FDCH TRANSCRIPTS
HOUSE GOVERNMENT REFORM CRIMINAL JUSTICE SUBCOMMITTEE HOLDS HEARING ON DRUG
POLICY
MICA:
Good morning. I'd like to welcome you to this meeting of the
subcommittee on criminal justice, drug policy and human resources and call
this hearing to order. It's my understanding that they're concluding a
democratic caucus and we should be joined with members from the Democrat
side, the minority side, and the Republicans are having a conference which
is just concluding and we should be joined by members from the majority side
in just a few minutes.
But we'll just go ahead and begin. I have an opening statement and will
be followed by others who have opening statements today. We have three
panels that we'll hear from and the subject of today's hearing are the pros
and cons of drug legalization, decriminalization and harm reduction. Today
the subcommittee on criminal justice, drug policy and human resources will
examine a subject which is frequently talked about but rarely the topic of a
congressional hearing.
And that is the question of drug legalization. Specifically we'll
discuss issues relating to drug use, drug offenses, decriminalization and
harm reduction. This hearing is just one more in a series of hearings that
we have held. And will continue to hold in examining our nation's drug
control policy and its defectiveness. As you know, recent statistics on drug use by young people are not just worrisome. They are tragic and sobering. Methods to deter the use and abuse of dangerous substances should be the centerpiece of any serious effort to reverse the rising drug use trends. The simple truth is, drugs destroy lives. They steal away opportunities that might have been. They produce fatal overdoses, fatal accidents and death by criminal homicide. Despite the warm glow of well intention words, the reality is really hard to miss. Drug overdose deaths continue to plague our metropolitan areas, our suburbs and our schools. There's really no element of our society today untouched by the ravages of illegal narcotics.
Drug use is soaring among our 12th graders. More then 50 percent of
them have tried an illicit drug and more then one in four are today a
current user. There have been serious proposals across our land and here in
Washington about how to best combat school violence and drug traffickers,
restore individual and community security, and reduce overall youth drug
use.
These proposals have ranged from legalization of marijuana for medical
use to tough sentencing guidelines in needle exchanges. Today we venture
into a first of its kind hearing with this subcommittee undertaking of this
opportunity to provide new information and also solicit informed opinions to
both the policy makers and the public on issues relating to drug
legalization and decriminalization. The often high pitched debate over legalization of drugs appears to have intensified during the past several years. There appears to be more public support for these initiatives then there was when these were first proposed several years ago. My concern is that the media and other opinion leaders are paying more attention to drug legalization because there has been in fact a well financed and internationally and nationally coordinated effort championed by several organizations and wealthy backers. Quite frankly I'm not certain of their motivation and I'm not certain of their end game. Regardless of which seed (ph) bed this movement is sprouting from, the issue needs to be openly and honestly addressed by both government and non-governmental officials. That is why I decided to conduct this hearing and will conduct additional hearings on this subject. And that's why today we're bringing together federal officials who have responsibility in this area and a sampling of outside policy experts today. The notion that dangerous drugs might one day be legalized has come from a number of sources including Former Surgeon General Joycelyn Elders, Mayor of Baltimore, Kurt Schmoke and others of the press and other opinion leaders.
If this debate is going to be as Justice Brennan once said, as all
controversial debates should be open and robust, it must at least be joined.
Honest debate over these issues I believe will benefit the American people.
Hopefully we can also act to discredit those who promote positions without a
basis in fact and also add credibility to those who have facts on their
side.
The American public should understand the policy implications of
legalization, decriminalization and harm reduction. They need to hear both
sides of this debate in a civil, well-informed setting. And that's why we
begin today, hopefully in a civil and well-informed discussion. There are
many facets and nuances to this debate. However, I would like to take just a few moments to share my personal views on several issues. As many of you know, I've been highly critical at times of this administration's drug policies and budget priorities. For a number of years this administration floundered without specific goals or objectives in a coherent drug control policy.
General McCaffrey, has helped to change that direction. But in the
prior leadership vacuum, substantial ground was lost and the war on drugs
was nearly closed down. That said, I believe this void helped provide
momentum to the current drive towards legalization and decriminalization.
The problems associated with drug use are not simple and will not respond to
simple solutions.
I believe that there have been victories and successes in the fight
against drug trafficking and drug use and abuse and in my own view, however,
we can and must do more. The alternative isn't very pretty. In fact the
alternative may be consigning a generation to addition and drug dependency
in unprecedented numbers. We cannot step backwards after beginning to move
forward.
The 50 percent drop in drug users from 15.4 million in 1979 to a little
over 12 million in 1992 and the 75 percent drop in cocaine use between a
measured peak in 1985 of 5.7 to a bottom of 1.4 million in 1992 are what I
would term successes. As many of you know, these successes were the combined
result of a strong parents movement, a strong federal anti-drug policy. In
New York City we've seen that tough enforcement has reduced crime, murder
and drug abuse.
In the past few years we have restarted, I believe, effective
eradication and [source country] programs. We've also begun an unprecedented
education and demand reduction program. It's important that before we
reverse course, we carefully examine what has worked and what has failed. If
we can identify effective treatment for those incarcerated or those
afflicted with drug addiction, nothing should stand in our way to provide
care to those individuals.
However, we cannot turn our backs on felonious conduct. And [issue]
those who traffic and deal in deadly substances a license to destroy lives.
Today's hearing solicits initial comments from this administration. And as I
said, we'll have a sampling of experts on the subject today. This is our
first hearing in a series of hearings that I hope will provide factual
testimony on the questions of drug legalization, decriminalization and harm
reduction.
Those are my opening comments and as I said, we have three panels we'll
hear from shortly. I'm pleased that we've been joined by our ranking member.
I know she may be out of breath running back. But I'm delighted to recognize
her at this time, the Gentlelady and ranking member as I said, Mrs. Mink,
from Hawaii. You're recognized.
MINK: I thank you, Mr. Chairman. I do apologize for being late. The democratic caucus was convened this morning on a very important matter debating juvenile justice. And the majority leadership had reoriented the whole scheme of things as you know at the last minute and so we've been trying to sort things out. Half of the bill came out of my committee on education and the work force and it has now been pulled together so things are in somewhat of a disarray and I apologize for being late. I will insert my remarks at a later point. I would like at this time to yield a few minutes to, Dennis Kucinich, who has an introduction to make.
KUCINICH:
With the permission of the Chair with unanimous consent, I would like
to introduce...
MICA:
Without objection.
KUCINICH: Thank you very much. I would like to introduce Kevin Sabet (PH) from the community anti-drug coalition. If Kevin could stand. He's supposed to be there in the audience. Kevin is one of the many young people from across this country who is working on strategies to quell the use of drugs in communities and he had some remarks. With the permission of the Chair, and with unanimous consent to be included in the record of this.
MICA:
Without objection. So ordered.
KUCINICH: I might mention that Kevin's involvement in testimony was called to my attention by the wife of the governor of the state of Ohio, Mrs. Hope Taft, who called me and asked me if I would communicate this to the Chair. And I would certainly appreciate your indulgence (CROSSTALK)
MICA:
Very pleased for his participation and without objection his remarks
will be made part of the record.
KUCINICH:
Thank you. Thank you.
MICA:
Thank you. And I'm pleased now to recognize our ranking member on this
side who is the Chair of our international relations committee, the
gentleman from New York, Mr. Gilman.
GILMAN: Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I want to thank you for conducting what I consider to be a very important hearing today on this controversial issue of the legalization of mind altering drugs. And I want to thank you for bringing some excellent witnesses, including, General McCaffrey and Dr. Leshner, Mr. Marshall, our Deputy Administrator of the DEA, and Mr. McDonough, Mr. Ehlers, Mr. McGinnis, Mr. Boaz and Ira Glasser.
I think you have an excellent set of witnesses today that should help
to focus our attention on this very important issue. Legalization is
virtually a surrender to despair. It cannot and ought not be any topic of
serious discussion in our nation's debate on the challenges of illicit
drugs. Hopefully by the time this hearing is over we'll make it clear that
is certainly not the direction in which any drug policy should be headed now
or ever. Most importantly, we must not be perceived as sending mixed and confusing messages on illicit drug use to our young people. Illicit drugs are wrong. They are destructive. They are not recreational. They are deadly. Nothing more, nothing less. We have a firm moral obligation not to lead our citizens into any spiral of despair and substance dependency to the legalization of mind altering substances. As Tom Constantine, our DEA Administrator, is also a great cop and proven drug fighter, said so well at our November '97 international anti-drug conference in Scotland and I quote, "for those elite's who propose legalization, let them start in their own families and in their own school districts. And then we can better evaluate that option," closed quote. Looking down from an ivory tower it may be easy to throw up your hands and say it's time to surrender to the scourge of illicit drugs. But let those who offer such an unsophisticated solution which avoids the hard choices, and the difficult battles, first pass the Constantine home and school test if they want credibility in advocating legalization. And for those who would despair in our fight against illicit drugs, let me state unequivocally that we can and we have made progress in fighting drugs in the past. Between 1985 and 1992, we reduced monthly cocaine usage in our nation by nearly 80 percent. Nearly 80 percent reduction. There aren't many federal programs that can claim that rate of success of such a difficult and a challenging problem as illicit drug use.
We made that kind of remarkable progress through a good public
relations campaign, through Mrs. Reagan's "just say no" theme and through a
balanced even handed supply and demand approach. In any balanced strategy in
our nation's drug war must include both a reduction in supply and demand and
have to do that simultaneously.
By reducing supply we have to eradicate the product at its source. We
have to interdict when it gets into the mainstream of distribution and we
have to enforce when it reaches our shorelines. Be able to arrest, convict
and put away the drug traffickers. And in reducing demand we have to educate
our young people about the dangers of drug use. They have to treat and
rehabilitate the victims. And we have to do all of those things simultaneously. You can't take funding from one of those elements and give it to another. I'm looking forward to today's testimony and hope that we may initiate the beginning of the end of this misguided and unfortunate debate about legalization that detracts us from the important aspects of what we're trying to do.
A debate that would take us in the wrong direction for both our nation
and our young peoples future and wellbeing. Mr. Chairman, I want to make
certain that we refer in the record to DEA Administrator, Tom Constantine's
papers delivered in Austria this past January at another important
international drug conference. DEA Administrator Constantine is part of that
excellent paper.
GILMAN: The impact of the de facto legalization of illicit drugs in the city of Baltimore stated that the strategy used in Baltimore was a lost strategy. Chairman Mica, who participated in that Austrian conference frequently cites the DEA Baltimore heroine figures. That startling data indicates that there exists one heroine addict for every 17 people in that nearby city.
Mr. Constantine's paper outlines extensive devastation and adverse
impact that heroine has had on the Baltimore community and a took a laissez
faire approach to the use of illicit drugs. Let no community follow
Baltimore's example. Mr. Chairman, I ask unanimous consent that
Administrator Constantine's Vienna paper be included in the record of these
proceedings. And before closing, I'd like to commend, General McCaffrey, to the outstanding job he's done and focusing attention on our drug war in our nation and trying to illicit support for what our nation should be doing to eliminate this very critical problem in our nation. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
MICA: Thank the gentleman, without objection to the paper that you referred will be made a part of the record. I'm pleased now to recognize for an opening statement the gentleman from Maryland. Be recognized.
CUMMINGS: All right, I thought you were going to say my name.
(LAUGHTER)
MICA: I was going to say the gentleman from Baltimore.
(LAUGHTER)
After the comments from the gentleman from New York I thought I ought
to cool it. Thank you.
CUMMINGS: Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. I certainly am from Baltimore and I'm very proud to be so. And I think as I listened to the gentleman from New York I cannot help but think about the fact that there are so many people who need medical treatment. They need treatment. And a lot of people it's easy to sit back and look at folks -- well I live in the middle of it.
I live in a drug invested neighborhood. I know people who have been
trying to get treatment for years. For years, and can't get it. And as a
matter of fact, General McCaffrey, came to Baltimore I guess about two years
ago and went through one of those neighborhoods in East Baltimore and had an
opportunity to see young men and women who were struggling, taking their own
resources, coming out with innovative ways to get the funds to treat
themselves. So I think we have to be very, very careful when someone sits a distance and then tries to put a microscope on any community but yet and still can complain but don't provide the funds to address the problem. The problem is very serious. It is one as I said, before I count as a top priority on my list since I live with it. I've known them little girls who I've watched grow up from babies and they're selling their bodies for $5, at 14-years old. I see them everyday. I know the pain of coming home and seeing my home ransacked. My car broken into. Because people are in so much pain they don't even know they're in pain. And so it is that I'm glad that we are having this hearing today. I'm personally against the criminalization of drugs. But I am for making sure that people are treated. I'm glad that, General McCaffrey has made the efforts he's made with regards to inmates. People go into jail and they seem like they come out worse off then what they went in. And at least we're beginning to try to tackle their problems so that when they come out they're better off.
The fact is that sometimes this whole problem reminds me of my little
girl when she was a little younger. She's five now but when she was a little
younger, she was about 2-years old. She would come up to me and say, "daddy,
let's play hide-n-go-seek." And she would put her hand up to her face and
she says, "daddy, you can't find me." But she was standing right in front of
me. And I guess what I'm trying to say is that so often the solutions to the problems are right in front of us but we don't address them for various reasons. And sometimes I think -- as Martin Luther King, Senior, who said, "you cannot lead where you do not go and you can not teach what you do not know." And I would ask some folks to do what General McCaffrey has done.
To walk in my neighborhood. To see what happens. To see what happens
when children are left out and left behind. See that babies do grow up to
placed in difficult circumstances. And so, criminalization is not the
solution. Legalization is not the solution. Solution is trying to have -- is
that we must a more humane society so that people don't grow up feeling that
they have to do these things.
And second, if they do these things, try to make sure they get
appropriate treatment so that they can come back to a life that is
productive and a life that is meaningful. And so it is, I look forward to
the testimony, Mr. Chairman. And I want to thank you for holding this
hearing. I'm just so anxious to hear what's going to be said I just don't
know what to do. So, with that, I want to thank all of our witnesses for being here. I thank you for taking your time and I'll remind our witnesses -- I'm almost finished, Mr. Chairman, -- I'll remind our witnesses that your testimony is so important to us. This is the Congress of the United States of America. The greatest country in the world. The most powerful country in the world.
And we so happen, we folks up here, have been charged with leading this
country. Your testimony helps us to address the policies that make this
country the great country that it is and we simply take time out to say
thank you.
MICA:
Thank the gentleman. Now recognize the gentleman from Arkansas for an
opening statement. Mr. Hutchinson.
HUTCHINSON: Thank you, Mr. Chairman. And I want to welcome, General McCaffrey, and look forward to your testimony. General, I just want to express that I have an enormous respect for you and the work that you've done. The commitment that you've expressed to this endeavor and to your work. I can't think of any public official that puts his heart more into the job that you're trying to perform then you do and our country should be grateful to you.
We do have some differences in emphasis. I've read your testimony -- I
think whenever you talk about fallacy, fallacy that we are fighting a war on
drugs and the reality is that it's analogous to the fight against cancer.
You have some legitimate points, I guess that you don't want to declare war
on your citizens and whenever someone goes out to make a drug arrest you
don't want to treat it like a war.
Those points are well taken and obviously there's some merit to that.
But, to me, whenever I'm a parent of teenagers, and I've had family members
that have struggled with drugs, you know, it's war in the family I guarantee
you. And it's a war in our society and you document that through your
testimony which is a very strong statement as to why we should not legalize
marijuana in our country.
And so, I guess you can use whatever term. It just doesn't make any
sense to me to make a big issue of the terminology of war against drugs is
wrong. This is not something I want to live with in America's families. And
secondly, and I hope you'll address some of these issues because I'm not
aware of all that you're doing, but this legalization of marijuana across
the country is of an enormous concern. The initiatives in various states. And please explain what the administration is specifically doing in each of these states to combat these efforts. It would appear to me that the media campaign budget that is extraordinarily, generous is not the right word, but hefty, in the budget, should be targeted toward the states and not just necessarily an anti-drug message but a specific message that relates to the problems of legalization that you have articulated so well in your testimony that I've previewed.
And also I just think it takes your presence and the presence of the
attorney general of the United States in each of these states holding news
conferences, outlining the problems that you have recited and urging people
not to be swept away with this legalization effort. And so please comment on
specifically what you're doing, the administration is doing, the attorney
general is doing in that regard.
And finally, in looking at the goals of your 1999 strategy, certainly
you can't disagree with those goals. I mean, they're very important. The
education is critically important. Obviously the key component of any
campaign reducing crime, social costs, the interdiction efforts. At least in
the overall goals it seems like there's not a strong enough law enforcement
component. Are these goals different from previous years in regard to the law enforcement component and the emphasis upon law enforcement? If you could comment on that and advise if there is any change or retreat from the hard push in the law enforcement arena. And so with that, I'll yield back and I look forward to your testimony, General McCaffrey.
MICA:
Thank the gentleman. We have no further opening statements at this
time. As you know, General, this is an investigation and oversight
subcommittee of Congress. We do swear in all of our witnesses so if you'd
stand, sir. Raise your right hand. Do you solemnly swear that the testimony
you're about to give before this subcommittee of Congress is the whole truth
and nothing but the truth?
MCCAFFREY:
I do.
MICA: Thank you. Welcome, General, and we won't put the time clock on you today. You're the only one on the panel. Welcome back and we look forward to your testimony. Without further ado, sir, you're recognized.
MCCAFFREY: Thank you, Mr. Chairman, to you and Congresswoman Mink and all the members of your committee. The enormous amount of energy that all of you collectively and individually have poured into this and I've watched your travels around the country and the two of you on your trip to the Indian Ridge and I thank you for engagement on the issue and for indeed your guidance and support over the last several years.
Let me if I may, thank some of the witnesses that here to support your
hearing, particularly, Dr. Alan Leshner, who without meaning to embarrass
him, I consider a national treasure. You gave him a half billion dollars
last year in research money.
You've increased his budget by 36 percent in four years. He knows what
he's talking about. And that's been the basis of an informed policy on drug
abuse in America (OFF-MIKE) for the last several years. You've also got
Donnie Marshall here representing Tom Constantine and 9,000 men and women of
the DEA. Thank God for their integrity and for the skill with which they've
confronted this international and implacable drug criminal threat that we
face. And I look forward to hearing what Donnie says. He's got a ton of common sense and the DEA and counter-narcotics officers who are present understand drug abuse at face value. Bob Maginnis, Family Research Council has been a very important NGO and a voice of common sense and we thank him for his writing and thinking and influence. And Jim McDonough, my former Head Strategic Planner now working for Governor Jeb Bush, we look forward to his comments. Mr. Chairman, I thank you for allowing to have the opportunity to bring together and listen to this hearing the people that have really formed and guided our own efforts. Chief Liles (ph) here from community and drug coalition of America, more then 4000 coalitions around the country and thanks to the Portman-Levin (ph) bill, we're now growing the number of community coalitions. Johnny Hughes, from the National Troopers Coalition, Bill McGivney (ph) from DARE. Twenty-six million American Children involved in the biggest drug prevention program in the world, they're now nine million plus kids in the international arena. It's spreading throughout Latin America. A lot of the teaching of the DARE coordinators going on in Costa Rica. With your permission, Mr. Chairman, he's brought some of his kids here and they may sort of provide an under point, if I could ask them to stand up. How about these DARE kids. Go ahead, stand up.
(APPLAUSE)
Dr. Linda Wolfe-Jones (ph), Therapeutic Communities of America is here
to again key-off Congressman Cummings' point, we're not going to solve this
problem until we understand that there's 4.1 million Americans who are
chronically addicted to illegal drugs. We'll go on to talk about this if you
wish but at the end of the day, we believe we've probably got half the
infrastructure we required to bring effective drug treatment to bear on that
problem. We thank, Dr. Wolfe-Jones (ph), for her leadership. Welsh Huddleston's (ph) here, Director of the National Drug Court Institute. What a concept. Four years ago there were a dozen drug courts, today there are more then 600 either online or coming online this year. The first national convention five years ago, there were less then 300 people there. This year it was in Miami. There was more then 3000 people there from all over America.
Jeff Kuhulsey (ph) is here, the youth member of our Drug-Free
Communities Advisory Board. We're very grateful. The YMCA has Edan
Fisher-Durban (ph) here. Tremendous program engagement with young people. I
thank Christy McCampbell (ph), the President of California Narcotics
Officers Association of being here. The National Narcotics Officers Association has been an extremely influential body in helping form our own thinking. And let me also if I may mention Rob Connelly, Boys and Girls Clubs of America for their tremendous work, supported by Congress and by many municipal governments in pulling online, literally, a 1000 plus Boys and Girls Clubs. It's one of the most effective concepts I personally know of in the field of drug prevention. Let me if I may, Mr. Chairman, draw attention to the statement which, Congressman Hutchinson was generous enough to refer to. We put an enormous amount of work into this thing and I thank you for this hearing which really formed the basis of us going to the administration, going to our stakeholders and said, let's form a written response to not just the drug legalization community, but those who have disguised themselves under other terms to advance that argument. And I would hope that this statement which is cleared by the administration will stand as a position paper to guide our future discussions.
MCCAFFREY:
Some quick comments. Is there a ...
MICA: General, excuse me, I think we would ask unanimous consent that that statement be inserted as part of the record at this time.
MCCAFFREY: Yes, sir. That would be a useful addition to the record.
MICA: Without objection, so ordered. Thank you.
MCCAFFREY: Some quick comments if I may, Mr. Chairman. To what extent is there a drug legalization movement in the United States? If you try and overtly move that argument forward, it's very difficult to do. There's probably around 400 groups in America that we can identify, you know sort of a superficial LEXIS-NEXIS check, that are advancing that argument.
But to put that in context, we have brought together 47 national,
civic, service, fraternal, veterans and women's organizations in something
we call 'Prevention of Drug Abuse through Service'. That represents a 100
million people in a million chapters. Those are people, American citizens
who have stated publicly we are opposed to drug abuse. There are 121,000
local Boy Scout units, 4000 plus community anti-drug coalitions, 2300 local
YMCA chapters, et cetera.
So I would argue if you look out at America, the 270 million of us,
there is unanimous opposition to the notion of making these drugs more
available to our children. The second thought I would table for you, we should make people stand upon their written record. If you write a book, if you write an article, if you give a speech and advance an argument in favor of drug legalization, you should not be allowed later to move to a disguised position. And I've provided previously to the committee excerpts from some of the books and writings that I think make this point. Ethan Nadelman (ph) and I quote, "Personally when I talk about legalization I mean three things. The first is to make drugs such as marijuana, cocaine and heroin legal. I propose a mail order distribution system based on the right of access." Professor Arnold Treback (ph) out at American University, "Under the legalization plan I propose here, addicts would be able to purchase the heroin and needles they need at reasonable prices from a non-medical drug store."
Now we've been culling this kind of material out. And we ought to be
civil, we ought to be charitable in democratic debate, but some of these
notions are sheer buffoonery. They're from an ivory tower; they are not
informed on the kind of problem that I see at face value in prisons in
America, in drug treatment centers, in families and in the workplace. And I
think we need to strip away the disguise and label people with the arguments
they're actually trying to support. I believe the American people support our strategy against drugs. The Gallup Poll, 1999 data, says 69 percent firmly oppose any legalization of marijuana. 1998 Family Research Council poll, 82 percent oppose making drugs legal like alcohol. I just don't think it's there. I think we've also got some examples where we can look around the world. We can look at the Dutch example. The European Union Monitoring Center notes that heroin addiction has tripled since the Dutch liberalized their policy. Holland's now a synthetic drug production center.
Our own experience in the United States in the 1800's when legal opium
use was available. We had our own use rates jump 400 percent. I think we
also ought to take into account that drug abuse is not just a personal
choice. It involves other people. When we look at child abuse and neglect
and innocent victims, we find that substance abuse exacerbates seven of ten
child abuse and neglect cases. We look at workplace accidents. We believe that a third of the industrial accidents in America are caused by illegal drug abuse. We look at drugged driving and find the enormous correlation between the use of illegal drugs and alcohol in fatal accidents on the nation's highways. The bottom line is we are absolutely opposed to the legalization of these substances or it's de facto legalization under the notion of harm reduction. Which is really unfortunate that they've captured that term - because if I can, Bridget (ph) Grant, a senior at George Mason University, thanks for being here, one of our interns, will help me with these charts.
You look at our national drug strategy and what we're trying to
accomplish; goal two and goal three are in fact a harm reduction approach.
We recognize that that four million plus chronically addicted Americans are
killing 14,000 people a year and causing a $110 billion of damages. Smart
law enforcement, smart drug treatment have to deal with that huge number of
Americans, a tiny percentage of the population. But that harm reduction
label has been hijacked by people that in many cases are actually talking
the legalization of drugs.
