciding whether to expand, contract, or
significantly re-tailor these programs, Congress needs to have
a better understanding of what they do and how effective they
are.
This hearing will address these difficult questions and
hopefully help lay the groundwork for legislative action in the
next Congress. Our first panel of witnesses has joined us to
discuss the Federal Government's response to the meth problem.
Mr. Scott Burns, Deputy Director of State and Local Affairs at
the Office of National Drug Control Policy, who has taken a
lead role in addressing meth issues; Mr. Domingo Herraiz,
Director of the Bureau of Justice Assistance at the Justice
Department's Office of Justice Programs, which is responsible
for administering many of the Federal grant proposals at issue
today; and Mr. Joseph Rannazzisi, Deputy Chief of the Office of
Enforcement at the Drug Enforcement Administration, which is
not only responsible for coordinating the Federal Government's
meth enforcement efforts, but also for administering the
Federal Government's meth cleanup assistance program for State
and local agencies.
For the record, the subcommittee invited the U.S. Coast
Guard to testify at this hearing concerning the trafficking of
Southeast Asian methamphetamine, also called yaba, and the
movement of precursor chemicals into this country from Asia.
The Coast Guard declined to testify about their knowledge of
these issues. The subcommittee will ask the Coast Guard in
writing about questions regarding Southeast Asian meth and the
movement of precursor chemicals.
At a hearing like this, it is vitally important for us to
hear from the State and local agencies forced to fight on the
``front lines'' against meth and other illegal drugs. We
welcome Mr. Lonnie Wright, Director of the Oklahoma Bureau of
Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs, who will talk to us today about
his State's new anti-meth law; Sheriff Steve Bundy of the Rice
County, KS Sheriff's Department; my fellow Hoosier, Lieutenant
George Colby, Division Commander and Project Director of the
Allen County Drug Task Force at the Allen County Sheriff's
Department.
We also welcome three representatives of manufacturers and
retailers of pseudoephedrine products, who will help us
understand the impact that new regulations may have on
businesses and consumers. We are joined by Mr. Joseph Heerens,
Senior Vice President for Government Affairs at Marsh
Supermarkets, on behalf of the Food Marketing Institute; Dr.
Linda Suydam, President of the Consumer Healthcare Products
Association; and Ms. Mary Ann Wagner, Vice President for
Pharmacy Regulatory Affairs at the National Association of
Chain Drug Stores.
We thank everyone for taking the time to join us this
morning, and look forward to your testimony.
[The prepared statement of Hon. Mark E. Souder follows:]
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T0084.001
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T0084.002
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T0084.003
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T0084.004
Mr. Souder. Now I will yield to the distinguished ranking
member, Mr. Elijah Cummings.
Mr. Cummings. I want to thank you, Mr. Chairman, for
holding this hearing and for your attention to this important
issue of methamphetamine abuse in the United States and our
efforts to fight it.
Methamphetamine is a dangerous, highly addictive, and
sometimes deadly illegal drug, the increasing use of which has
created a serious drug epidemic in our country.
Once concentrated in the western United States and among
particular population subgroups, the use of meth has spread
geographically, has become more broadly population, and appears
to be increasing among young adults in particular. Significant
changes in patterns of meth trafficking and production have
contributed to the epidemic, while increasing the challenge of
anti-meth law enforcement efforts.
The adverse impact of the meth problem is not limited to
the serious negative effects on health and the general well-
being of its users. Because meth use leads to violent and
erratic behavior, it fuels serious crime problems in areas
where meth use is prevalent; and meth production can result in
deadly exposures and substantial environmental damage. For
these reasons, the spread of meth production and use creates
severe burdens for the government agencies that must deal with
the consequences.
On that note, I want to thank all of our witnesses who, on
a day-to-day basis, work so hard to address the drug problems
in this country. As one who has seen the effects of the drug
epidemic and has seen the people that it has destroyed, the
neighborhoods and the families, I thank you for what you are
trying to do. I know it is an awesome task.
Anti-meth efforts have become an increasing focus for
Federal, State, and local law enforcement agencies in various
parts of the country, including through the High Intensity Drug
Trafficking Areas program and other joint law enforcement task
forces.
We will hear today from representatives of the Office of
National Drug Control Policy, the Drug Enforcement
Administration, the Office of Justice Programs, and the drug
law enforcement officials from Indiana, Kansas, and Oklahoma
about how law enforcement is responding to the trends in meth
production, trafficking, and use, and to the costly
consequences of these activities.
The chairman did mention the fact that we will be hearing
about the Federal Government's response. One of the things I am
also interested in hearing is I read about some of the State
laws that have been put into effect, and I would like to hear
recommendations as to whether other States should be doing the
same things, or perhaps whether the Federal Government should
step up their role in regard to those issues.
When I read about one of them, I immediately wrote my State
legislator, my favorite State legislator--you have always got
to have somebody to carry your water in the State government--
and said, look, you ought to put this into effect; you ought to
make sure you file this come January, when our legislature
comes into being. So we want to know that.
Because meth is frequently manufactured from common,
readily available products, such as over-the-counter cold and
cough medicines, it presents unique policy problems. Beginning
with the Comprehensive Methamphetamine Control Act of 1996,
Congress has responded with legislation to increase penalties
for meth-related crimes and tightened controls on retail sales
of products containing pseudoephedrine and related chemicals.
Several proposals introduced in the 108th Congress would place
further restrictions on the sale of over-the-counter products'
use in meth production, and Mr. Souder has gone over some of
them.
Clearly, the meth epidemic presents a difficult set of
challenges for law enforcement policymakers. I hope today's
hearing will enhance our understanding of the challenges and
shed some light on what further action we should take to
address the problem.
And I want all of our witnesses to know that this is indeed
a bipartisan subcommittee, and we share a lot of concerns with
regard to drugs, and we have worked very hard to make sure the
government works effectively and efficiently using the
taxpayers' dollars to address those problems. So we welcome
you; we thank you.
With that, Mr. Chairman, I yield back.
[The prepared statement of Hon. Elijah E. Cummings
follows:]
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T0084.005
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T0084.006
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T0084.007
Mr. Souder. Mr. Mica, did you have an opening statement?
Mr. Mica. Well, Mr. Chairman and ranking member, I thank
you for convening this hearing today on law enforcement's
efforts and the administration's efforts to fight the scourge
of meth abuse and misuse of illegal narcotics. Having
participated on this panel for some time--and I think I just
heard the chairman recall a hearing that we held in California,
when we saw the beginning of this problem in our country--I
think I was never so shocked as some of the testimony we heard.
I think one was of a mother who put her baby in a microwave
when she was on meth, and we heard social workers talking about
dozens of children that had been abandoned because their
parents or guardian was hooked on meth.
It made me realize that we had a very insidious problem,
and also a problem that needed a multifaceted approach, and I
am pleased the administration has what they call a national
synthetic drugs action plan. One of the realizations from that
hearing and from that time was that it is going to take a
combination of effort. It is not just enforcement, which is
important; it is not just interdiction of the chemicals,
because meth can be produced with off-the-shelf ingredients; it
is going to take education and treatment efforts.
And I think people really don't realize and, fortunately,
hearings like this can tell the damage that this is doing.
Right now we are in the 20,000 range per year of individuals
who die from drug overdose deaths; 20,000 Americans. It is a
phenomenal number; it is a silent death. But that is only those
from drug overdose. You are not talking about the murders, the
suicides; you are not talking about the human toll, the
families that are in total chaos and individual lives that are
destroyed through narcotics. This is indeed our biggest social
problem, the biggest problem in our society today, is the
problem of illegal narcotics, now led by the meth epidemic.
So I think you are holding the hearing today is important,
and I think that the plan of action that has been proposed is
important, and I think that we need to provide whatever
resources are necessary in a concerted effort to deal, again,
with this whole situation.
So I thank you and I look forward to working with you, and
applaud your efforts today in bringing this to the attention of
the subcommittee and Congress.
Mr. Souder. Thank you.
Ms. Norton, do you have any opening comments?
Ms. Norton. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. I appreciate
this hearing.
It is not the first hearing we have had on methamphetamine,
and I think the fact that we have had more than 1 year points
out the concern of the committee and the Congress about the
rapid spread of this drug, whose effects are quite pervasive,
not only on individuals, but on the environment itself, because
these labs require extensive cleanup after they are brought
down.
I recognize that drugs of choice differ based on location
in the country, and that in big cities you don't hear as much
about meth. You hear about very dangerous drugs, but not meth.
And it is interesting, I guess whoever establishes a niche,
that becomes the drug of that locale.
But I asked about meth in the Nation's Capital, and, yes,
to be sure, it is the kind of drug where the existence of labs
and the like do not lend themselves as readily to bringing it
in to the middle of a big city, so it is not a major problem
here yet. I am very concerned that we catch it, because who it
is a major problem with are teenagers and young adults.
And we know about the use of young adults and the
distribution at raves and at nightclubs of meth and meth-type
drugs. So I am particularly concerned about the age group that
is involved and that this could sweep everywhere. We already,
it seems to me, have a major problem with meth, but it would
appear to me that it has real attraction on a national level.
There are a number of bills that have been pending for
sometime in the Congress. The last time we took, I think,
significant action was in the 106th Congress. I don't believe
these bills are terribly controversial, and I certainly hope
some of them will come to the floor.
For example, a bill that would require that certain of the
ingredients that can be used to make meth, which are readily
available in a store or a drug store, be kept behind the
counter of the pharmacy, so that you would have to make your
purchase over the counter and show identification and sign a
log. I think these are the kind of minimal steps that the
Congress should take. At the same time that we are saying to
drug enforcement officers around the country why don't you
clean it up, we need to do all we can, and perhaps much more,
to help you clean it up.
Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Souder. Thank you.
Mr. Tiberi.
Mr. Tiberi. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you for having
this hearing today. It is a real pleasure to have a constituent
of mine on the panel, and friend, Domingo Herraiz, who has, in
the past, served Ohio as the man in charge of the Criminal
Justice Service Office in Ohio. Great reputation; did a great
job in Ohio. Thank you for your work here in Washington and
your service to our country.
I yield back.
Mr. Souder. Thank you.
Ms. McCollum.
Ms. McCollum. Thank you, Mr. Chair.
This is a hearing that I think will help us be more
effective in working with you and our local law enforcement on
this very critical issue of methamphetamine. I just had some
law enforcement in my office on Monday from our Minnesota
Police and Peace Officers Association, and we have taken some
of the steps to work toward reducing the number of small labs.
Prompts come up when Sudafed is purchased and that, but law
enforcement was sharing with me that the bigger problem--and it
is in the testimony that is before us today--is really from the
major labs that are producing methamphetamine in very large
quantities.
Law enforcement spoke of three generations of
methamphetamine abusers in one family, and now arresting the
grandchildren of meth users. So this is a very serious problem
which needs to be looked at. The filling up of our prisons in
Minnesota, as we do make arrests; the lack of any kind of
treatment that is proven to help people who do want to change
their life around is very serious.
But I think the issue that concerned me most was the first
responders and their concern about their own personal health.
So I think if this is part of the war on drugs, we need to come
up with protocols for what type of equipment will be available
for rural, urban, and suburban first responders; what is the
protocol when we find children for their health, well-being,
which affects their ability to be good learners in school; and
what we are going to do for our first responders for their
health. We are now starting to see retirements come about as
people literally have had their lungs destroyed when they have
encountered labs that they didn't know that they were walking
into.
So, Mr. Chair, I appreciate the hearing and I look forward
to working on this very important issue.
Mr. Souder. Thank you.
Judge Carter.
Mr. Carter. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Well, I first encountered speed back in 1981. As a trial
judge, we dealt with it a lot. I had an experience that I will
share with you one time. We had a bunch of trustees that were
moving furniture in the courthouse, and I was just listening to
their conversation, and I discovered something that was very
interesting: going to prison is the cost of doing business in
the drug manufacturing business. If going to prison is not too
harsh and the profits are great, then the results are that it
is just the cost of doing business, and 2 or 3 years is not bad
when you are making a million bucks a year, so you just take
your time and go back, and you are back in business in 30 days
and everything is wonderful.
Now, we weren't dealing with the superlabs that you are
dealing with today; we were dealing with the mom-and-pop
operations. But, first off, an information program went out
through the local papers about the problems with meth and the
problems with speed, and what happens when kids get on it; and
then the jury showed up and started issuing punishment, because
in Texas you get to go to the jury for punishment.
And people discovered that maximum sentences for those
people who were manufacturing methamphetamine resulted, at
least in our county, of no manufacture of methamphetamine.
Methamphetamine generally, in those days, was manufactured in
the suburban counties around the urban areas, and we happened
to qualify as one of those suburban counties around Austin
being the urban area. They weren't cooking meth in Austin; they
were cooking meth in Williamson County and Bastrop County and
Hays County and Bernard County that surrounded Austin. Within
60 days there wasn't anybody cooking in Williamson County,
because everybody that got caught was going to prison for 20
years and up. And ultimately that problem got solved in our
area, because everybody started looking at what happened.
So I want to know what we are doing in the way of punishing
people who are manufacturing this stuff, because I happen to
believe that if the cost of doing business gets great enough,
on the mom-and-pop labs, at least, the speed labs go elsewhere.
And then ultimately we need to know what is being done
internationally on these people that are cooking out of this
country, and the harshness that we are dealing with those
people who are transporting into this country large volumes of
these drugs, because I think that also has a cost of doing
business effect on drug traffic.
I agree with everything that everyone says about the issue
of treating people, but the bottom line is education. Making
the business difficult, in my opinion, is the key to cleaning
up the drug business. So I would like to hear your ideas on
some of those things, and I thank you very much for being
willing to come here and share with us.
Mr. Souder. Thank you.
We are going to insert into the record this tremendous
Oregonian newspaper series, ``Unnecessary Epidemic,'' that has
a very interesting map that shows, as this committee has
watched it over the years, the track from west to east of the
meth problem, starting in Hawaii, which is the oldest and
deepest. We are now in the city of Honolulu. Some apartment
complexes require cleaning prior to taking occupancy, because
the leftover meth chemicals from the labs poison the children
in the next group that comes in. We have seen it in the west
coast, moving to the midwest. You can tell by the request for
field hearings to this committee. Right now they are
outstanding from members, from Kansas, Missouri, Kentucky,
southern Indiana, Tennessee, and North Carolina.
And the hearing requests tend to come as it is moving east.
We get the request from that group of members, and you can see
the intensity of the problem coming. In the Speaker's drug task
force, it is the No. 1 subject that comes up. The members from
North Carolina showed up en masse last time regarding the meth
problem as it has moved.
As we have held the field hearings, we have seen the first
signs of it coming into motels and other things in New Orleans,
and in the southeast, Detroit, which would be the first hit in
some of the largest cities, because up until now it tends to
have been a rural phenomenon and to some degree moving into the
suburbs.
If it hits the cities, it could be like a crack epidemic,
which is why we really need to work at both the rural and the
urban side, and understand that this is something that is a
widening threat; and when it hits a district, to the Member of
Congress in that district, it becomes the No. 1 issue in his
district, beyond any other narcotics issue.
With that, we will have a few other things we are going to
insert, but before proceeding, I want to take care of a couple
of procedural matters. First, I ask unanimous consent that all
Members have 5 legislative days to submit written statements
and questions for the hearing record; that any answers to
written questions provided by the witnesses also be included in
the record. Without objection, it is so ordered.
I also ask unanimous consent that all exhibits, documents,
and other materials referred to by Members and the witnesses
may be included in the hearing record, and that all Members may
be permitted to revise and extend their remarks. Without
objection, it is so ordered.
Now, our first panel, Mr. Burns, Mr. Herraiz, and Mr.
Rannazzisi, if you will stand and raise your right hands, I
will administer the oath. It is the tradition of this
committee, as you know, because it is an oversight committee,
that it is our standard practice to ask all witnesses to
testify under oath.
[Witnesses sworn.]
Mr. Souder. Let the record show that each of the witnesses
responded in the affirmative.
