Mr. MICA. Mr. Speaker, I come to the floor again today, I was here last week, I was here last year, I was here every year since I was elected in 1992, to talk about the problem of drug abuse and drug misuse in our country.
I am here, sadly, 3 1/2 years later again talking about what has taken place with this administration. We see across our great land and in my district the results of what has taken place. Mr. Speaker, let me recap what has taken place with this administration on the question of drug use and drug abuse.
First, this President came in, and what did he do? He cut. He gutted, in fact, the White House drug czar's office from 140 to just a handful of people.
The next thing he did, he employed as the chief health officer of our Nation Joycelyn Elders. Joycelyn Elders began the campaign of just say maybe, kids. Just try it, kids. Maybe we should legalize it, kids. Sending out that message, there was such an uproar that she finally was dismissed.
Then the President took the step of dismantling the drug interdiction program. He dismantled it piece by piece, stopping drugs at their source. We know that cocaine, 100 percent of it is grown in Bolivia, Peru, and Colombia. We know its transit points, and we can stop it inexpensively at its source. Yet, he dismantled, he gutted this program.
Then finally the ultimate insult to the American people and to the Congress and to the high office of the Presidency, the White House, which is supposed to set the standard for Americans, to set the highest level of performance of acceptability in our society and our Government. What did they do? Things got so bad in the folks that they were employing, and I sat on the committee that heard this testimony and was appalled. The Secret Service was so alarmed that folks were being hired with recent and past drug use histories, and we are not talking about marijuana here folks, we are talking about hallucinogenic drugs. We are talking about crack, about cocaine. We are talking about hard drugs being acceptable, used in the past, recent past in some cases for employment in the White House.
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Mr. Speaker, this is not acceptable. And this is what has been done by this administration, what has been done by this President, and this is the result. This is the result in my community. Look at this headline: Long Out of Sight, Heroin Is Back Killing Teens. In the past year central Florida has had more teenage heroin deaths than all the rest of the State.
It is epidemic among our children. This is the result. Look at this: With Reagan and Bush, drug use and abuse went down in this country among our teenagers. And in 1992 it starts to shoot off the charts. Look at how it has affected our children with heroin, with crack, with marijuana, with hallucinogenic drugs. It is epidemic.
We now have 1.6 million Americans in our prisons across this country, and 70 percent of the people that are in our prisons are there because of drug use and abuse . So we have set a bad example from this White House and this administration, and we can see the bad results here, crime and death.
The wrong Americans, too, are behind bars. Our elderly and senior citizens across this Nation are afraid to go out at night because of the crime that this has created. And we know, again, that nearly 70 percent of those incarcerated and convicted of crime are drug -related incidents.
But there is hope. This Congress, under the leadership of the gentleman from Pennsylvania, Chairman Clinger, under the leadership of the gentleman from New Hampshire, Chairman Zeliff, we are restoring the funds for the drug czar's office and the positions that were cut by this administration. We are bringing back together interdiction. We are going to use the military. We are going to use the coast guard. We are going to stop drugs at their source.
Mr. Speaker, we are not going to just spend all the money on treatment. Spending all the money on treatment like Clinton wants us to do is, in fact, like treating only the wounded in a battle. We have to fight this with education, interdiction, enforcement, and treatment; all four. The leadership must start in this Congress, and it must start at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue or we will see these results continue.
So, Mr. Speaker, it is not acceptable. It is not acceptable in my community. I ask for assistance to help us make a positive change
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