I also have to underscore our strategy does say you can't hope for a
magic solution on drug abuse. We are clearly -- our dominant objective is
prevention education aimed at American adolescents. We're trying to get kids
from the age of nine through about 19, where we minimize their exposure to
gateway drug taking behavior. That certainly includes alcohol and cigarettes
but primarily it's marijuana and huffing inhalants and heroin and almost any
drug you can name, Ecstasy, MDMA, now spreading up and down the eastern
seaboard. Brigitte (ph), if you will, the next chart.
A quick thought. What are the consequences? Is this an individual
choice? Can we buy a libertarian model? Or should we be forced to recognize
when you look at -- even though drug abuse in America has come down
dramatically in the last 15 years, you look at 1979, 14 percent of the
population using drugs, 1992, it drops to six percent. We're going to try
and take it below three percent, but that has nothing to do with the fact
that we've got four million Americans who are sicker than ever committing
enormous amounts of crime and they dominate the population behind bars, 1.8
million Americans and growing. And probably between 50 and 80 percent of
those people have a chronic drug or alcohol problem. That's the cost to you
and I. This is not an individual choice. This involves our workplaces, our
children, our communities.
Brigitte (ph) next chart. Let me, if I may, underscore this chart. There's been a notion of hard drug-soft drugs. Yes, we understand that heroin, methamphetamines, crack cocaine have consequences, but surely not the softer drugs of MDMA, marijuana, et cetera. I think the strongest voice I listen to inside the administration is Donna Shalala who is essentially a teacher, a college professor, a university president. We are adamantly opposed to the use of marijuana in America, whether that's on the nation's highways, or more importantly among our students and our families. When you look at some of the behavior that Dr. Leshner can talk to, where you find high rates of marijuana abuse, you find enormous statistical correlations to other behavioral problems. One of which is violence. It's not just crashing your car or an 18-wheeler, it's also personal aggressive behavior. We're not suggesting we've demonstrated a causal linkage, I'm just saying that's there. If your child is involved in a lot of drug abuse, including marijuana, it'll probably also have beer involved, you've got problems and part of it's aggressive behavior.
Next chart, please. You've seen this chart before but it deserves to be restated. We believe, and this chart here comes out of University of Michigan data, but it underscores a notion that attitudes drive behavior. When youth attitudes about drug abuse change, when they worsen, when they see it as less threatening, more acceptable, they use more drugs. When we turn those attitudes around, drug abuse goes down. That's why we're so grateful for the bipartisan support we've gotten on this national media campaign.
We believe you've got to talk to children. Not just over TV, the
Internet and the radio, it's got to be parents, educators, coaches,
pediatricians, local law enforcement. We're seeing the initial stages of
turning youth attitudes around in America. For five years it went in the
wrong direction.
In the last two years we've seen it stabilize and then modest but
statistically significant reductions in drug abuse in America, eighth grade,
tenth grade, twelfth grade, cigarettes, alcohol, marijuana and other drugs.
We've got ten years of hard work ahead of us though if we're going to
capitalize on this beginning effort.
Next chart.
We've been playing around with this chart to make a point. Take '91 as
a baseline year. '91 was the year before actual youth rates of drug abuse
started up. We had a long period where it came down from a disaster in the
'70's. Attitudes started changing probably 1990, fear of drug use in '91,
'92 drug use went up. So I took '91 as a baseline year. Those are increase
or decrease in a given year.
The last two years we have the beginning indications that when
America's communities and families and educators get involved, we actually
can talk to our children and turn the situation around. But I would not even
indicate this is the beginning of a victory, it's just indications that our
hard work can pay off.
Next chart.
I'm not going to go through this in some detail. But you know it's just
astonishing what's on the Internet. It is unbelievable. When we tried to
name one of our initial home pages, Project Know, K N-O-W, I had initially
asked for a Project Teen and we went to that sort of keyword on the net, you
get masses of child pornography. When you fed in drug search words,
marijuana, heroin, et cetera, you ended up on drug legalization nets. And
they're linked together. It's incredible, "The High Times" home page, they're selling drugs over the Internet, they're selling doping materials for young athletes over the Internet and they're providing credibility and an argument that these materials don't cause physical harm. We're going to try and counter that but you need to understand that it's out there. And it's incredible the material that many parents aren't aware their children see and encounter in the computer they have in their room or basement.
Next chart.
We're now out there confronting that issue. We've done some incredibly
good work in this. I've got two very sophisticated firms, Oglive, Mather and
Fleishman (ph), Hillard that are helping guide our media buying campaign.
But when it comes to the Internet itself, we've provided you all of our
linked home pages. I just tell you; we're up to almost a quarter million
hits on our White House Drug Net. Disney's running freevibe.com just since
March, many of you were there when we opened that, they're pushing a million
hits. Project Know, we're almost up to five million visits on the site. And
the Drug Resource Center, America Online, we're up to a quarter million just
since the beginnings of April. We're also into influencing all the search engines and web pages so that if you punch on Yahoo, Warner Brothers, AOL, et cetera, keywords, you'll end up getting scientifically, medically accurate information that's color, that's interactive. If you're a mother, you can go to Drug Help AOL. If you're a tween (ph), you can go to freevibe.com. You can see pictures of this material. You can talk to personalities, public people, movie stars about why drug abuse is harmful to your future. We think we're starting to move ahead and we welcome your own involvement in that. Mr. Chairman, if I may, let me just end my formal comments there. But I thank you and your committee members for your leadership in bringing this issue to the attention of the American people.
MICA: Thank you, General. I'd like to start off with a couple of questions, if I may. First of all General, I've got bibliographies here of more than 200 scientific studies indicating the extraordinary damage that's done to the human body and the brain by marijuana probably from some of the most renowned scientific minds in the world. The findings that they come up with are absolutely uncontestable that THC in marijuana damaged the brain, the lungs, the heart, reproductive and immune system and they also show that marijuana is linked to - increases aggressive and violent behavior.
MICA:
And in view of these findings, why do you believe there's still a
fiction that is prevalent out there among particularly kids that taking
drugs is fine and safe and particularly use of marijuana is not that
dangerous or harmful?
MCCAFFREY: Dr. Leshner will probably want to talk to the medical issues of it. And I'm normally trying to be carefully on how I pose this. What we're sure of is that if your adolescents using marijuana on weekends, 12 years old, they're probably in a period of enormous vulnerability, central nervous system development, social development, educational development. If they get involved in that behavior younger and they do a lot of it, the chances of them being in trouble are significantly enhanced. You can argue about what the stats are. The stat I used is at age 12, if you're smoking pot on weekends, you're 80 times more likely to end up using cocaine than some 12-year-old who isn't smoking pot. Possibly Dr. Leshner in the years to come will document that 15 percent of that population in the high school years will end up dependent on marijuana if they use a lot of it. That figure is soft.
Now to a high school kid, this might sound like pretty good odds, to
your mother or the coach; it sounds like dreadful odds. Fifteen percent
chance of being in serious, possibly life long trouble. It's a complicated
challenge. A third of adult Americans have used an illegal drug. And it's sort of age dependent and there's some demographics tied into it. The lowest rates of drug abuse in American society are African-Americans under the age of 30. But depending on your year group and college, yes, no, the chances are you smoked a joint. Thirty million Americans have been exposed to cocaine.
They've stopped it; they don't want to do it. But now they're trying to
sort out in their own mind what they tell their kids. We have been remiss in
not explicitly telling our children that regardless of mother's and my
background, in this family, we're not going to drive drunk, smoke dope, use
inhalants. These are behaviors that we've learned are destructive to your
future. And I think the message has been too weak. That's the answer, Mr.
Chairman.
MICA:
Well you have described in the past and I quote, when you were speaking
about medical marijuana and I think the term you used, you called it a
stalking horse for legalization. General many of those who are trying to
promote legalization have started with promoting the medical use of
marijuana. Can you tell me how your offices have tried to deal with that
issue? And also we have a problem that we've lost in many of the states
where this issue is on the ballot. Tell me -- you have said this is the
stalking horse for legalization and I think you've just defined this as a
serious drug problem. What has been done by ONDCP to deal with this
situation?
MCCAFFREY: Three years ago I consulted the people I think know what they're talking about, Dr. Leshner, Dr. Harold Warmis (PH), Dr. Nelba (ph) Chavez (ph), the folks who have devoted their life to a study of drug addiction. And we came to a conclusion that we were getting, to be honest, rolled in the public arena by some very clever people who were hiding behind medical use of illegal drugs and were actually pushing a drug legalization agenda. But if there's one thing I know about and respect, it's American medicine. I've spent more time in hospitals as a patient than most young doctors have worked there. And we have great trust in American medicine and in the process under the NIH and the FDA by which we make medicines available as clinically safe and effective. We trust doctors. We've given them morphine; we give them heart medicines that can kill you. But what we did was we said let's go out -- and we hired the American Academy of Sciences, gave them $800,000 for a study to review what do we know and not know about smoked marijuana. We've got a document now that's done by serious people that we can stand behind. That document says smoked marijuana isn't medicine. It's a carcinogenic delivery vehicle, it's unknown dose rates, it's 400 plus compounds, it's 30 plus cannabanoids (ph). It won't be medicine. It has a potential modest contribution to some symptom management. It has no curative impact at all. It also went on to say, why don't you go research more of the cannabanoids (ph). There's one right now, THC, available in a pharmacy, maybe others could have benefit particularly in combination with other therapies. From a policy perspective, I support such a research approach.
And finally it said that you need a rapid onset delivery vehicle and
we'll go ahead and support that notion. That means deep lung inhalants,
nasal gels, skin patches or suppositories. But what we've got to do is keep
that issue back with doctors and scientists, not let it become a political
issue. We've got a problem. Five states as I remember and possibly the District of Columbia through some very clever investment of advertising dollars have now passed some form of medical marijuana initiative. And it's state law. And we're trying to confront that in a prudent manner to take into account the state/federal sensitivities.
These drugs are still not certified for medical prescription. It is
illegal under federal law to grow, produce or sell marijuana and we will
uphold the law.
MICA: Two final questions then I want to give my other colleagues ample opportunity for questions. First of all, has your agency researched whether the federal government can preempt efforts to make drugs such as marijuana and their medical use illegal in the states? That's the first question. Secondly, you spoke to money coming into these referendums. We have some documentation that Mr. Souros (ph), Bruce Souros (ph), multi-millionaire -- and incidentally I invited him to testify today and we'll invite him back, because we're interested to find out his motivation and what's going on here. But he created Lynn Smith Center and funded it with four million dollars. And has also given $6.4 million, we believe, to the Drug Policy Foundation, a legal advocacy group for medical marijuana.
Two questions again. One, can we preempt state efforts? The second part
of the question is there's one individual I'm not sure what his end game is.
Maybe you have some insight as to the motivation for his money and where
this money is coming from to promote these initiatives and pass them. Those
are my two final questions.
MCCAFFREY:
Mr. Chairman, I would ask your permission to give you a written answer
on the legal, political notion of preempting states. Let me tell you the
answer, as I understand it. These statutes were deemed to not be in conflict
with federal law. So the sort of up front answer is marijuana is still
against federal law to grow it, possess it, sell it or write a prescription
for it, prescribe it for medical purposes. It's against the law. We will
uphold the law.
Now having said that, there's 7,000 DEA agents, a couple of thousand
staff, they're in 40 nations on the face of the earth. Criminal justice is a
state responsibility almost across the board. So we have a problem here.
We're going to have to sort it out. And the lead of solving the problem has
to be the people of California, Oregon, the State of Washington, Arizona,
Hawaii, et cetera. I'd be glad to provide you perhaps a more definitive legal argument, but there's no conflict with federal law and we will enforce federal law.
And the motivation of people behind these efforts, I think there's
probably a range of behavior. Some of them are patently, personally using
drugs and trying to advance their own use. I think that's probably not the
motivation for many of them.
A couple of them have intellectually goofy positions. Professor Travock
(ph) at American University, and I don't mean to be uncharitable, but I
don't think he's thought through the argument that he's hoping to see a
return of opium dens in America, and to contrast that with the evil of the
bar, the saloon. Now others, I think are -- I think there's a great sadness on the part of many of us in America about this small percentage of the population, the huge consequences we pay. Congressman Hutchinson talked about if you've got a family member that's abusing drugs, is this is a war.
One of my best friends and his wife, who I believe you know, a very
senior military officer, his 21 year old baby is now sitting in a wheelchair
with permanent short term, long term cognitive impairment, with massive
muscle loss in the right arm and right leg because he overdosed on Mexican
Black Tar heroin and was in a coma for 42 days. I mean this has devastated
the family.
When we announced our last pulse check in an emergency room in a New
York City hospital and got these beautiful physicians to talk about what
they see in drug abuse in America, and it's absolutely ugly, I don't think
Mr. Souros (ph) and some of these other people have seen that. And I don't
think they appreciate the consequences. They're hopeful from an elitist
standpoint that maybe it's some lower class kind of person that's involved
in this behavior, not my family, not my community. If you just legalized it,
it would all go away. And as we tried to advance in that paper, that Rob Houseman (ph) and Pancho Kinney (ph) from my strategic plan shop wrote, nothing could be farther from the truth. The problem with drugs isn't that they're illegal. They're destructive of the human body, of brain function and of spirituality. That's the problem with drugs.
MICA: Thank you. I'd like to yield now to our ranking member, Mrs. Mink.
MINK:
I thank you. There is hardly a word, General McCaffrey, that you have
said today that I don't agree with totally. And unfortunately however, we
are faced with this nagging debate about marijuana. I don't think there's
any argument about any of the other drugs with reference to legalization. At
least I haven't heard it in any of the constituent groups that are in my own
state that are talking about legalization and it is primarily concentrated
in this area of marijuana. I think that one of the important areas that we have to examine are the direct effects of marijuana on the human brain, on their physical being, on all the other assets of being a total person. And until we do that, until the scientific research comes up with that specific, unequivocal statement about the damage that a person can suffer as a result of the use of marijuana, we're going to have this continuing debate. There's absolutely no doubt that those who use marijuana are likely to go on to other drugs, but that's a different issue. We can certainly point that to young people who are tempted by marijuana, that this is a dangerous road to go because it leads to other things. We can certainly talk about the criminal implications that lead to, that come from the use of marijuana. And all of those things should militate against a society that tolerates the use of marijuana. But until we can get this definitive study with respect to the full use of marijuana and the harm that comes from that in terms of being a fully cognizant, social intelligent human being with a total brain capacity, I think that we are challenged. And I would like to hear your comments about that because that's the only element that I feel is missing in the debate and which I find myself having to endure in many, many places in my own constituency.
MCCAFFREY: I think you're comments are right on the money. Most people are not foolish enough to talk about why they want methamphetamines in a 7-11 store near them, although there are many who actually are advancing that argument. I think that is the argument of the Lynn Smith Center. Now having said that to go directly to your point. I think Dr. Leshner and others can talk to the issue of what do we know about smoked marijuana and it's impact on the human being. Not just from it's impact on brain function, but what do we see as the consequences of extensive use of marijuana particularly among adolescents. We do know quite a bit about it. The other thing that I would argue is that overwhelmingly parents and educators get the point. When you ask them in an abstract sense about marijuana, you may get one answer. But when you ask about your daughter or your son, your employees, do you personally, do you think marijuana smoking is inconsequential, the answer's quite different. Americans don't support the legalization or marijuana. A final notion if I may, Congresswoman. Two people that have helped form my own thinking, one of them is Dr. David Smith in the Haight-Ashbury Free Clinic in San Francisco. What a beautiful man, what an incredible organization they put together initially to deal with the wreckage of the drug revolution of the '70's in San Francisco, and I mean human wreckage. And now it's very well organized and it's continuing. If you ask Dr. David Smith with his lifelong involvement, past president of the American Society of Addictive Medicine, what about pot? Is it OK? He'll answer, are you nuts? We get 300 kids a month off the streets of San Francisco and their problem; their drug problem is pot. Now Dr. Mitch Rosenthal, Phoenix House, one of the biggest, best organized drug treatment centers in the country. This is the Cadillac of drug treatment; a lot of it publicly funded. And you go out to his center in California, the Youth Drug Treatment Center, and those kids are in there for marijuana and alcohol. It's probably drug abuse, but primarily it's pot.
So I tell people if you've got this shiny, young kid and he or she is
12 or 13 or 14, they're playing sports, they're pleasant to be around, you
admire their friends. And then a year later, they're acting in a weird,
unresponsible manner, they're grades are dropping, they're not playing
sports, they're alienated from their family, don't wonder what's going on.
The problem is drugs and that means marijuana and beer. That's what you're
watching in action.
And so I'm sympathetic to the argument, but I think if you're a
teacher, if you're a mother, we've got to stand against marijuana use by
youngsters in particular.
MINK:
Thank you.
MICA:
Thank you, gentlelady. Yield now to the gentleman from Arkansas, Mr.
Hutchinson, for questions.
HUTCHINSON: Thank you, Mr. Chairman. And General McCaffrey, I want to go back to the questions I raised in my opening comments. First of all, in reference to the media campaign fund that has been provide by Congress to use. Are any of those funds targeted in states considering legalization of marijuana? And do you see any legal problems with having a specific message in those states urging citizens to oppose that legalization effort?
MCCAFFREY:
That media campaign, Congressman, we're enormously proud of it. We're
into year two. I think we know what we're doing. We've got a real
professional group running it for us now. They do this for a living, Oglive,
Mathers. It's no longer five of my people at 2:00 in the morning. These
folks are buttressed by Dr. Alan Leshner who's running my evaluation
component. Is this going to work, yes or no? Show me the data. He's got
Westpac Corporation following it.
We've hired other sort of outside critics, a behavioral science expert
panel of people like Annenberg (ph) School of Journalism. So Partnership for
Drug Free America and ONDCP have put together this program that by the end
of the summer will be in 11 foreign languages and English and we'll have 102
different strategies around this country. So that whoever you are and the
drug environment in your region, we're talking to your children and the
adult mentors.
It isn't much money surprisingly. It's less than one percent of the
federal counter-drug budget. It's $185 million last year. I've negotiated
108 percent media match. But that's modest money compared to alcohol and
cigarettes, $2 billion, $5 billion. I'm getting your question; I apologize
for the context.
HUTCHINSON:
I do have some more questions.
MCCAFFREY: But the bottom line is we've got that $185 million targeted on confronting drug use by youngsters and their adult mentors attitudes.
HUTCHINSON:
The answer is no.
MCCAFFREY: The answer is absolutely not. We're not going after this very important issue. Nor are we going to try and confront underage drinking.
HUTCHINSON: Do you see any legal problem in doing that?
MCCAFFREY:
Yes.
HUTCHINSON: Or is that just a judgment call on your part?
MCCAFFREY:
Well, I think it's a legal problem, but also the funds wouldn't be
there to take on sort of a political state issue to go after Proposition 200
in Arizona or 215 in California.
HUTCHINSON:
And would -- if there was some specific authorization by Congress to
allow those funds to be used in that effort, would that overcome the legal
problem you're concerned about?
MCCAFFREY: I would think it would be harmful to this effort...
HUTCHINSON:
I asked about the legal problem. I know you disagree from policy
standpoint.
MCCAFFREY: Yes. Well of course, Congress could write the law any way they wanted. I would probably argue that we're making a tremendous impact on the American people about the legalization issue without directly confronting it. We're talking about pot smoking and their kids. So it's there, but ...
HUTCHINSON: So you're not using any of the campaign funds targeted ...
MCCAFFREY: Don't go after Proposition 200 or the D. C. Campaigns.
HUTCHINSON:
Have you been personally into any of the states that are considering
these legalization efforts in order to hold news conferences using the
influence of your office to oppose them?
MCCAFFREY:
I've been almost everywhere in this country and have directly
confronted that issue in op eds, radio interviews, TV. I've been on 3,000 TV
interviews, 7,000 news articles and have directly confronted these issues
with some impact. And Janet Reno, of course obviously, stands with me as
does Dick Riley and Donna Shalala. The four of us are the heart and soul of
this effort.
HUTCHINSON: Well, I congratulate you on that. I would encourage you to continue doing that. I would like to see if these issues heat up that you, Donna Shalala, the attorney general, Janet Reno, the president of the United States going into those states and saying this is bad for the country. In my judgment, that is the kind of leadership that we need on these issues.
You know we certainly see every night on the news the power of this
presidency when it comes to media. And you and I can go into those states
and we can hold news conferences. We will not have the impact as the top
official. And I hope that you will be urging the president, the
vice-president, those officials to go in and really make it an initiative to
make the message clear that legalization of marijuana is not the direction
that we need to go. A final question. On your media campaign, I think you said that some of your ads are specifically directed like to marijuana. Is that correct?
MCCAFFREY:
Absolutely. And the next generation of ads you'll see starting in the
fall, we've focused in on that problem. We had very little material when we
started this.
HUTCHINSON: So you have some that focus on marijuana. Do you have some that focus on crank, for example, or, and other drugs?
MCCAFFREY:
Yes.
HUTCHINSON: And do you have separate ads for alcohol and tobacco?
MCCAFFREY: There's 7,000 and some odd adds that are in the matching component that we have now shown that have been vetted through the Behavioral Science Council and the Advertising Council of America. So there is an anti-alcohol youth drinking in the non-paid component.
I would welcome the chance to provide any of you an overview of how
we're developing that campaign. It's a very complicated and we think it's
starting to work.
HUTCHINSON: I very well might take advantage of that. I would welcome that opportunity. Thank you very much, General.
MCCAFFREY:
Yes, sir.
MICA: Thank you, gentleman. Now recognize the gentleman from Maryland.
CUMMINGS:
Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.
General let me ask you something. We've spent a lot of time here on
marijuana. Let's talk about cigarettes, cigarettes. I think I've heard you
talk about how so many of our children become involved in drugs and
cigarettes, they sort of start with cigarettes. Is that still accurate
initially?
MCCAFFREY:
I think it's probably correct to say that cigarette smoking is almost a
precursor to marijuana smoking. It's not always the case. But generally it's
rare to see somebody smoking pot or for that matter, if you go to a drug
treatment center to find somebody that didn't start smoking as an
adolescent.
CUMMINGS: So you just -- in answering Mr. Hutchinson's question, you said that there was -- I forgot your exact words, there's a piece of your ad campaign that goes to cigarettes. Is that what you said?
MCCAFFREY: No. Some of the matching component is authorized to address the cigarette issue. And what I've done is I had a meeting with the Attorneys General of the states. They have a committee that's trying to put together their cigarette policy. I intend to support their work with our research. But there'll be a different research strategy, a different way they go about that issue because since it is a legal product for those 18 and older. But we will be supporting that huge amount money about to go into anti-cigarette advertising. And there's a lot of material out there. California, Florida and other states already know a lot about it.
CUMMINGS:
Yes. It just seems to me that if we are going to spend this time today
talking about marijuana and when we consider what you just said, that is
there seems to be a correlation in many instances between the cigarette
smoking and the marijuana. It just seems to me that that would be something
that we would want to take a look at.
Again it goes back to the hide and go seek theory. Things in front of
us and the question is what are we doing about it? And I think we've made
some great strides with all of these settlements. So I take it that these
states like Maryland, they're all trying to come up with strategies, how to
use that money to prevent our children from smoking. So you're saying your
office is collaborating when asked?
MCCAFFREY: We're going to be supportive of the states with their programs. And there's a lot of material out there they can build on.
CUMMINGS: Now I don't want anybody in this room to be mistaken. I think you're doing a great job. And I've felt that way all along. I think you have a very difficult job, a very challenging one. And we disagree on a few things and I think one of them may be this whole thing of methadone. When I talk to people in the -- former drug addicts who are recovering, living productive lives, when I talk to them about methadone, I mean these people are averaging 12 years of non-drug use, they feel that - they understand the argument that by using methadone, a person can continue to be productive and they understand all of that. But they still feel that it's like trading one drug for another drug and the person is still addicted. I'm just wondering where are we on that? Where are you right now on that issue?
MCCAFFREY: We're fortunate we've got a brilliant man, Dr. Wesley Clark, one of the smartest people I run into in government, lifelong psychiatrist, drug research person, practitioner. He is Secretary Shalala's architect to re-look the methadone lamb and other therapeutic tools program. What we're moving toward is what evidence based medicine has produced before. Credential the medical drug treatment establishment to use it.
I share your uneasiness. Badly run methadone programs, the kind that
Mayor Guiliani railed against in New York are a nightmare. You shouldn't
have people knock on a door that says methadone, walk through and get into.
You ought to have heroin addicts; there's 810,000 of us as Americans that
are using heroin.
Sooner or later, you're going to be in despair. And we need to reach
out and put you in treatment. And you ought to be diagnosed, there ought to
be a triage system. We ought to use an array of tools which includes
psychotherapeutic communities, social interventions and in some cases
methadone or lamb (ph).