Mr. Scott Burns, Deputy Director at ONDCP. And we are also
going to insert into the record your National Synthetic Drugs
Action Plan. As we look into the next session, and what we can
do here in Congress, this will give us a good layout. You have
done a good job of pulling that together, and we look forward
to hearing your summary of those remarks and what you have been
working on in this area; and thank you for your leadership at
the State and local level.
STATEMENTS OF SCOTT BURNS, DEPUTY DIRECTOR, STATE AND LOCAL
AFFAIRS, OFFICE OF NATIONAL DRUG CONTROL POLICY; DOMINGO S.
HERRAIZ, DIRECTOR, BUREAU OF JUSTICE ASSISTANCE, OFFICE OF
JUSTICE PROGRAMS, U.S. DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE; AND JOSEPH
RANNAZZISI, DEPUTY CHIEF, OFFICE OF ENFORCEMENT, DRUG
ENFORCEMENT ADMINISTRATION
Mr. Burns. Well, thank you, Chairman Souder, Ranking Member
Cummings, and members of the subcommittee. Thank you for the
opportunity to appear before you today to discuss the efforts
to reduce the problem of methamphetamine in America. I
appreciate this subcommittee's longstanding support of the
Office of National Drug Control Policies and our efforts
against illegal drug use.
The problem of methamphetamine use, distribution, and
production, as you know and have discussed, is one with which I
am also well acquainted. I was a prosecutor in rural Utah for
some 16 years before being confirmed in my present position.
Methamphetamine use and labs can take a significant toll on
communities, but I am pleased to report that there is good news
on the horizon. As discussed in the administration's newly
released National Synthetic Drugs Action Plan, there are things
we can do that we know will make the methamphetamine problem
smaller and that we intend to pursue over the next 4 years.
My written testimony discusses this in greater detail, and
I request it be made part of the record.
Our approach to methamphetamine must be market-based,
focusing both on the supply and demand of the drug. Reducing
the supply of methamphetamine is best accomplished by
destroying the ability of methamphetamine cooks, both large and
small, to make the final product; and this means making the
acquisition of chemicals used to cook methamphetamine even
harder than it is now.
One of our successes in this area is Operation Northern
Star, which is a DEA-led initiative to cutoff the supply to
superlabs of pseudoephedrine, the key ingredient, again, as you
know, used to make meth. By focusing on the diversion of these
chemicals from Canada to domestic superlabs, we have now seen a
shrinking in the number of superlabs within the United States,
and that is good news. However, we believe that some of these
superlabs are being pushed south of our borders to Mexico; and
for this reason we will continue to work with our international
partners, such as the Fox administration, to stop the flow of
these chemicals into Mexico, and we fully support the efforts
of the Fox administration to become more effective in
controlling the methamphetamine threat in Mexico.
In addition to the efforts of Federal law enforcement, we
continue to be focused on disrupting the domestic market for
methamphetamine. For example, the percentage of Organized Crime
Drug Enforcement Task Force, or OCDETF, investigations in which
at least one of the drugs involved included methamphetamine has
steadily increased, from 19.2 percent in fiscal year 2001 to
26.7 percent in fiscal year 2004.
Additionally, among the High Intensity Drug Trafficking
Area, or HIDTA, initiatives that focus predominantly on a
single drug, more have focused on methamphetamine than any
other drug. Most of the remaining initiatives which were poly
drug in nature included a methamphetamine focus.
Among the many recommendations of the administration's
Synthetic Drug Action Plan are those designed to cutoff access
by methamphetamine producers to precursors such as
pseudoephedrine. These including a lowering of the Federal
limit on single sales of pseudoephedrine products and removing
the so-called blister pack exemption that currently exists in
Federal law.
Federal legislation will be necessary to implement some of
the recommendations set forth in the Action Plan, and we look
forward to working with you to identify the right solutions.
Additionally, some States have focused on limiting not only the
amount of pseudoephedrine products that may be purchased, but
also the location and manner in which the product may be
purchased, and have imposed additional requirements for the
process of the purchase itself.
Over the next several months we will be closely analyzing
the data and results in States where these innovative measures
have been implemented. Many of these State actions were taken
in the recent past, so over the next several months we will
seek the best data and information possible to highlight which
of those approaches are the most effective in reducing
methamphetamine availability and lab numbers.
In conclusion, as with the drug issue as a whole, it is
important to remember that drug trafficking and production
respond to effective supply and demand reduction measures, and
the administration looks forward to working with Congress to
effectuate a lasting reduction of the methamphetamine problem
in America.
I look forward to your questions and, again, thank you for
holding this hearing.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Burns follows:]
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Mr. Souder. Thank you very much.
Mr. Domingo Herraiz, who is the Director of the Bureau of
Justice Assistance, Office of Justice Programs of the U.S.
Department of Justice, arguably the most important agency to a
lot of our local State and police agencies. We appreciate your
coming today and look forward to your testimony.
Mr. Herraiz. Chairman Souder and members of the
subcommittee, I am pleased to be here this morning before the
subcommittee to discuss how the Office of Justice Programs
provides support in addressing the problems of methamphetamine
abuse, manufacturing, and tracking in the United States.
As requested by the committee, I will also discuss the
Office of Community Oriented Policing Services, the COPS
office, and their meth programs.
As we continue to combat the deadly scourge of
methamphetamine, I want to point out that our overall effort in
fighting crime is succeeding. I am pleased to report to you
that the violent crime rate is the lowest in 30 years. For the
first time in a decade we have seen teenage drug use fall
across all boards, with the 8th, 10th, and 12th grade. Although
we are encouraged by this data, if we want to continue the
decline in crime, we realize we must remain committed to
preventing crime and holding accountable those who violate our
laws.
As BJA director, I now focus on the problems associated
with meth from a national perspective. However, in my previous
position as Director of the Ohio Office of Criminal Justice
Services I saw firsthand the toll that meth has had on Ohio
families and children, as well as the Ohio criminal justice
system.
Mr. Chairman, as we both know coming from heartland States,
the problems associated with meth production, distribution and
abuse is of grave concern to rural areas.
Through various BJA funding sources, law enforcement
agencies across the country are addressing the prevention and
treatment of meth abuse, as well as the production,
distribution, and exposure risks to officers and citizens. Meth
task forces and other anti-drug efforts investigate and
prosecute drug crimes, as well as work diligently to ensure law
enforcement officers' safety while encountering meth labs. BJA
also provides valuable training and technical assistance to law
enforcement on task force management and investigation.
One of our primary funding sources for supporting efforts
to fight meth abuse is the Edward Byrne Memorial State and
Local Law Enforcement Assistance Program, which is a
partnership among Federal, State, and local governments to
create safer communities. Through Byrne, BJA awards grants to
States for use by the States and units of local government to
improve the functioning of the criminal justice system.
In fiscal year 2003 alone, at least eight States and
partnering local communities made use of $2.76 million in Byrne
Program funds for anti-meth efforts. For example, in Tennessee,
Byrne funds were used to support both meth investigation and
trafficking efforts, as well as prevention efforts. In Oregon,
Byrne funds were used to support two different regional drug
task forces for meth lab seizures, as well as the destruction
of street-level distribution. A Methamphetamine Response Team
was funded in Kentucky and Kansas used Byrne funds to support
the development of intensive supervision and treatment
alternatives to meth abusers and offenders.
The Bureau of Justice Assistance, the Drug Enforcement
Administration, and the Office for Community Oriented Policing
Services prepared a program-level environmental assessment
governing meth lab operations. Officers face unknown exposure,
as you have already mentioned, when responding to homes, hotel
rooms, vehicles, and other places where meth is being produced
or consumed.
In addition, when the immediate exposure risks are
mitigated, the problem isn't gone. Officers and departments
must then decide what to do with the vehicle, the home, the
hotel room that would normally soon be returned to its owners
or occupants or used by other consumers, even though
contamination may still be at unacceptable levels. Our
assessment describes the adverse environmental, health, and
safety impacts likely to be encountered by law enforcement
agencies as they implement specific actions under their meth
lab operations.
Another BJA source of support for these efforts to combat
meth abuse is the Local Law Enforcement Block Grant Program,
which provides funds to units of local government to underwrite
projects that reduce crime and improve public safety. The LLEBG
Program, as it is referenced, allows funds to be used for
various types of meth responses, including establishing multi-
jurisdictional task forces, paying for law enforcement
overtime, and acquiring specialized equipment. The funds can
also be used to cover or defray costs of insurance for
hazardous assignments, as may be required with this issue.
In fiscal year 2004, LLEBG funds supported 12 projects in
nine States, including Kentucky, Oregon, Texas, and Washington.
For example, Richmond, Kentucky funded equipment purchases for
a meth lab trailer that is used to process meth labs
encountered within the county. Marion County, Oregon funded
``NO METH: Not in My Neighborhood'' program, and Washington
County, also in Oregon, launched an Anti-Methamphetamine
Education Campaign. Corpus Christi, Texas purchased meth
response protective gear for its officers. Thurston County,
Washington provided overtime for its officers to support anti-
methamphetamine efforts within the county.
The administration has proposed replacing the Byrne and
LLEBG Grant Programs with the new, more flexible Byrne Justice
Assistance Grant Program in 2005. As you can see by these
various funds, both the Law Enforcement Block Grant and the
Byrne Program could be utilized for prevention, education,
enforcement, and prosecution efforts.
The Drug Court Discretionary Grant Program is another BJA-
administered program which is a valuable resource for
communities experiencing methamphetamine problems. Drug courts
can assist those who abuse meth and other drugs by providing
treatment, drug testing, sanctions, and transitional services
to offenders.
In addition to BJA's grant programs, I am placing an
emphasis on providing training and technical assistance with
regard to the complexities of the meth production and abuse.
Just this past October, BJA, along with the Office of National
Drug Control Policy and the Alliance for Model State Drug Laws,
a BJA grantee, sponsored a National Methamphetamine Legislative
and Policy Conference. The summit produced concrete strategies
and raised awareness regarding additional work we need to do to
comprehensively attack methamphetamine throughout the Nation.
Through the Center for Task Force Training, BJA provides
training to law enforcement on basic investigation techniques
and basic drug task force management issues such as personnel
selection, handling confidential informants, and raid planning.
After hearing from law enforcement about their need for
additional training, we have more than tripled our number of
methamphetamine training courses offered nationwide, for a
total of up to 12 courses. These courses are offered at the
State level, for the State themselves, to then bring in local
law enforcement to provide them the opportunity to be trained.
Most recently, we have scheduled a course, actually in
Virginia, as the first pilot of this project.
Other components of the Office of Justice Program are also
addressing meth use and serving its victims. For example, the
National Institute of Justice is working on a comprehensive
review of methamphetamine-related research that will identify
lessons learned about enforcement and treatment, as well as
research gaps that need to be addressed.
The Office for Victims of Crime has a bulletin available
called ``Children at Clandestine Methamphetamine Labs: Helping
Meth's Youngest Victims.'' It explains that the best way to
help these children is through coordinated multi-disciplinary
efforts such as medical and mental health treatment services,
child protective services, law enforcement, prosecution, and
public safety officials.
As the subcommittee is aware, the Office of Community
Oriented Policing Services [COPS], operates the COPS
Methamphetamine Program. The program is intended to support
State and local clandestine lab cleanup efforts. In 2005, the
administration requests $20 million for that purpose.
Available on the COPS Web site is a problem-solving guide
on clandestine drug labs and an evaluation of the COPS Meth
Program. The guide is intended to help law enforcement develop
proactive, prevention strategies and to improve the overall
response to these incidents. The evaluation assesses the
effectiveness of the community policing strategies employed by
the various jurisdictions funded by the COPS Office under the
Methamphetamine Program in fiscal year 1998. The evaluation
report indicates successes among those agencies employing
coordinated, proactive intervention tactics, including targeted
enforcement strategies coupled with police and community
awareness training regarding the production and distribution of
the drug.
Even though these collective efforts from OJP and COPS are
helping address the Nation's meth problem, we recognize we need
to work harder with all of our State and local partners to
ensure that resources are used effectively and efficiently.
Through our conferences, we have learned from the field that
they would be better served by having a centralized resource, a
portal, if you will, for information on meth abuse and
strategies, including law enforcement and prosecution
strategies, environmental briefs, research summaries, and
funding information, and BJA is creating it.
We appreciate the interest that you and your colleagues
have shown in this critical drug abuse issue. I welcome the
opportunity to answer your questions as it relates to the
Office of Justice Programs. I would request that any questions
related to the COPS Program be submitted to the COPS office in
writing. Thank you.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Herraiz follows:]
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Mr. Souder. Thank you.
Our next witness is Mr. Joseph Rannazzisi. I appreciate
your work as the Deputy Chief of the Office of Enforcement of
DEA. DEA increasingly plays not only an internationally
important role, but in the United States working with our local
drug task forces. So I am glad you came to testify today and
look forward to your testimony.
Mr. Rannazzisi. Thank you very much, sir. Chairman Souder,
Ranking Member Cummings, distinguished members of the
subcommittee, and fellow panel members, on behalf of
Administrator Karen Tandy, I appreciate your invitation to
testify today on the importance of law enforcement's fight
against methamphetamine.
Until the late 1980's, methamphetamine's popularity was
primarily confined to the west coast and southwest. By the
early 1990's, methamphetamine was gaining in popularity,
spreading west to east across the country, and hitting rural
areas particularly hard. No community is immune.
There are three distinct components to combating the
overall methamphetamine problem: first, enforcement; second, a
comprehensive domestic and international precursor control
program; and, third, the identification and cleanup of the
growing number of small toxic labs, which we call STLs.
As a result of our efforts and those of our law enforcement
partners across the country and in Canada, since 2001, the
United States has seen a 79 percent decrease in the seizure of
superlabs. Enforcement efforts have also led to an 85 percent
reduction in the amount of pseudoephedrine, ephedrine, and
other methamphetamine precursors seized at the Canadian border,
and the price of black market pseudoephedrine in California has
doubled.
Internationally, the DEA is working with our foreign
counterparts to prevent the diversion of pseudoephedrine from
Europe, China, and India to methamphetamine producing
countries.
Specialized training is required to safely and effectively
conduct these investigations, and our Office of Training has
developed a program for our agents, State and local officers,
and our foreign counterparts. Since fiscal year 2000, we have
provided basic clandestine laboratory training certification to
over 6100 State and local law enforcement officers.
Additionally, we are providing clandestine lab awareness
training to approximately 17,000 students per year.
Heightened enforcement efforts have resulted in a dramatic
increase throughout the country. To properly dispose of
resulting waste, the DEA has enlisted the services of the
private sector to help clean up these lab sites. The DEA's
Hazardous Waste Program, with the assistance of the COPS
Program, supports and funds the cleanup of the majority of the
laboratories seized in the United States. Though the number of
cleanups has increased more than 4,000 percent, the average
cost per cleanup has continued to decrease.
In addition to the drain on law enforcement resources, the
demands on medical, social, environmental, and public health
and safety services continue to grow. STLs account for the vast
majority of clandestine labs and are often discovered in areas
where children live and play. These STLs also generate toxic
waste, which is frequently discharged on the ground, into the
waterways, or down the drain. Clearly, given the problem of
this magnitude, there is a need for new approaches and strong
regulatory controls on precursor chemicals used to manufacture
methamphetamine.
The regulation of ephedrine and pseudoephedrine is a vital
overall strategy to combat methamphetamine abuse. State
legislative measures have focused on limiting the amount of
pseudoephedrine products that may be purchased, the location
and manner in which the product may be purchased, the
requirements for the process and purchase itself. Because State
action regulating methamphetamine precursors is a recent
development, the administration will wait for better data and
information to emerge before commenting on the effectiveness
and impact of any particular action in reducing methamphetamine
availability or methamphetamine laboratory numbers and how they
relate to Federal policy.
The administration recently released the National Synthetic
Drug Action Plan. In doing so, the Department of Justice,
ONDCP, and DEA proclaimed the seriousness of the challenges
posed by methamphetamine, along with other synthetic drugs and
diverted pharmaceuticals, as well as our resolve to confront
these challenges. The Action Plan outlines specific steps the
Federal Government will take to accelerate our national efforts
against these harmful substances.
