After years and months of nearly deadly silence by the President of the United States on one of the most pressing issues facing our Nation, that is the problem of illegal narcotics use and abuse, the President spoke out yesterday.

I have a transcript of his speech, and I was really stunned to hear his remarks. These are his exact comments.

He said, "When we were out there running for office in 1992, the Vice President had this hilarious rap about everything that should be up was down and everything that should be down was up, and everything was all mixed up. And it is true.'' And then the President said, and again let me quote him, ``And one of the sad things that was up was drug use.'' Now, this is what the President of the United States said yesterday.

Mr. Speaker, this does not gibe with the facts. In fact, we did a little bit of research and we found, and this chart states quite clearly, that long-term trends in lifetime prevalence of drug use, from 1980 when President Reagan took office, and this is the Reagan administration, through 1988, with President Bush during that period, we found that the trend in prevalence of drug use actually went down. These are the facts.

Now, again the President said, "And one of the sad things that was up was drug use.'' That is what the President said. These in fact, Mr. Speaker, are the statistics. These are not tainted or misconstrued in any way or partisanly presented. Those are the facts.

Then if we looked at individual narcotics, the trends in cocaine use, the President said, "And one of the sad things that was up was drug use.''

So we can look at drugs individually. We see that during President Reagan and Bush's era, that the point at which President Clinton took office that there was a downward spiral in cocaine use. In fact, when President Clinton took office, we see the resurgence of that in fact returning and going up. This does not show the dramatic increase in drug use. Because of the Clinton policy, we in fact had a shift of more people going not only to cocaine but also to heroin in unprecedented amounts and also to methamphetamine which did not appear on any of these charts. So what the President said, "And one of the sad things that was up was drug use'' is not in any way correct or does it relate to facts.

Then if we look at heroin, in the Reagan administration and Bush administration, we see downward trends. He said, "And one of the sad things was that drug use was up.'' We see in fact during President Clinton's term, it dramatically shot up, and heroin, deadly heroin, in incredible quantities. I do not have a chart on methamphetamine, but meth was not even on this chart and now is staggering up. The only reason we see any change here in a downward spiral in the last several years is because of the Republicans taking over the Congress and restarting the war on drugs.

Finally, the President also said, "We tried to do more to keep drugs from coming into the United States.'' This is the quote of the President. I do not have all the charts with me, but under complete control by the Democrat-controlled Congress, the White House and the Senate, the administration and this other controlled legislative body, 1992 to 1993 dramatically decreased the source country programs, they cut them by over 50 percent, dramatically cut the military. He said, "We tried to do more to keep drugs from coming into the United States.'' Dramatically cut the military and interdiction programs. Nearly cut in half the Coast Guard drug programs, stopped antidrug resources from getting to Colombia which is now the major source of heroin and cocaine coming into the United States. And certified Mexico, which is the greatest source of illegal narcotics and now methamphetamines of anywhere coming into the United States. And our President said yesterday, "We tried to do more to keep drugs from coming into the United States.''

Mr. Speaker, the President says one thing. The facts prove something totally different. It is sad that after years and years of deadly silence, we finally have the President come out in one of the rare occasions he ever mentions illegal narcotics and says two things that do not gibe in any fashion with the facts as to what actually took place.

It is very sad that I report this to the House, but I think that the facts relating to this important problem that is facing our Nation that has condemned so many families tragically to losing loved ones, 14,000 people died last year alone because of direct results of illegal narcotics. It is very sad, indeed, that the President of the United States paints a picture that does not gibe with the facts.