If you're a 35-year-old, you're a male street prostitute, you're HIV
positive, you've got tuberculosis leg sores, you've been unemployed for a
decade, you're living under a bridge. We've got to get you into treatment
and part of that treatment program probably ought to include a methadone
component.
Now our purpose ought to be to move you along a path of treatment and
to end up with you employed, back with your family and treating not just the
addiction, but treating your other diagnosis if you're malnourished or HIV
positive. So I think methadone, lamb (ph) does have a place in that inventory, but it ought to be part of a package of interventions.
CUMMINGS: Sir, I just have one more question. One of the things that I guess that I've seen in Baltimore -- you know we have -- one of the reasons why numbers are so high for drug addicted people is that we have people who started off on heroin many years ago, so they've been living with this thing. I know people who have been on heroin for 30 years. And there was a time where I think people kind of looked at this population and said well, you know with crack cocaine and cocaine coming along that this population would die out. I know this sounds a bit morbid, but I mean that's what they believed. Now the word is that heroin is becoming in certain places attractive again, or did it ever die down? In other words, there's been some national reports like on national news that says that heroin is cheaper and young people are more attracted to it. Where are we on -- I mean what's happening there? Because I would hate to see us moving to a point where we've got another 30 or 40 years of someone on some substance like heroin.
MCCAFFREY: Well the -- by the way heroin addicts that have been on it for 30 years are very clever people. There are very few stupid folks who are addicted. It's such a dangerous life; the chances of living beyond 10 - 15 years with a severe drug abuse problem are modest, alcohol, heroin, methamphetamines. So that's sort of the tip of the iceberg, those who can go that long. There's more heroin abuse in our society than there was ten years ago. These numbers are so soft, I'm nervous using them. I've got a number I can document under 300,000, another number over 500,000. The number I'm using is 810,000. I think that's how many Americans are using heroin.
I think there's a new population using it. There's lots of
suburbanites, working class males. It's almost a new drug. Instead of seven
percent heroin, it's 70 to 90 percent heroin. Mr. Marshall will talk about
it. It's like China White, stick it up your nose, ingest it, smoke it. I'm wearing a memory bracelet from a young white girl, freshman in college, dead on a respirator after seven days smoking pure heroin and crack cocaine. This drug -- a 21-year-old boy that I've known since he was born, Mexican Black Tar heroin. The world's awash in it. We're confronting it, but Americans, we think, use three percent of the world's heroin. The difference is we pay $250 to $500 a day for it. We steal $60,000 a year in Baltimore to get it and you can sell it in Pakistan for $5 a day. We've got a huge problem and if we're not careful, we're going to see resurgence in heroin addiction, which is very tough to deal with.
CUMMINGS: Thank you very much. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
MICA: Thank you. Recognize now the gentleman from California, Mr. Ose.
OSE: Thank you, Mr. Chairman. General, good morning. The question I have -- I want to return to a subject you were talking about. There are some states to which we had a subcommittee hearing with testimony in which there are initiatives, referendums and the like being proposed to legalize different drugs similar to California where we legalized marijuana for arguably medicinal purposes. The question I have and I believe Mr. Hutchinson spoke about it earlier. The question I have based on the testimony we took at this previous hearing was that we have advertising designed to address, if you will, demand abatement knowledge for the consumer. Are we putting that advertising into these states in direct competition to the pro legalization advertising that's going on with these initiatives and referendum?
MCCAFFREY: We are not targeting legislative initiative in state. No, absolutely not. As a matter of fact, I've been very careful, a lot of these state authorities are prohibited by law -- the lieutenant governor of Washington, a person I admire enormously, was sued by a drug legalization group to confront his efforts, which he was correctly I think claiming that in his off duty time he was confronting the state initiative. So we have to be a little careful about the political and legal issues.
But to get to your point, every state in this country -- we are now in
102 different media strategies to confront drug abuse and its consequences
among adolescents and their adult mentors. Yes we are arguing against drug
abuse in America.
OSE:
Let me make sure I understand because this is the part that was
terribly confusing for me. Are you telling me that there are legal
restrictions as to what the federal government can do to advertise the
medical consequences of drug abuse?
MCCAFFREY:
Absolutely not. Not at all.
OSE: In terms of a marketing strategy, if my competitor, if you will, proposes in a marketplace in which I'm in, x, and I happen to think anti-x ...
MCCAFFREY: Oh, medical consequences. Excuse me. The way you're saying it. What we could talk about is that there are consequences, medical consequences to abusing drugs. We have no restrictions at all on accurately and scientifically portraying why we're opposed to the use, never mind the abuse, of these drugs. We are doing that. What we wouldn't do is go head to head with a referendum in a state that tries to do something like say let's do medical marijuana for anemia.
OSE:
All right. So the restriction deals with the specific reference to the
initiative not to ...
MCCAFFREY: Some political debate, right, over an initiative.
OSE:
Sight for me a couple of the states -- California's adopted it,
Arizona's adopted it ...
MCCAFFREY: Washington, Hawaii, possibly the District of Columbia, Colorado...
OSE: They have adopted it or it's pending?
MCCAFFREY:
There are different -- no, a bunch of these have passed. The first two
states are California and Arizona that have passed some form of medical
legalization of certain kinds of drugs.
OSE:
Are there any states where an initiative is pending for medical
legalization ...
MCCAFFREY: I've got a map that should be in you packet that shows you -- I maintain a status watch by state of drug legalization initiatives either under the guise of medical marijuana or industrial hemp.
Now what we do about it depends upon the state and the situation. But
we do have a map. You should have availability to it and we try and track
where are we on this issue. I write to governors. I just talked to the
Mayor's Conference. We talk to county executives. We talk to state
legislators. We have a point of contact in every state, by law, NSADAD (ph)
coordinators.
OSE:
What I'm trying to get to is that if there's someone - I don't mean to
demean the problem or diminish the importance of this, I have to speak in
business terms. But if somebody's in a state advertising a product and the
product is something that is arguably harmful to the citizenry of the United
States, why aren't we matching with our own marketing program if you will in
those states in a targeted fashion this information that would contradict or
counterbalance that argument?
MCCAFFREY:
I want to make sure I don't talk by you. The best answer I can give you
is the drug legalization people don't have a fraction of the power that we
have now brought to bear on this issue. I don't know how much money Souros
(PH) and there's three or four people who funded this whole effort. I doubt
it was more than $15 million. So we're in the marketplace on the Internet,
radio, TV, billboards, print media.
We clearly are presenting a correct scientific argument on why you
shouldn't use drugs and 50 percent of that energy is at adolescents, but
another 50 percent of it's aimed at adult caregivers. So we're talking to
America about this problem right now.
OSE: OK. Recognizing -- someone just brought me the map and I thank you for sending it up here. Recognizing on this map that we have no initiatives pending or in effect in a large number of states, is there any logic to, for instance, providing a maintenance type effort there and transferring funds that would otherwise go in those states and targeting them on states where for instance we have a signature petition underway in Florida and we have legislation introduced in five other states here.
Targeting those states for the purpose of either defeating, very
cleverly, if you will, the petition drive or the legislation by informing
the public?
MCCAFFREY: Well let me again be explicit. We are not confronting state initiatives. We absolutely are not. We're not going -- if Americans want to debate whether heroin should be used as a painkiller, they're welcome to do that, to vote on it, whatever. Federal law is quite clear. What this media campaign is doing, it's trying to effect youth's attitudes to reject the abuse of drugs. Most of these initiatives nobody has got a drug legalization initiative on the table. Nobody's stupid enough to do that. You couldn't get it through anywhere in America. You've got to go an indirect route of medical pot or hemp industrialization or whatever.
So that's a different issue that we ought to argue on medical,
scientific grounds. We're talking to America's children and their adult
mentors about drug abuse. And we are swamping any drug legalization message
in that effort. Nobody's out there competing now like we are. This is a
two-year, five-year, ten-year effort to talk to America's children. It will
work; it will effect youth attitudes.
OSE: I am confident of that. It just seems like, for instance, whoever these individuals are that are funding this, if they take their money to Florida and target it on Florida, we ought to send the clear and unequivocal message, you go there, we're coming there too. And we're going to make you waste your money because we're going to bring the resources of the federal government on it's educational program to bear and put it up on the TV opposite your stuff and give people the counter...
MCCAFFREY:
That's what we're doing, though. We're absolutely not confronting
medical drug issues head to head. We're not doing that. We're talking to
young people about why these drugs are harmful to their social,
intellectual, moral development.
OSE:
Mr. Chairman, my time's done.
MCCAFFREY:
I'm normally not too hard to follow. We are not confronting political
initiatives by state. The legal authority isn't there. That's not what I'm
doing with these monies. We're going after youth attitudes and adult
caregivers. But we're not shifting money around chasing George Souros'(PH)
$15 million. We're talking to America's kids and their using drugs in every one of these states. This is not an urban problem, a minority problem; this is America's problem. We're in every state in the union doing that. We're trying to target the message by ethnic group, by age, by what drugs do this group of kids see. The message is different in Boise, Idaho than it is in Newark, New Jersey. Meth is in Boise, it isn't in Newark.
You know if you live in Los Angeles, you'll hear Spanish on the air a
lot. If you're in San Francisco, we're going to be in the Chinese language
on radios. So we're going after the target audience with a very powerful,
correct message, don't use drugs.
MICA:
I thank the gentleman. Now I'd like to recognize the gentleman from New
York, Mr. Towns.
TOWNS:
Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. And I thank you for holding this
hearing. I think this is a very important debate that should take place and
I'm happy that you're doing it.
And it's also good to see you, Mr. Director, and to commend you on the
outstanding job that you're doing with the limited resources. I want you to
know that we appreciate that as well. My question basically, the first one is, why aren't we looking more at antagonizers? The point is that something that would sort of -- you could use to sort of help a person stay away from drugs when they're off. Why aren't we really concentrating more on that?
MCCAFFREY:
On what?
TOWNS: Antagonizers. In other words, like cylavozine (PH), a medication that would be used to sort of help a person go through the crisis.
MCCAFFREY:
Yes, I see.
Mr. Congressman, by the way, let me thank you for the opportunity to
listen to your and talk to your faith leadership community. That was a
tremendously important day to me and I benefited a lot from hearing their
ideas.
You raise a good point. Dr. Leshner ought to talk to it. We are putting
a significant amount of money into research efforts dealing with new
medications. Columbia University is doing some spectacular work. Johns
Hopkins -- there's some for profit corporations. We try and give the drug
treatment community some tools to deal with things like cocaine addition.
There is nothing there right now to access. And Alan Leshner has got several
very promising lines of research going.
We do believe that LAM (ph), methodone, bufinorphene (ph) and other
medications should be available as an antidote, an agonist to some of these
drugs. I think you're quite correct. It's another tool that we ought to give
our drug treatment community.
TOWNS:
Thanks. How do you feel about the debate that's taking place around
legalization. Is it in danger, the gains that we have made, in reducing drug
use?
MCCAFFREY: I think it's a harmful background message. On the other hand it's a democracy. We got to address these ideas.
Four years ago Senator Hatch, Senator Biden told me stay away from the
legalization group. Don't give legitimacy to their arguments or they don't
have any hold over the American people. I think they're so clever, so
devious, that I welcome this hearing and the chance to confront this issue
publicly. Having said that it's a terrible problem. Congressman Ose was quite correct. If you're a young person in California and Arizona you're now hearing that smoking pot has some curative power over diseases and you wonder if it's medicine, how can it be bad for me at age 12. That's a conflicting message and we think it's harmful.
We're going to have to deal with it in open debate in a democratic
society.
TOWNS: Right. Do you think that the reason that we get involved in this debate -- debate so frequently, is the fact that there's not enough slots available for rehabilitation, in terms of -- a person walked in this room right now, and said, I want to be placed on a program today. I'm ready to give up drugs. I'm ready to give up drugs now.
I don't know how -- what I would do. And I'm a member of the United
States Congress, and been a member for 17 years. I don't know what I would
be able to do with that person if he or she walked in here right now and
says, I want a program today. So I think that maybe the reason we keep debating this so frequently, is because of the lack of slots available for rehabilitation.
MCCAFFREY:
Well, I don't argue your point. You know, I got to tell you, though,
the United States Congress, in four years, has increased drug treatment
funding by 26 percent. Donna Shalala now has $3 billion-plus in her
prevention/treatment funding.
You have given us the tools, you're moving us in the right direction in
the appropriations process.
MCCAFFREY:
We've got 300,000 more treatment slots today than we had four years
ago. We've now got programs -- Janet Reno is pushing, break the cycle. If
you're behind bars, you've got a drug abuse problem -- we've got to bring
effective drug treatment to bear on that population, or we'll never break
free of it.
You did give us the money to get the Drug Corps (ph) program up and
running, so we can get on the front-end of this system, and put these
non-violent offenders in a mandated treatment, and lock them up for three
days or 21 days, to keep them on track. So I think you're giving us the tools, and over time, it'll pay off.
TOWNS:
Let me -- I see my time has expired, but let me just say, too -- I
commend you on the work that you're doing with the faith community. I think
that's so important. I think to tie in the faith community, you know, with
the rehabilitation, I think it's just so important, because I think that
they could be very -- play a very important role in making certain that
young people, in particular, follow through on their treatment. So thank you
very, very much for that.
And Mr. Chairman, thank you again for holding this hearing, and I yield
back.
MICA:
Thank you. Now recognize our Vice Chairman, the gentleman from Georgia,
Mr. Barr.
BARR:
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Chairman, it's been a number of years
since we have had a comprehensive hearing on the drug legalization issue,
and I commend you for calling us together today, given the fact that much
has happened in terms of research and writing on issues involving
legalization of drugs, so-called medicinal use of marijuana, addiction, and
so forth, since the last hearings on this topic. I would like to ask
unanimous consent to introduce into the record a bibliography of marijuana
literature studies ...
MICA:
Without objection, so ordered.
BARR: ... the book entitled "Marijuana and Medicine," edited by Gabriel Nahas (PH), Kenneth Souten (ph), David Harvey, Stig (ph) Agerell (ph) ...
MICA: Are you asking for the entire volume?
BARR:
Yes, Mr. Chairman.
MICA:
Without objection, so ordered.
BARR:
And we do have some additional studies that we would also like to have
submitted for the record, Mr. Chairman.
MICA:
Without objection, so ordered.
BARR:
Thank you. General McCaffrey, back in the spring of this year, as you
know, there was an IOM (PH), Institute of Medicine study that came out. And
while it did not argue for marijuana legalization or the ready availability
of so-called medicinal use of marijuana, it did keep the issue alive, and
move us ever so slightly down that road. You were quoted in The Washington Post as saying you, quote, "thoroughly endorsed the study," and called it -- and this, again is a quote -- "a significant contribution to discussing the issue from a scientific and medical viewpoint," close quote -- and that you would not -- and this is not a quote, but it is attributed to you -- that you would not oppose limited studies of smoked marijuana until a less harmful way of inhaling the substance's active ingredients is found.
It's that particular notion attributed to you that I'd like to have
your reaction to. Do you, in fact, not oppose limited studies of smoked
marijuana until a less harmful way of inhaling the substance's active
ingredients is found?
MCCAFFREY: It is true, and indeed, we now have underway for about a year -- Doctor Leshner can talk to it more knowledgeably than I can -- we already are doing studies of smoked marijuana as medicine. We've got one on-going, I think there's two more that have passed peer-group review.
I think the -- it's -- I think this study is a pretty good piece of
work. This is the executive summary, and I'll make sure that the committee
gets a copy of it. These were serious people, they said up front -- and, Mr.
Congressman, I don't believe you were here when we responded to this an
earlier time -- smoked marijuana isn't medicine. That's what this study
says. It's carcinogenic, it's a dangerous drug, it's an unknown dose rate, it's 400-plus compounds, it's 30-plus cannabenoids (ph) - smoked marijuana isn't medicine. That's what that study says.
It also says ...
BARR: That being the case, General, why would you not oppose further studies of smoked marijuana? That being the case?
MCCAFFREY:
It goes on to say that you ought to do further research on the
potentially modest contributions to symptom management of cannabenoid
(PH)-based research, and to avoid the problem with this carcinogenic
delivery vehicle, you ought to develop a new rapid-onset vehicle. So that's
about 80 percent of what this says.
It also suggests, that in the interim, with a population that's
terminally ill, with six months or less to live, that something could be
learned from controlled studies of a population who have not responded to
any other available therapeutic measure, and we could collect data, as we do
under other NIH guidelines -- for example, chemotherapy drugs that haven't
been yet proven to be effective. So that's really the sort of the modest exception, and we have funded one such study, and I think there's a couple of more we'll fund.
BARR:
The problem I -- and we've talked about this before -- I think it is
absolutely, utterly inconsistent for the taxpayers to be funding such
studies.
When a -- when a company proposing to seek approval for and then market
a drug seeks to do so, the government doesn't pay them to conduct the
studies. They absorb the cost of that, because they're the ones that want to
market that product.
And here, we have just the opposite. We have the federal government,
paid for with taxpayer dollars, paying for studies that lead us in the
direction of medicinal use of marijuana.
That's what I don't understand -- why the federal government - why you,
or anybody else in the federal government should be advocating and in fact,
carrying out, the use of taxpayer dollars to fund studies oriented toward
the possible so-called medicinal use of marijuana. If somebody wants to
study that, why don't we make them pay for it? Why should the taxpayers pay
for it?
MCCAFFREY: Well, I think largely we're going to do that.
BARR:
Well, no. No, you're not.
(CROSSTALK)
MCCAFFREY: If you'll allow me to answer. I think ...
BARR: This other study cost (OFF-MIKE) of taxpayer money.
(CROSSTALK)
MCCAFFREY: If you'll allow me to respond to your question, Mr. Congressman. I think the principal contribution that NIH makes is to provide medical-grade marijuana for the studies. I think a lot of these sort of modest proposals are actually funded by a San Francisco based research group.
But the bottom line is, this is the same tool that's used on
chemotherapy as a waiver for certain products. I agree with you, we don't
smoke -- agree with smoked marijuana, and this study doesn't either. It says
smoked pot isn't medicine. But some of the cannabenoids (ph) in smoked
marijuana may ...
(CROSSTALK)
BARR: Well, if -- if smoked pot is -- is not medicine, why are we paying -- using taxpayer dollars to continue to study it?
MCCAFFREY:
I've provided you with the answer. If you don't agree, I respect your
viewpoint, but that's where we are.
BARR: OK, then let's move on to something else. If -- if in fact, marijuana -- the active ingredient in it -- tetrahydro (OFF MIKE) -- THC -- is in fact a schedule one substance, that means that the drug has a high potential for abuse -- do you agree with that?
MCCAFFREY:
Sure. You get stoned if you use it.
BARR: That -- that the -- that it has no currently accepted medicinal use in treatment in the United States -- I assume you agree with that.
MCCAFFREY:
What doesn't?
BARR:
Pardon?
MCCAFFREY:
THC does. It's available in pharmacies, with a doctor's prescription,
right now -- marinol (PH). It's ...
BARR:
OK. Then do you advocate the changing -- removing that to a lesser
schedule of controlled substances?
MCCAFFREY:
It would probably make it -- there's a practical matter that doctors
don't like using drugs under that restriction. I don't think THC competes
very well with other available drugs. Certainly nobody in his right mind,
according to this study, would use THC for glaucoma management. It would be
bad medical practice.
So, THC itself has some modest potential. It sort of passed by
history -- better drugs are available. This study's saying, how about the
other 30-some-odd cannabenoids (ph) -- do they have any benefit? And that's
really where they're urging us to go.
BARR: But you're -- you're not advocating in any way, shape, or form at this time that marijuana be removed as a schedule one controlled substance?
MCCAFFREY: Absolutely not. We're adamantly opposed to making marijuana more available to America's children or working people.
BARR: If I could, Mr. Chairman, just ask one further question, and I know we need to -- to go vote. I know we've had some discussion here today of Mr. Soros (PH) and others funding the marijuana legalization movement.
Aside from what a number of us would like to see, and that is a more
perhaps activist or pro-activist role by our Department of Justice in
rebutting and fighting these efforts, is any consideration being given to
possible prosecution, under perhaps the racketeering title of Chapter 96
with Title 18?
MCCAFFREY: Umm. Golly. Mr. Barr, I -- in terms of the initiative -- by state, you mean. These medical marijuana initiatives?
BARR:
Well, they're engaged in medical marijuana initiatives, as well as
other -- funding other studies and -- and activities oriented toward
circumventing our drug laws.
MCCAFFREY: Golly. I don't know. That's new one on me. My view would be, it's a legitimate topic in a democracy, to debate whether or not these psychoactive drugs should be more available in your community. If you want to propose that idea, you ought to be able to make your argument.
I think it's a silly argument, it's dangerous, it's currently against
the law for well-thought-out reasons, but I welcome the chance to confront
that issue in open debate, and I am positive American families and local
leadership are not going in that route. Not when the idea is aired in
public, as we're now doing.
BARR:
You're not aware of any effort, or even looking into the possibility of
prosecuting possible racketeering...
(CROSSTALK)
MCCAFFREY:
I don't know. (OFF-MIKE) it would have a chilling implication on the
right to free speech, so I -- I'm ...
BARR:
It might have a chilling effect on the drug legalization movement,
which might not be bad.
MCCAFFREY:
I think we're going to win that. I have enormous faith in the good
judgment of the American people. I think this kind of argument in public --
you give them the facts, the American people will do the right thing.
They're already against legalization.
You can't get by the common sense of parents, pediatricians, local law
enforcement, nobody really has a grass-roots movement on this effort. It's
not there.
MICA: I thank the gentleman. I'd like to yield now to Mr. Souder.
SOUDER: I kind of hate to rain on the general consensus of enthusiasm for a free and open debate. I am one who is not particularly happy that we're having a hearing called The Pros and Cons of Drug Legalization. I know the Chairman is very committed against -- and has spent his whole career fighting illegal narcotics -- but the plain truth of the matter is, while we live in a democracy, we do not have hearings called The Pros and Cons of Rape. We do not have hearings called The Pros and Cons of Child Abuse. We do not have hearings called The Pros and Cons of Racism. We do not have hearings called The Pros and Cons of Gangs. And the -- the thrust of this being, that somehow a -- this is a libertarian argument that somehow somebody goes and smokes pot, it - that it's a victimless crime -- is just not true. Those who are advocating the legalization of marijuana are responsible for blood in my district, in my neighborhood, and families in my community. And I don't believe they're any less guilty than those who publicly -- if we hauled a bunch of rapists in here and said, hey, why do you do it? Thousands of people do it, but we don't invite them up here to talk about why they favor that position. Or there are millions of Americans who are racists. But we don't openly say, explain why you're a racist to us. Because -- I don't think it's right.
And I understand that we're trying to be open-minded here, and that
this hearing -- with all due respect -- has mostly people who - who share my
hard-line view. But at the same time, I don't believe that there should be
views of the pros of illegal activity that is taking the lives of thousands
and thousands of Americans, and to give them any kind of credibility that
this is a democratic debate.
I understand what General McCaffrey is arguing -- that, in fact, like
racism at different points in American history -- and in Indiana, we had the
Ku Klux Klan that took over the state. I don't think that was particularly
helpful to democracy.
That -- I understand that some of these things, once it gets to a high
level in the democracy, that there is a debate that occurs, and if we don't
counter it -- we have to do that.
I do have an uncomfortability with this. (OFF-MIKE) a more calm-down
subject. But I've just been kind of wound up since I heard about the hearing
(OFF-MIKE). I, too, have concerns about George Soros (ph), who, clearly, he and his closest allies have funded predominantly every one of these referendums, and many of the things that I've fought so hard. And -- and we're about to embark -- and I appreciate all your work in many different areas, and particularly in the media campaign we're doing -- if much of what we're doing is going to fight what he's doing.
Have you ever attempted to just sit down with him, and talk with him,
and say, can you divert some of this money to trying to actually do a
no-use?
MCCAFFREY: I have not talked to George Soros (PH), Peter Lewis (ph), or John Sperling. In California for Medical Rights Legalization Campaign, they put essentially $1.3 million into it. Maybe I should. I actually have enormous sympathy and resonance with what you just said. I want you to understand -- don't think I've got an open mind.
OSE:
Sight for me a couple of the states -- California's adopted it,
Arizona's adopted it ...
MCCAFFREY: Washington, Hawaii, possibly the District of Columbia, Colorado...
OSE: They have adopted it or it's pending?
MCCAFFREY:
There are different -- no, a bunch of these have passed. The first two
states are California and Arizona that have passed some form of medical
legalization of certain kinds of drugs.
OSE:
Are there any states where an initiative is pending for medical
legalization ...
MCCAFFREY: I've got a map that should be in you packet that shows you -- I maintain a status watch by state of drug legalization initiatives either under the guise of medical marijuana or industrial hemp.