The DEA is energetically combating our national
methamphetamine epidemic on several fronts: we are engaged in
aggressive enforcement, comprehensive domestic and
international precursor chemical control, the identification of
cleanup of the growing number of STLs, and providing
clandestine laboratory training to our law enforcement
partners, as well as our foreign counterparts. In addition to
our efforts in these areas, we also believe that stricter
regulatory controls of precursor chemicals is one of the most
effective tools available to assist in the fight against
illicit methamphetamine production.
Thank you for your recognition of this important issue and
the opportunity to testify here today. I look forward to
answering any questions you may have. Thank you.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Rannazzisi follows:]
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Mr. Souder. Thank you.
I want the record to show, too, that what our committee is
finding is that the national EPIC number of 17,000 is
tremendously understated. In northeast Indiana alone, in
talking with our sheriffs, the number in my district exceeds
the number for the State; and in Northwest Arkansas, they had
more than was reported for their entire State; and in meetings
that we had with Congressman Alexander in Alexandria and
Monroe, Louisiana, with about 30 to 50 sheriffs and
prosecutors, they just dwarfed the numbers that are reported.
It doesn't appear that any one State is off; it is a
process. But I think that explains some of the political
pressure that we are hearing, because somehow our numbers
aren't matching in the reporting, and I think it is just a lot
of them are very small local police that are so overwhelmed.
In my district we can't build enough jails to put the meth
addicts in. Every single county outside of Allen County, where
Fort Wayne is, has the majority of their jail spots filled
right now with meth addicts. And the second they let them out,
they are right back in it. They are the most immune group to
treatment that we have faced in any of our drug questions right
now, and it is partly why we are feeling this political
pressure.
But first I wanted to ask Mr. Burns and Mr. Rannazzisi, on
the small meth labs, what is the main source of precursor
supply? Do you feel they are buying it from pharmacies or
stealing it? Do they get the anhydrous ammonia and other
solvents by buying them or stealing them?
Mr. Rannazzisi. Let us talk about the anhydrous ammonia
first. Extremely dangerous chemical used in farming. A
necessary tool for farmers. Basically, they are stealing it.
They are walking in, looking at nurse tanks that are on
farmland, waiting late at night, walking onto the farmland,
tapping into the nurse tank, an extremely dangerous situation.
Anhydrous ammonia is a terrible, terrible chemical as far as
inhalation; severe medical damage to the lungs. There have been
countless reports of police officers and people being injured
or killed, citizens being killed because of anhydrous.
If you remember correctly, I believe it was last year there
was a meth lab operator who tapped into a high-pressure
anhydrous line in Florida. It was a pipeline. It scorched 500
acres of land. I believe two residential developments were
evacuated and a school. Obviously, they need the chemicals, and
they go after the chemical that way.
Mr. Souder. What about the pseudoephedrine?
Mr. Rannazzisi. Pseudoephedrine is available in all
different markets. I believe we have done a very good job in
stopping the bulk flow across the Canadian border. We do know
that pseudoephedrine is still sent out from, as you said, the
European countries and China and India. There is that sector of
bulk pseudoephedrine; there is also the retail sector.
Obviously, you could walk into pharmacies and buy
pseudoephedrine.
Mr. Souder. There is no reason to steal it if you can buy
it over the counter.
Mr. Rannazzisi. Right. There are reports where people have
done sweeps where they have actually walked into pharmacies
with shopping bags and just swept the whole shelf, put them in
the bag and ran out of the store. There are serious concerns
about stealing as well. The profit margin is so high, though,
if you think about it, why would you want to steal it and get
caught, when you could purchase it. You could smurf it, go to
five, six, seven pharmacies or other areas, purchase it, and
make your methamphetamine.
Mr. Souder. Because a lot of the mom-and-pop people are
cooking for themselves, or maybe two people, and they can buy
it. It is only if they maybe start to get a circle of 10 to 15
would you start to see----
Mr. Rannazzisi. I believe that is accurate. Well, I don't
like to call them mom-and-pop labs; we call them STLs. As a
gentleman in Kentucky told me, I've known my mom and pop for 43
years, and I have never gone home and watched them cook meth.
And I really believe that is accurate. We call them STLs
because that is what they are, they are very toxic labs.
Mr. Souder. But there is a difference between those who are
predominantly cooking for themselves and the immediate
household, and those who are actually dealers as well.
Mr. Rannazzisi. That is right. If you look at the people
who are cooking in their houses, you are looking at small labs,
probably no more than an ounce. Then you have the people who
are cooking to support their habit and also to make money. They
are going to be the multi-ounce purchasers. They are the guys
who are going to be going out and smurfing large quantities of
retail sales pseudo, and they are going to be going to 5, 6, 7,
10 retail distributors purchasing their packs, bringing it home
and starting the process.
Mr. Souder. Oklahoma has probably the toughest law at this
point, and they seem to be making some progress. Do you believe
that is because of the law?
Mr. Rannazzisi. I am very cautious to discuss the Oklahoma
law, and the reason is because, as you said, the statistics
that are coming out now--let us talk about the CLSS first of
all. I think you mentioned that the CLSS statistics are kind of
off; and the reason is that there is always a time lag between
when the lab is seized and when the paperwork is submitted.
Now, on the CLSS, paperwork is submitted from all different
areas. On the west coast it is submitted through WISEN, which
is a collaborative intelligence center; there could be a 2 to
3-month lag time. But in these smaller departments, they have
so much to do, they might not submit their paperwork for 3, 4,
or 5 months. They are getting it in, they just are not getting
it in on a timely basis.
And I understand, I was a lab agent for many years; I still
am a lab agent. I don't feel that blame should be put on those
officers; they are doing their best. But that is why we don't
look at those statistics. We don't look at the November
statistics and say, look at this, this is where we are. We
usually wait about 4 to 6 months from the month we are looking
at to make a determination that is a good number.
So what I would like to do, and I think what the
administration and the Department wants to do, is sit back and
wait about a year. Look at the statistics after a year to make
a determination how much impact that Oklahoma legislation had.
I think that is the prudent thing to do.
Mr. Souder. Did you see the Oregonian, which has a
cumulative chart that combines DEA data and a Rand Study that
shows when we regulated ephedrine, the purity of meth dropped
dramatically over a period of a number of years? Then as they
figured out they could use pseudoephedrine, it went back up
again. And when we started to put more regulations on
pseudoephedrine, it dropped again. That is a long-term chart
that shows some correlation to the regulation that uses some
DEA data. Are you familiar with that chart?
Mr. Rannazzisi. I have read that article numerous times and
I am familiar with that. I am interested to see where the
purity data came from. I am not familiar with the sources that
they got that data from. Obviously, whenever we have a major
enforcement push, an operation that cuts the flow of precursor
chemicals, there is going to be less of a market, less
methamphetamine on the market. If there is less methamphetamine
on the market, the dealers that have the methamphetamine are
going to cut their product to service more people, so you are
going to see a period of decrease. That is an absolute.
Mr. Souder. I would appreciate it if you could, since the
footnote source is DEA and a Rand Study, get back to us with
particulars. Because if that study is incorrect--I know the
difficulty of determining purity, too. A chart makes it look
very scientific, but that is actually good news, if we show
that when we combine intercept internationally and control at
the local pharmacy level, that we have a reduction in purity.
But I would like to make sure that chart is accurate.
Mr. Rannazzisi. Thank you, sir. I will take care of that.
Mr. Souder. Mr. Cummings.
Mr. Cummings. You don't believe that the numbers are
accurate when it comes to people involved in using
methamphetamine? It sounds like you and the chairman were in
some agreement on that. In other words, the number of people,
whether the stats that we get--he just talked about Indiana,
and then you seem like you kind of verified it, that you don't
believe that the stats. He said the jails are filled with
methamphetamine addicts, and I thought you kind of verified it,
but tell me.
I guess what I am trying to get to is, first of all, we
have to understand what our problem is and the extent of it,
before we can deal with it; and if we are not getting numbers
that are accurate--and you gave some reasons why they might not
be accurate, but, first of all, I want to know you obviously
believe that the problem is worse than what it appears to be,
or what the information is being put out to be.
Mr. Rannazzisi. Oh, absolutely. I believe there is a
terrible problem with methamphetamine abuse, and I believe
there is a very large population of abusers out there. I
believe there is a large population of abusers that haven't
been identified. That is absolutely correct.
Mr. Cummings. I listened to you talk about things that the
DEA was doing--and, gentlemen, you might want to chime in
whenever you get ready to--and we are talking about training?
Mr. Rannazzisi. Yes, sir.
Mr. Cummings. Tell me just generally about the training.
What does the training entail that is different than, say,
dealing with other drugs?
Mr. Rannazzisi. Well, there are several different training
courses, but let us take you through what an agent goes through
for training. You start with your clandestine lab investigation
and safety course. That is about 2 weeks long. Once you get
that course under your belt and you go out, learn a little bit
about labs, then they send you back for safety officer school,
which I believe is another 3 to 5 days. That is advanced
training. You get to learn about the equipment and how to take
it apart, how to check it, make sure it functions properly; how
to set up a site safety; how to make sure that all the toxic
substances are identified and removed. Then you go into your
instructor class.
That is basically the progression. It is quite a bit of
training, and there is also a lot of on-the-job training. When
we take our new lab agents into the labs, it is on-the-job
training; we are teaching them what to do and what not to do.
The problem with labs, unlike other law enforcement, is
until you have done it, until you have seen a process go bad,
you really just don't know. And you are working in very
restrictive suits. You do an entry where a lot of times your
vision is restricted because you are wearing respiratory gear.
You have to operate in these big bulky suits; you have to be
very careful. There is always an inhalation problem, where you
could inhale toxic substances. It is just a different type of
law enforcement. It is a very different type of law
enforcement.
Mr. Cummings. Let me ask you this. If you were up here and
you got people in your district that are suffering tremendously
with regard to meth addiction, and you see the labs all over
the place, what would you do? I mean, in other words, is there
something that we can do that we are not doing? Because that is
the bottom line. Is there something that we as Members of
Congress can do? We obviously have bad numbers, and the problem
is worse than what we think it is.
Clearly, this drug is destroying a whole lot of people. I
am always amazed when I go into these various counties outside
of urban areas and find out how many people are involved in
drugs. And they serve their time, maybe they get caught; they
can't get jobs, they can't support their families, and then
they are back in jail again. Communities destroyed; families
paying out money,; good, hard-working people trying to keep
their kids going, trying to stop them from committing crimes,
so they are coming out of their pocket with money that they
could be paying their mortgages and buying food with and
medicine or whatever. So it is a tremendous drain on our
society.
I am just trying to figure out what can we do to try to
address this problem that is just really going out of whack?
What would you do, more than what we are doing?
And then just one tag-on question on that one. You were
talking about the Federal Government should wait and see how
these State laws work out, and I think that is not an
unreasonable proposition. The problem is that there are too
many people suffering in the meantime.
And I am just wondering how long is long enough to wait? I
am assuming we are going to get some people come up here saying
how great their State law is working, and I am just guessing
they may say the Federal Government ought to be doing this and
helping out and maybe making this across-the-board so that you
can help us in our communities. And since you won't be coming
back up, I just want to get you to answer that.
Mr. Rannazzisi. Well, personally, I believe that looking at
the data for about a year, if we could look at a year's worth
of data, I think that will give the statistics enough time to
stabilize and we could make a good determination of what impact
it is having on the community. Obviously, if the lab seizures
significantly decrease within a year, then we should look at
that legislation strongly.
But what we do also see is peaks and valleys, and it might
not stabilize down; there might be another source of that
pseudoephedrine coming in somewhere. That is why we always like
to wait to make a determination, to make an informed
determination. For me to come back here and tell you I believe
that this is the way to go, I think it wouldn't be prudent for
me to say, at this point in time, this is it, this is what we
need. Is it promising? Absolutely it is promising.
But I don't think I could sit here today and tell you that,
at this point in time, with what I have, the statistical data I
have, that is necessarily the answer. It is a very promising
piece of legislation. I know the legislation you are talking
about. But at this point in time I don't think we have enough
data to make that determination.
Mr. Cummings. To the first part of the question, what would
you do? Is there something that we can do more than what we are
already doing?
Mr. Rannazzisi. Well, obviously, there is an awareness
issue, getting the retailers to understand that this is
extremely dangerous; allowing people to walk into a store and
buy 10, 15 packs of blister-exempt products. Obviously, if you
are buying 10 to 15 packs of blister packs, I just can't
imagine you have that bad of a cold; I think that you are doing
something else with the drug. And if retailers would understand
that, they would limit.
About 3 years ago, when I was a section chief in the
Dangerous Drugs and Chemicals Section, I sent two of my guys
into a local place. I said, here is $500, see how much
pseudoephedrine you can buy; and they basically came back with
a bag full of pseudoephedrine. They paid $350 for it and no one
looked at them, no one said boo.
So I think the one component is the retailers have to be
our partners. The retailers are going to have to stop allowing
people to walk in and purchase quantities, large quantities. I
think that is part of the issue.
Mr. Cummings. I just wanted to leave you with this. I never
thought I would go all the way back to when I was 16 with
regard to this issue, but when I was 16 years old, I worked in
a drug store, and I remember I didn't even understand
Robitussin, but I remember people used to come in and buy
Robitussin, I mean, like seven and eight bottles of it. Now, I
knew people had colds and everything, but I thought that was a
bit much. But I didn't know. Come to find out they were buying
Robitussin to get high. And when I figured it out, I mentioned
it to the fellow, who now is deceased, who owned the drug
store, and he was saying you have to understand, I have to make
a profit.
I would hope that we would be able to get the kind of
cooperation from the drug stores and whatever, but I am not
sure that is enough. And I guess that is the frustrating part
of all of this, as I listened to all of you, and perhaps the
witnesses that will come later will help us, but I can't
believe that we have to sit and wait while all this destruction
is taking place. Maybe I am just too impatient, but we have one
life to live; this is it.
Mr. Rannazzisi. And I understand your frustration, sir. I
have been working lab cases as a diversion investigator and
agent since 1986, and I have watched the progression of this
problem. I have seen them go from phenyl to propenol and
phenylacetic acid to ephedrine to pseudoephedrine, and all the
weird combinations in between. It is a very frustrating
process, and no one is more frustrated than me, because I have
to go out into the communities and talk to the local officers
and hear their problems. And they are problems, they are
serious problems, because they care about the people they
protect and serve. At this juncture, though, we have to look at
all different types of legislation; we have to see what is
going to be the most effective thing before we can sit here and
make a determination.
Mr. Cummings. Do you think the Office of Drug Control
Policy, for example, is doing enough in regard to prevention? I
mean, when you hear the stories like Mr. Mica talked about, the
baby being put in the microwave, we have heard all kinds of
stories. If some people could just see films of things that
people do on meth, I just wonder whether it would make them
think twice before they even got involved in it.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Souder. Ms. McCollum.
Ms. McCollum. Thank you, Mr. Chair.
I would like to kind of talk a little bit about the
training. And I want to say that the Department has worked very
hard to expand the training opportunities, but there are still
barriers to many law enforcement receiving the training. Do you
have or can you make available to the committee how many--I
will use my State for an example--how many sheriff's offices
through the counties, how many municipalities have taken
advantage of the training, the followup training that is
involved in it?
Because what we are seeing is people are going out and
getting trained on it, but there are so many other demands,
State cuts occurring in law enforcement and other things, that
we don't have maybe as many people taking advantage of the
training as we realize, just as Congressman Cummings was
talking about really knowing the numbers of people who are
incarcerated, as the sheriff pointed out; how many children are
being impacted in social services and everything like that. We
need to get a handle on this for the numbers, and I don't know
if you have data available, if you could get it to the
committee.
Mr. Herraiz. Mr. Chairman and Congresswoman McCollum, we
certainly would be happy at the Department to get you that
information. I would like to followup, though, as to the
training aspect and share with you just a better snapshot of
what is actually happening.
It is imperative, as I mentioned in my testimony about the
rural jurisdictions. Too many times sheriffs' deputies will be
going into a scene that they are going there for something
else, and they have no idea that they are going to encounter a
meth lab. It could be a protective service order or something
that they are going to serve, and they do. And if they have
been improperly trained, we have already put their life at
risk.