Now what we do about it depends upon the state and the situation. But
we do have a map. You should have availability to it and we try and track
where are we on this issue. I write to governors. I just talked to the
Mayor's Conference. We talk to county executives. We talk to state
legislators. We have a point of contact in every state, by law, NSADAD (ph)
coordinators.
OSE:
What I'm trying to get to is that if there's someone - I don't mean to
demean the problem or diminish the importance of this, I have to speak in
business terms. But if somebody's in a state advertising a product and the
product is something that is arguably harmful to the citizenry of the United
States, why aren't we matching with our own marketing program if you will in
those states in a targeted fashion this information that would contradict or
counterbalance that argument?
MCCAFFREY:
I want to make sure I don't talk by you. The best answer I can give you
is the drug legalization people don't have a fraction of the power that we
have now brought to bear on this issue. I don't know how much money Souros
(PH) and there's three or four people who funded this whole effort. I doubt
it was more than $15 million. So we're in the marketplace on the Internet,
radio, TV, billboards, print media.
We clearly are presenting a correct scientific argument on why you
shouldn't use drugs and 50 percent of that energy is at adolescents, but
another 50 percent of it's aimed at adult caregivers. So we're talking to
America about this problem right now.
OSE: OK. Recognizing -- someone just brought me the map and I thank you for sending it up here. Recognizing on this map that we have no initiatives pending or in effect in a large number of states, is there any logic to, for instance, providing a maintenance type effort there and transferring funds that would otherwise go in those states and targeting them on states where for instance we have a signature petition underway in Florida and we have legislation introduced in five other states here.
Targeting those states for the purpose of either defeating, very
cleverly, if you will, the petition drive or the legislation by informing
the public?
MCCAFFREY: Well let me again be explicit. We are not confronting state initiatives. We absolutely are not. We're not going -- if Americans want to debate whether heroin should be used as a painkiller, they're welcome to do that, to vote on it, whatever. Federal law is quite clear. What this media campaign is doing, it's trying to effect youth's attitudes to reject the abuse of drugs. Most of these initiatives nobody has got a drug legalization initiative on the table. Nobody's stupid enough to do that. You couldn't get it through anywhere in America. You've got to go an indirect route of medical pot or hemp industrialization or whatever.
So that's a different issue that we ought to argue on medical,
scientific grounds. We're talking to America's children and their adult
mentors about drug abuse. And we are swamping any drug legalization message
in that effort. Nobody's out there competing now like we are. This is a
two-year, five-year, ten-year effort to talk to America's children. It will
work; it will effect youth attitudes.
OSE: I am confident of that. It just seems like, for instance, whoever these individuals are that are funding this, if they take their money to Florida and target it on Florida, we ought to send the clear and unequivocal message, you go there, we're coming there too. And we're going to make you waste your money because we're going to bring the resources of the federal government on it's educational program to bear and put it up on the TV opposite your stuff and give people the counter...
MCCAFFREY:
That's what we're doing, though. We're absolutely not confronting
medical drug issues head to head. We're not doing that. We're talking to
young people about why these drugs are harmful to their social,
intellectual, moral development.
OSE:
Mr. Chairman, my time's done.
MCCAFFREY:
I'm normally not too hard to follow. We are not confronting political
initiatives by state. The legal authority isn't there. That's not what I'm
doing with these monies. We're going after youth attitudes and adult
caregivers. But we're not shifting money around chasing George Souros'(PH)
$15 million. We're talking to America's kids and their using drugs in every one of these states. This is not an urban problem, a minority problem; this is America's problem. We're in every state in the union doing that. We're trying to target the message by ethnic group, by age, by what drugs do this group of kids see. The message is different in Boise, Idaho than it is in Newark, New Jersey. Meth is in Boise, it isn't in Newark.
You know if you live in Los Angeles, you'll hear Spanish on the air a
lot. If you're in San Francisco, we're going to be in the Chinese language
on radios. So we're going after the target audience with a very powerful,
correct message, don't use drugs.
MICA:
I thank the gentleman. Now I'd like to recognize the gentleman from New
York, Mr. Towns.
TOWNS:
Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. And I thank you for holding this
hearing. I think this is a very important debate that should take place and
I'm happy that you're doing it.
And it's also good to see you, Mr. Director, and to commend you on the
outstanding job that you're doing with the limited resources. I want you to
know that we appreciate that as well. My question basically, the first one is, why aren't we looking more at antagonizers? The point is that something that would sort of -- you could use to sort of help a person stay away from drugs when they're off. Why aren't we really concentrating more on that?
MCCAFFREY:
On what?
TOWNS: Antagonizers. In other words, like cylavozine (PH), a medication that would be used to sort of help a person go through the crisis.
MCCAFFREY:
Yes, I see.
Mr. Congressman, by the way, let me thank you for the opportunity to
listen to your and talk to your faith leadership community. That was a
tremendously important day to me and I benefited a lot from hearing their
ideas.
You raise a good point. Dr. Leshner ought to talk to it. We are putting
a significant amount of money into research efforts dealing with new
medications. Columbia University is doing some spectacular work. Johns
Hopkins -- there's some for profit corporations. We try and give the drug
treatment community some tools to deal with things like cocaine addition.
There is nothing there right now to access. And Alan Leshner has got several
very promising lines of research going.
We do believe that LAM (ph), methodone, bufinorphene (ph) and other
medications should be available as an antidote, an agonist to some of these
drugs. I think you're quite correct. It's another tool that we ought to give
our drug treatment community.
TOWNS:
Thanks. How do you feel about the debate that's taking place around
legalization. Is it in danger, the gains that we have made, in reducing drug
use?
MCCAFFREY: I think it's a harmful background message. On the other hand it's a democracy. We got to address these ideas.
Four years ago Senator Hatch, Senator Biden told me stay away from the
legalization group. Don't give legitimacy to their arguments or they don't
have any hold over the American people. I think they're so clever, so
devious, that I welcome this hearing and the chance to confront this issue
publicly. Having said that it's a terrible problem. Congressman Ose was quite correct. If you're a young person in California and Arizona you're now hearing that smoking pot has some curative power over diseases and you wonder if it's medicine, how can it be bad for me at age 12. That's a conflicting message and we think it's harmful.
We're going to have to deal with it in open debate in a democratic
society.
TOWNS: Right. Do you think that the reason that we get involved in this debate -- debate so frequently, is the fact that there's not enough slots available for rehabilitation, in terms of -- a person walked in this room right now, and said, I want to be placed on a program today. I'm ready to give up drugs. I'm ready to give up drugs now.
I don't know how -- what I would do. And I'm a member of the United
States Congress, and been a member for 17 years. I don't know what I would
be able to do with that person if he or she walked in here right now and
says, I want a program today. So I think that maybe the reason we keep debating this so frequently, is because of the lack of slots available for rehabilitation.
MCCAFFREY:
Well, I don't argue your point. You know, I got to tell you, though,
the United States Congress, in four years, has increased drug treatment
funding by 26 percent. Donna Shalala now has $3 billion-plus in her
prevention/treatment funding.
You have given us the tools, you're moving us in the right direction in
the appropriations process.
We've got 300,000 more treatment slots today than we had four years
ago. We've now got programs -- Janet Reno is pushing, break the cycle. If
you're behind bars, you've got a drug abuse problem - we've got to bring
effective drug treatment to bear on that population, or we'll never break
free of it.
You did give us the money to get the Drug Corps (ph) program up and
running, so we can get on the front-end of this system, and put these
non-violent offenders in a mandated treatment, and lock them up for three
days or 21 days, to keep them on track. So I think you're giving us the tools, and over time, it'll pay off.
TOWNS:
Let me -- I see my time has expired, but let me just say, too -- I
commend you on the work that you're doing with the faith community. I think
that's so important. I think to tie in the faith community, you know, with
the rehabilitation, I think it's just so important, because I think that
they could be very -- play a very important role in making certain that
young people, in particular, follow through on their treatment. So thank you
very, very much for that.
And Mr. Chairman, thank you again for holding this hearing, and I yield
back.
MICA:
Thank you. Now recognize our Vice Chairman, the gentleman from Georgia,
Mr. Barr.
BARR:
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Chairman, it's been a number of years
since we have had a comprehensive hearing on the drug legalization issue,
and I commend you for calling us together today, given the fact that much
has happened in terms of research and writing on issues involving
legalization of drugs, so-called medicinal use of marijuana, addiction, and
so forth, since the last hearings on this topic. I would like to ask
unanimous consent to introduce into the record a bibliography of marijuana
literature studies ...
MICA:
Without objection, so ordered.
BARR: ... the book entitled "Marijuana and Medicine," edited by Gabriel Nahas (PH), Kenneth Souten (ph), David Harvey, Stig (ph) Agerell (ph) ...
MICA: Are you asking for the entire volume?
BARR:
Yes, Mr. Chairman.
MICA:
Without objection, so ordered.
BARR:
And we do have some additional studies that we would also like to have
submitted for the record, Mr. Chairman.
MICA:
Without objection, so ordered.
BARR:
Thank you. General McCaffrey, back in the spring of this year, as you
know, there was an IOM (PH), Institute of Medicine study that came out. And
while it did not argue for marijuana legalization or the ready availability
of so-called medicinal use of marijuana, it did keep the issue alive, and
move us ever so slightly down that road. You were quoted in The Washington Post as saying you, quote, "thoroughly endorsed the study," and called it -- and this, again is a quote -- "a significant contribution to discussing the issue from a scientific and medical viewpoint," close quote -- and that you would not -- and this is not a quote, but it is attributed to you -- that you would not oppose limited studies of smoked marijuana until a less harmful way of inhaling the substance's active ingredients is found.
It's that particular notion attributed to you that I'd like to have
your reaction to. Do you, in fact, not oppose limited studies of smoked
marijuana until a less harmful way of inhaling the substance's active
ingredients is found?
MCCAFFREY: It is true, and indeed, we now have underway for about a year -- Doctor Leshner can talk to it more knowledgeably than I can -- we already are doing studies of smoked marijuana as medicine. We've got one on-going, I think there's two more that have passed peer-group review.
I think the -- it's -- I think this study is a pretty good piece of
work. This is the executive summary, and I'll make sure that the committee
gets a copy of it. These were serious people, they said up front -- and, Mr.
Congressman, I don't believe you were here when we responded to this an
earlier time -- smoked marijuana isn't medicine. That's what this study
says. It's carcinogenic, it's a dangerous drug, it's an unknown dose rate, it's 400-plus compounds, it's 30-plus cannabenoids (ph) - smoked marijuana isn't medicine. That's what that study says.
It also says ...
BARR: That being the case, General, why would you not oppose further studies of smoked marijuana? That being the case?
MCCAFFREY:
It goes on to say that you ought to do further research on the
potentially modest contributions to symptom management of cannabenoid
(PH)-based research, and to avoid the problem with this carcinogenic
delivery vehicle, you ought to develop a new rapid-onset vehicle. So that's
about 80 percent of what this says.
It also suggests, that in the interim, with a population that's termina
lly ill, with six months or less to live, that something could be learned
from controlled studies of a population who have not responded to any other
available therapeutic measure, and we could collect data, as we do under
other NIH guidelines -- for example, chemotherapy drugs that haven't been
yet proven to be effective. So that's really the sort of the modest exception, and we have funded one such study, and I think there's a couple of more we'll fund.
BARR:
The problem I -- and we've talked about this before -- I think it is
absolutely, utterly inconsistent for the taxpayers to be funding such
studies.
When a -- when a company proposing to seek approval for and then market
a drug seeks to do so, the government doesn't pay them to conduct the
studies. They absorb the cost of that, because they're the ones that want to
market that product.
And here, we have just the opposite. We have the federal government,
paid for with taxpayer dollars, paying for studies that lead us in the
direction of medicinal use of marijuana.
That's what I don't understand -- why the federal government - why you,
or anybody else in the federal government should be advocating and in fact,
carrying out, the use of taxpayer dollars to fund studies oriented toward
the possible so-called medicinal use of marijuana. If somebody wants to
study that, why don't we make them pay for it? Why should the taxpayers pay
for it?
MCCAFFREY: Well, I think largely we're going to do that.
BARR:
Well, no. No, you're not.
(CROSSTALK)
MCCAFFREY: If you'll allow me to answer. I think ...
BARR: This other study cost (OFF-MIKE) of taxpayer money.
(CROSSTALK)
MCCAFFREY: If you'll allow me to respond to your question, Mr. Congressman. I think the principal contribution that NIH makes is to provide medical-grade marijuana for the studies. I think a lot of these sort of modest proposals are actually funded by a San Francisco based research group.
But the bottom line is, this is the same tool that's used on
chemotherapy as a waiver for certain products. I agree with you, we don't
smoke -- agree with smoked marijuana, and this study doesn't either. It says
smoked pot isn't medicine. But some of the cannabenoids (ph) in smoked
marijuana may ...
(CROSSTALK)
BARR: Well, if -- if smoked pot is -- is not medicine, why are we paying -- using taxpayer dollars to continue to study it?
MCCAFFREY:
I've provided you with the answer. If you don't agree, I respect your
viewpoint, but that's where we are.
BARR: OK, then let's move on to something else. If -- if in fact, marijuana -- the active ingredient in it -- tetrahydro (OFF MIKE) -- THC -- is in fact a schedule one substance, that means that the drug has a high potential for abuse -- do you agree with that?
MCCAFFREY:
Sure. You get stoned if you use it.
BARR: That -- that the -- that it has no currently accepted medicinal use in treatment in the United States -- I assume you agree with that.
MCCAFFREY:
What doesn't?
BARR:
Pardon?
MCCAFFREY:
THC does. It's available in pharmacies, with a doctor's prescription,
right now -- marinol (PH). It's ...
BARR:
OK. Then do you advocate the changing -- removing that to a lesser
schedule of controlled substances?
MCCAFFREY:
It would probably make it -- there's a practical matter that doctors
don't like using drugs under that restriction. I don't think THC competes
very well with other available drugs. Certainly nobody in his right mind,
according to this study, would use THC for glaucoma management. It would be
bad medical practice.
So, THC itself has some modest potential. It sort of passed by
history -- better drugs are available. This study's saying, how about the
other 30-some-odd cannabenoids (ph) -- do they have any benefit? And that's
really where they're urging us to go.
BARR: But you're -- you're not advocating in any way, shape, or form at this time that marijuana be removed as a schedule one controlled substance?
MCCAFFREY: Absolutely not. We're adamantly opposed to making marijuana more available to America's children or working people.
BARR: If I could, Mr. Chairman, just ask one further question, and I know we need to -- to go vote. I know we've had some discussion here today of Mr. Soros (PH) and others funding the marijuana legalization movement.
Aside from what a number of us would like to see, and that is a more
perhaps activist or pro-activist role by our Department of Justice in
rebutting and fighting these efforts, is any consideration being given to
possible prosecution, under perhaps the racketeering title of Chapter 96
with Title 18?
MCCAFFREY: Umm. Golly. Mr. Barr, I -- in terms of the initiative -- by state, you mean. These medical marijuana initiatives?
BARR:
Well, they're engaged in medical marijuana initiatives, as well as
other -- funding other studies and -- and activities oriented toward
circumventing our drug laws.
MCCAFFREY: Golly. I don't know. That's new one on me. My view would be, it's a legitimate topic in a democracy, to debate whether or not these psychoactive drugs should be more available in your community. If you want to propose that idea, you ought to be able to make your argument.
I think it's a silly argument, it's dangerous, it's currently against
the law for well-thought-out reasons, but I welcome the chance to confront
that issue in open debate, and I am positive American families and local
leadership are not going in that route. Not when the idea is aired in
public, as we're now doing.
BARR:
You're not aware of any effort, or even looking into the possibility of
prosecuting possible racketeering...
(CROSSTALK)
MCCAFFREY:
I don't know. (OFF-MIKE) it would have a chilling implication on the
right to free speech, so I -- I'm ...
BARR:
It might have a chilling effect on the drug legalization movement,
which might not be bad.
MCCAFFREY:
I think we're going to win that. I have enormous faith in the good
judgment of the American people. I think this kind of argument in public --
you give them the facts, the American people will do the right thing.
They're already against legalization.
You can't get by the common sense of parents, pediatricians, local law
enforcement, nobody really has a grass-roots movement on this effort. It's
not there.
MICA: I thank the gentleman. I'd like to yield now to Mr. Souder.
SOUDER: I kind of hate to rain on the general consensus of enthusiasm for a free and open debate. I am one who is not particularly happy that we're having a hearing called The Pros and Cons of Drug Legalization. I know the Chairman is very committed against -- and has spent his whole career fighting illegal narcotics -- but the plain truth of the matter is, while we live in a democracy, we do not have hearings called The Pros and Cons of Rape. We do not have hearings called The Pros and Cons of Child Abuse. We do not have hearings called The Pros and Cons of Racism. We do not have hearings called The Pros and Cons of Gangs. And the -- the thrust of this being, that somehow a -- this is a libertarian argument that somehow somebody goes and smokes pot, it - that it's a victimless crime -- is just not true. Those who are advocating the legalization of marijuana are responsible for blood in my district, in my neighborhood, and families in my community.
And I don't believe they're any less guilty than those who publicly --
if we hauled a bunch of rapists in here and said, hey, why do you do it?
Thousands of people do it, but we don't invite them up here to talk about
why they favor that position. Or there are millions of Americans who are
racists. But we don't openly say, explain why you're a racist to us.
Because -- I don't think it's right.
And I understand that we're trying to be open-minded here, and that
this hearing -- with all due respect -- has mostly people who - who share my
hard-line view. But at the same time, I don't believe that there should be
views of the pros of illegal activity that is taking the lives of thousands
and thousands of Americans, and to give them any kind of credibility that
this is a democratic debate.
I understand what General McCaffrey is arguing -- that, in fact, like
racism at different points in American history -- and in Indiana, we had the
Ku Klux Klan that took over the state. I don't think that was particularly
helpful to democracy.
That -- I understand that some of these things, once it gets to a high
level in the democracy, that there is a debate that occurs, and if we don't
counter it -- we have to do that.
I do have an uncomfortability with this. (OFF-MIKE) a more calm-down
subject. But I've just been kind of wound up since I heard about the hearing
(OFF-MIKE). I, too, have concerns about George Soros (ph), who, clearly, he and his closest allies have funded predominantly every one of these referendums, and many of the things that I've fought so hard. And -- and we're about to embark -- and I appreciate all your work in many different areas, and particularly in the media campaign we're doing -- if much of what we're doing is going to fight what he's doing.
Have you ever attempted to just sit down with him, and talk with him,
and say, can you divert some of this money to trying to actually do a
no-use?
MCCAFFREY: I have not talked to George Soros (PH), Peter Lewis (ph), or John Sperling. In California for Medical Rights Legalization Campaign, they put essentially $1.3 million into it. Maybe I should. I actually have enormous sympathy and resonance with what you just said. I want you to understand -- don't think I've got an open mind. I am not, after three-and-a-half years of going to drug treatment centers around America, and listening to 14-year-old girls who are addicted to heroin, and listening to their parents talk about it - and just having come yesterday from New Orleans, from a Baptist church-based drug treatment center, I am not open-minded about drug abuse in America. I think it's a crime. It's 1.5 million Americans got arrested, it's a reason why half that, 1.8 million people are behind bars. It's more people dead each year than in the Vietnam War that shattered my generation.
I think it's crazy, and I think most Americans feel the same way. We've
got to put it out in public, we've got to rediscover why we're opposed to a
drugged, dazed lifestyle for our children, our fellow workers, and our
families.
And we're going to do that. I think it's moving in the right direction,
thanks to the kind of support this Congress has given this program -- and
you in particular.
SOUDER: Thank you very much, and I want to reiterate, too, that in the Chairman's district, we heard from a young boy and his dad who had come -- who had started into marijuana, and the difficulties of that family, and that led -- that type of thing led a lot to the heroin epidemic, and -- in Orlando, and in Arizona, we heard from a young spouse whose husband would come home, smoke marijuana, mix it with alcohol, and beat her. We've heard many moving testimonies, and I hope some of those we can pull back out and put into the record with this hearing, too.
Thank you.
MICA:
Thank the gentleman. Our time has expired, and we have a vote -- just
about five minutes left in that. I think we've gotten all the questions that
we -- in that we can now. General, we're going to submit additional
questions to you, and we're looking for some responses to some of the
questions that have already been posed that you said you would respond in
writing.
We thank you for your participation and cooperation, and your efforts
in this great mission. There being no further business at this time, we'll
excuse you, and we will recess for one half hour, to approximately twenty
minutes of, so people can get a quick bite. And I'd like all the witnesses
in the next panel to be here at twenty of, and we'll start promptly at that
time.
The subcommittee is in recess.
(RECESS)
MICA: I'd like to call this subcommittee back to order.
MICA: Since we do have two panels, I would like to go ahead and proceed. We'll be joined by other members shortly.
Our second panel today by way of introduction is Dr. Alan Leshner,
director of the National institute on Drug Abuse. Our second witness is Mr.
Donnie Marshall, who's the deputy administrator of our Drug Enforcement
Administration.
Gentleman as you may know, this is an investigations and oversight
subcommittee of Congress and we do swear in our witnesses, so if you would
please stand and raise your right hand. Do you solemnly swear that the
testimony you're about to give before this subcommittee of Congress is the
whole truth and nothing but the truth?
LESHNER:
(OFF-MIKE)
MARSHALL:
(OFF-MIKE)
MICA: I'd like to again welcome both of our panelists. If you have lengthy statements or additional information you'd like to submit as part of the record, we'd be glad to do that by unanimous consent request. And I'll recognize now our first panelist, Dr. Alan Leshner, director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse. And you're recognized, sir.
LESHNER: Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. I want to thank you and the other committee members for inviting me to participate in this very important hearing and to speak a bit about the science of drug abuse and addiction.
My full statement which we've submitted for the record speaks
extensively about some of the advances that we've made. And I hope everyone
will have an opportunity to read it.
MICA: Without objection, that will be made part of the record.
LESHNER:
Thank you, sir. Let me make some introductory comments -- the point
that scientific advances have been coming at an extraordinary rate and have
virtually revolutionized our fundamental understanding of drug abuse and
addiction and what to do about them. I would say that of particular importance has been an increased understanding of the very significant effect that drug use on a user's brain, and as a result on his or her behavior. Many of those effects on the brain persist long after the individual stops using drugs, and therefore their consequences can be extremely long-lasting and extremely serious. One significant consequence, of course, is addiction -- the literal compulsion to use drugs that interferes with all other aspects of life. And science has taught us that addiction is a devastating illness that results from the prolonged effect of drugs on the brain. However, I would also point out that the affective drugs on the brain are not limited to addiction. They can result in other long-lasting behavioral abnormalities like memory deficits and psychotic-like states with some drugs. And of course, drug abuse and addiction has tremendous negative consequences that go way beyond the health of the individual - consequences for the health and social well-being of the public as well.
Since my written testimony highlights the very diverse array of things
that science has been teaching us, I'll only use one or two examples here to
make an introductory point. As one example, recent scientific advances have
taught us much about the motivations or the reasons that people use drugs,
and of course there is no single reason that people use these substances.
Those motivations are extremely important in designing both prevention and
treatment programs. We need to know why people are using drugs if we are to
influence their decision to use.
Research suggests that there are at least two distinct categories of
users. One subset of people appear to use drugs simply to have a novel or
sensational experience. They take them simply to produce the positive
experience of modifying their mood, their perception, or their emotional
state. But there is also another large group of people who take drugs for a very different reason. Although they're also trying to modify their mood, their perception, their emotional state, this group is using drugs in an attempt to help them cope with their problems. These individuals are in effect self-medicating. They're using drugs as if they were anti-anxiety or anti-depressant medications, and of course over time drug use has the opposite effect. Drug use exaggerates, rather than corrects, underlying psychological, emotional or situational problems. Whatever the motivation for initial drug use, though, drugs produce their effects on mood, perception and emotion by modifying brain function and those changes in brain function have dramatic consequences both acutely in the short-term and over time in the long term.
It's significant that we now know in tremendous detail the mechanisms
of action in the brain of every major drug of abuse. Among the important
things we've learned, by the way, is that even though each drug has its own
idiosyncratic or individual mechanism of affecting the brain, they all share
some common effects and we're coming to understand these common effects as a
common essence of addiction. The implication of all of this work is that addiction actually comes about because prolonged drug use changes the brain. And I'd like to use just one poster to demonstrate one of these important differences in brain function caused by prolonged drug use. But I would like you to know that we've identified similar kinds of changes for very many other drugs as well. What you're seeing here on my right is the brain's ability to use a critical neuro-chemical called dopamine. The ability to use dopamine is critical to normal cognitive functioning and to the normal experience of pleasure, among other things. So interfering with dopamine function has significant negative behavioral consequences. And what this poster is showing you is the very long-lasting effects on the brain that methamphetemine, in particular, can have. So the scan on the left is that of a non-drug user. The next one is of a chronic methamphetemine user who was drug-free for about three years when this image was taken. So this is a persisitent effect of methamphetemines, basically to destroy the brain's ability to use this chemical substance. The third scan is of a chronic methcathenone (ph) addict who was also drug-free for about three years. And the last image is of the brain of an individual newly-diagnosed with Parkinson's disease. What you're seeing here is that when compared with the control on the left, there's a significant loss in the brain's ability to transport dopamine back into brain cells. And as I just mentioned, dopamine function is critical to emotional regulation. It's involved in the normal experience of pleasure. And of course, is involved in controlling motor functions.
Therefore, this long-lasting impairment in dopamine function might
account for some of the very bizarre behavioral dysfunctions that persist
for so long after long-term methamphetamine use. We believe that this kind
of scientific evidence emphasizes dramatically the significant dangers in
drug use, and again significant brain changes have been observed after
individuals use any drug - marijuana, cocaine, heroin, amphetamines,
nicotine. And no one is immune from the effects of drugs on the brain and
the body. Studies such as these have taught us that drug use is an equal opportunity destroyer. That's why we say that there is no such thing as recreational drug use. Drug use is never good for you. It's not like playing ping pong and it's not like playing tennis.
And therefore, as a scientist and as an official concerned with the
public health, I applaud your holding this hearing and your highlighting
these kinds of health consequences of drug use, and I thank you for the
opportunity to participate.
MICA:
Thank you for your testimony. We'll withhold questions until we've
heard from our second panelist. He is Mr. Donnie Marshall, deputy
administrator of our Drug Enforcement Agency. Welcome, and you're recognized
sir.
MARSHALL:
Mr. Chairman, members of the subcommittee, thank you very much. It's an
honor to appear here. I have submitted a written statement that I'd like to
read into the record.
MICA:
Without objection, so ordered.
MARSHALL: I would also like to say, Mr. Chairman, first of all that I want to express my thanks to the subcommittee -- the chairman and the members -- for your support of drug law enforcement, DEA in particular. I'd like to recognize the presence of members of the law enforcement community here today -- the National Troopers Coalition, the National Narcotic Officers Associations Coalition, and members of several state narcotic officers associations, and recognize their tireless work in the efforts to protect our citizens, and particularly our youth, from drugs and drug trafficking.
What I would like to do today -- I'm not a scientist. It's an honor to
appear here with a distinguished scientist such as Alan Leshner. I'd like to
talk to you really as a professional law enforcement person, but also as a
parent and a community volunteer. What I'd like to discuss is what I think would happen, based on my best professional opinion, what would happen if drugs were legalized, and then outline why I think a policy of drug enforcement and prevention does work.
I know that a lot of the current debate has really been over the
legalization of marijuana -- of medical marijuana. And I suspect though that
that legalization of marijuana -- of medical marijuana - is really a first
tactical maneuver in a strategy that some hope will result ultimately in the
legalization of marijuana and all drugs. I think the practical outcome of legalizing any drug would really simply be to increase the amount of drugs available, and in turn increase drug use, abuse and all of the crime and violence that go along with that. I really can't imagine anybody arguing that legalizing drugs would reduce the amount of drug abuse that we already have.
MARSHALL:
And although drug abuse is down from its high mark in the 1970s, we
still have entirely too much drug abuse and too much drug availability in
this country. In 1962, there were only four million Americans who had ever
tried an illegal drug. And in 1997, roughly 77 million Americans have tried
drugs.
This escalation I think, along with the permissiveness and the greater
availability of drugs, I think that the escalation really drives a central
point that I would like to make. And that is that supply, in my best
professional judgment, drives demand. What legalization could mean for drug consumption in the United States really can be seen in the marijuana liberalization experiment in Holland, and that's already been referred to that began in 1976. Holland has now acquired a reputation as the drug capital of Europe.
Another illustration I think of supply driving demand is the recent
surge in heroin abuse in this country. Starting in the early 1990s,
traffickers from Colombia realized that there were tremendous profits to be
made in heroin trafficking and they began to produce sizable amounts of
high-purity heroin.
By developing these -- this high-purity heroin levels -- they attracted
many, new potential users that might not have otherwise been inclined to use
the needle because they can use this high-purity heroin through an inhalant
method of injecting -- of usage.
In order to develop a consumer market for the high-purity heroin, they
used aggressive marketing strategies. They began to use brand names. They
began to market their heroin with cocaine. They began actually to require
cocaine traffickers to move heroin as a condition of accepting their cocaine
product.
These examples really are not just my feelings from a law enforcement
perspective. There's really others who support this line of reasoning such
as Dr. Herbert Claybour (ph), who is one of the leading authorities on drug
addiction. In a 1994 article in the "New England Journal of Medicine," Dr.
Claybour (ph) presented clinical data to support the premise that drug use
would increase with legalization.
He stated in this article and I quote, "Cocaine is a much more
addictive drug than alcohol. If cocaine were legally available as alcohol
and nicotine are now, the number of abusers might be nine times higher than
the current number." I believe that there's also a close relationship
between drugs and crime, and this relationship can be borne out by
statistics.
Invariably, there is a majority of the individuals who are arrested for
violent crime in recent years have tested positive for the presence of drugs
at the time of their arrest. And further, there's a misconception that most
drug-related crimes involve people who are looking for money to buy drugs.
Most drug-related crimes are actually committed by people who are under the
influence of mind altering drugs. And with increased availability of drugs, more people would be abusing drugs. Therefore, I believe more people would be committing those crimes and I think the crime rate would actually go up rather than down.
To illustrate this, I would show a 1994 study by the Bureau of Justice
Statistics -- compared federal and state prison inmates in 1991. This study
found that 18 percent of the federal inmates who were incarcerated for
homicide had committed that offense under the influence of drugs. Whereas,
only 2.7 percent of those people had committed the offense to obtain money
for drugs.
There's been example after example that illustrates the effects of
increased availability of drugs. We've heard a couple of those examples
today, particularly Baltimore. We could debate the causes and the solutions
to the Baltimore example, but we really can't debate the tragedy that's
involved with the Baltimore example.
In response in New York to the drug and crime problem, there was a
strong law enforcement response mounted and this has been effective in
addressing the upward trend of violent crime. In New York, the homicide rate
in 1990 had risen to the highest level ever, 2,262. By 1998 as a result of
the law enforcement response, that homicide rate had dropped to 663, a 70
percent reduction in just eight years. What that really means in human terms is had the murder rate stayed at the 1990 level, by 1998, there would have 1,629 more people died than actually died. And I believe that it's fair to say that those 1,629 human beings really owe their lives to the law enforcement response in New York. Proponents of drug legalization often point to the liberalization experiments in Europe to show that other nations have really successfully controlled drugs by providing drugs and areas where they can be legally used. My question would be that, if those experiments have been so successful, why have there been 184 cities in 30 European countries who adopted the European Cities Against Drug Resolution, commonly known as the Stockholm Resolution, which rejects the liberalization approach.
If you really want to discover though what legalization might mean to
society, I suggest you talk to a clergyman, a junior high school teacher,
high school coach, scout leader or a parent. And I would ask you and I would
bet I know the answer. How many parents or teachers have ever come into your
office to say congressman the thing our kids really need is easier
availability to illegal drugs? I bet you've never had a parent come and say
that.
Drug addiction is a tragedy. It effects entire families. It's a tragedy
that -- for everybody involved. And it wouldn't matter one bit to those
families and those victims whether those drugs were legal or illegal. The
human misery would be just the same. The only difference is there would be
more of it.
And finally, a point I would like to make that drug legalization would
really a law enforcement nightmare. I'll bet there are very few people in
the country who really would propose making drugs legal to a 12-year-old
child.
And that reluctance points up really a major flaw in the legalization
proposal. Drugs will always be denied to some sector of our population. So
there will always be some form of black market and some need for drug
enforcement and prevention programs. I know that there are those that would make the case that drug addiction hurts nobody but the user, but if that lie really becomes part of the conventional wisdom, there will be a lot of pressure to legalize all drug use. And if that were done, I believe we could reverse that tide only when we see the harmful effects over the years of widespread drug abuse.
And by then, I believe it would be too late to reverse that tide. I
believe that this is no time to undermine our effort to stem drug abuse. I
would offer that from 1979 to 1994, the number of drug users in America
dropped almost by half. And I believe that two things significantly
contributed to that drop -- a strong program of public education and a
strict program of law enforcement.
Drug laws and prevention programs can work if we have the national
resolve to enforce them. And as a father, and someone who has had a lot of
involvement with kids and boy scouts and Little League, and as a 30 year
civil servant in drug enforcement, I can tell you that there are a lot of
young people out there that are looking for help. And sometimes helping
those people means saying no. It means setting limits and means having the
courage to back that up. I'd like to tell you about one of those young people who I have helped over the course of my career. During the early 1970s when I was a young drug agent in Austin, Texas, we arrested a young man named, I'll call him John, on drug charges. John had a young, pregnant wife at the time and they were devastated by this arrest, but after he had served his sentence, he and his wife came to my office there in Austin looking for me.
I was a little bit apprehensive about meeting with them at first, but I
went ahead and met with them. And they told that they had come in so that I
could see their new baby who had been born while John was in jail. They also
outlined a second reason. Both of these people agreed that their experience
with drugs and John's arrest had been one of the most horrible experiences
that had ever happened to them, but that that arrest was probably what saved
them.
John explained to me that he had started using drugs because they were
readily available in Austin, Texas in the early 1970s and because he had
seen widespread drug use among his peers. He quit playing sports. He ignored
warnings from his parents, from his teachers. Finally he dropped out of
school all together.
And I had no idea that night when I arrested him what the long term
impact would be and that I would have a positive influence on that young
man's life and I suspect that this young man was a pretty typical person.
One who used drugs because they were readily available and because they were
socially acceptable.
I believe that as a society we have to help our young people and we
have to keep them from taking that first step into the world of drugs that
will ruin their careers, destroy marriages and leave them in a cycle of drug
dependency. If we don't have the courage to say no to drug abuse, I believe we'll find that drugs will ruin millions of lives and ultimately could destroy the society that we've built over the last 200 years.
Drug-abuse-related crime, personal degeneration and social decay, all
of that go with it, those things are not inevitable. They're not inevitable.
Too many people in this country I believe seemed resigned to this growing
rate of drug abuse and too many people seem ready to give up. But our
experience with drugs shows that strong law enforcement and prevention
program polices can and do work if we have the courage, the strength and the
persistence to stay the course.
At DEA our mission, quite simply, is to disrupt the major trafficking
organizations and to fight drug trafficking in order to make drug abuse
expensive, unpleasant, risky and disreputable. And if the drug users
themselves and the traffickers aren't worried about their own health, the
health of others or the welfare of people who are affected by their
products, then they should at least have the worry about the likelihood of
getting caught and going to prison.
Mr. Chairman, thank you very much for the opportunity to appear and
I'll be happy to try to answer any questions you or the committee might
have.
MICA: Thank you for your testimony and I do have some questions. Let me start first with Dr. Leshner. Doctor, there have been questions raised about the need for additional studies of the effect of marijuana. First of all, the effect of marijuana and the marijuana that we see out there now, and I think it's a little bit different than what we saw in the '70s and maybe even the '80s, that would be in general, the damage to an individual.
The second part of that marijuana question would be are there
additional studies that need to be conducted or is there sufficient
scientific, documented, factual evidence that there are not or there are
medical benefits for the use of marijuana? Can you address both of those
parts?
LESHNER: The situation with the marijuana that's available on the streets is that if you were to look at the average concentration of marijuana that's seized and analyzed, what you find is that in the last decade or so it's been relatively stable on average and that's a bit higher, one or two percentage points of concentration, higher than it had been in the '70s. What has changed and what I think is the point of concern for many people is that the diversity of forms and concentrations of marijuana has increased tremendously. So although the average may not be that much different, you now have tremendously potent marijuana and marijuana-like products that are available that might not have been available earlier.
As to the second question about the purported medical uses of
marijuana, both the National Institutes of Health, and as General McCaffrey
spoke this morning, the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of
Sciences, has looked at this question in detail. And let me try and be
precise in reporting what they have said. And that is that there is not a
body of scientific literature to suggest that marijuana is in fact a
medicine.
However, having said that, both groups suggested that there might be
ultimate use for the constituents of marijuana, for example THC and that
research should be done in order to answer that question. One of the issues
of public health officials is that there is a lot of anecdote, intuition and
common sense that appears to be driving medical practice in some parts of
this country. And it's our obligation, in the scientific community, to try
to provide a scientific answer to that.
And it's for that reason that these groups recommended that we enable
research into the medical uses of marijuana. We do have some studies ongoing
that we are supporting that are looking at the potential of marijuana for
the treatment of AIDS wasting, for the treatment of cancer chemotherapy for
those people who do not respond to existing medications and for a potential
use in analgesia.
MICA:
Do you feel that you have sufficient resources this year to complete
those studies?
LESHNER:
We will complete those studies. I need to say that for the National
Institutes of Health, we don't see this as a particularly high priority
area. That it is as it goes through the peer review process, the majority of
these studies have not received very high priority scores and that's why
additional studies have not been funded. We, therefore, have provided a mechanism whereby bone fide research can be conducted by other entities. It would have to be judged to be genuine research through the Food and Drug Administration and NIH, and therefore, we might supply marijuana on a reimbursable basis.
MICA:
Do you plan in the next fiscal year, beginning in October of this year,
to fund additional studies?
LESHNER: We have not received additional proposals for support from the National Institutes of Health and we are not actively soliciting such studies. If they come in the door, we'll evaluate them. And if they receive sufficient priority and merit, then we would consider funding them. Again, we don't have any of those proposals before us that I'm aware of at the moment. Maybe another institute does. And therefore, I think it's not very likely that we will fund many additional studies in the coming (OFF-MIKE).
MICA:
Mr. Marshall, some of the pro-legalization folks are taking to the
airways and supporting various referendum initiatives. There are even
publicizing in paid advertisements. This is a multi page advertisement --
paid advertisement to change drug control strategy and policy. One of the
things they recommend on their last page is effective drug control budget
and they want to slice law enforcement by 50 percent. Do you think that's an
effective strategy and what would it do if we sliced law enforcement by 50
percent?
MARSHALL: Mr. Chairman, no I don't think that's an effective strategy. I think, as I've mentioned in my comments, I believe that a combination of drug prevention programs and law enforcement really works. I heard this morning, either yourself, Mr. Chairman or Congressman Gilman, refer to some decreases in the amount of cocaine use in this country. I would offer I think that law enforcement was a part of that reduction. Over the last six to seven to eight years, we have very effectively wiped out the Medellin Colombia cocaine cartel. We have continued our enforcement efforts against their successors, the Cali cartel, and we really have that group in a tremendous disarray now. And I would submit that that law enforcement success is a part of the reason that we have seen that reduction in the cocaine abuse rate,
So it does -- law enforcement does work. I think it would devastate the
total effort if we reduced our law enforcement programs. I believe that
obviously I think prevention and education are the long-term solutions to
this problem, but in the meantime, we have a lot of vicious, violent
criminals that are preying on our citizens through drug trafficking and
those criminals need to be dealt with and the only way to do that is law
enforcement.
MICA: Two quick points in conclusion. I think this Baltimore example, which Tom Constantine, the director/administrator, had prepared show that liberalization can be effective in population reduction which took place in Baltimore. And there can be some I guess some lessening in crime. Although I don't think it's been very significant in Baltimore. But liberalization leads to addiction. Now this number we have here is from 1950. Three hundred heroin addicts in Baltimore to 38,985. The gentleman from Maryland and Baltimore, Mr. Cummings had told me it's closer to 60,000. That would mean about 10 percent of the population of Baltimore.
So do you think that this is the way we should go? I mean your
statistics point that liberalization has some effect. Crime is down slightly
in Baltimore, but we've got a -- I'd say more than a few more addicts. Does
liberalization lead to addiction?
MARSHALL: Mr. Chairman, I do not believe the liberalization approach is the way that we should go. I've already used the New York example, which I believe has resulted in less violence in that city. I would also use as an example a 1998 study by the Justice Department. I believe it's the Adam Report that shows that arrestees for violent crimes tested positive for drugs. And at the following rates: 74 percent of arrestees for violent crimes in Atlanta tested positive for illegal drugs, 49 percent in Miami, 60 percent in Oklahoma City. I've given you examples of the homicides that were committed under the influence of drugs. I believe that there is clear, clear evidence that drug use is accompanied by crime and violence. And I absolutely do not believe that liberalization is the right approach.
MICA: One final question, the Internet now becomes the -- has become a source for market activity and our staff produced this little printout that shows price -- drug price report -- prices of ecstasy and LSD and marijuana. I guess this information can be made public legally. Although I'm told additionally you can buy drugs now over the Internet -- illegal drugs. Is DEA taking any steps to go after folks that are dealing in this and it is illegal to market and sell drugs in this fashion?
MARSHALL:
The -- what you've referred to there in terms of the prices and
basically the steering people towards sources I would -- I would be hard
pressed to say that that's illegal. You get into freedom of speech issue and
that sort of stuff. But as far as the selling of drugs over the Internet
obviously that's just as illegal as selling drugs in any other forum and we
have heard those same reports. We are in the early stages of evaluating and
assessing that. And we will be looking at that over the course of the near
future.
MICA: Thank you. I'll yield now to the ranking member, Mrs. Mink.
MINK:
Thank you very much. Mr. Marshall, following on the chairman's question
about the use of Internet to entice people to try drugs and indicate that
it's widely available and where it could be purchased. Is there any effort
in the DEA to look at this as a special problem? If so, what are you doing
about it?
MARSHALL: We're actually investigating the reports that we've heard of the sale of drugs over the Internet. Quite honestly, we're in the early stages of that we do not have a handle on that. I would like to respond to that at a later date after we've had a chance to completely look into it.
MINK:
It would seem to me that it would be important for the DEA to have a
cyber space cop section that would be looking at all of this and keeping on
top of it and making a search to see who is doing all of this and whether in
fact sales are taking place.
MARSHALL:
We have requested in our 2001 budget, funding for a computer forensics
program and what you're suggesting would become a part of that computer
forensics program. We have a limited capability in that area right now, but
we hope to increase that over the next couple of years through the budget
process.
MINK: Currently we're discussing Internet sales of guns, Internet sales of wine and beer and hard liquor. So I think this is -- this suggests a new area for the federal government to begin some very serious studies and suggestions for legal efforts on the part of the federal government to intercept the growth of this particular industry. I'm very distressed about it. I have a bill in myself that bans the Internet sale of guns. I see that we could easily expand it to this if there is any gap in the law that prevents you from getting into this field at all.
MARSHALL: I agree totally with everything you've said. I would point to a particular issue with law enforcement and it's going to - it's going to become more of an issue as Internet commerce grows and that's the issue on encryption. We're sort of at a crossroads right now. And we have a need to preserve law enforcement's legitimate court-ordered, court-authorized capability to intercept both telephone communications, Fax communications and Internet communications that involve criminal activities.
And we are, frankly, in some danger of losing that and that's an issue
that we've had -- the law enforcement community has had a lot dialogue with
Congress and industry on. And it's an issue which is very important to law
enforcement.
MINK: The statistics that you brought forth about the number of people in prison today who have a drug use connection is very startling. Could you tell the committee how many major drug traffickers are in prison today?
MARSHALL:
I would have to get that actual information as to how many are in
prison. I can tell you this, the Drug Enforcement Administration and our
local law enforcement partners who are working with us through formalized
task forces arrested some 33,000 drug traffickers in the most recent fiscal
year in fiscal '99. I could not tell you how many of those are actually in
prison, but we do target the major traffickers, the major command and
control figures, the communications managers, the money launderers, those
kinds of people.
And among those 33,000 that we have arrested, we believe that they are
for the most part major drug criminals. If you would like I will try to get
you those statistics.
MINK:
I'd appreciate having that for the record, Mr. Chairman, when you're
able to assemble it.
Now, if you were able to arrest and convict those 33,000 drug
traffickers, what percentage of the drug traffic in America would that then
represent?
MARSHALL:
That's a very difficult if not impossible question to really answer.
And the reason it's difficult to answer is that when you look at drug
production in the aggregate, you have to consider a number of things. You
have to consider that there's a demand for drugs at a certain level in the
United States, and there are numbers on this. I can't -- I don't have them
with me.
But if you assume a certain level of demand, we know that the
traffickers have an actual production level of drugs that is in excess of
that demand. So we -- you would think that would be a simple equation. You'd
bring that down below the demand, you impact availability of drugs. But what
we also have to consider is that somewhere above the actual production is
production capability. And the traffickers have this built-in capability to
account for loss and spoilage and law enforcement seizures and that sort of
stuff. So what you have to do is really impact on the production capability,
not the actual production, before you can impact on the demand level. And
because that production capability so far exceeds the demand level, it's
really hard to say -- it's probably impossible to say what percentage those
33,000 arrested represents.
MINK:
In other words, what you're saying is, even if you put all of them in
jail, there'll still be traffickers to replace them that will be out there
to sell whatever else is being produced.
MARSHALL:
As long as there's widespread drug use. And that's where the prevention
part of the equation comes in...
MINK:
Well, the reason for my question is, that when we're dealing with a
subject of youthful, potential users, say of marijuana, the whole issue that
I'm confronted with when I talk to teenagers about this, is that they would
say, but it's so easy to get. It's down on that street corner or over at the
shopping center or wherever. So I always confront the question of what can
we do as a society to stop this easy access, easy availability. And so I go
back to the trafficking and how this thing moves throughout society. And
unless you can come to grips with that issue, it's tough on the other aspect
of keeping our kids away from that.
MARSHALL:
Well, here's what we can do in my best professional judgment. It really
has to be a two pronged attack. We have to do the prevention and the demand
reduction side of the equation as the ultimate long-term solution. But in
the meantime, as I mentioned, we have these major narcotic traffickers, we
have the violence, we have the crime that is associated with drug use. And
we have to go after those criminals. We have to punish those criminals. What
we do in DEA, and I think most law enforcement agencies, we try to target
the most violent of those criminals. We try to target the ones who are
moving the largest quantities of drugs, and frankly, law enforcement
resources are limited across this country, and we can never arrest our way
out of the problem. I don't think any law enforcement professional would say
that we could.
But it is a part of the equation that we have to address because of the
crime and the violence.
MINK: Moving to the prevention end and addressing it only to the teenager, the student in school, what is the most effective thing we can do to prevent our young people from making that first mistake in trying a marijuana smoke or some other drug? What is the most effective thing that we can do here in the Congress or in the relative agencies to which this problem is a very profound question? Maybe Dr. Leshner can answer that.
LESHNER: A great deal of research has been done on the prevention of drug use, and sadly there is no simple solution to the problem, of course. But we do know that comprehensive programs that involve multiple parts of the community, that are all sending the same message, and that are sending those messages repeatedly, are effective in preventing drug use. General McCaffrey showed some very impressive graphs about drug attitudes and changes in drug use rates and we have seen a change in attitudes and begun to see a change in use rate. Some of that, we believe, is the result of very sophisticated prevention programing that gets -- begun very early. We have to get kids actually before they're in middle school and then we have to give them boosters, just like any other vaccination. And so this programming is never simple and it does have to be comprehensive. One of the things that has happened in this country is the evolution of these anti-drug coalitions around the country. And a major goal that they have had, and that I think they have done an outstanding job of, is having integrated approaches that bring in, not just the schools, not just the parents, not just the churches, but to mobilize the entire community in a single strategy. And as far as we can tell, from the scientific research that has been done, it is an effective strategy.
MINK:
Thank you Mr. Chairman.
MICA: Thank you. And I now recognize the gentleman from Georgia, Mr. Barr.
BARR:
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
First of all Mr. Marshall, I want to thank you and the men and women of
DEA for the outstanding job that you do. I and my constituents deeply
appreciate it.
Put yourself for a moment, hypothetically, in the position of a state
prosecutor. In a state in which there are laws against pedophilia and rape.
Would you take kindly to somebody who comes in with a study and says that
pedophilia is okay and therefore I am going to go out there and spend huge
sums of money trying to make it legal and encourage people to engage in it,
or rape?
MARSHALL:
No, sir.
BARR: Would you have any hesitancy in taking offense at that, notwithstanding their claims that this is simply an exercise of First Amendment free speech?
MARSHALL:
I would take great offense, and I think it would be a ridiculous
argument.
BARR: Do you see that much of a distinction between those arguments and the arguments of the advocates of legalized drug usage?
MARSHALL: Being a professional 30-year law enforcement person, Congressman, I have to confess that I do not see much difference in it.
BARR:
Thank you.