So what is important for us to look at is to get to
Congressman Cummings' issue as far as what is it that we could
do differently while you, in the meantime, continue to look at
the legislative remedies. I think it is important for us to
expand our training efforts.
I mentioned to you, again in the testimony, that we are
going to triple, and we are doing it currently, triple our
methamphetamine training at a State level. It is at a State
level in the sense of those who receive our funds, because that
is our point of contact, to provide it for the locals. So if
you can envision that in 12 States this coming year, for the
first time, the Bureau of Justice Assistance will be able to
offer that training to all local law enforcement through the
State criminal justice entity, this is a huge step forward.
For us to be able to, in that training, educate law
enforcement officers on a traffic stop, as an example. When
they pull over someone's car for a speeding ticket, what have
you, and approach the car and they see these chemicals in the
back, many law enforcement officers have no idea what they are
actually seeing. So it is imperative that we educate the law
enforcement officers.
As was mentioned from DEA, it is imperative we educate
pharmacists and clerks in facilities, whether it be a retail
facility or a drug store chain, what to look for so that they
can in fact alert law enforcement. Training is something that
we can do more of, and that is public education as well. I
think that so much of that can happen.
In my own home State we found methamphetamine labs in the
back of trunks at rest stops. So it is a pervasive issue, but I
still think there is much more that we can do through training
and education.
You had referenced meth in the context of treatment, and
when you are looking at facilities, Mr. Chairman, you
referenced the county facilities in your community. In the
Residential Substance Abuse Treatment Program that our agency
runs, there are resources to actually invest back into the
State and local communities so folks can receive treatment
while they are incarcerated, so we don't maintain that
revolving door.
We can continue to make utilization of the Regional
Information Sharing Systems that are out there that the
Department of Justice funds because as we know if an epidemic
occurs, if it is in Fort Wayne, IN, it will soon be in Van
Wert, Ohio. So it is important for us to continue to educate,
and the best way to do that is through law enforcement
information sharing systems such as, in this case, the RISS
network that is funded by the government and administered
through our office.
So, again, we can get you more specific details on who has
been trained and what is available. I can tell you the LLEBG
resources and the Byrne resources are heavily involved in
training initiatives for law enforcement, as well as funding
the majority of the law enforcement multi-jurisdictional drug
task forces that are out in the country.
Ms. McCollum. And that is good, and I support the dollars
for doing that, but sometimes I have found that other law
enforcement issues aren't funded in order to increase funding
into another program, and we need to be cognizant of not
turning our back on another potential source of crime to fund
another one.
I will use Minnesota as the example. Ten percent of the
methamphetamine, to the best of our knowledge, is from the
small labs; 90 percent is what is coming in. Now, of that 10
percent, we need to address it aggressively, we need to
continue to work with our retailers on that.
But to just focus overwhelmingly--and each State is going
to be different--for that 10 percent, when 90 percent of it is
what is coming in, and we are seeing an increase on that, what
do we need to do to stop that 90 percent coming in over the
borders? I mean, we are supposed to be at heightened alert for
activity now with homeland security, with what is going on with
our borders, and when we see 90 percent of it not being
produced locally, but coming in, and the term ``farm Mexico''
was used by my law enforcement, I think we still have a huge
problem going back to homeland security.
So where is the integration going on with that? What do we
need to be aware of in Congress to make that more effective?
Because if we can't keep out methamphetamine, how are we
keeping out terrorists?
Mr. Rannazzisi. Well, ma'am, to start, I don't think we are
concentrating just on the small labs. I think the small labs
are important because the meth coming from Mexico or other
countries is produced and it is in the marketplace. When these
people actually make methamphetamine in STLs, it presents a
great problem for the health and safety of the community at
large, and then that----
Ms. McCollum. Sir, I understand that fully, and that is why
I prefaced it. I don't take away the seriousness of the 10
percent. I have law enforcement officers who have had to retire
early because of going into meth labs and literally having
their lungs destroyed. I take this very seriously. I had a
constituent who purchased a home, who ran a daycare in it, and
it wasn't disclosed in their retail. I understand that. I
support the actions that the committee is taking on this; we
need to focus on it.
But in Minnesota, when 90 percent of the methamphetamine is
coming in, the prisons are full, there is no treatment
facility, we have children who are now in our social network
system. I also want to know what we are doing as a country to
decrease the amount of methamphetamine that is coming in
illegal into this country.
Mr. Rannazzisi. Well, to begin with, we are working with
our foreign counterparts at the chemical-producing countries.
We are trying to track the chemical shipments from places like
China and Germany and India into those chemical-producing
countries. We are actually asking for voluntary stop of those
shipments. We are notified of the shipments; we know where they
are going and we know where the methamphetamine is being
produced. Say Mexico, for instance. We know that Mexico has
several production laboratories down there. We are working with
the Mexican authorities; we are actually training the Mexican
authorities in clandestine laboratory enforcement so they can
go out, find and identify these labs, and dismantle them.
Unfortunately, when the problem moves outside of domestic
boundaries, we have to work in conjunction with our
international partners, and we are doing that. We are doing
that in Mexico and abroad. It is difficult to shut down the
border for methamphetamine, just as it is for cocaine and
heroin, because the trafficking groups generally don't send one
huge load through one particular port of entry.
What they do is they find very novel approaches to move a
contraband into the country. If I produce 300 pounds of
methamphetamine, I am not going to move them all through one
port of entry; what I am going to do is split the load. That
way, if I lose two components of the load, I still have two to
make my profit. And that is what is happening.
But we still do have superlabs here as well. Not to the
extent that we had 2 years ago, but we still have production
labs. So we are working the production labs domestically on an
enforcement basis with DEA and our local and State
counterparts, and then we are working abroad in the chemical-
producing countries, where the precursors start, and then in
the production countries, such as Mexico, where it is being
manufactured.
Ms. McCollum. Mr. Chair? I think that because they are two
very serious ways in which people access these illegal drugs,
both the small labs here and, as the gentleman pointed out,
there are some large labs here, but also the international
trafficking of this over our borders, at a time when we believe
in Congress that we are spending a lot of money trying to make
our borders more secure. Both of those maybe need to be
separated out, as well as this is such a big topic, maybe what
we need to do, Mr. Chair, with your help, is to break the next
set of hearings down into smaller components so we can really
wrestle and get into what we need to do congressionally to put
an end to this problem.
Mr. Souder. I appreciate your suggestion, and as we pursue
the meth problem, that is a good point. I want you to know, as
well as the other members of the panel and those who are
listening, that we are having a major internal battle which I
think, based on everyday changes, that we have made some
progress on. Speaker Hastert has been taking the lead.
Obviously, border control and homeland security, the narcotics
part and homeland security are totally interrelated; they are
the same people on the border.
And one of the arguments we are having on the so-called 9/
11 Commission bill is a series of amendments that I had in the
Homeland Security Committee that the Speaker is advocating to
strengthen the Air and Marine Division inside Border
Protection, which is danger of being gutted; to strengthen the
Counternarcotics Office that didn't even have anything but a
detailee there, even though Coast Guard, Border Patrol,
Customs, those legacy agencies are the major part; and to also
take a number of other steps.
We have seen the Shadow Wolves in effect disbanded, which
is a critical part on the Arizona border, and we cannot talk
about how we are going to control the borders if we disband the
anti-narcotics operations inside Homeland Security. The
Department of Homeland Security has to understand that if they
are in charge of the border, narcotics is part of their
mission. And this committee has been taking the lead, and we
need to continue to push that part of it.
In addition, clearly, if we lose these court rulings on the
drug dogs, this is a disaster at the borders. There has been a
local hearing that is going up toward the Federal level that
would challenge the propriety of drug dog hits at the border,
and that is one of the only ways that we pick up the random, if
we don't have a tip. And if we don't have control of the
border, anything else we talk about becomes more or less
irrelevant.
I need to ask a series of questions here which we may not
have all the answers, but I want to make sure some of these get
in the record, and we will have some additional questions,
because we are working toward a package and also what we should
focus on in hearings in this next year. And I want to followup
directly with one of the things that Ms. McCollum just asked
Mr. Rannazzisi.
The Oregonian newspaper reported that DEA has not actively
sought information or cooperation from manufacturers or law
enforcement authorities in India, one of the major
pseudoephedrine exporters. The Indians, however, claim that
they are very willing to work with DEA to address the diversion
program, including by providing DEA with documentation about
exports to third countries, such as Canada. Does DEA plan to
increase its efforts in India and elsewhere to monitor and
track the pseudoephedrine exports to third countries?
Mr. Rannazzisi. We do work with the Indian government. We
sit on numerous international committees where there is dialog
between our staff and the Indian government regarding shipments
of chemicals. I don't understand where that came from, but that
is just not the case.
Mr. Souder. Could you provide us with how many agents in
India you have working on this, roughly? I realize agents do
multiple tasks. And also, in particular, the question of third
countries. In other words, often we are looking directly at us,
but a lot of this is coming from Mexico and Canada.
Also, do you and Mr. Burns believe that we need new import
quotas or controls to prevent diversion of pseudoephedrine?
Mr. Burns. I didn't get the question.
Mr. Souder. Do you believe we need new import quotas or
other controls to prevent diversion of pseudoephedrine?
Mr. Burns. Yes. I think that is something that would be
very helpful to address some of the questions that you have
asked and Congresswoman McCollum and Ranking Member Cummings.
Let me just try and briefly state this: You have been very
helpful. Ranking Member, you asked if we need to step back and
look at the overall picture, and at the Office of National Drug
Control Policy, that is what we try and do, and rely on good
numbers for sound policy. You require it, the President
requires it, Drug Czar John Walters certainly requires it.
And what we know from the household survey and from
monitoring the future is that there are currently 19.5 million
illegal drug users in this country. Some of the most recent
numbers. Seventy-five percent singularly or co-use marijuana;
about 6 million are using illegally prescription drugs. That is
a 150 percent increase in 5 years. That is a problem. About 3
million cocaine; about 1.5 heroin; and about 1.5
methamphetamine.
So why this hearing today and why the Federal Government's
response so aggressively to methamphetamine? For all the
reasons that you have stated. We could be here all day, and I
could try and respond to you what we have been doing in the
State of Minnesota. I have been there three times in the last
year. I flew with your senator to small towns all over the
State; we had hearings. I called them talk-listen sessions.
Senator Rosen has been very aggressive in gaining the ear
of the Office of National Drug Control Policy. With your
Governor, I recently flew around to several small towns and we
listened again, trying to fix problems one at a time with
respect to training, literally getting on the phone with law
enforcement agencies, hooking the up with the Midwest HIDTA,
which is located close by, and demanding that training
information and access be made available.
Ranking Member Cummings, you have one of the best HIDTAs in
the country, with Director Tom Carr. I know that you have been
wholly and fully engaged with Director Walters and others not
only on this problem, but others.
But the one point that I would like to make, and Mr.
Rannazzisi has talked about the need to look at the numbers, it
is because you demand good policy. This National Synthetics
Drug Action Plan came out less than a month ago. It has taken
us a long time to define what the issues are with all synthetic
drugs and to come up with a plan so at some point we can come
to you with numbers and with recommendations that are
appropriate.
And I am going to chair a synthetic drug working group; the
Plan requires that be set up within 30 days, and the first
meeting will take place within the next couple of weeks. And
then I hope, and I say this to all of you, that we will be able
to come back, as Mr. Rannazzisi has said, with good numbers so
that you can make good decisions based on sound policy.
Mr. Souder. We need to get to our second panel, but I have
some very specifics that I want to have on the record. Did DEA
support new import quotas or controls to prevent diversion?
Mr. Rannazzisi. I am sorry, sir, could you repeat that
question?
Mr. Souder. Do you support new import quotas or other
controls to prevent diversion of pseudoephedrine?
Mr. Rannazzisi. I believe that is in the National Drug
Synthetic Action Plan, and I do believe we support that,
absolutely.
Mr. Souder. Another question has to do with Glowtel. There
have been lots of news stories around the country that says
when Glowtel is added to anhydrous ammonia, it dyes it bright
pink. Apparently, the bright pink color transfers to any meth
made with anhydrous ammonia and actually stains any users of
the drug. Should the Government promote the use of this
additive?
Mr. Rannazzisi. I know about the additive, I just don't
know enough to promote or tell you that it is a good program. I
do know that there are a couple of other studies out there,
including University of Iowa----
Mr. Souder. Are you investigating this or is ONDCP or
Justice?
Mr. Rannazzisi. I believe our lab program is investigating
it, our forensic laboratory program is looking into it.
Mr. Souder. Can you have somebody respond to the committee
on any investigations on Glowtel?
Mr. Rannazzisi. Yes.
Mr. Souder. Also, The Oregonian newspaper said Pfizer has
announced it would soon introduce a new form of Sudafed which
contains, instead of pseudoephedrine, a compound called
phenylephrine. And you, earlier, just referred to some acid
that sounded like it was the same basic component, you said
phenyl acid?
Mr. Rannazzisi. Phenylacidic acid. It is a different
precursor. It was one of the primary precursors used way back.
Mr. Souder. So do you believe that such chemicals like that
could prevent meth use, or will they be able to transfer like
they have transferred from ephedrine to pseudoephedrine?
Mr. Rannazzisi. If we are talking about the drug
phenylephrine, our lab has done studies with phenylephrine, and
they do not believe that you can manufacture methamphetamine
from that substance.
Mr. Souder. So that becomes a very interesting question,
because there may be more than one way to tackle this problem.
We have some other written questions I want to submit, but
I want to say both to the Department of Justice and the CTAC
Program that what we have heard in State after State from law
enforcement officials is they appreciate the training. Their
No. 1 problem right now is not the training. They don't have
cleanup equipment. In CTAC or from Bureau of Justice
Assistance, these mobile labs are very expensive.
What is happening is we are freelancing in the
appropriations process. I, for 2 straight years, have gotten
money for Indiana that way; Tennessee has gotten money for
their State; Hawaii has gotten money for their State. What is
happening, because, bluntly put, the administration is not
responding, in my opinion, to what local law enforcement is
asking, individual Members of Congress are freelancing and
earmarking your appropriations.
And we need to look at and listen at the grassroots level;
otherwise, we are going to have chaos in our appropriations
process. With no national drug control plan, we are going to
have individual Members of Congress responding to what they are
hearing from the grassroots level; and that is one thing that
we need to look at in the mix of the equipment and how to do
that.
Does anybody else have anything on the first panel?
Mr. Cummings. I just have two questions.
And I will submit some written questions, gentlemen. I want
to thank you for your testimony.
Mr. Herraiz, do meth addicts present any unique problems
with regard to treatment, being amenable to treatment? Do you
know?
Mr. Herraiz. Methamphetamine?
Mr. Cummings. Addicts. In other words, I am thinking about
treatment. I was just listening to what the chairman was
saying, different ways to try to approach this whole issue. Do
they present any unique problems with regard to being amenable
to treatment? If you know. You may not even know.
Mr. Herraiz. Mr. Chairman, Congressman Cummings, yes. Meth
is highly addictive. And those statistics are available. If you
look at data from CSAP and others, SAMHSA, you will find
statistics that will show that. That is a correct assumption.
Mr. Cummings. The reason why I mention it is because I am
trying to figure out the drug courts and all the things that we
are trying. I am just wondering if we need to look at that. An
maybe the folk coming up will mention something about that. But
I was just trying to figure out whether they are more difficult
to treat. Because I have been a big proponent of treatment. I
just want to make sure that we are doing what we need to be
doing in the area. And I am sure somebody will address that.
Mr. Burns. Congressman, if it is helpful, your
appropriation to the President's Access to Recover Program, a
grant was made to the State of Tennessee, and pursuant to that
grant they are in the process of answering the question that
you just asked. Currently, everything is anecdotal. As I travel
the country, programs are from 7 days to a year and a half.
Mr. Cummings. Thank you all very much.
Ms. McCollum. Mr. Chair, to followup on that, maybe we can,
if you have the time to break this down and out a little more,
have someone in from CDC and NIH. And I just handed Mr.
Cummings two articles. They do not feel that any of the
treatment programs that are currently out there are successful
at all in really addressing hardcore addiction on this.