One of the things that I look at, for example, is consistency, and I
think that's very important to yourself as a professional law enforcement
agent.
Recently it's come to our attention that the U.S. Department of Defense
is finalizing regulations to allow for the use of peyote on military bases
by military personnel for so-called "religious purposes." Is it your
understanding that peyote remains a Schedule-1 control substance under the
laws of the United States of America?
MARSHALL: Congressman, I believe that it is. However, I believe there may be some religious exemptions for Native Americans, and I'm not aware of the -- the issue with the Department of Defense. But I believe it does remain a Schedule 1 -- if I could verify that and get back to you.
BARR: Because I mean it is in my criminal code. If in fact the military allows this, and if thereafter somebody in DEA would come to you and say, "I believe, as part of my religious practice and my Native American heritage, that I should be allowed to smoke peyote," would you see that as inconsistent with their duty as a sworn law enforcement officer with jurisdiction to enforce the controlled substances laws in the United States?
MARSHALL: I'm sorry, are you talking about military, sir, or law enforcement...
BARR:
No, if there were a DEA agent that came to you and said, "I believe
that as part of my religious practice, what I deem a religious practice, I'm
going to start smoking peyote. I understand that it's now allowed in the
military." Would that to you be consistent with or inconsistent with their
sworn duty as a law enforcement officer with jurisdiction over enforcing our
federal drug laws?
MARSHALL:
I would be -- Congressman, I would be very, very troubled by that.
However, I think I would have to look at the religious exemption and the
origins of that law to make a final decision, but I would be very, very
troubled with that.
BARR: I would hope so, and I would certainly think so.
Dr. Leshner, I referred earlier to this volume, "Marijuana and
Medicine," that you may or may not be familiar with. We've inserted it into
the record.
There is a -- quite a lengthy discussion about a lot of the harmful
effects of marijuana usage, including several chapters here on its very
serious detrimental effect on reproduction, human reproductivity, and in
particular it's affect on -- and they have some very interesting slides,
similar to the scientific slides you presented here -- on spermatozoa and
the abnormalities that result from particularly extended marijuana usage.
Are you familiar with those studies?
LESHNER: I am somewhat familiar with them. I'm not sure I'm familiar with all of the studies that have been done, but a great deal of work has of course been on the metabolic consequences of marijuana use.
BARR:
Are you familiar enough to give us your opinion on whether or not there
are detrimental effects on human reproductivity by the - particularly the
extended use of marijuana?
LESHNER: I think it's not clear, sir. There is a substantial body of literature in animal subjects that suggests that Delta 9-THC can decrease prevantagenesis (PH) and can in fact interfere with cycling in female rodents. I think that some studies have been done in humans that confirm that kind of an interpretation. But as a scientist, I have to say that I'm not sure all of that research has actually been done.
BARR:
OK.
LESHNER:
There are certainly other...
BARR:
I would commend you, if you could, to take a look at some of the
research in here. I'm certainly not a medical doctor or scientist, but they
present both -- some compelling both textual material as well as some graphs
and pictures they're showing that there indeed seems to be a very clear
link. Could you just very briefly explain -- I notice the chart that you have up here on methamphetamines. We've been focusing particularly this morning on marijuana, maybe to the detriment to some of these other drugs. Could you -- and you may have already done this, and if you have, I apologize, but by the same token, I think that this bears repeating. Could you just briefly explain for me -- and for anybody who might be listening, or redirected to this case -- what that depiction of the four -- they're not photographs but brain scans regarding methamphetamine usage represents.
LESHNER:
They are, and if you'll indulge me, given the comments earlier this
morning about Ecstasy, I would also like to take just a minute and tell you
about the other poster as well. This one, which I did mention in my oral statement, is the measure here -- bright colors are more; dull colors are less -- the measure here is the ability to use a substance in the brain called dopamine. Dopamine is necessary for normal cognitive functioning, the normal experience of pleasure, and it's been involved in psychotic states, anti-psychotic medication. It's a very important neurochemical substance.
So what you see on the left is the ability to bind dopamine in a
controlled, normal individual. The second scan is the brain of a
methamphetamine abuser three years after that individual stopped using
methamphetamine. The third is a methcathanone (ph) addict three years later.
And the fourth is a newly diagnosed Parkinson's Disease patient. As you
know, Parkinson's is a dopamine abnormality as well -- different part of the
brain.
And what's significant here is that you are seeing a very long lasting
effect of drug use that persists long after the individual has stopped using
the drugs. What's important about the particular brain change is, that could
account for some of the mood alterations and certainly the psychotic-like
behavior that persists after methamphetamine use long after the individual
stops using it.
The other chart, which actually you may have seen a related study
reported in the press just yesterday, is the first demonstration in
humans -- this is the first demonstration in humans on methamphetamine, by
the way, the first demonstration in humans of the effects -- persistent
effect of Ecstasy use. MDMA is Ecstasy. What you're seeing here on the top is a control individual, a normal individual. The measure here is the ability to bind another neurochemical called serotonin -- involves, as you know -- anti depressants modify serotonin binding. So there's a normal individual on top.
The bottom is an Ecstasy user. In this case it's three weeks after that
individual has stopped using Ecstasy. And what you're seeing here is a
persistent decrease in the ability of the brain to bind this very important
neurochemical substance. The study published yesterday actually showed in primates -- I'm not sure how you would do this in humans -- but showed in primates a virtually identical effect seven years after the primates were given MDMA. So that the point that I've been making is that drug use has an effect not only acutely, not only in the chronic-use condition, but that it has persistent effects that last long after the individual stops using drugs.
BARR: Would the same hold for extended marijuana usage?
LESHNER:
We don't know in detail. We know in great detail - and the question was
asked earlier this morning. I would be pleased to submit information on that
for the record.
We know in great detail the mechanisms by which marijuana exerts its
acute effects in the brain, it's short-term effects, and we do know that in
long-term marijuana users there are persistent behavioral effects that
persist 48 to 72 hours after the individual stops using marijuana. But as
far as I know, no studies have been done analogous to this that are looking
so far out after marijuana use.
BARR: Thank you, Dr. Leshner. Thank you, Mr. Marshall.
MICA: I'd like to thank both of you. We have additional questions which we would like to submit to you for the record. I would also like to leave the record open for at least two weeks for you to submit additional information on it.
Someone commented that if we could get these charts to every parent in
America we'd probably have a lot less drug use when people could see the
actual -- can see the actual effects on their body and on their brains. Yes,
sir.
LESHNER: We are trying, sir. We're trying to do exactly that.
MICA: Well, it's very revealing, quite shocking.
I'd also be interested, if you can, supply us with any similar
information on the effects of marijuana, if you do come across that. I think
that would be interesting to have. And also these other drugs, we'll put in
as part of the record.
LESHNER: We will provide you information on that.
MICA:
Thank you. I'd thank to both of you, and we will submit additional questions.
I'd like to call our third panel at this time and excuse the second
panel.
Our third panel today consists of Mr. James McDonough, who's the
director of the Office of Drug Control Policy at the state of Florida, Mr.
Scott Ehlers, who's the senior policy analyst at the Drug Policy Foundation,
Mr. Robert L. Maginnis, senior director of the Family Research Council, Mr.
David Boaz, the executive vice president of the Cato Institute; and Mr. Ira
Glasser. Mr. Glasser is the executive director of the American Civil
Liberties Union.
I'm pleased that all of you have joined us today. As I indicated
before, our subcommittee is an investigative and oversight panel of
Congress.
We do swear in our witnesses, and if you wouldn't mind standing and
raising your right hand, do you solemnly swear that the testimony you're
about to give before this subcommittee of Congress is the whole truth and
nothing but the truth?
WITNESSES:
I do.
MICA:
Thank you. I thank the witnesses. They've all answered in the
affirmative. And I also will point out -- most of you are new to the panel - we do ask that any lengthy statements or additional information you'd like to submit to the record, we do so upon request and that we try to limit our oral presentations to the subcommittee to five minutes. You'll see a little light there. We try to be a bit flexible.
But with those comments in mind, I'd like to first recognize and
welcome to our subcommittee, Mr. James McDonough, who's the director of the
Office of Drug Control Policy created by the new governor of the state of
Florida and manned by Mr. McDonough. So welcome, and you're recognized, sir.
MCDONOUGH: Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. It's an honor to be here.
I would like to submit my statement for the record and save you the
time not going through it.
MICA: Without objection, it will be made part of the record.
MCDONOUGH:
I just wanted to say a few things about my observations of drug use in
the United States and particularly in the state of Florida where I know, as
you have pointed out, have been tasked to coordinate all drug efforts to
bring down that abuse rate.
Prior to that time I worked here in Washington in the National Drug
Control Office to see what I could do to help the national concerns about
drug abuse.
I will tell you that Florida has a bad problem with drugs. It has
enough of a problem right now that I feel any legalizations of drugs would
only exacerbate further.
I note that we have by my account some 8 percent of our people in
Florida currently using drugs. This does not fare well compared to a
national average of about 6 percent.
And I have looked further -- last existing surveys in Florida, which
date to '95, show me that we're about 25 percent above the national average
with our youth use.
So we have a problem across the board, and we have a particular problem
with use. I think one of the reasons why we have such a problem is the vast supply of drugs coming through the state. I've taken a look at that over the first 90 days that I've been in my office down there by going around the state, and what I see, quite frankly, is shocking.
In this past year we note that the heroine death rate in Florida has
gone up 51 percent in only one year. This is just an enormous rise in the
statistics in only one year. It makes one shudder as to how it's going look
over the long term. The cocaine-related deaths in the state as well are also up to an horrific extent. We're talking about in the last six years a 65 percent increase in the cocaine-related death rate. This now means that over 1,100 deaths a year, that that statistic exceeds the murder rate in the state.
I said that indications are -- is a big part of this is related to the
amount of drugs flowing through the state. I would note that last year
Customs reported that some 60 to 65 percent of cocaine it seized was seized
in my state.
I'm trying to point out that there are several factors for the abnormal
rate of drug use in the state, but one of the factors, I am certain, is the
supply of drugs.
I might add that I have spent most of my initial time in the state
going around into the various regions of the state meeting with the civic
leaders locally, the media, but a significant portion of the time getting
into the treatment centers to see what the people who are addicted to drugs
have to say. And it is remarkably revealing to me, something I saw when I
worked at national level.
When you go into a treatment center where you are seeing people in
their 20s or 30s or 40s -- and by the way, some in their teens - who have
really suffered a lot in their lives and brought a lot of suffering on other
people, who have committed the majority of the crimes in the state, there's
a couple of message that they give you. The first message is -- and I don't endorse this message -- but the first thing they tend to tell you as a group is, "I'm a wreck. I've hurt a lot of people in my life. I'm a failure." And the next thing they tell you -- well, they don't really tell you, they ask you -- they ask you for help. They say, "Unless you get me the treatment, I'm a gonner, I don't want to die, please, please, we need help," or "I need help."
When I asked them what got them started on drugs, invariably goes back
to their youth -- usually it's their early youth -- and they tell me, "Look,
I smoked, yeah, I drank. Marijuana was my initial drug." They tell me they
started this 12, 13, 14.
When I asked them, "Well, would it have been any different if these
drugs were legal?" They say, "Absolutely not. The last thing we need is the
legalization of marijuana. It's marijuana that got me here." Probably that
phrase is the one I hear most often.
I will tell you I have yet to hear from any addict who's talking to me
saying, "You know, if only drugs had been legal, I wouldn't be in the shape
I am today." I might add on a much more graphic note, when I listen to parents, I have no parent of a child that has suffered from the use of drugs, died from an overdose or caused untold grief on the family say, "If only the drugs had been legal, my child would not have been caught up in this."
So my observation is, the last thing Florida needs -- and I would
extrapolate that, the last thing the country needs -- is a legalization of
illicit drugs.
Thank you.
MICA: Thank you. We'll withhold questions. I'd like to recognize next Mr. Ira Glasser, who's the executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union.
You're recognized You are welcome.
GLASSER:
Thank you. I ask to have my testimony, which I have delivered to the committee, be submitted for the record and then I'll summarize.
MICA:
Without objection...
GLASSER:
Thank you.
MICA: ...that entire statement will be made part of the record.
GLASSER:
Let me speak to three named topics of this hearing - to harm reduction,
to criminalization and to legalization. These terms are thrown around a lot by a lot of different people, and it's not always clear what they mean, so I want you to be clear what I mean. There are two kinds of harms associated with drugs. One set is caused by the drugs themselves, and that's mostly what we've been talking about today. It is important to say -- and we have not heard much of that today -- that those harms very widely, depending on the particular drug, depending on its potency, depending on its purity, depending on its dosage, depending on the circumstances and the frequency of its use. There is no such thing as harms from drugs. There are only harms from particular drugs used in particular ways and particular frequencies and particular dosages. We have also not heard -- but I think it's important to make when you're making policy -- distinctions between use and abuse. We have heard just now, for example, that no parent would say, "If only drugs were legal," if they had a child who overdosed on drugs.
I'm a parent of four children who grew up in the middle of Manhattan,
and I agree with that. I would -- I would be very distraught if one of my
kids had died from an overdose of drugs. But I tell you what I would say as a parent and what I've heard many parents say when their kids are not drug abusers but maybe smoked a marijuana joint when they were 16 in the same way as they may have tried a beer. Both of them are legal at the age of 16, but these kids were under control, they used it moderately, once in a while, they did well in school, they did well in sports, and they grew up to be stable, productive kids. And those parents were not real happy about the law. And when my 15-year-old came to me 15, 20 years ago now and said, "I'm smoking marijuana, what should I do about it?" I talked to him as I would have if he told he was drinking beer. And then I told him one other thing. I said, "You have two additional dangers from marijuana that you don't have from beer. One of them is, you can get arrested for it, and the other is, you don't know what you're getting on the street because it's totally unregulated." And it is only for those two reasons, and not for any other reasons, not for any pharmacological reason, that I was more concerned about his use with marijuana than I was about his use of beer.
GLASSER: Kids can be destroyed in a lot of ways, and frankly, I don't need the government's help in raising my children, and I don't want the government's intervention, particularly with the police power of the state.
I had real concerns about my kids drinking too much, but that had
nothing to do with legality or illegality. It had to do with teaching
children the responsible use of dangerous substances. And it critical when
you're making policy to make distinctions, I think, between use and abuse.
There are 70 million people, most of them adults in this country, who have
admitted to using marijuana, and virtually all of them have done so while
maintaining productive and stable lives, and most of them you wouldn't even
know that they had smoked marijuana. It used to be said 15 years ago that every family had somebody gay in their family, only they didn't know it. That is true of marijuana use today. We hear the stories of the abuse, but we don't hear the stories of the use, we don't hear the stories of controlled use, of moderate use, of long-term use within lives that are otherwise stable and productive. And one of the questions we have to ask ourselves, is do we want to make those people criminals out of a concern for people who are abusing drugs. Those are very important differences. The second kind of harm is the harm associated with the law itself. Our laws, which are criminal prohibition laws for the most part, create problems, just as they did during alcohol prohibition, that the drugs themselves do not cause. Al Capone did not shoot people because he was drunk. And most drug dealers are not shooting people because they're high.
There are many studies which show that. And it makes sense. Everybody
knows that Al Capone didn't shoot people because he was drunk. He was
settling commercially disputes with weapons in the streets because that's
what prohibition requires you to do, because you can't settle disputes
through the law.
The random escalating violence in our streets is not caused by drugs.
It's certainly not caused by marijuana, which if anything, it makes people
less aggressive. But it is caused by making commercial transactions, which we cannot prevent, be settled outside the law with violence in a way that endangers all sorts of people, including innocent bystanders. Now criminalization and legalization. Criminalization means the attempt by society to control the availability of drugs in order to deal with drug abuse, to control the availability through criminal prohibitions with heavy penalties by interdiction and by deterring commercial transactions.
That's what criminal prohibition is. That's what criminalization is.
And we ought to be assessing whether criminal prohibition works, not on some
moral fervor about drug use, and certainly not about a concern about drug
abuse which criminalizes drug users who have no problem. We ought to be
assessing whether in fact it reduces drug availability, whether in fact it
deters commercial transactions, and whether perhaps it doesn't create harms
that didn't exist there before.
Legalization refers to an alternative system -- I want to say this very
carefully -- legalization refers to an alternative system of controlling the
availability and safety of drugs. It means that you have regulations of
various kinds instead of criminal prohibition. You cannot regulate what
you're trying to prohibit, because by definition you're putting it outside
the law.
Regulations can range from medical prescriptions to things like Prozac
and Valium, and it can range from more restrictive kinds of medical
prescriptions, like the use of morphine over a two-week period for pain
relief in a hospital setting, and it can be regulations that are milder,
like those used for alcohol and tobacco.
We would never say that because there are 15 million alcoholics in this
country, we should make criminals out of people who drink a bottle of wine
at night with dinner or have a scotch after work. We would never say that
and this country would never accept it. And we would not even say even to
those 15 million who are alcoholics that the way to deter you from being
alcoholics and ruining your lives and the lives of the people around you is
to put you in jail and arrest you. We don't say it with alcohol, we don't say it with tobacco, so why do we say it with marijuana, for example. It has to be that there's something much worse about marijuana use than there is about alcohol use and tobacco use. And part of the task, if you're going to really be objective and impartial about this, is to find out what exactly that is.
And the science that we bring to bear on that has to be a science that
is contested, that is peer reviewed, and that is not the product of
political conclusions drawn first with the scientific marshalled to support
it. There are books you've introduced today, there are other books you ought to be introducing, and I can tell you what some of them are, and I've read them all. And as a non-scientist, I can tell you when you read them all, you find that the science is a lot more unsettled than we have heard here today. And that in fact, marijuana may be one of the mildest drugs and the least dangerous drugs and the least capable of abuse of all the drugs we're talking about, including those that are legal. So the question about why do you want to criminalize even heavy users, and above all, why do we want to criminalize productive users who are using it the way you use alcohol, is a heavy burden for a free society to bear, and it's a burden I suggest you ought to take seriously.
One final point. The enforcement of drug laws in this country has
become an engine for the restoration of Jim Crow justice. We have to talk
about race when we're talking about the enforcement of drug law. Maybe this
is not inevitable and maybe it is not an inevitable consequence of
prohibition, but the racially disparate sentences between crack cocaine and
powder cocaine, the racially disparate arrests for the same offense, the
racial profiling that goes on in drug interdiction on our highways, of which
we've so much of recently, the racial profiling in sentencing, the
disproportionate number of black and Latino people who are in prison for the
same offense, in the teeth of everybody telling us that most drug users and
most drug addicts are white. As long ago as the early '80s, William Bennett, one of General MacCaffrey's predecessors said, "eighty percent of the drug addicts and drug users are in the suburbs and white and male and in their '20s." But that isn 't who we're arresting and that isn't who we're sending to jail and that isn't who we're pulling over in their cars.
The racial consequences of this experiment in criminal prohibition are
stunning in this country and have also led to the disenfranchisement, the
post-felony disenfranchisement of 14 percent of African American men. One in
three men between 20 and 29, African American men, are now under the
jurisdiction of the criminal justice system. Most of them for nonviolent
arrests, most of them for possession.
Thirteen percent of all monthly drug users are African American,
according to federal government statistics. Thirty-four percent are
arrested; 55 percent are convicted; 74 percent are in prison. That is a
scandal that has to be part of the burden we bear when we look at the
consequences of criminalization.
Thank you.
MICA: Thank you for your testimony. I would like next Mr. Scott Ehlers, senior policy analyst with the Drug Policy Foundation.
EHLERS:
Thank you. I have a full statement that I would like to introduce into
the record.
MICA: Without objection, that will be made part of the record. Thank you.
EHLERS: Thank you. Chairman Mica, Representative Mink and other distinguished members of the subcommittee once again, my name is Scott Ehlers. I'm a senior policy analyst with the Drug Policy Foundation.
Thank you for inviting me to testify on our nation's drug policies. I
am proud to say that the Drug Policy Foundation has been on the forefront of
reform since 1986. I'm sorry to say that over the last two decades the drug war strain on the justice system has gone up significantly. Drug arrests are up from 580,000 in 1980 to nearly 1.6 million in 1997. The number of drug offenders in prison is 22 times larger today than in 1980. We are creating, in the words of General Barry McCaffrey, a drug gulag.
One of those prisoners is Dorothy Gaines, a mother of three from
Mobile, Alabama. Dorothy calls me every week to tell me how she misses her
children and how she would be willing to wear an ankle bracelet for the rest
of her life if she could just go home. Dorothy is serving 19 years in
federal prison on a crack cocaine conspiracy charge. No evidence of drugs
were ever found in her home. She has no previous arrests. She is an
upstanding, church-going citizen. There was so little evidence, the state
court threw the case out, but the federal prosecutor took it any way. She
was convicted merely on the testimony of the word of drug dealers who lied
so that they could get a reduced sentence. The kingpin is going to get out
of prison eight years before Dorothy because she didn't know anyone to
snitch on. But it's not only Dorothy serving time, so is her son Phillip who
wrote the trial judge to strike a deal -- "Dear Judge, Could you help my
mom? I don't have anyone to take care of me and my sisters. My birthday is
coming up in October and I need my mom to be here. I will cut your grass. I
will wash your car every day. Just don't send my mom off. Please, please
don't send her off."
Other families are being torn apart just like Dorothy's, many of whom
are in this book, "Shattered Lives," which I am sending to each of you. And
if there have been other books entered into the record, I'm wondering if
this is a possibility as well.
MICA: Without objection it will be noted and made part of the record.
EHLERS:
Thank you. Has the mass incarceration made drugs less available? Cocaine is half as expensive today as in 1981 and heroin is five times as pure. In 1975, 87 percent of high school seniors said it was easy to get marijuana.
EHLERS: Today, that figure is 90.4 percent. Clearly, our nation's current drug strategy is not achieving its intended goals. We think there's a better way, based on the following principles and reforms. Number one, drug use and addiction should be treated as public health issues, not criminal justice problems. With the threat of criminal sanctions gone, many more people with substance abuse problems would seek medical assistance rather than hiding out of fear of arrest.
Number two, prevention should address the root causes of drug use and
abuse. Community development, job training programs and after school
programs should receive more support.
Number three, drug policies should be based on science and research,
not ideology. Research shows that treatment is more cost effective than
prison, marijuana is an effective medicine, and syringe exchange reduces the
spread of HIV.
Number four, drug policies should be based on a respect for the
Constitution, civil liberties and property rights. Unfortunately,
Representatives Barr and Cummings aren't here. I was going to thank them for
cosponsoring the Civil Asset Forfeiture Reform Act, which we are supporting.
That would protect property owners.
Number five, federal drug policies should respect democracy and states
rights. The federal government should respect state initiatives that have
supported drug policy reforms. Number six, mandatory minimums should be repealed, drug sentences reduced, and alternatives to incarceration implemented. Congress should support Representative Waters in passing her H.R. 1681 which would repeal mandatory minimums for drug offenses, and we also support General McCaffrey's call to reduce drug prisoners by 250,000.
Number seven, the regulation and control of currently illicit drugs
must be included as one of the drug policy options that's discussed. What
would these regulations look like? Would government doctors at special drug
stores dispense the drugs? Would all currently illicit drugs be sold in the
regulated market or are some unacceptably dangerous? Would drugs be
regulated over one year or 20 years? All of these questions have to be answered by the American public. Why must regulation be considered? Because prohibition and the resulting black market enriches criminals and terrorists around the world, encourages the recruitment of youth to sell drugs, provides youth with easier access to drugs, corrupts government officials, and undermines the rule of law.
We must also acknowledge the potential benefits of regulating the drug
market, including taking the profit out of the hands of criminals and
putting it into government coffers for expanding prevention and treatment
efforts. In conclusion, there are a wide variety of drug policy innovations that would save tax dollars, protect children, and improve public health. But we must first realize that police and prisons are not the solution to our social problems. As a free society, we should seriously consider all the options to determine what is the best drug policy for our country. Thank you again for giving me this opportunity.
MICA:
Thank you for your testimony. I'd like to recognize Mr. Robert
Maginnis, senior director of the Family Research Council. You're recognized.
Welcome, sir.
MAGINNIS:
Thank you, Mr. Speaker, members of the committee. Sir, I'd ask to have
my testimony submitted for the record. I also have five exhibits -- actually
one through five, and number seven that I'd like to show as I go through my
testimony, if I may.
MICA:
Thank you. Without objection, we'll make that part of the record and
we'll be glad to show your display here.
MAGINNIS: Well sir, I -- legalizers will promote myth and we'll probably hear some today. The truth is that drug legalization as the DEA indicated will lead to more crime and violence, significantly higher social costs, and ruin millions of lives from addiction and use. These tragic results promise severe consequences for the non using public as well.
I also want to dismiss the spin given to the so-called "quasi
legalization" quote successes like those in The Netherlands and Switzerland.
There are five slides here I'd like to show that indicate -- I visited these
countries numerous times and have seen their drug problems. I have discussed
their bankrupt policies with government officials and drug treatment
specialists, addicts and their families.
Now, they took these -- the first five, if you can just run through
those please. They took a very public embarrassment to Switzerland -- and
these are only on Switzerland, not The Netherlands today -- and they put
this underground basically. They hid it in shooting galleries. They hid it
in heroin giveaway clinics. They hid it across the country. It still exists.
It's just that it's not in a big forum right in the middle of Potspitz (ph)
Park in downtown Zurich of in Bern or some other countries. But they
continue to have a real problem.
I think it's interesting and worthwhile noting that slide number seven,
if she would show that -- number seven exhibit please. Well, you can't quite
read this, but basically it's an advertisement, a giant billboard, in one of
the Swiss cities that says: "Bill Clinton smoked pot and he didn't become a
junkie." And the message is clear. They're taking our cultural, our
political icons in this country and using it to promote their liberal drug
policy. Very disturbing. And unfortunately I've seen much the same in my two
visits here recently in The Netherlands. I'll continue with my statement, sir. Unfortunately in this country, I see a growing tolerance for liberal drug policies such as medical use of marijuana and free meals for junkies. These radical ideas are seldom about compassion, but mostly part of the legalization slippery slope. The recent Institute of Medicine report makes mincemeat of smoked pot as medicine, and recent peer-reviewed medical journal studies show the hollow ground under needle pushers.
MAGINNIS: Two ideas are key. First, drug intolerance does work. And secondly, Americans and especially those harmed by drug use understand that legalization is a deadly path. Now, our military's experience shows that drug intolerance does work. In 1980, 37 percent of our service members reporting using drugs. Some units were nearly incapable of doing their mission because of drug and alcohol abuse.
Today, illegal use in the military stands at 2.7 percent. That's a
victory for our country. And the armed forces won the drug use war by
enforcing tough rules. Drug use came to mean either immediate discharge or a
single chance at treatment. Frequent and random drug testing radically cut
casual use as well.
I was an Army company commander in Europe during the early 1980s when
the military cracked down on drug use. As a commander, I supervised testing,
ordered soldiers to treatment, and disciplined or discharged others. We
cleaned the ranks. Today's military remains just as tough on drugs and is
much better as a result.
The military's tough anti-drug program offers valuable lessons for
American society. First, aggressive use of testing ought to be employed
where legal. Second, promotion of intolerance with stiff sanctions must
become the rule. Third, treatment with the threat of sanctions like today's
drug courts works. And most importantly, parents, friends and local leaders
must stay involved. America's tough drug law -- Americans, rather, approve of tough drug laws and oppose legalization. I would point out our survey that we do every year, we found that when told about the high potency of modern marijuana, seven of 10 voters opposed legalization. Nearly two-thirds of voters believe that legalizing cocaine and heroin would increase violent crime. Legalization would radically increase use, which would impact the innocent as well. Users are known to terrorize their families and neighbors with violent acts or to steal from them. Too often where children are involved with a drug-using adult, abuse and neglect are common. Welfare recipients on drugs stay on the public dole much longer. In some cities like Baltimore, most felony suspects test positive for illicit drugs.
The bankrupt notion that this country would legalize drugs is
especially disconcerting to the average citizen who doesn't want to make
drugs easier for kids to get. This strongly held view is supported by a May,
1999 Gallup public opinion survey that found that nine of every 10 Americans
believe increased violence is linked with drug and alcohol use by school-age
children.
In conclusion, I urge you to reject the mythology of legalizers. The
use of drugs like marijuana, cocaine, methamphetamine and heroin cause
widespread damage and death. Making these substances legal would pave this
country's path to social catastrophe.
Thank you.
MICA:
Thank you for your testimony. And now very patiently waiting is Mr.
David Boaz, executive vice president of CATO. Thank you for being our last
panelist. You're recognized, sir.
BOAZ:
Mr. Chairman, distinguished members of the subcommittee, thank you for
inviting me to testify before you today on the successes and failures of our
current policy and possible alternatives. I, too, have a complete statement
that I'd like to submit for the record.
MICA:
Without objection, so ordered.
BOAZ: Ours is a federal republic. The federal government has only the powers granted to it in the Constitution. And the United States has a tradition of individual liberty, vigorous civil society, and limited government. Just because a problem is identified does not mean that the government ought to undertake to solve it. And just because a problem is found in more than one state does not mean that it is a proper subject for federal policy.
Perhaps no area more clearly demonstrates the bad consequences of not
following such a policy than our experience with drug prohibition. The long
federal experiment with prohibition of marijuana, cocaine, heroin and other
drugs has given us unprecedented crime, corruption and incarceration,
combined with a manifest failure to stop the use of drugs or to reduce their
availability to children. In the 1920s, Congress experimented with the prohibition of alcohol. In 1933, Congress recognized that prohibition had failed to stop drinking, had increased prison populations and violent crime. By the end of 1933, national prohibition was history, although in accordance with our federal system, many states continued to outlaw or severely restrict the sale of liquor. Today, Congress must confront a similarly failed prohibition policy. Futile attempts to enforce prohibition have been pursued even more vigorously in the 1980s and the 1990s than they were in the 1920s. The federal government spent $16 billion on drug control in 1998 and has approved a budget of $17.9 billion for 1999. State and local governments spend another $15 billion or more every year. These mindboggling amounts have had some effect, as you've heard earlier today. Total drug arrests are now more than 1.5 million a year. Over 80 percent of the increase in the federal prison population has been due to drug convictions. Drug offenders now constitute 60 percent of all federal prisoners. And yet, as was the case during prohibition, all the arrests and incarcerations have not stopped the use and abuse of drugs, or the drug trade, or the crime associated with black market transactions.
Cocaine and heroin supplies are up. The more our customs agents
interdict, the more smugglers import. And of course, while crime rates have
fallen in the past few years, today's crime rates look good only by the
standards of the recent past. They remain much higher than the levels of the
1950s.
As for discouraging young people from using drugs -- a theme that has
come up many times today -- the massive federal effort has been largely a
dud. Despite these soaring expenditures, about half the students in the
United States in 1995 tried an illegal drug before they graduated from high
school. Every year for the past 20 years at least 82 percent of high school
seniors have said they found marijuana fairly easy or very easy to obtain.
During that same period, according to federal statistics of dubious
reliability, teenage marijuana use fell dramatically and then rose significa
ntly, suggesting that cultural factors have more effect than the legal war
on drugs.
I would remind you that all of the terrible and heartrending stories
that we've heard today in this room have happened under a policy of
prohibition -- under a policy of 1.5 million arrests a year. I would suggest
that is not a sign of success. The manifest failure of drug prohibition explains why more and more people from Baltimore Mayor Kurt Schmoke to William F. Buckley, Jr. to former Secretary of State George Schultz have argued that drug prohibition actually causes more crime and other harms than it prevents.
We care a lot about family values these days. We've heard a lot about
families today. But the drug laws often break up families. Too many parents
have been separated from their children because they were convicted of
marijuana possession or some other nonviolent offense. Will Foster used
marijuana to control the pain and swelling associated with his crippling
rheumatoid arthritis. He was arrested, convicted of marijuana cultivation,
and sentenced to 93 years in prison -- later generously reduced to 20 years
in prison. Are his three children better off with a father in prison -- or
better off with a father who uses marijuana medicinally or a father in jail
for 20 years?
And going to jail for drug offenses isn't just for men anymore. More
than two-thirds of the 150,000 women behind bars have children. One of them
is Brenda Pierson (ph), a heroin addict who managed to maintain a job at a
securities firm in New York. She supplied heroin to another addict and a
Michigan prosecutor had her extradited, prosecuted and sentenced to 50 to
200 years. We can only hope that her elderly children will remember her when
she gets out.
Drug prohibition leads to civil liberties abuses. People who compare
the success of the military to the success we might have in a free society
suggest that a military model is appropriate for a free society. In trying
to win this unwinnable war, we've already suffered under wiretapping,
entrapment, property seizures and other abuses of Americans' traditional
liberties. As we deliberate the costs and benefits of drug policy, we should
keep those problems in mind. Students of American history will some day ponder the question of how today's elected officials could readily admit to the mistaken policy of alcohol prohibition in the 1920s, but continue the policy of prohibition of other drugs. Intellectual history teaches us that people have a strong incentive to maintain their faith in old paradigms, even as the facts become increasingly difficult to explain within that paradigm. But when a paradigm has manifestly failed, we need to think creatively and develop a new paradigm. The paradigm of prohibition has failed. I urge members of Congress and all Americans to have the courage to let go of the old paradigm, to think outside the box, and to develop a new model for dealing with the very real risks of drug and alcohol abuse.
Now I believe that if this committee and the 106th Congress will
subject the federal drug laws to that kind of new thinking, it will
recognize that the drug war is not the answer to the very real problems
associated with drug use.
Thank you.
MICA:
Thank you for your testimony.
I'd like to recognize first for the purpose of questions, Mr. Barr, the
gentleman from Georgia.
BARR:
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Glasser, and before I -- I just had a
couple of quick question for you. I would like to say that I really
appreciate the work of the ACLU in a lot of different areas -- privacy
rights, asset forfeiture, and I know Mr. Ehlers, you mentioned that earlier
and I appreciate your reference to that. So -- and it isn't that we disagree on every issue. There are a lot of issues that we do agree on and that we work for, and I appreciate that very much -- the work that the ACLU does in those and many other areas as well.
We do have I think a fundamental policy difference on drugs. There were
a couple of terms that you used, and I note you were very careful about
defining certain terms. But a couple of terms that you used, Mr. Glasser,
that I wanted to ask your definition of. What is "drug abuse" as opposed to
"drug use"?
GLASSER:
Well, think of the difference between an alcoholic who is always in a
stupor and gets up in the morning and drinks a court of vodka every day, and
those of us who go home at night and share a bottle of wine at dinner or
have a scotch or two, even if we do it every night, and go into work and
lead productive and stable lives. That's the difference between use and
abuse.
BARR: So it would be the difference between ...
GLASSER:
Compulsive dysfunctional use of -- heavy use of a substance, as opposed
to occasional, moderate responsible use.
BARR: In terms of alcohol usage, we I think draw such a distinction, for example, in not making it necessarily illegal in every instance to convict somebody for driving after they've had a drink of alcohol. But we try, and I think we've succeeded in large part over the years at developing a somewhat sound scientific basis for measuring whether or not somebody's faculties and facilities to react and act to stimuli around them, for example, in driving a car, where to react improperly poses a danger to them and more importantly to other people -- and we draw a distinction. We say it's not illegal unless it can be shown, reasonably -- we do draw some lines...
GLASSER: And it's not illegal if they're not in a car. It's not illegal...
BARR: Yes, I'm just -- I mean I'm just using the example of driving a car where you inherently would pose a danger to other people.
GLASSER:
Driving while impaired.
BARR: Is it your view, then, that mind-altering drugs can be used in certain amounts without significantly impairing a person's ability to act and react to the world around them in a safe manner?
GLASSER:
Well, first of all, first of all, I would apply exactly the same
standard to marijuana or any other drug that we apply to alcohol in terms of
driving a car. If you are impaired for any reason while you're driving a
car, you should not be driving a car and you should be subject to sanctions
for doing it. But that's a different question than whether or not you're
impaired at home with two friends while you're sitting around and having a
little party on a Saturday night. There, you can get drunk, can't you? And
as long as you don't go out and drive a car and put someone else in danger,
the government has no authority to intervene in your life with its police
power and put you in jail.
And that is the same standard that I'm talking about. And when we come
across the person who cannot control the use of alcohol and whose life is in
a shambles, we still do not consider it a criminal problem. We don't exactly
always know how to solve it, you know, and the tale of Darryl Strawberry and
millions of other people whose names are not as well known teaches us that
this is not an easy problem to solve. But we know that with respect to
alcohol, we don't do it with prison and we don't do it with cops. And that's
all I'm saying.
BARR: One of -- thank you -- one other term that you used was a "productive user." And I'm not quite sure, you mean ...
GLASSER: I mean a person who is productive. I mean that ...
BARR:
Who is productive, yet also uses drugs; not that using drugs makes them
productive?
GLASSER: Yes. I mean the CEO of a major company whose on, you know, the cover of Fortune magazine and the only reason he may not be admitting he smokes marijuana the way you and I drink red wine is because it's criminally...
BARR: You're not outing somebody are you? You're not outing the CEO of a...
(LAUGHTER)
GLASSER: That's why I haven't used any names.
(LAUGHTER)
The -- but that's what I mean by productive. I mean, when you have 70
million people who have admitted to using marijuana, you almost can conclude
inevitably that most of those people are people you would like your kids to
grow up to be like. And that they're using marijuana in no way different
than you use wine.
BARR: We probably disagree on that as well.
GLASSER: Yes, but then we have to find out why we disagree.
BARR: Well, but you are, I'm sure, being a very learned and very, very well-read gentleman, you're aware of the studies that have been done over the years, not just recently, but going back many years, about the cost to the productivity of individuals, corporations and companies -- large and small -- with regard to drug usage. So I mean...
GLASSER: Well, actually Mr. Barr, I think those studies are less conclusive to the conclusion you draw than you think. The ACLU is about to put out a study on the utility of urine testing in employment settings, and the relationship of drug use off the job to productivity, to absence...
BARR: Well, I'll agree with you to the extent that...
GLASSER:
... you'll be surprised.
BARR:
... some of the figures that I see from some of these studies -- I mean
they are -- they're sort of like this Y2K issue. We had some witnesses come
in on that and they said it would cost a trillion dollars or something. I
mean, to some extent, I don't want to argue over the exact magnitude of it,
but in talking even anecdotally with employers of small businesses for
example, they are very forthcoming in indicating the drop-off in
productivity, the danger posed to other people when people try and use
machinery and so forth.
So there are costs.
GLASSER:
And how do they know this?
BARR:
Well, I suspect that any good employer can tell if an employee is
dozing off on the drug because of drug usage. Sometimes you can smell it.
Sometimes it's because of drug tests.
GLASSER:
Well what about if they use marijuana on a Saturday night and then it
was Wednesday? What then?
BARR: Well, if -- I suppose if one could establish that you can absolutely discreetly say, OK, drug usage on day one will have no effect whatsoever on day two, three, four, 50, 100 or 125 -- you know, your position might have some merit. But I think... GLASSER: And so isn't that worth finding out?
BARR:
... with regard to -- well, I think to a large extent we probably have
found out an awful lot. Maybe not so conclusively that every scientist and
every doctor is willing to say with definiteness, yes, this is exactly how
it is. We heard the -- you know, we have some studies up here that some scientists and doctors agree on; others they say there is certainly room for more study. But from a practical standpoint, I think a lot of employers would take exception to saying that people who use marijuana and then come into the job are productive individuals necessarily. There are some costs. Mr. McDonough, with regard to the comparison as many draw, or the distinctions as many draw, between alcohol usage up to the point where it does not demonstrably, measurably, significantly interfere with a person's ability to react and act to stimuli around them, do you think that alcohol usage is the same as the usage of mind-altering drugs? In other words, those in the federal schedule of controlled substances?
MCDONOUGH: I think not. And I'd like to just take a few minutes why I think that. I've heard some figures bandied about very freely. I'd like to just recap them. The fact that 70-some million people in America used to use drugs is true. I think it's good that drugs are illegal, because over 60 million of them have stopped using drugs, which I think is a very good outcome.
The casual use of drugs as a benign event, non-threatening, I will tell
you, sir, with 120,000 dead in the decade of the '90s alone, I don't think
so. I actually do think there's a debilitation with a significant portion of
drug users that leads in fact to death, and a lot of ruin before death --
not just to the people that suffer from it, but their families as well, as
well as our neighborhoods. In this regard, of the casual do-it-in-your-home, it's not a problem -- I would ask that we take a look at the children who end up in foster homes. The statistics that I've reviewed several times shows me that some 60 to 70 percent of the children in the United States in foster homes are there because within the nuclear family, you had the instance of substance abuse.
So the idea that it's a harmless, benign pastime, I just can't agree
with. That gets us into the analogy of prohibition, which has been mentioned
at this table three times. I've heard it often. It would have you think that
Al Capone was the product of prohibition; that with that came tommy guns and
with that came murder rate. I would tell you that in the United States -- and I've looked at the statistics and would like to submit them for the record -- between 1900 and 1915, the murder rate in the United States per 100,000 went up over 800 percent. It is true that during the period of prohibition there was a marginal increase in the murder rate -- another 12 percent, above that 800 percent. But I would tell you today that the murder rate is below what it was both before prohibition and after prohibition. So to draw the analogy that prohibition causes tommy guns and Al Capone and murder, and we see that repeated with drugs, just doesn't seem to wash.
In regard to prisons, I'd just like to make this statement. I do
believe we can do an awful lot in this country with drug courts and coerced
abstinence, meaning treatment for those in the criminal justice system. But
I have to say, it is an absolute myth that we have filled our prisons with
the casual smoker of a harmless bong. I did take a look at Florida's prison
statistics before I came here. I'd like to submit that for the record. I
would tell you that of the 65,000-plus in prison in late '97, there were 14
people there - that's 14, not 1,400 -- there for the primary offense of the
possession of marijuana. In every one of those cases, it was at a degree --
at a level that made you believe that they in fact were trafficking in
marijuana. So I will tell you that without any hesitation, statistically I can report that there is no one in a Florida prison with only one conviction of a marijuana possession offense. Of the 14, all of them had prior records and some had other serious crimes along with that.
When Mr. Maginnis talks about this series of myths, I think he's
exactly right. Not that we can't do better with our laws in getting
treatment prevention and cutting supply. I think we should do that. But to
surrender that it is hopeless; that it is an abomination to abuse the rights
of the individual to continue as we are, I think are a far overblown case.
Drugs are serious. Drugs do alter the mind. Doctor Leshner demonstrated that
here.
BARR: Is that why they call them mind-altering drugs?
MCDONOUGH: That's why they call it that. It is a mess. And I don't think making them legal -- actually makes the mess any worse.
One final thing, I listened to the story of talking to children about
use of drugs. When I was at national level, we would survey again and again
the 80 percent of our children that don't use drugs. By the way, that
dispels a myth right there. Eighty percent of our children between ages 12
and 17 don't use drugs. At the worst of it, senior in high school, about 25
percent are current drug users.
But to come to the point when you ask the 80 percent, why don't you use
drugs, the overwhelming answer is, my mother, my father told me not to. It's
as simple as that.
BARR:
Do you find a corresponding statistic on the other side - that there is
a disturbing correlation between...
MCDONOUGH:
I do. In fact -- absolutely.
BARR: ... brothers, sisters, parents that use drugs, and that is given as a reason why those teenagers in the 20 percent give for their use of drugs?
MCDONOUGH: That is exactly right. I have done that as well. I've gone to them -- the 20 percent. I put it this way, have your parents ever talked to you about using drugs? The overwhelming answer is, no. The other thing I asked, which is a very touchy one, is there drug use in your family? A significant portion say, yes. What they see is what they do.
BARR: That comports with my experience as a U.S. attorney in dealing with this issue in communities in the northern district of Georgia. Mr. Ehlers, I'd like to discuss very briefly the concept of harm reduction, which seems sort of a domestic version, I suppose, of our constable policy to some extent, because if you say that, well, we're going to let people use drugs so that we reduce the harm, there is, and I know that no matter how strong and well-researched a medical study or a scientific study there is, some people just won't believe it.
But there are, in fact, very, very sound scientific studies, some of
which we've already introduced into the record today, that indicate that
just marijuana, to say nothing of the other more -- much more serious
drugs -- marijuana usage does have direct serious negative effects on the
human immune system -- the auto-immune system. It can hasten the onset of
AIDS in HIV patients. We also know from studies that marijuana severely
damages various human organs over time. We've seen with regard to some substances, the effect on the brain; another study that I referred to earlier with regard to the detrimental effect of prolonged marijuana usage on the human reproductive system, particularly in males. We know certainly about the effects, well-documented, on the heart and the lungs of marijuana usage. Dozens of study show also that there is a psychiatric component also to both drug usage, as well as withdrawal from drug usage. Withdrawal from marijuana, for example, can create and does create a propensity toward violent or aggressive behavior. If in fact one says that well, we look at drugs as harm reduction. We l et people use drugs because to not do drugs would somehow create more harm. In light of these studies, particularly those that show that marijuana does damage the immune systems of HIV and AIDS patients at a rate at least twice as fast as those who do not use marijuana, how can you really advocate the use of marijuana for HIV and AIDS patients and say that this is harm reduction, if in fact is demonstrably and by scientific evidence hastens the onset of AIDS and hastens death in these patients?
EHLERS: I haven't seen that research that you're talking about. All I do know is I have met HIV and AIDS patients who get relief from using medical marijuana. They're all over the place, whether it be in California or here in DC. They've been some of the biggest -- the HIV/AIDS community has been some of the biggest advocates on behalf of medical marijuana. So it helps their wasting syndrome. If you're taking lots of pills in order to try to combat your illness, then you need something to help keep those pills down. You need something to help you eat. And so time and again we've seen AIDS patients who have used medical marijuana to stimulate appetite; to end their nausea; and that helps them live.
BARR:
But if you in fact read these studies and were convinced that there is
indeed some merit to them that show that aside from those other results of
marijuana usage, and we'll leave that aside for the moment, if it could be
shown, as I believe it has been, that the use of marijuana does have very
serious detrimental long-term -- in so far as you can speak of long-term in
somebody with terminal AIDS - results, would you still maintain that it is a
benefit to give them marijuana, even though it may hasten the onset of their
death?
EHLERS:
No, I mean you would have to weigh the evidence again, you know, using
marijuana as a means to increase weight, to end nausea -- you would have to
weigh that evidence against any potential increase in the spread of the HIV
virus. Like I said, I haven't seen that evidence. The HIV patients who use
medical marijuana right now say it really benefits them, so I have to take
their word for it.
BARR:
With regard to the use of or the increased propensity for violence by
marijuana and other drug users, both during the use of the drugs and as has
been shown in studies, in withdrawal, would this also be something that if
you saw these studies and they seemed to be scientifically based would cause
you to re-think in any way your advocacy of marijuana in terms of so-called
harm reduction?
EHLERS: If I saw that evidence, but I noted when you said that, I've got some quotes from the Institute of Medicine report, and I mean what they have to say is a distinctive marijuana and THC (PH) withdrawal syndrome has been identified, but it is mild and subtle compared to the profound physical syndrome of alcohol or heroin withdrawal. Compared to most other drugs, dependence among marijuana users is relatively rare.
So if the Institute of Medicine didn't find it, I don't know where that
evidence would come from.
BARR: In that case, drawing the analogy, should alcoholics be given free alcohol? Would that be considered harm reduction?
EHLERS:
No, because alcoholics, they can't function properly on the use of
alcohol. So ...
BARR:
Heavy marijuana users can?
EHLERS:
That's not what I'm advocating.
BARR: So you're not advocating marijuana usage?
EHLERS:
No.
BARR:
Are you opposed to marijuana usage?
EHLERS:
No.
BARR: Is there some middle ground there that I'm missing?
EHLERS: Yes, there is. I don't think marijuana smokers should be in prison. That's what it comes down to. I mean, I don't think they should use, but I don't think they should be imprisoned either.
BARR:
So your basis is really not so much a harm reduction or medical, but
more, as Mr. Glasser says, more of a legal -- or Mr. Boaz's is basically
just a legal. These are not the sort of things the government should be
regulating.
EHLERS: Ultimately, I don't think that the government should be involved in arresting nonviolent marijuana users if they are adults.
BARR:
With regard to -- I noticed in your testimony on page three, the part
about...
EHLERS:
In testimony?
BARR:
Yes, your paper here.
EHLERS:
Yes.
BARR: On page three, you say "other maintenance therapies should be explored, including the use of" -- I can't even pronounce that - but it goes on, I can pronounce "heroin maintenance" -- "heroin maintenance, based on the successful programs in England and Switzerland."
EHLERS:
Yes.
BARR:
How do you define "successful programs" in England and Switzerland? How
do you gauge -- how do you determine they're a success, because like Dr.
Maginnis, I've been over there. I know, granted, my perspective in going
over there was probably different from yours, but I've seen at least to some
extent the methadone clinics over there. I've gone to the shooting galleries
that they have in Switzerland. And I've seen mothers go into these, leave
their babies out on the streets for hours on end, with nobody watching them,
because it's more important for them to go in and shoot up at the shooting
gallery at government expense, than it is to pay attention to what's
happening to their children. I don't measure that -- I don't say hey that's a successful program, we ought to emulate it. How do you measure the success of the programs in England and Switzerland on heroin maintenance?