So what we are doing is we are just recycling them through
the prison population. They come back, more crimes are
committed, and it is a never-ending cycle. That is why, as I
mentioned earlier, law enforcement is starting to see literally
in families three generations of abuse on this. So treatment
and that does become a key thing we need to talk about.
Mr. Souder. Thank you. We have been the only State that has
a 10-year tracking on this. Congressman Case asked us to do a
hearing in Hawaii, because they have the biggest earmark, I
think it was $5 million for meth, in the appropriations process
through Senator Akaka, or I believe, Inouye. And they have
actual data of different types of patterns in meth at their
schools over a 10-year tracking; they have it in treatment
programs as well, and they have one.
We are trying to find even programs that are geared
specifically toward meth treatment, but they are hard to find.
It has been hard, at this point, even to get a hearing cluster
enough together to treat it, but that would be one of our goals
for this coming year. I appreciate your help with that. And it
is a good idea to get CDC and some of the other groups in.
I very much appreciate your patience. We will have
additional written questions for you, and thank you for your
continued work in this field. We have made progress, and we
shouldn't deny that, and marijuana has been fairly dramatic,
which is a precursor drug for all meth users. We have made
progress, and hopefully that will pay off over time. But short-
term we have an exploding problem across the country that is
growing faster than even our statistical ability to keep up
with it in meth, and we need to respond to that. We appreciate
your willingness to come today.
Mr. Rannazzisi. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Souder. With that, could the second panel come forward?
Mr. Lonnie Wright, Sheriff Bundy, Lieutenant Colby, Mr.
Heerens, Dr. Suydam, and Ms. Wagner.
Thank you. We have a new panel to swear in. Could each of
you stand and raise your right hands?
[Witnesses sworn.]
Mr. Souder. Let the record show that each of the witnesses
responded in the affirmative.
We have been joined by our distinguished colleague from the
State of Kansas, who has been very concerned with this issue
for a long period of time, Mr. Moran, and he would like to
personally introduce one of the witnesses, and we will start
with that witness today.
Mr. Moran. Mr. Chairman and Mr. Cummings, thank you very
much for the honor of joining you on the dais today, and I am
here to commend you for your subcommittee's work. I know, as a
Member of Congress from a very rural district, that this is a
significant issue for my constituents, for my State, and, in
fact, I have fought long to bring to the attention of the
administration, as well as Members of Congress, that I think
challenges we face with drugs in this country are often thought
of to be an urban problem. Woefully not true, and particularly
not true with methamphetamine. So I am honored to be here today
to join you and to particularly introduce one of the witnesses
on this panel.
This issue receives significant attention in Kansas. In
1994 we had four meth busts; in 2004 we will have between five
and 600. When our former colleague, Mr. Hutchinson, was at DEA,
he has been to Kansas to meet with law enforcement. I had the
Judiciary Subcommittee on Crime come to Kansas and conduct a
hearing on rural issues related to methamphetamine.
You have before you today one of our experts, our sheriff
from Rice County, KS, Sheriff Bundy. The sheriff is highly
regarded in law enforcement circles in Kansas and has been
actively involved in law enforcement for more than two decades,
and he comes from a county that, in some ways, has a larger
population than many of my other counties, with, I would guess,
a population of around 10,000 people in the entire county. This
is one of my urban sheriffs, and we are delighted to have his
perspective. And I welcome him and thank him for taking the
time in his dedication to the cause to be here today.
And I thank you, Mr. Chairman and Mr. Cummings, for
allowing me to join you.
Mr. Souder. Thank you.
Sheriff, you have the floor.
STATEMENTS OF SHERIFF STEVE BUNDY, RICE COUNTY, KS, SHERIFF'S
DEPARTMENT; LONNIE WRIGHT, DIRECTOR, OKLAHOMA BUREAU OF
NARCOTICS AND DANGEROUS DRUGS; LIEUTENANT GEORGE E. COLBY,
DIVISION COMMANDER/PROJECT DIRECTOR, ALLEN COUNTY DRUG TASK
FORCE, ALLEN COUNTY, IN, SHERIFF'S DEPARTMENT; JOSEPH HEERENS,
SENIOR VICE PRESIDENT, GOVERNMENT AFFAIRS, MARSH SUPERMARKETS,
INC., ON BEHALF OF THE FOOD MARKETING INSTITUTE; DR. LINDA
SUYDAM, PRESIDENT, CONSUMER HEALTHCARE PRODUCTS ASSOCIATION;
AND MARY ANN WAGNER, VICE PRESIDENT, PHARMACY REGULATORY
AFFAIRS, NATIONAL ASSOCIATION OF CHAIN DRUG STORES
Mr. Bundy. Congressman Moran and Chairman Souder, Raking
Member Cummings, and other distinguished members, I am very
happy to be here today, and hope to provide some insight into
some tough decisions you have to make in the near future.
As Congressman Moran stated, I have been in law enforcement
for about two decades in Kansas. I am a certified meth lab
investigator. Matter of fact, I was at a meth lab for 9 hours
right before flying out here to be with you. So I think I might
be able to offer you some insights that may be helpful.
We are a very rural county; we have a population of about
10,000; we are 750 square miles. There is myself and four
officers who provide service for those 10,500 people, which is
representative of about 75 percent of Kansas law enforcement.
And I think if we would look at it even beyond the boundaries
of Kansas, that is not so non-typical for western United States
once you leave this fine area.
We do have a serious methamphetamine problem. One of the
reasons is the very qualities we enjoy is our agricultural
nature, the wide open spaces. The things that are most
appealing to those involved in producing methamphetamine draws
them to our county. We don't have the resources to do a lot
with that, given the five people, so we came up with a program
that is called Meth Watch in Kansas. I may briefly tell you how
that works for us. And it simply was a recognition and an
admission by myself that my resources were overwhelmed with the
problem.
We went to the community and said, we need your help. We
educated the citizens on the very problem with methamphetamine
for our area. And once we had got them to partner with us and
see how large of a problem this was, the very scope of it, how
it affected them and their taxes, and overwhelmed the resources
of law enforcement, that we weren't responding to them in a
timely manner they wished, they were very eager to partner with
us in this battle against methamphetamine.
The next group we brought into that were the retailers. And
the interesting insight to that was that they actually were
calling me, asking what can we do, because we had such
tremendous support from the community, as well as from the
local media, on really detailing, covering all the problems
that we were encountering and just the frequency and the amount
of work we were having to put into methamphetamine
investigations. So retailers came on board very easily and
anxiously, and wanted to partner with us. And the community had
an expectation of those retailers to partner with them and law
enforcement in this very program.
We made cases through that with great regularity. If it is
not just the retailers reporting suspicious transactions or odd
purchases, or they recognize just the very ingredients you have
talked today in the shopping carts coming through the lines, if
they aren't calling, we are getting calls from the citizens of
Kansas that have been trained.
And when they are in line, they notice these shopping carts
behind them, or they will notice the peculiar behavior of a
multitude of individuals coming in and splitting up and buying
these purchases and then lining up in the checkout line. So it
has been very effective for us in Kansas to approach it at the
community level through a very strong education piece that was
only possible by a small grant through the Kansas
Methamphetamine Project of $3,000 is really what initiated this
Meth Watch program. So I don't want you to underestimate the
value of the Federal dollars coming down the State levels, and
from the State level to the local level, and what $3,000 can
be, because it has had a huge impact in my county.
My neighbors to the south, the great State of Oklahoma,
have introduced Schedule V, and I know the early data says that
is working well for them. I know there are some border counties
in Kansas that are reporting an influx of Oklahoma residents
coming up to purchase that, and I hope it works.
I am a little guarded, as you have heard earlier, on that,
because my experience in 20 years, it is very hard to regulate
or legislate addiction; and relocating products, limiting
products, it is still a very hard thing to take away from these
people, because I work with them everyday. Truly, a portion of
every workday is dedicated to methamphetamine work in a county
my size, which hinders the civil process and the jail
operation, and all the other services that a sheriff's office
is forced to provide.
So any tool we can come up with that helps is great. The
grants were great, not only on the education front for the Meth
Watch, but also in my training. I am the only meth investigator
for clandestine labs in our county, which puts me at safety
risk, as well as the citizens to only be able to provide one
officer for that service. And, unfortunately, there has not
been funding available in our State to train any more of my
officers, so I can't partner up with another officer in these
dangerous situations. So I encourage you to expand the grant
portion of your investigation here, because it is critical to
local law enforcement.
You asked earlier about Glowtel. I would very much support
that. We take an anhydrous ammonia theft daily and we recover
anhydrous ammonia in any kind of container imaginable. So
anything you can do to help the rural America on that front
would be greatly appreciated too.
In summary, it is just truly all my life has become is an
officer. When I started in 1979, I was in uniform like this
now. More often than not I look like a spaceman working for
NASA in a suit with breathing apparatus and testing equipment,
things like that. So I would encourage you to listen carefully
today and be very open-minded, and come up with a comprehensive
approach that would assist rural law enforcement. And I would
be happy to answer your questions at the conclusion.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Bundy follows:]
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Mr. Souder. Thank you. And as I earlier stated, all of your
written statements will be submitted in full of any witness.
I want to depart from our normal procedure just a little,
because we have not, in a Washington hearing, had anybody in
detail explain who does it here. We have done it in the field
hearings; we hear it all the time. You said it took you 9
hours. Why did it take you 9 hours?
Mr. Bundy. Because it was a small lab, honestly. There have
been labs that I have been at for 30, 32, 35 hours without a
break, without stopping. It is just the complexity of the
process; the hazards that are left behind that need to be
remediated correctly; to collect new evidence. Most of these
scenes have hundreds of pieces of evidence that have to be
photographed and documented and collected. There are disposal
orders that have to be sought from the judicial system to allow
us to get rid of some evidence that is just too hazardous to
store for trial.
It is just a very large undertaking, and that is even
further complicated by the rural nature of Kansas, in that
oftentimes these sites are 15, 20, 40 miles from other
resources. So when you do get a contracted company to help with
the final disposal of the identified hazards, it just pretty
much eats into an entire day.
Mr. Souder. Well, I thank you for that, because we have
heard testimony across the country that particularly in small,
10,000, up to 80,000 counties, 4 to 9 hours. Mr. Wright told me
out in the hall earlier 12 hours; and Oklahoma has been as
long. You can go out there, your entire drug task force is tied
up, in some counties your entire police force is tied up all
day long. It means nothing else is protected while you are out
there dealing with one tiny lab. And we clearly have to have
some way to kind of look at this problem in a macro way, as
well as in the micro way.
Now I would like to recognize Mr. Lonnie Wright, who is the
director of the Oklahoma Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous
Drugs.
Mr. Wright. Thank you, Chairman Souder, Ranking Member
Cummings, and the rest of the distinguished members here.
I am probably the only guy that will be able to give you
good news today. In Oklahoma we have regulated pseudoephedrine,
and methamphetamine labs have dropped off dramatically. But
before I talk about that and the law, I would like to tell you
why we took such a step as regulating pseudoephedrine and
making it a controlled substance.
Like many other States, in our region, anyway, beginning in
1994, we have seen a steady increase in methamphetamine
laboratories. I think the last few years we have worked over
1200 laboratories. And I know you have discussed
methamphetamine lab reporting. In my opinion, these numbers are
grossly under-reported. I can tell you that in many cases, when
deputies in rural areas encounter boxed labs and trash that is
often dumped by people who manufacture every few days, they
don't wait 19 hours or 12 hours or whatever, they simply dump
it in the trash. So those kind of statistics typically aren't
reported.
We don't see superlabs in Oklahoma; we haven't since the
late 1980's. All we see are addict-operated laboratories. These
laboratories are operated by people who are simply supplying
their own addiction, and that of a few of their close friends.
This is an addiction-based crime that we are encountering, not
an economic-based crime like in years past. These are not
laboratories with giant flasks that look like a chemistry
department at a university like we have seen in the past; these
are a few fruit jars, some coffee filters, and some household
products. And at the onset of this epidemic, I think a lot of
times law enforcement stumbled across these products and didn't
really know that they were in a meth lab. Sometimes it is
difficult for the untrained person to tell.
In Oklahoma we have spent countless millions of dollars. We
have done all the traditional things that we thought were
necessary to treat the symptoms of this problem. But, yet,
every year, as you can see from our graph, those numbers just
go up and up and up, and seem to have no end in sight. Our
jails are full of methamphetamine addicts; our treatment beds
are full; our resources are strained to the hilt. We were
pretty desperate and simply didn't know what to do.
We initially had a 20-to-life sentence for manufacturing
methamphetamine. We had to reduce that in part to accommodate
the vast numbers of people that were apprehended in
methamphetamine laboratories.
One thing that I think is very important to note here, and
it made a difference when we had these sort of hearings in
Oklahoma, for understanding purposes: you don't mix a number of
household products together and get methamphetamine. You start
with pseudoephedrine that is molecularly very similar to
methamphetamine, in fact, it is one O-H molecule different than
methamphetamine. And you use those household products to burn
that O-H molecule off in just a few short hours with this
household apparatus and these products.
In reality, a methamphetamine addict looks at these cold
medications on the shelf like it is methamphetamine, not like
we look at it, as medicine. So that is the single key issue to
focus on if you want to solve the problem. You have to keep
pseudoephedrine out of the hands of those who would simply
convert it in a few hours.
One of the differences, I think, between superlaboratories
and addicts who buy methamphetamine from distribution networks,
and those who manufacture their own is those who purchase it
from distribution networks have to come up with the money. They
are limited somewhat in their addiction and their ability to
get as much methamphetamine as you want. When you can
manufacture methamphetamine in your home for a fraction of the
cost of what it would cost to buy it on the street, you can
have all of it you want and it is basically pure. There is
nothing to limit your addiction. So what we see is these people
that are able to make as much as they want; their addiction
becomes chronic very quickly. This is a terribly addictive
drug, as you well know.
Prolonged chronic addiction leads to something that we have
been told is called the methamphetamine psychosis. A person who
has methamphetamine psychosis is clinically indistinguishable
from a paranoid schizophrenic, as we are told by our medical
experts in Oklahoma. They are, of course, unpredictable, and
violent behavior is often a result of that unpredictability.
In that sense, in the past few years in Oklahoma, with this
epidemic reaching a terrible state, the violence and the
carnage associated with methamphetamine manufacturing and
addiction has really resulted in a public safety problem and an
issue. I think that is one of the reasons that we focus on that
in State and local law enforcement more than maybe Mexican drug
cartels and the like, because it is such a public safety issue.
About a year ago we had an interim study in our
legislature, much as you are holding here, and we brought in
experts from all of the various disciplines to try to
understand this. One thing was clear: what we were doing simply
wasn't working. We basically, in essence, concluded that as
long as methamphetamine addicts have access to pseudoephedrine,
there won't be any diminution of methamphetamine labs, the mom-
and-pop type labs that we are talking about. Our challenge,
what we became: How do you keep pseudoephedrine out of the
hands of those who would turn it into methamphetamine in a few
short hours, while not restricting access to those who have
nasal congestion? Pseudoephedrine is a nasal congestion
medicine. We came up with the only solution we could, and that
was to regulate it.
What we did in Oklahoma, to make a long story short, we
regulated all pseudoephedrine as a Schedule V controlled
dangerous substance. We moved those starch-based tablets and
hard gel caps behind the counter at the pharmacy. Those are the
products that we see in methamphetamine laboratories. We
require customers to show a photo identification and to sign a
log book. We limit sales to nine grams of pseudoephedrine per
running 30-day period. We ask individual pharmacists to look at
that log book and not sell individuals more than that nine
grams.
And we are presently, pursuant to a COPS grant we are very
grateful for, developing an online, State-wide, realtime log
book that would enable pharmacists to access that data and know
whether or not that person had purchased more than the nine
grams in that 30-day period, thus having the ability to limit
that and not let people have more pseudoephedrine than is
necessary.
We made exceptions. We exempted products that we have not
seen in methamphetamine laboratories that contain
pseudoephedrine. Those products are the squishy liquid-filled
gel caps--we haven't encountered that--and all of the syrups.
In total, the products that we moved behind the counter,
say at a typical Walgreen's store, would be about 100 products,
including their Equate brands. So this was really a quite
doable deal.
Our legislature passed this idea on April 7th of this year.
The only opposition we had after great State-wide debate was
the industry; and they opposed it. The citizens of the State of
Oklahoma were pretty much tired of methamphetamine and problems
associated with it, and I believe supported it. I have heard
very few complaints from anyone, and we think that it is quite
reasonable to have a minor inconvenience to treat nasal
congestion, compared to the carnage that is associated with
continued methamphetamine addiction.
As you will note, and others here agree, these are
preliminary numbers that we are seeing. But just
instantaneously, the number of methamphetamine laboratories
submitted to our State's crime laboratories dropped off by
about 50 percent, and have steadily continued to drop in the
months following.
For example, our 27 drug task forces that are Byrne funded
and very important, by the way, around the State do the lion's
share of methamphetamine laboratory investigations. In 2003
they averaged 92.4 meth labs per month; they presently, as of
August, reported 32 meth labs. That is about a 65 percent
reduction. The same sort of reductions have been seen in our
metropolitan areas. The Oklahoma City Police Department numbers
have dropped off from an average of 14.5 per month to I think
September they worked 2 meth labs; I think in October they
worked 4 meth labs. And so on. So we are real encouraged by
this.
The bottom line is if these addicts can't have access to
unlimited supplies of pseudoephedrine, they can't manufacture
methamphetamine. You cannot manufacture that without having
pseudoephedrine. The key to what you are trying to accomplish
here is how do you keep that out of the addicts' hands.
If I could say, there is a lot of anecdotal information.
Mr. Souder. You need to conclude. We have given you
generous time here.
Mr. Wright. Sir?
Mr. Souder. Make a concluding statement, because we have a
5-minute clock, and I have let you about double that.
Mr. Wright. OK. I am basically finished, and I apologize,
sir.
We are looking at where pseudoephedrine presently comes
from. Obviously it is coming from adjacent States and areas
close to the border. We see people going from pharmacy to
pharmacy, signing the log, and that is called smurfing. We hope
to close that gap. And we have a few pharmacies that are yet to
become compliant. So we are real excited about our results. And
all these Federal programs you have talked about here,
particularly Byrne and COPS, are very valuable to us.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Wright follows:]
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Mr. Souder. Well, thank you. And I wanted to make sure you
had a full description of the program in, because we probably
had five hearings in the country now and description, and
almost everywhere we go Oklahoma's program comes up. So we
needed to have a full and thorough explanation of the Oklahoma
program. And we are going to have a number of witnesses here
who have concerns about how we do this at a Federal level, so I
think that helped lay the groundwork for it.
Lieutenant Colby is from my hometown of Fort Wayne, IN,
which is a city larger than most areas that are affected by
meth, as he states in his written testimony. But he has been
the chief narcotics person in our region for many years, and
not only has the city of Fort Wayne, but coordinates the drug
task force that goes beyond the city.
You have been through crack, you have been through all
different types of narcotic challenges in Fort Wayne, including
just a few years ago we had this boost up in LSD, and things
come and go. This one appears to be different. You have talked
to me before about the importance of the Byrne Grants, about
RISS, and the information network, and I just wondered if you
could share some of your thoughts about what is happening in
Indiana and some of the historical perspective with what we are
looking at here.
Lieutenant Colby. Thank you very much, Chairman Souder, for
asking me to share my views on State and local meth enforcement
today. I commend you on drawing attention to the meth
enforcement challenge by holding this hearing.
We are in the midst of a crisis; last year in Indiana, law
enforcement seized 1,260 clandestine meth labs. The total in
2004 will almost certainly be larger. In fact, just last Friday
the Indiana State Police reported to me the State Police alone
has responded to 973 labs so far this year.
I can tell you that this problem, at the moment, affects
rural areas more than it does affect our larger jurisdictions.
The sky-high costs of taking down and dismantling meth labs is
being carried by agencies with relatively very small budgets.
We have learned to be very efficient in what we do, but we know
we could do better if we had some more resources. To do better,
we need your help.
Alongside the devastating physical impact of meth on
abusers, the saddest aspect of the meth problem is the so-
called drug-endangered children issue. Investigators in Indiana
often encounter children in clan lab sites. We remove these
children from immediate danger and take them to local child
protective agency services to make sure that these children are
tested for the presence of meth and any other toxic chemicals
in their bodies. Parents who subject their children or kids to
these toxic waste sites are being held accountable by the use
of child endangerment laws.
More than other illegal drugs, meth enforcement requires a
high degree of training and specialization for the officers who
deal with it. Many of our officers have received specialized
training and equipment provided by Federal agencies such as
DEA. This training enables us more effectively to size and
dismantle clan labs. We especially appreciate the training on
how to enter operating labs, taking control of the sites and
halting production.
Let me give you an idea of the costs that we have been
bearing in dealing with this problem. Specialized vehicles and
equipment are very necessary to protect officers responding to
hazardous sites and are very expensive. Appropriate training
absolutely is essential, but is time-consuming and expensive.
Waiting for qualified cleanup companies to arrive on the scene
of an active lab takes 2 to 4 hours, during which officers who
are on the payroll clock have to guard the site. They use part
or almost all of a shift responding to just one meth lab. The
real impact is on the bottom line. Hazardous material must be
disposed of under strict government regulations.
Faced with the nature of the meth problem, we cannot afford
to just stand by; we have no choice but to attack the clan
labs. But the costs are enormous. We are left with little
choice but to appeal to our State leaders and you here in
Washington to give us a hand.
Narcotics officers throughout the State of Indiana are
supporting efforts in our State legislature to pass a bill that
would require Indiana retailers to demand photo identification
and signature in a register book in order to purchase over-the-
counter products containing ephedrine and pseudoephedrine. I
can tell you that we have closely watched the efforts of the
State of Oklahoma, and we are aware that meth lab seizures are
down about 50 percent from a year ago. We think that something
can be learned from this lesson.
I believe that based on the experience from States moving
ahead with proposals that place common-sense restrictions on
how certain products are sold, stored, and displayed can cause
a significant upset in clan lab meth production. I think you
should consider a Federal law that addresses these issues. You
just might cause a real disruption in meth production at the
small town mom-and-pop labs that are plaguing rural America.
As a drug task force commander in Indiana, I can tell you
that funding that comes from the Edward Byrne Memorial Formula
Grant Program is critical in helping us tackle the meth
problem. I know there are proposals to change the Byrne
program, but I want to strongly urge you, Mr. Chairman, to
fight to preserve the focus on Byrne and on Drug Enforcement
efforts. Task force operations that Byrne funds are absolutely
essential and effective pieces of overall illegal drug
enforcement strategies. As echoed by the National Narcotics
Officers Association's Coalition and the Indiana Drug
Enforcement Association, Byrne Formula grants must continue,
and the focus must remain on drug enforcement activities.
Providing the means for police officers across the United
States to work in multi-jurisdictional drug task forces has
created thousands of drug-related intelligence leads, gang-
related intelligence, and huge numbers of arrests.
Neighborhoods are safer because of these efforts. In Indiana
alone, we have 34 drug task forces funded by Byrne and a task
force of over 200 full-time narcotics officers. State and local
enforcement spends billions every year on drug enforcement, but
the funding provided by Byrne is the magnet that attracts
different agencies to give them incentives to cooperate.
In the meth investigations, we found that importation for
methamphetamine from superlabs located outside the United
States is a major problem. As local law enforcement, we fully
support the Federal anti-drug trafficking efforts of the
southwest border. We also understand that California is a very
significant source of meth production in huge superlabs.
Because of a lot of the meth that makes its way to Indiana, we
support these efforts to halt major production and trafficking
activities.
Effective methamphetamine enforcement means a strong
support for training and equipment, but it also means
reinforcing task force cooperation throughout the Byrne
program, it means robust funding for programs such as the
Regional Information Sharing System [RISS] that dramatically
improve cooperative efforts, and the specialized meth training
provided through the program such as the Center for Drug Task
Force Training. RISS is the information-sharing intelligence
highway that is available to thousands of enforcement agencies
across the country. This program has proven effective over many
of the years and the investment as a result of the cooperation
of more effective enforcement.
The State of Indiana established the Methamphetamine Abuse
Task Force, of which a copy is attached to my testimony for
your review. This Task Force was organized in July 2004 and
represents law enforcement agencies, youth services, and family
and social services.
As law enforcement officers, we are sworn to protect the
citizens. As we continue to fight the growth in meth abuse and
production, strong Federal support for meth enforcement,
training, and equipment is absolutely critical. By now most of
the people understand the meth problem, but we in law
enforcement know what it takes to make real progress against
it.
Thank you, Chairman Souder, for seeking our input, and I
look forward to continuing to provide any guidance you and your
staff needs. Thank you.
[The prepared statement of Lieutenant Colby follows:]
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Mr. Souder. Thank you.
As we tackle this difficult issue, as we have done in a
couple of other hearings, it is important we hear what impact
it has on others as well. Not everybody, in fact a very small
percent, who use pseudoephedrine are in fact drug addicts. And
our first witness in this group is Mr. Joseph Heerens, Senior
Vice President of Government Affairs for Marsh Supermarkets, on
behalf of the Food Marketing Institute, another Hoosier, and
representing a Hoosier firm that is a long-time family grocery
business that has expanded across the State of Indiana.
Mr. Heerens. Mr. Chairman and members of the subcommittee,
I am Joseph R. Heerens. I am the Senior Vice President of
Government Affairs for Marsh Supermarkets, headquartered in
Indianapolis, IN. My statement today is on behalf of Marsh
Supermarkets and the Food Marketing Institute.
To effectively combat the illegal diversion of chemical
precursors, we need a comprehensive strategy and partnership
between law enforcement, our regulatory agencies,
manufacturers, and the retail community. But we have serious
concerns about imposing stringent controls on precursor
chemicals at the retail level. I am specifically referring to
the Oklahoma law that relegates cough and cold products to
Schedule V status.
Under the Oklahoma model, only stores that have a pharmacy
department are allowed to sell these products, and these
products must be kept behind the pharmacy counter. For our
industry, a Schedule V approach is very troublesome. That is
because an overwhelming majority of grocery stores in the
United States do not have a pharmacy department. For example,
my company currently operates approximately 120 supermarkets in
Indiana and Ohio, but only 46 of them have a pharmacy
department.
Therefore, under the Oklahoma model, more than 60 percent
of our stores could not sell pseudoephedrine products that our
customers expect us to carry to meet their shopping needs. At
the national level, 79 percent of grocery stores do not have an
in-store pharmacy. In other words, four out of every five
grocery stores in the United States would be taken, in large
part, out of the cough and cold business.
Of our 46 stores with pharmacy departments, store hours are
quite different from hours of operation in the pharmacy
department. Most of our stores are open 24 hours to serve our
customers who shop at all hours of the day and night. In
comparison, our pharmacy departments are typically open less
than 12 hours on weekdays and less than 8 hours on weekends.
Therefore, even if the store is open for business, if the
pharmacy department is closed or if the pharmacist is not on
duty, sales of cough and cold products would not be permitted
and our customers would have to shop elsewhere to meet their
needs in this respect. This causes us great concern.
A Schedule V approach would also present a number of
operational challenges for pharmacy departments in grocery
stores. For example, the average Marsh Supermarket typically
carries on its retail shelves more than 150 types of cough and
cold products. If we have to keep these products behind the
pharmacy counter, my company would likely have to reduce the
number of these products to no more than a few dozen. This is
due to space limitations in the existing pharmacy departments.
As such, Schedule V classification would mean less choice for
our customers, as well as dramatically reduced customer access.
It is also likely that Schedule V would force my company to
spend a lot of money on construction to reconfigure our store
layouts to make the pharmacy departments larger in order to
facilitate new work flow and to accommodate the relocation and
placement of these products behind the pharmacy counter.
Additionally, Schedule V restrictions raise quality-of-care
issues for our pharmacy operations. Under Schedule V, only the
pharmacist or the pharmacy technician would be permitted to
sell these products, which means less time for them to carry
out their primary professional duties of preparing and
dispensing prescriptions and consulting with customers about
the safe and effective use of their prescription medications.
Schedule V poses problems for supermarket companies and
their customers who have a legitimate need for these products
in order to treat their coughs and colds. There would be
reduced customer access and customer inconvenience because
their local grocery store, which they shop more than two times
each week, would not be allowed to sell these products, or, if
it contained a pharmacy department, would be allowed to sell
these products, but only behind the pharmacy counter.
Schedule V may also mean higher prices because sales will
be restricted and the pharmacist would be required to ask for
photo ID and have the customer sign a written log.
Finally, Schedule V could not come at a more inopportune
time, with the current flu vaccine shortages here in the United
States.
The supermarket industry applauds the work of the law
enforcement community in its efforts against methamphetamine,
but we do not believe Schedule V is the right solution.
Instead, we advocate for a more comprehensive approach for
reducing methamphetamine production, trafficking, and abuse.
In this regard, the supermarket industry strongly supports
the following initiatives: first, elimination of the blister
pack exemption; second, a national uniformity threshold sales
limit of six grams; third, greater regulatory authority,
controls, tracking and quota limits over imports and the sale
of bulk chemicals of ephedrine and pseudoephedrine; fourth, a
ban on Internet sales of precursor chemicals; fifth, promotion
and funding of educational training programs for store
employees concerning suspicious pseudoephedrine purchases
(i.e., the Meth Watch program); sixth, stiffer penalties for
the manufacturing, distribution, and possession of
methamphetamine; and, seventh, greater Federal regulatory
authority, including licensing and inspection at the
distributor level, especially secondary wholesalers.
Mr. Chairman, this concludes my statement, and thank you
for allowing me to participate in this important hearing.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Heerens follows:]
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Mr. Souder. Thank you very much.
Our next witness is Dr. Linda Suydam, president of the
Consumer Healthcare Products Association. Thank you for coming
today.
Ms. Suydam. Thank you. Chairman Souder and Ranking Member
Cummings, thank you for the opportunity to testify before the
subcommittee today.
I am Linda Suydam. I am president of the Consumer
Healthcare Products Association, a 123-year-old trade
association representing the manufacturers of over-the-counter
medicines and nutritional supplements.
Methamphetamine is a serious problem that plagues entire
communities. And as we have heard in earlier testimony today,
pseudoephedrine is a necessary ingredient in its manufacture.
CHPA is deeply concerned that safe and effective medicines
that are purchased by millions of consumers each year to treat
symptoms of colds, allergies, asthma, and the flu are being
diverted to manufacture meth in small clandestine labs. We are
committed to the need for strong action to prevent the
diversion of these important medicines to the illegal
manufacture of methamphetamine.
According to the DEA, these small clandestine labs account
for about 20 percent of the meth supply in this country. Yet,
that small number causes significant problems for communities.
We believe, however, that the only way to significantly address
the meth production and abuse is through a multifaceted
approach that empowers communities to deal with all aspects of
the problem.
We encourage tough comprehensive measures to attack the
meth problem at every level of its manufacture and abuse,
including limiting the number of packages a consumer can
purchase at one time; enacting severe penalties for those
manufacturing and selling meth, especially those endangering
children; strengthening law enforcement resources and providing
them with the tools to take action against the major
traffickers who fuel the meth supply and, as well, the meth
cooks who threaten the safety of communities; and we need more
programs focusing on prevention and education like Meth Watch.
Mr. Chairman, we know you support Meth Watch, and we
applaud the introduction of your bill, which would authorize
Federal funding for this effective program. Implementation of
Meth Watch has resulted in a dramatic reduction in theft of
products used to make meth. It is now established in nine
States, and more are on the way.
Comprehensive efforts are working in other States facing
this epidemic. According to EPIC data, meth lab busts have
decreased since 2001 in Washington, Oregon, and Kansas, all of
which have Meth Watch programs in place. And California has
seen a dramatic reduction in labs due to an aggressive system
of tracking and monitoring of meth precursors, mandatory
registration of wholesalers and distributors, retail sales
restrictions, and aggressive law enforcement and prosecution.
These proven approaches should be adopted by all 50 States.
At the Federal level, we need to put more resources into
stopping the demand for methamphetamine and stopping meth from
coming into this country. The ONDCP recently issued a plan to
address meth. CHPA applauds the administration for the
development of that plan, and we agree with many of its
recommendations.
All of these efforts are encouraging and will help reduce
the meth problem in our communities. It is imperative that we
work together toward achieving the same goal. Some, however,
are now calling for a different approach. They propose to make
pseudoephedrine a Schedule V drug. At first glance, putting
these medications behind the counter might sound sensible, but
before we embrace a single-step approach that ignores the
totality of this abuse problem, and restricts access for
consumers who need these medicines, we need to make sure that
it is truly an effective solution. We believe it is not.
Like everyone who has testified here today, I believe that
any decrease in meth lab busts is commendable. The OBN lab
numbers are important if they continue to go down, but the
Oklahoma law has only been in effect for a few months, and
there are conflicting statistics that indicate it is too early
to draw sweeping conclusions. Compared with the concrete data
that indicates significant lab reductions in Kansas,
Washington, Oregon, and California, it begs the question on the
effectiveness of the Oklahoma approach and the long-term
effectiveness on reducing meth use in general.
Over-the-counter medicines remain important to our
healthcare system. A recent study by Northwestern University
concluded that OTC cough and cold medicines saves the U.S.
economy and our healthcare system almost $5 billion a year.
Furthermore, OTC medicines serve a critical public health need,
a fact that will likely be drawn into sharp focus given the flu
vaccine shortage this year.
In conclusion, Mr. Chairman, as great as it might sound,
there is no quick fix to this complex problem. We must take a
comprehensive approach that works, not half measures that have
a greater impact on sick kids, caregivers, and flu sufferers
than on criminals. We must all work together with all the
resources that are available to us. We look forward to working
with you and continuing our efforts to fight methamphetamine at
every level. Thank you.
[The prepared statement of Ms. Suydam follows:]
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Mr. Souder. Thank you very much.
Our cleanup witness, so to speak, would be Ms. Mary Ann
Wagner, vice president of the Pharmacy Regulatory Affairs,
National Association of Chain Drug Stores.
Ms. Wagner. Good morning, Chairman Souder and Ranking
Member Cummings. My name is Mary Ann Wagner, and I am Vice
President of Pharmacy Regulatory Affairs at NACDS. I am a
pharmacist licensed in the State of Indiana. I think I am the
third Hoosier up here on the panel. I served as a member of the
Indiana Board of Pharmacy from 1988 to 1996.
NACDS commends Chairman Souder for his leadership in
addressing the methamphetamine problem. We appreciate the
opportunity to testify today before this committee as you
examine ways the Federal Government can assist law enforcement
in the fight against methamphetamine.
Our membership consists of more than 200 chain community
pharmacy companies operating over 33,000 pharmacies.
Collectively, chain pharmacy comprises the largest component of
pharmacy practice, with over 100,000 pharmacists. Our
pharmacies fill over 70 percent of the 3 billion prescriptions
dispensed annually in the United States.
Our membership is deeply concerned about the problems of
methamphetamine production and abuse. We have ongoing calls and
meetings to discuss this issue and to develop solutions to this
devastating problem in our country. The majority of our members
have taken voluntary proactive steps that go beyond what is
required by their State laws to reduce the theft and
illegitimate use of pseudoephedrine products. Among other
things, they have initiated voluntary sales limits of these
products, participate in voluntary education and theft
deterrent programs like Meth Watch, train their employees on
methamphetamine abuse, and work with law enforcement by
reporting suspicious activity in their stores.
We want to continue to work with DEA and law enforcement to
reduce the illicit meth production in the United States, but we
also want to balance those efforts with our ability to provide
access to OTC products for legitimate consumers and to optimize
the skills of pharmacists and the pharmacy staff that our
members employ.
The new Oklahoma law is not only operationally difficult
for our members to comply with, but we also have some very
serious concerns as to why the law appears to be reducing the
clandestine labs in the State, when in fact the same results
could be accomplished without the extreme measures that were
taken in Oklahoma. Since other States are now looking to
Oklahoma and Schedule V as the model, we appreciate the
opportunity to State our reasons why we question the
effectiveness of the Oklahoma law and oppose making
pseudoephedrine a Schedule V controlled substance.
First, we have found no reliable statistics or data to
support the statements that the law has been successful or is
the optimal approach. For this reason, we are pursuing
independent verification of the anecdotal statistics that
appear to point to a reduction in methamphetamine labs.
Second, under the law in Oklahoma, those who have been
arrested for methamphetamine-related crimes must appear before
a magistrate, judge, or court, who are likely to deny bond. Had
this law been in effect a year ago, the addict who killed the
State trooper there would have been behind bars, rather than
back on the streets to commit a senseless killing.
Third, we are concerned about the effect that classifying
pseudoephedrine as a Schedule V controlled substance would have
on the practice of pharmacy and the services that we provide.
Requiring pharmacists to perform the duties of a sales clerk
would not be an efficient use of their time, training, or
knowledge. Time spent tracking cold medicine sales is time not
spent practicing pharmacy.
We believe that any benefits achieved under the Oklahoma
law could be replicated in other States without the unnecessary
burdens of Schedule V requirements. Registration of non-
pharmacy retailers who sell pseudoephedrine products would
drastically reduce the caseloads of product being sold at the
back doors of rogue convenient stores and gas stations.
Raising barriers for consumers to access pseudoephedrine
products is a short-term solution to a long-term problem. The
methamphetamine problem in this country goes beyond toxic lab
investigation and cleanup. And we don't mean to minimize the
seriousness of the problems these labs pose for law enforcement
and the communities affected; however, we must also pursue
long-term solutions to the methamphetamine problem that reduce
the demand for illicit substances.
So, in conclusion, if the Federal Government is serious
about reducing the methamphetamine problem, we would recommend
a number of opportunities be explored, some of which are: stiff
penalties for those arrested or convicted of methamphetamine-
related offenses; encouraging States to register non-pharmacy
retailers that sell pseudoephedrine products; significantly
increasing funding for methamphetamine abuse, prevention, and
treatment programs; working with the State Department and
officials in chemical-producing countries to more closely track
every sale of pseudoephedrine into the United States; providing
incentives for drug companies to develop an effective
decongestant that cannot be converted into methamphetamine;
providing more funding and resources to DEA for enforcement
activities and to local law enforcement for lab cleanup.
Mr. Chairman, this concludes my testimony. We thank you for
the opportunity to participate in this hearing, and we look
forward to working with all present today to find effective
solutions to the methamphetamine problem. We look forward to
sharing with you the research and data that we are pursuing in
the hope of providing further evidence to help us develop
meaningful solutions for addressing these problems.
[The prepared statement of Ms. Wagner follows:]
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Mr. Souder. First, I want to thank everybody for their
testimony, and since this is narcotics enforcement, and
arguably one of the hottest debates that is occurring at the
State and Federal level, it is really helpful to have all of
you on the same panel. Too often we have disconnects; we hear
something on one side and hear something on the other side, and
you go to one place and go that sounds really good, and you go
somewhere else and that sounds really good. This gives us a
chance for a little extended discussion.
I have some other questions beyond this for this panel, but
let me plunge right into this.
Mr. Wright, clearly, you heard these discussions in
Oklahoma as you went through the law. There were a whole range
of concerns, from pharmacy hours and the impact on the grocery
store to pharmacists being professionals. Let me just stick
with those for a start here.
Did you look at treating this more like cigarettes, where
it would be behind the counter, but not have to be a pharmacy,
and somebody might have to show a license and be limited in the
quantity they buy, as opposed to treating it as a Schedule V
and putting it in a pharmacy?
Mr. Wright. Yes, sir, that was discussed, but not seriously
considered. We already have an industry and an institution in
Oklahoma, that is the pharmacy, where we regulate drugs. All
drugs and pharmacies are regulated by government because of
some sort of need. We thought that pseudoephedrine belonged in
a pharmacy.
Mr. Souder. Did you hear, when you were developing the law,
the concerns from the grocery stores and from the pharmacists,
as well as the pharmaceutical companies?
Mr. Wright. No, sir, we didn't hear so much from the
retailers in Oklahoma. Initially they were a little bit
concerned, but we had a number of instances where independent
convenient store operators were making as much as $70,000 in a
6-month period, when they made $5,000 selling Coca Cola
products. Some of those stores are clearly making an awful lot
of money selling pseudoephedrine to methamphetamine addicts. We
don't regulate those people, and it appeared to us to be very
difficult to do that.
Mr. Souder. Mr. Heerens, compared to a small one-person
convenient store or grocery store, your firm would be huge;
compared to some other supermarket chains, you are small. In
looking at the challenge here, we heard from a representative
at the hearing in Hawaii that was very concerned because there
they have lots of small towns and, by definition, every
pharmacy and grocery store is small; they don't even have
scanners.
At the same time, in Indiana, one of the problems we see
with pseudoephedrine and ephedrine precursors, we have even
seen at least one case in my district of somebody getting a
pharmacy license predominantly to be able to deal with biker
gangs; and that much of like what we see and just heard about
Oklahoma is coming from a lot of wherever they see a
vulnerability, they will go and hit that store.
How do you respond, specifically, to what Mr. Wright said,
that in fact it is undeniable that there are certain places
where they are loading up?
Mr. Heerens. No, there is no question it is a serious
problem, and Indiana does have a problem like many States. We
had, this summer, in July 2004, the creation of the Meth Abuse
Task Force, which is making recommendations to the Indiana
General Assembly, many of the recommendations that have been
discussed at this table today. But I think, as you have heard,
I know I was encouraged to hear what Sheriff Bundy had to say
because he said that the retail community in his State was very
cooperative.
As we have become familiar, especially over the last year,
of a serious problem in Indiana, our community, the retail
community is stepping up and trying to be a part of the
solution, and one of the things we have been talking about an
organization in Indiana called the Indiana Retail Council,
which is a trade organization for retailers--we talked about
this actually last month, as well as earlier this week--is what
can we do to try to have a positive impact; and you have heard
some of the things that we have outlined: elimination of the
blister pack, limiting the amount of products to six grams,
maybe stronger sentencing. Those are some of the things that we
think will make a difference here, constructive, positive
steps, but not drastic steps that may not be warranted.
But in terms of rural areas, in terms of specific pockets
of problems, I am not sure. In the State of Indiana, as you
know, it is mostly an agricultural State with few large cities.
In terms of dealing with pockets or I think you talked about a
license in the biker gangs, I am not sure what the solution to
that is except enforcement of the law once that becomes known
and putting those kind of people out of business. And then in
Indiana one of the things that I think is coming is, again, a
limitation on the amount that you can buy, two or three
products per transaction, as well as elimination of the blister
pack and some other things.
Mr. Souder. I think you also have in your recommendations
with wholesalers?
Mr. Heerens. Yes.
Mr. Souder. How do you see that? Rather than ask you that
question, Mr. Wright, do you believe this problem could be
addressed by wholesalers looking at unusual quantities going
out of proportion, like the person that said they were selling
more than Coca Cola? How much of an auditing problem is that?
Mr. Wright. That is a tremendous problem for us when it is
widespread, and it apparently is. And also I might add that I
don't think three-pack-per limits work. We have that self-
imposed by Walmart in Oklahoma. We have videotape after
videotape where people get out of a car, four or five of them,
they all go buy three packs, they go back to the car, they go
buy three more packs, they come back, they go to some other
Walmart, they are doing the same thing. We really work just
trying to keep pseudoephedrine out of the manufacturers' hands,
and we don't think that is a viable solution.
Mr. Souder. Can they do that through a Schedule V drug by
going to different pharmacies?
Mr. Wright. Right now they can, but when we implement our
Statewide computer system that will authorize those threshold
limits, they won't be able to do that. And as we speak,
pharmacies in small communities particularly are networking
with each other and showing their log books to law enforcement
or comparing names to see who is presently trying to purchase
more than the nine gram limits, so we are making some arrests
already.
Mr. Souder. Have you seen anything move to internet?
Mr. Wright. No, I have not.
Mr. Souder. Mr. Cummings.
Mr. Cummings. I am so glad that we had both. I agree with
the chairman. I was feeling pretty good about you for a while
there, Mr. Wright. Then these folks came along and it just was
a clash, because I can see both sides of the issue. So when I
look at Mr. Heerens' recommendations, I was trying to figure
out what can we do to try to, at the same time, maintain the
convenience for customers for you, Ms. Wagner and you, Ms.
Suydam, but at the same time deal with the problem.
And as I was listening to all of you, I can understand why
you all may have had the success that you had in getting this
passed, and not so much opposition. Part of it is what Mr.
Heerens said, that is, that they are figuring out what happened
and they see the effect.
The other part of it is that probably the problem was so
overwhelming in your jurisdiction that people said, well, we
don't care about the convenience, we would rather deal with the
problem. I am just guessing. But now we are at a point where,
in some kind of way, we are trying to find a solution to this
problem. We usually don't have this kind of exchange, so I have
to take advantage of it.
You have heard the arguments here. What is your response to
that? You understand what they are saying.
Mr. Wright. Yes, sir.
Mr. Cummings. And it is reasonable. Do you agree?
Mr. Wright. I don't think that it is.
Mr. Cummings. You don't think it is reasonable?
Mr. Wright. No, sir.
Mr. Cummings. OK, why don't you go ahead?
Mr. Wright. I have been a policeman for 25 years. I go back
into those phenylacetic acid laboratories. I have seen the
carnage associated with the abuse of methamphetamine, and you
clearly understand it. What we are really weighing here is
treating the sniffles versus solving this problem, in my
opinion. As a police officer, personally speaking, I would
rather solve the problem at minor inconvenience to people with
nasal congestion. I think it is a very good trade. The people
of Oklahoma seem to think so.
Mr. Cummings. Sheriff Bundy, the Meth Watch program, as I
listened to you, I just tried to think like these manufacturers
think. First of all, they understand that it is truly a thin
blue line. And if a person is a manufacturer knowing there is a
thin blue line, and it is even thinner in rural areas, it seems
as if they would say to themselves, well, this is a situation
where we probably have more of an opportunity to get away with
it. I am not saying that is true, but that is what they may
conclude.
Mr. Bundy. It is true. That fact is just really enhanced by
the truth that we don't have 24-hour police patrol; we are
abutted by more urban areas. Rural counties are attractive to
these individuals for all those very reasons, and the honest
answer is, yes, more often than not they are able to come to
rural areas of America and get away with it.
Mr. Cummings. And then when I hear you go into a small lab
for 9 hours, the overwhelming nature of that on a small police
force has to be just absolutely devastating. We are all
reasonable people, and I am just trying to figure you all
listened to Mr. Heerens--I don't know why I can't pronounce
your name.
Mr. Heerens. Nobody can.
Mr. Cummings. Oh, OK, good. I feel better now.
You heard his suggestions and you heard Ms. Wagner and Dr.
Suydam, and I understand what you said, Officer Wright, and I
respect that. I support police officers. I really do, because I
know how important your job is. So how do we now, with all of
this, come up with--I mean, you heard the suggestions.
I mean, what is reasonable? What do you all suggest we do,
hearing everything that you have heard, I mean from my police
side? Because these arguments are going to be made, I can tell
you; I can hear them. They were, by the way, extremely well
done, both sides extremely well done. We have two major
problems, and I guess it all depends on who is observing.
One may feel like one problem is worse than the other and
far outweighs the other, so we have a certain solution; then
there is the other side. So where is the middle? What do you
see that we could do to try to meet all of your hopes and
dreams that we deal with this problem, but at the same time not
inconvenience folks to the degree that it might be
unreasonable?
I know where you stand, Mr. Wright.
Sheriff.
Mr. Bundy. I believe there are a lot of pieces that have to
come together, and I think there can be some very productive
partnerships formed from law enforcement, from retailers, to
communities. I think everybody is coming to a greater
appreciation of the scope of this problem, and we recognize it
as being a true problem.
And the Oklahoma approach is working for Oklahoma; it may
work other places. Something of a smaller scale may work other
places. I don't know the answer any better than you do, I
guess, or anyone here at the panel, but it is my belief and my
experience after all these years, and just the countless cases,
there is going to have to be a partnership that involves the
community and law enforcement and retailers that all play a big
role in this comes together to formulate a workable solution
that we can all be happy with.
Mr. Souder. Just for the record, I come from a small town
of 700, but it is in a big county. The smallest county I
represent is about 40,000 people. You said your county had
10,000 in it total?
Mr. Bundy. Yes, sir.
Mr. Souder. Is it a somewhat unique situation in a sense?
Do you have much mobility in and out of the county? I mean, do
you pretty much know everybody in the county?
Mr. Bundy. Yes.
Mr. Souder. So it becomes a little bit easier challenge to
work with a grocery store or a pharmacy where you know
everybody. Is that fair to say?
Mr. Bundy. That is the tremendous strength in programs such
as Meth Watch, yes. A long time ago I remember, early in my
career, a sheriff from Wichita, which is our urban area in
Kansas, talking about how the best way to really solve problems
starts just like that, it is a neighbor-to-neighbor thing and
then it is a block-to-block thing, and then it goes from
community-to-community to encompass the county was the story he
related.
And that is very much how it does work and that is my
experience, that I have to sell the neighborhoods on it, then
they sell the blocks, and then the blocks the communities, the
communities the counties, and the counties the States, and
right up the chain to where we really come up with some
tremendous solutions. But that is the grassroots approach I
take with problems. In this instance it has proven to be really
effective in trying to manage our methamphetamine problem.
Mr. Cummings. You know, Mr. Chairman, I am a lawyer, and
before I came here I practiced for about 19 years in a small
practice, but the way most people got caught in criminal
situations is somebody told on them, or else they told on
themselves. And I was just thinking we have to maximize that
cooperation. I guess the Meth Watch program aims at doing that.
And I was thinking about the drug-free communities piece. Maybe
we need to look at that and see.
I just have to go back and look at it, whether there are
things that we can do to enhance that to help some of this
prevention and addressing these community needs, because we
have to, sheriff, going back to what you just said, we almost
have to try to do everything in our power to do this almost by
community by community. And perhaps having the drug stores and
others who may sell these products help us in any way that they
can to try to address this problem.
You know, Martin Luther King, Jr. said you cannot lead
where you do not go, and you cannot teach what you don't know.
That is why I appreciate what the law enforcement side said so
much, because I know that when you see the carnage, when you
see the jails filled, it is like this is what you have to deal
with everyday. And I guess after you have seen it, Sheriff
Bundy, for 20 years plus, and then you see generation after
generation, you say, well, I've got to do--and I don't want you
to give up.
And I am just imaging somebody sitting right now, watching
this on C-SPAN and saying, OK, let us go and do this, because
there is this thin blue line. So I just think we have to figure
out a way. We in the Congress have to just try to figure out
how we can empower communities more and at the same time try to
bring folks together, both the retailers and others who may
have a problem with some of these solutions, and you all so
that we can lift our whole communities up, because we can't
just sit here. I am not saying that we are not doing things,
because we have already heard the testimony, but I just can't
believe that we can't do more. So I just don't believe it.
So anybody may want to comment, and then I will be
finished.
Ms. Wagner. You are absolutely right, we need to do more.
Two of the suggestions that we made I think are something that
could be done quite easily and would make a difference. One is
limiting or eliminating the blister pack rule as it stands
today, and starting sales limits within retail stores. But even
more than that, limiting the number of stores that carry the
products. Right now all pharmacies are licensed by their State
board of pharmacy. They know who those pharmacies are, they go
out, they regularly inspect them. When it comes to selling this
particular product, we find it in convenience stores, in gas
stations, and that is where some of the real problems are
happening.
We don't necessarily believe in limiting stores that can
carry it, but at least if they are not licensed by the board of
pharmacy, let them register so that some entity in the State
knows who is selling it and can go and inspect those premises,
look at their invoices, look at their records. Right now there
is no one body overseeing the non-pharmacy retailers, and that
is something that could be done quite easily, quite quickly,
and it would at least give us more knowledge of where these
problems are occurring.
Mr. Cummings. Does that hurt you, Mr. Heerens?
Mr. Heerens. I don't believe it does. I happen to think
that is probably a good idea.
Mr. Cummings. So that still would allow Marsh to--you said
a large percentage of your stores don't have a pharmacy.
Mr. Heerens. Right.
Mr. Cummings. So products that would fall under that
category, in your suggestion, they would have to still register
because they don't have a pharmacy. And the ones that have a
pharmacy, they are already regulated.
Ms. Wagner. Given the opportunity to register. But I would
imagine that the rogue operators aren't going to do that. They
do not want regulators knowing who they are and that they are
selling caseloads out the back door. So this would legitimize
those retailers who carry the product. They could still have it
available for legitimate customers, but at least an entity in
the State would know who and where these people are that are
selling it.
Mr. Cummings. Well, I just want to again thank all of you
for what you are doing. This is a major problem. It is one of
the reasons why I agreed to do this subcommittee, because I see
the pain of drugs everyday. We don't have the methamphetamine
problem in Baltimore too much, where I am from, but no matter
what the drug is, it is just so painful to see how people are
destroyed. So we are going to do the best we can. We want to
work with you.
Mr. Chairman, I hope that we can revisit, a year from now,
Oklahoma's situation. And one of the things, too, that I saw as
a problem, and you alluded to it, Sheriff Bundy, is that when
you have an Oklahoma law, then does that force people into the
next State or surrounding States?
Therefore, what would happen is you would almost have to
have a national law, because then people just move from State
to State to State, and then possibly an adjoining State gets a
bigger problem. I don't know, I am not sure about the answers
to that, but I know that in almost everything else, just like
most States, when they look at something like cigarette tax and
things of that nature, they worry about those things because
they force people into another State.
So I think those are the things that we have to consider.
And the fact is that there is a role for the Federal Government
to play. We want to play our role, but we also want to be
supportive of our States and our locals. So we will give it the
best we can, and we just thank you all very much.
Mr. Souder. Thank you.
Dr. Suydam, do you agree with eliminating the blister pack?
Food Marketing said they did, the Association of Chain Drug
Stores. What is your association position?
Dr. Suydam. Yes, we agree with that as well. In fact, I
agree with all of the points that Ms. Wagner made and Mr.
Heerens. We believe that registration will be an important
factor in limiting sales to the legitimate groceries and to the
legitimate pharmacies, and will get rid of these rogue places
where the product is going out the back door.
But, you know, one other thing we haven't mentioned, Mr.
Chairman, and I know this is a law enforcement hearing, but I
do think we have to focus on prevention as well. And I think we
have done some work with the Partnership for Drug-Free America
that looks at how do you raise awareness about the problem of
methamphetamine addiction and, in fact how you can raise
awareness with parents and with pediatricians and children, to
get people to stop using this, because we have heard from all
the law enforcement people how addictive this drug is and how
you cannot, in many cases, be treated because there is not an
effective treatment.
So we think a major effort needs to be in the prevention
area as well. But we also agree that we need to enforce the
law; we need to strengthen our laws, and we need to make the
other retail restrictions that we have talked about and
registration.
Mr. Souder. I want to comment just briefly on what you
said, because probably 60 percent, at least, of our work is
with narcotics, so we have lots of different things, even
segment further the meth in future hearings. But I want to
touch briefly on the prevention side. I talked to Director
Walters just last Friday about this very subject, about using
some of the ad campaign on meth, but here is our fundamental
problem: there is no meth addict who didn't start with
marijuana, period. We have had multiple testimony around the
country about poly drug use and other things. But if we don't
get hold of the marijuana problem, we don't tackle the meth
problem. And everybody likes to talk about meth, but they don't
want to talk about marijuana.
The fact is that our National Ad Campaign, combined with
other efforts, have reduced marijuana use in the United States
the last 2 years in a row. So guess what Congress is about to
do in its infinite wisdom, and to my great frustration? And the
problem is the ``other body'' as we say here. They are reducing
the National Ad Campaign. We have consistently reduced it now
for 3 straight years. Ranking Member Cummings and myself, along
with Speaker Hastert, have worked, and Chairman Istook has held
a higher number in the House, but we are battling to keep that
program alive.
The Partnership for Drug-Free America does a great job, but
without some of this National Ad Campaign funding, if we
further divide a limited amount of dollars in basic
advertising, which you all know in your industries, if you go
below a certain threshold, you might as well not do the
program, because there is not enough repetitions and enough
penetration of the market. So if we segment this by drugs, we
will lose the momentum we have in one and not get the other one
started. And I am exasperated, and I hope the Speaker succeeds
here in the next 48 hours of getting this dollar amount back
up, or we are in big trouble in our No. 1 prevention program.
Our second big prevention program, Safe and Drug-Free
Schools, has been so watered down in so many districts. They
use it for any after-school program because maybe it will make
the kids think that they are not going to get involved, and it
was supposed to be an anti-drug program.
So when we actually talk about prevention programs in the
United States, we don't have many. Partnership for Drug-Free
America is a great program, the community drug coalitions are,
but we have reduced the thrust of what we have been doing at
this, in spite of this committee's efforts to highlight it.
Now, I have a couple of other specific questions. I
wondered, Mr. Wright, what was your reaction to the licensing
of a lot of these smaller operations? Would they go out if they
were monitored more closely, and would that give us another way
to handle it?
Mr. Wright. I don't really know the answer to that. What we
looked at is we already have a body where we keep drugs that
need to be protected, and that is the pharmacy. It might be
worth exploring.
Mr. Souder. So you basically knocked out convenience stores
and anybody else from being able to sell the type of products
you described if they didn't have a pharmacy.
Mr. Wright. Yes. That still left liquid gel caps and liquid
preparations in the convenience stores. Those are products that
we don't see in methamphetamine laboratories.
Mr. Souder. This is a huge question, and we are talking
about meth today, but we had a hearing in Orlando on OxyContin
and oxycodones; similar argument, similar debate. As DEA
consistently reports, the No. 1 cause of drug deaths in the
United States is legal drugs, and that there is continuing
pressure to try to figure out how to get hold of this. We have
this rash of OxyContin. We picked up the main guy or group in
my area on OxyContin. In Orlando it went through one high
school and killed 10 kids, just like that. How do you balance
that with pain relief? These are huge questions, not just in
the meth precursors.
I want to make sure I get on the record here, Lieuenant
Colby, because we got mostly on this subject, but this hearing
is also dealing with a broader range. Byrne Grants are proposed
to be cut, and I don't believe at the end of the day they will
be cut. Could you describe what would happen if Byrne Grants
were cut, as it relates to you? And I would be interested in
hearing the other law enforcement say that too.
Lieutenant Colby. Certainly. As I said in my statement, we
have 34 drug task force grants in the State of Indiana that are
multi-jurisdictional. This is one of the requirements through
the Indiana Criminal Justice Institute that sends out the Byrne
moneys. One of the problems is one-third of the narcotics
officers in the State of Indiana will be unemployed if the
Byrne Grants go away.
I am personally from a large county of Allen County. We
have 350,000 people in our county. My unit is seven people. It
is our responsibility. Plus, I picked up Huntington County,
Huntington City, and two other counties that work with us on
knocking off meth labs and so on. We don't get involved in
their meth labs as much as they take care of that and we try to
help them take care of their cocaine and crack head problem. So
it is kind of a tit-for-tat thing. Their funds are getting
eaten up because of it. I try to help them out, out of the drug
task force funds.
So the Byrne Grants are doing a multi thing in everybody's
area, and the Indiana Drug Enforcement Officers Association is
saying one of the problems we have with meth is, as officers,
as all of you know, law enforcement officers really don't see a
lot of gray, it is black or white, and you either go to jail or
you don't. And I think that is one of the stances that Oklahoma
took. It is not a patch, it is a fix, and they are getting
results; and it is not tomorrow or a year from now, it is
today. And I think that is one of the big problems that you are
going to see with the battle that you people have,
unfortunately, and I don't have to mess with that.
Mr. Souder. Mr. Wright, could you describe what would
happen if Byrne Grants would go away or get dramatically
reduced?
Mr. Wright. Byrne Grants are essential to Oklahoma. More
than half of the narcotics agents in our State are funded by
Byrne funds. They operate 27 independent drug task forces,
particularly in rural areas. That has been the single group
that has fought this methamphetamine epidemic for the last
decade. Those guys do more meth labs in Oklahoma than anyone
else, and we are going to be in real trouble if we lose Byrne
funding. We lobby for that hard every year.
It also funds a wire intercept project that we have at my
agency. We don't just work meth labs, we work Mexican drug
cartel cell groups that are operative in Oklahoma, and we do
wire tap after wire tap after wire tap on those organizations,
and all of those cases lead back to Mexico. That is also Byrne
funded. We very much appreciate Byrne funding.
Mr. Souder. One of the things that is happening that we
have to watch is that the High Intensity Drug Trafficking
Areas, the HIDTAs, had a very specific goal. That goal was to
work in high-intensity drug trafficking areas to keep the drugs
from getting to other areas.
And as Congressmen figured out and Senators figured out
that they could get HIDTAs in their home area, the HIDTAs
became in some areas like the drug task forces. And as the
HIDTAs proliferate, the support for Byrne Grants has declined
because HIDTAs became the new trend.
And even though some of their functions are the same and
some of them aren't, what is going to happen is if we reduce
the Byrne Grants, we are going to see a demand for HIDTAs
everywhere. HIDTAs, in effect, will merely become a
reconfiguration of the drug task forces, which is starting to
happen in some areas already in the country.
And the whole point of border control high intensity
distribution networks will be undermined and will have
undermined the existing drug task force structure, trying to
reinvent another one because we have a new hot name. And it is
has been interesting because we haven't really looked at that
interrelationship between where the Byrne Grant money is going
and where the HIDTA money is going.
Oklahoma is kind of interesting because don't you have a
new HIDTA?
Mr. Wright. Yes, sir. We are an extension of the North
Texas HIDTA out of Dallas.
Mr. Souder. Which is a relatively low-funded HIDTA, so you
don't have as much pressure.
Mr. Wright. A very low-funded HIDTA.
Mr. Souder. But it is that type of trend, that as that
expands, there will be more attention on that money and trying
to get that money, and we just move it from one to another and
don't get a net in a reconfiguration. So I wanted to make sure
we got onto the record here about the Byrne Grants. And we are
similarly looking at RISS versus EPIC, and so on.
Did you have something, Sheriff Bundy?
Mr. Bundy. Just real quickly about the Byrne Grants. I just
met with the director of the Kansas Bureau of Investigation
last week, and the trend has become that it is the only way
that KBI exists, and 46 percent of that budget is from Federal
funding now. And in a State like ours that is so rural, where
75 percent are representative of me, we don't have narcotics
offices or detectives, we rely on the State agency, being the
KBI, for that type of support for the entire State.
So the elimination of Byrne Grants wouldn't so much impact
narcotics investigations or specialized services, but the most
basic type of services to the citizens of our State would be
impacted that day the Byrne Grants are lessened. It plays a
huge role in rural States, and I would hate for you not to know
of that.
Mr. Souder. Well, I thank you all for your testimony today,
for your participation. We and many other Members of Congress
and the Speaker's drug task force are trying to put together a
package here. We are trying to work with everybody involved as
to how we do this at the national level. We all know that
Internet and international sales complicate all these
questions, so we don't just move it to another place.
We want to work with the industry, we want to work with law
enforcement to make sure that we can try to keep the meth
problem from expanding. While we are focused on this for this
particular task, we are working with the industry as well on
the other over-the-counter legal drugs that are used and abused
by individuals, both for distribution and leading to the death
and destruction of many families and individuals around the
country.
So, once again, thank you again. If there any additional
materials you want to submit, please do so. We will probably
give you some additional followup questions both for the
record, but as we develop the package together, I am sure that
the Narcotics Officers Association, which is a key part of the
support for this committee and represents the people on the
front lines, as well as trying to balance that with fairness
for the people who need legal drugs to relieve their pain and
suffering in many different ways.
Thank you all for participating. With that, the
subcommittee stands adjourned.
[Whereupon, at 1:06 p.m., the subcommittee was adjourned.]
[Additional information submitted for the hearing record
follows:]
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<all>