EHLERS: I measure success by the reduction of crime in Switzerland. They found a 60 percent reduction in crime among people who were in the program.
BARR: So heroin usage would be a form of crime prevention?
EHLERS: It wasn't about crime as far as the crime of possessing heroin. It was the crime of going out to steal in order to support a habit. So yes, it's used as a crime prevention program, as is methadone maintenance in a way.
It also increased employment, decreased homelessness, stabilized
people's lives, brought people into treatment. A lot of people weren't
interested in heroin maintenance after they tried it. They wanted to go into
treatment.
BARR:
Well, that's not my experience. And when I was over there just a couple
of years ago talking with some of the doctors at the government-run clinics,
they said, for example, that they would find that once people got into the
program and were able to come by several times a day and get their drugs
from the government, that they would lose their interest in maintaining a
job. They would lose their interest in their family. And the most important
thing every day was getting by the clinic at a certain time so they could
get shot up. So here again, I'm not quite sure whether that is a success or whether you would measure success simply because that person is no longer committing crimes. He or she doesn't have to. They can just come to the clinic and get their drugs. It seems almost a circular argument that, hey, this is a successful program because we're giving them what they want so they don't have to go out and take it from somebody else. But I'm not quite sure that it has an effect, as you say, on unemployment other than perhaps increasing it because they feel they don't have to or can't maintain a job because they're constantly going over to the clinic.
EHLERS:
I just can tell you what I saw in the research. The research showed
that there was an increase in employment, a decrease in unemployment. There
was a stabilization of lives. So I mean, I can give you the research if you
would like. I have it.
BOAZ (?):
Congressman, could I add one sentence in response to that? As a
non-heroin user, I would consider a program successful if it reduced the
amount of crime that I and my family had to be subjected to as we walk
through a city like Washington, D.C. or Zurich. It would be better if people
cured their heroin addiction, but it's certainly a success for the rest of
society if crime went down 60 percent.
BARR:
With regard to one other question that I posed earlier, Mr. Ehlers, to
an earlier panelist, with regard to studies documented in "Marijuana and
Medicine" book we've introduced into the record here, that show demonstrably
a very negative effect on human reproductivity. Would you, if you see the
study and you conclude as I think is pretty obvious that it does have an
effect on the abnormal development and production of spermatozoa in humans,
would that be something that would be a success, if we say OK, it's OK for
people to smoke marijuana and use other drugs, notwithstanding the possible
effect or very likely effect it would have on birth defects and so forth?
Would this also be harm reduction?
EHLERS: I don't think it's OK to smoke marijuana, so that's not really the point. One, I don't think that -- I think there is a lot of conflicting evidence on the health effects of marijuana. I think Ira mentioned earlier another book that we would like to introduce into the record, is "Marijuana Myths, Marijuana Facts." And that looks at all the scientific research, and overall it shows that the negative health effects of marijuana are fairly benign. So I don't think the research is there.
BARR: OK. I would respectfully say you're somewhat selective in research. On page four of your paper, you have as a footnote number eight to the following statement: "The Institute of Medicine found marijuana to be an effective medicine," but if you look, as you have properly done, at the quote in your footnote eight, it simply says "the accumulated data indicates a potential therapeutic for cannabinoid (PH) drugs" I don't think that's quite the same thing as saying it's an effective medicine.
Would you agree with that?
EHLERS:
Right. Well, maybe I should have used a better quote, like from the
principal investigator, Dr. John Denson (PH), who said we concluded there
are some limited circumstances in which we recommend smoking marijuana for
medical uses.
BARR: What -- OK. With regard to the Drug Policy Foundation...
EHLERS:
Yes.
BARR: Is the money that you all receive from George Soros received directly from him or does it comes through other conduits?
EHLERS:
We receive a grant from the Open Society Institute to run our grant
program.
BARR:
OK. So it doesn't come directly from Mr. Soros. It comes from the Open
Society Foundation of his?
EHLERS: That is a foundation that he established, yes.
BARR:
OK. How much do you receive? Is there a set amount that you all receive
each year? Or does it vary?
EHLERS: This year, the grant program received $1.75 million.
BARR: And is that consistent with prior years? Or has it gone up or down?
EHLERS: Yes, I think that's fairly -- I'm not exactly sure, but I think that's about the same as what has happened in the past.
BARR:
OK. Before I turn back to the chairman, Mr. Maginnis, as you've
indicated, I know you've done extensive research and travel to Switzerland
and Netherlands and some of the other countries where they have gone further
down the road toward legalization than we have at this point. Would you care
to take just a couple minutes, and I'd appreciate the chairman's indulgence,
but just take just a couple of minutes in response, or in reflecting on some
of the other material we've gone over here in the last several minutes, on
the concept of harm reduction and whether or not the programs whereby
citizens of Switzerland, for example, are allowed on a sometimes regular
basis several times each day to go shoot up with drugs, whether this is
indeed a benefit and a harm reduction.
MAGINNIS:
Yes, sir. I have visited Switzerland six times in the last three years
specifically to look at the drug issue. It's interesting with regard to what
the Swiss government has been doing that even the Dutch government, who is
known for its drug (OFF-MIKE) policy, has been very critical of the outcome
of the Swiss experiment.
The World Health Organization just a couple of months ago really
condemned the outcome. They said this is not science. This is - they didn't
use the word "quackery," but in fact if you read their study, they come to
that conclusion. And the INCB -- the International Narcotics Control
Board -- just in May released a finding that this study or this experiment
by Switzerland is misleading. It doesn't accomplish what it set out to do.
And it set out to supposedly show that you could reduce harm; that you could
help return people to effective lifestyles, healthy lifestyles and so forth,
by giving them heroin.
Now, of course that changed radically as they went through. They added
people and so forth.
Now with regard to crime, I interviewed the doctor who ran one of the
clinics in Zurich, and they had an official from Bern, and he put together
the so-called "crime" part. They used data that they picked up from the Bern
police department on 40 of their addicts. And then unfortunately they've
extrapolated those facts across the entire experiment and they have really
it's been distorted in the press - the real facts -- about the crime
reduction.
And when you began to ask addicts, and I did -- I put together a video
with the assistance of the Swiss that oppose this. And it's interesting,
when we interviewed addicts coming out after having received their heroin
shots, many just openly acknowledged, yes, we take cocaine on the side. And
where do you get the money for that? Well, they didn't really want to tell
us. We came to the conclusion after watching and discussing this with them, quite frankly they were probably engaging in illegal activity to get their additional money. A lot of what you hear about crime is more anecdotal than factual. Employment -- the government gives them jobs, meaningless jobs for the most part. They're not putting together BMWs and Mercedes over there -- not these heroin addicts. For the most part, they're sitting around waiting for the next heroin shot, as you indicated, Congressman. There are very few people -- very few -- in this three-year experiment that ever went on to meaningful treatment. You know, in fact, they're closing treatment facilities in Switzerland because they can't get enough of these heroin addicts because they're getting free dope from the government, they're not going to the treatments, so they're closing them down.
And as far as the overall effect, as I showed you on that sign, there's
a great tolerance in that country. You know, it's a great country, but the
fact is that their drug policy, and they've already gone through two
constitutional referendum, they're probably going to have another one before
long. Those constitutional referendum, first, the people were confused,
quite frankly, the government was supporting their heroin maintenance
program.
In the second one, of course they came out and said, no, we're not
going to legalize drugs. They're not really sure where they're going, but I
will tell you from talking to many teachers and many public officials that
the effect is having significant impact on the kids. The kids are using
marijuana at much higher rates than they ever have before and it continues
to go up. Their view of heroin is not what it was 20 years ago, it's much,
much more tolerant.
And I've seen the same thing in Holland. You know, General McCaffrey
went to Holland last summer and there was quite a lot of media play in that.
He was very critical, and rightfully so. Their figures that were posted by
Interpol aren't quite squaring with what they want to accept by their
country.
You know, I can remember, and I'll leave, you know, I'll stop with
this. I went into -- at Rotterdam -- I went into the basement of a church,
where I talked with a heroin and a cocaine dealer. And I saw this dealings
there. They were allowed to operate there. And anybody can come in and buy
heroin, anybody can use it right there. I watched this guy chasing the drug, and which is basically sniffing the stuff, heroin, up into his nose, and then they go off and they meander through the streets. And they're not very coherent and they are going to, you know, significantly increase certainly the public loitering problem. But they've really pulled down that beautiful part of the city into, you know, a terrible scourge on what otherwise was a pretty productive community.
BARR:
Is Mr. Soros involved also in channeling money to the Vienna Foundation
which supports these sorts of movements?
MAGINNIS:
I understand Mr. Soros has contributed to some organizations that
promote liberal drug laws in Switzerland. Now, as far as the Netherlands, I
can't say specifically on that.
BARR: Are you familiar, Mr. Ehlers, whether the figure, as I understand it, of $20 million that Mr. Soros has put into the Vienna Foundation to further the legalization and expand the legalization effort is accurate or not?
EHLERS:
I don't -- I don't know anything about that foundation or whether
they've gotten any money.
BARR:
Thank you.
MICA:
Thank you. Mr. Boaz, you seem to like the Baltimore model sort of addiction as an alternative. Is that something that you support? You said that crime went down and you cited Mr. -- or Mayor Schmoke, I guess it is, as someone who said we should go to a more liberal policy in...
BOAZ:
I did cite Mayor Schmoke, yes.
MICA: Do you think that that's a good model? He's instituted that.
BOAZ: No, I'm not particularly excited about the Baltimore model. I cited Mayor Schmoke as somebody who has come to realize...
MICA: But you said it would bring crime, you know...
BOAZ: My policy would, yes. If we eliminated the criminal penalties for the use and sale of these drugs, it would significantly reduce crime. People would be able to buy other mind-altering drugs in the same sorts of stores where they buy mari -- where they buy alcohol today, and they would not have to commit crimes in order to get those drugs, and the dealers would not have to shoot each other when they have a dispute.
MICA: In Baltimore they've adopted some of that policy under his leadership and through '96 we saw almost 40,000 people as heroin addicts. Now, Mr. Cummings, who sits right over here, told me that the figure is closer to 60,000, that's 10 percent of the population. If we adopted...
BOAZ: I find that implausible, Mr. Chairman.
MICA: He told me 60,000 and he cited it in hearings that he estimates in Baltimore. This is a 2-years-old official record given to me by DEA. That would be about 10 percent of the population. Now, if we took that great model and we applied it on the United States, we have about 260 million, we'd have 26 million heroin addicts as an alternative. How's that sounding?
BOAZ:
Mr. Chairman, nobody seriously believes that under any circumstances,
if you had mandatory heroin use in the United States, you couldn't get 26
million addicts.
(LAUGHTER) If I could just make one suggestion...
MICA: This model -- this model seems to indicate that one city that has tried a liberalized policy has an incredible percentage of people that have become addicts. And I'd venture to say, I don't have the statistics here on the decrease in crime, but it certainly doesn't mirror New York and it doesn't mirror the nation as a whole. And there has to be some cost to 39,000 people as heroin addicts. Wouldn't you say there's some cost involved?
BOAZ:
There would be if there were 39,000 heroin addicts. And, Mr. Chairman,
I have not...
MICA: Well, that -- the information given to me by DEA (OFF MIKE).
BOAZ:
Well, I understand that. I have not studied the Baltimore situation. I
would suggest the first problem with that chart is that you show 1950 and
1996. A lot of changes happened between 1950 and 1996. At least a fair chart
would show how many heroin addicts there were in Baltimore the day Kurt
Schmoke was elected mayor...
MICA:
Well...
BOAZ: ... and then has there been a change. And then, if you can show that it doubled and you have plausible figures, we have something to discuss. But the change from 1950 to 1996 cannot be attributed to any single policy.
MICA: But there are -- you say there are not 39,000.
BOAZ:
I am skeptical of that number, but I admit I have not studied
Baltimore.
MICA: And again, Mr. Cummings tell me the figure's much higher. But he just lives there and that's his neighborhood, so he probably wouldn't know.
I've heard repeated comments that we have first-time marijuana users or
just users of marijuana behind bars.
Now, Mr. McDonough, you testified there are 14 folks in the state of
Florida.
MCDONOUGH: That's correct, in 1997, the end of '97.
MICA: In 1997. And some of those had other records...
MCDONOUGH: In every case they had some other record.
MICA: Mr. Glasser, are you from New York or locally?
GLASSER:
I am.
MICA:
You are. This is an interest...
GLASSER: I don't know how many heroin addicts.
MICA:
This is an interesting...
(LAUGHTER) ... study of incarceration that's just published in April that really debunks the theory that first-time drug users or simple even first-time felons involved with use of illegal drug substances are incarcerated. It was completed by the state of New York, director of criminal justice completed in April 1999. And I'd like to submit this for the record and just read maybe one or two sentences from it. And it's pretty comprehensive and really what it does, let me just read in conclusion: "This report provides an accurate and objective insight into the manner in which New York State criminal justice system adjudicates persons charged with drug offenses. Contrary to images portrayed by the Rockefeller drug law reform advocates, drug offenders serving time in our state prison system today are committed to prison because of their repeated criminal behavior, leaving judges with few options short of prison."
And this has a very detail report basically mirroring what they said in
Florida.
UNIDENTIFIED WITNESS: Is that violent behavior or is that repeated criminal behavior with repeated arrests, say, for a small amount of personal marijuana?
MICA: Again, it's documented. And this is...
UNIDENTIFIED WITNESS:
Yes, but what's documented?
MICA:
... this is felony convictions.
UNIDENTIFIED WITNESS:
Yes, I understand that. But the felony convictions can be violent or
they can be for possession of a...
MICA: Possession is not, as I understand it, a felony (OFF-MIKE) marijuana.
UNIDENTIFIED WITNESS: Well, it can be. Depends on the amount. Well, look, all I can tell us is that the United States Department of Justice in 1993 produced a report, which I got from the United States Government Printing Office in 1994, which on page three of that report says that nearly 17 percent of the total federal prison population were drug offenders with no prior criminal history.
MICA: I'm sorry, could you repeat the percent again?
UNIDENTIFIED WITNESS:
Seventeen percent of the total federal prison population were drug
offenders with no prior criminal history. Eighty-four percent of the
increase in state and federal prison admissions since 1980 was accounted for
by nonviolent offenders, which generally means possession or buying or
selling. And in 1995, only 13 percent of all state prisoners were violent
offenders. What you're dealing with here is that the major proportion of the increase that has gotten our prison population up to 1.8 million is for nonviolent drug offenses. If we were getting the kingpins and the violent people, we wouldn't have any more drug market. You guys are not doing it.
MICA: This report, and it just happens to deal with facts and recent facts...
UNIDENTIFIED WITNESS:
Well, what about these facts?
MICA: Disputes that. Without objection, this report will be made part of the record. And I'd be glad to insert that statement of '93. And this is a pretty comprehensive study of the New York prison population. I think we've heard the same thing from Mr. McDonough. So there a myth (PH) here.
Mr. Boaz, you look like you're -- you want to respond, but I want to
ask you a question. As far as legalization and decriminalization, do you --
I think you indicated, and I want to be sure about this for the record, you
want to go beyond marijuana to any type of now substance, what is it,
category one, schedule one, decriminalize, no criminal penalty for
possession?
BOAZ: Right. And I just wanted to say that I don't think there's necessarily a conflict between the facts you read and the facts Mr. Glasser read. The report from New York says that most of the prisoners in New York have had prior criminal records. The report Mr. Glasser read said most of -- or a large portion of them have not had a violent conviction. So the issue comes down to should people who sell drugs be in jail.
MICA:
That leads me to my next question.
BOAZ:
OK, well...
MICA: Most of these people are dealing in quantities and are traffickers. Now, possession versus trafficking and sales. How far did you want to go on your legalization/decriminalization? Just - there's no -- possession, I understand, no penalty is your position. How about trafficking?
BOAZ:
I would like to see drugs sold in licensed, regulated stores, not on
street corners and not on playgrounds. You don't see very many liquor
dealers offering liquor on schoolyards and playgrounds. You do see people
selling drugs there because it's a completely unregulated, unlicensed,
illegal business.
MICA:
Now...
BOAZ:
So I would like to see...
MICA:
... do you want to...
BOAZ: ... the business treated like alcohol, yes.
MICA:
OK. So that if people were dealing in manufacture, production,
trafficking in an illegal, nonregulated fashion, for example producing
moonshine you get arrested. Do you want the same thing for illegal
narcotics?
BOAZ:
Well, I grew up in Kentucky and we had a lot of bootlegging and
moonshining, and my father used to be one of the people who tried to take
those people in. So, yes, I would...
MICA:
I'm trying to develop the model...
BOAZ:
All right, well, my...
MICA: I -- we talked about, a little bit about Baltimore, and I...
BOAZ:
Right.
MICA:
... want to see how you want to distribute and what types of stuff. And
you don't think we as a Congress or a legislative body have any
responsibility in controlling substances. And we have methamphetamine, you
want that in the same category even with this medical statis -- medical
factual information.
BOAZ:
I'm not necessarily certain that there couldn't be some drug that was
so dangerous...
MICA:
Heroin?
BOAZ:
... so mind-altering...
MICA:
Heroin?
BOAZ: ... but I would not put heroin in that category. I would rather have marijuana, cocaine and heroin produced by Philip Morris and distributed by licensed liquor stores than I would have it being produced by the Cali Cartel and distributed on street corners, yes, that's right.
MICA:
And meth, (OFF-MIKE) category?
BOAZ:
Well, you know, I think meth is actually a pretty good example of
something that we've seen throughout Prohibition in the 1920s and the 1990s,
which is the creation of stronger drugs. When you had these huge profits
available in an illegal business, as opposed to a legal business, you get an
incentive to try to supply more and more powerful, smaller and smaller kinds
of drugs.
I don't think you would see drugs like crack and meth if we had a legal
drug market. I think if we had licensed, regulated stores where you could
get marijuana and cocaine you would not see these other kinds of drugs being
produced.
MICA:
Mr. Ehlers...
EHLERS:
Yes.
MICA: I'd like to hear about your model. Possession across the board?
EHLERS: Yes, I would say right now, and that's considered a decriminalization model. Adults wouldn't be prosecuted only for the possession of...
MICA: Marijuana, heroin, cocaine, are you in the Boaz model?
EHLERS:
Well, the -- what we're attempting to do is treat drug use and drug
abuse as a health problem. And the problem is, if you criminalize it, if you
tell people they're going to get arrested for being a drug user, then you're
going to push people away from help. So that right now I think you've got a
situation where people are afraid to go in for treatment -- actually there's
no treatment available, but if it were available they're afraid of criminal
sanctions.
I think there's also the problem of, like, heroin overdoses among youth
where...
MICA:
Well...
EHLERS:
... you've got kids who are afraid that they're going to be arrested
and they're then not helping their friends get to the hospital because they
don't want to get in trouble.
MICA: I'm trying to get to the model, though, that you'd like to see. I mean, we're a legislative body, we pass the laws for determining what's legal and illegal, what's criminal and noncriminal. Now, the Boaz model is pretty clear. Marijuana yes. How about heroin and cocaine?
EHLERS:
What...
MICA:
You want to...
EHLERS:
What I would like you to do now is I've got a full list of, in my
testimony I listed all of those things that should be done now, namely the
repeal of mandatory minimums, much more treatment available, much more
prevention available, the reform of civil asset forfeiture, the restoration
of civil liberties. All of those things can be done here and now. That's
what I want.
MICA:
What about cocaine and heroin sales, legalization, regulation as
described by Mr. Boaz..
EHLERS:
That...
MICA: I'm trying -- you know we operate basically on -- actually this Congress operates on the will of the people.
EHLERS:
Right.
MICA:
Believe it or not, it does.
(LAUGHTER) And when the people make up their mind they want such and such...
EHLERS: I think the people should be offered -- I mean, frankly we talk about a lot of different potential models and we don't advocate on behalf of any of those various models that would come under regulation. Right now, one thing that I think could be tried - both of the fellow witnesses here have said it hasn't worked. I think there's good evidence to support the possibility of heroine maintenance. That's something that could be tried. Medical marijuana -- that is something that should be available.
MICA: Do you like the Baltimore model on heroine?
EHLERS:
I'm still not exactly sure what exactly the Baltimore model is. I
haven't...
MICA: Well, it's a liberalization more or less...
EHLERS:
The only thing that I was aware of that Kurt Schmoke was doing in
Baltimore was that he had -- was expanding needle exchange programs which
I've seen studies to show that it works -- and he's gotten a lot of the
addicts into treatment. And he's also expanding treatment. I don't know what
he's doing on arrest policy.
I do know that there has been a heroine use problem in Baltimore long
before Kurt Schmoke came on board. So, you know it's not something that we
can blame on Kurt. There's -- there's -- you know this is a long history
here. He came into a situation.
MICA: What about regulation, continuing of the regulation of, and criminalization of trafficking in heroine and cocaine, methamphetamines?
EHLERS:
I think we do need to discuss the possibility of regulation mainly
because of the problems created by prohibition on the black market which
have been discussed before. A regulated market would -- I mean do good
things in the sense that we would no longer have criminals getting large
amounts of money from the trade. We would no longer have destabilization of
governments in other countries, undermine the rule of law, the huge prison
system we have now. And there's also tax revenues to talk about and using
that for prevention and treatment.
That is a possibility. It's not something that we're advocating for
right here and now.
MICA:
Thank you. I have tried to be open and fair in this process. In fact I
think we're three to one on this panel of pro. But that -- the government
also state its position prior to this, the head of the Drug Policy Office
and two others. But we conducted this hearing to have as I said in the
beginning, an open civil discussion. There is obviously a difference of opinion and I intend to have additional hearings to the point, decriminalization, looking at the Arizona model, Phoenix, talking about medical use of marijuana. There's some points that have come out in this hearing that we need to look at.
What's going on as far as promotion of these different positions, the
new element that's raised here today about marketing on the Internet. I mean
the Internet didn't exist just a few years ago, and we have a whole new
scope and range of activities.
So, that's the purpose of the hearing is to open the discussion. I
don't know that we'll reach any conclusions and you can see that there's a
great diversity of opinion among you, I'm sure the people in the audience
and the members of this panel. I did want to give Mr. McDonough some time to respond. He did want to respond. If you would do that at this time.
MCDONOUGH: Thank you Mr. Chairman. I just wanted to make a comment on the notion put before you that the fact that drugs are against the law deters people from getting treatment. Having spent a number of years looking at drug courts, the prison system and addicts, sad to say, but what I find is an addict almost never volunteers treatment. It's only when they're under great duress that you see them come forward. This is for the reich as well as the poor. Usually with the rich it's when the spouse says looks that's enough. We can't tolerate this any more. Or the business is about to fail or the profession is about to fail, then they will quietly go and get treatment.
The vast majority of those that come before treatment actually come
before it within the criminal justice system. That is to say the law picks
them up after they've committed about 20 crimes -- that's what the law
enforcement professionals tell me happens. And then if they're given the
option to go to a drug court in lieu of prison, they will accept the
treatment. Now interesting to note the success rates on that in bringing down the addiction and bringing down the recidivism rates, are very, very good. To be specific in Florida, I've studied the data since '94. We see a seven or eight fold improvement. That is to say you have seven times, eight times as much success in bringing the recidivism rates down when you have the coercion of the criminal justice system overhanging the treatment. That's not an undignified process for the offender, now called the client.
The client appears before the drug court judge. Has to go to treatment.
Has to take his drug or her drug test on a monthly basis, often more often
than that. And has to successfully get through the program every month for
12 months. After 12 months, they graduate. The ideal is they're free of
drugs, they're employed and they no longer have a criminal activity habit.
That's where we're seeing successes.
I will tell you my experience, the statistics I've looked at, it's not
the criminal justice that deters people from getting treatment. Actually, it
seems to be an impetus to treatment, a very good one. So, I would like to
dispel that myth.
MICA:
Thank you. And to be totally fair, the only one I don't think I've
asked a question to or given an opportunity to respond is Mr. Maginnis. Did
you want to comment sir?
MAGINNIS: Mr. Mica, I had a chart and I won't have to use it, but 70 percent of Americans oppose cocaine and heroine legalization because they believe as the DEA indicated, it would lead to more violent crime in America. And that of course is one of the number of reasons. But if we look at the Chinese example of the opium era, at the turn of the century, 100 million people started using opium. If we consider what Dr. Herb Kleber (ph) who has been quoted earlier by the DEA in saying how addictive cocaine is.
Can you imagine if Madison Avenue was to market cocaine and heroine as
they have cigarettes in this country -- we produce what 600 billion
cigarettes a year -- we market it all over the world. We would certainly
produce a pure heroine or a pure cocaine. We would package it with flavors.
We would package with everything else and it would be pretty well available.
But then the social consequences, the chart that the drug czar showed of 110
billion social consequences that would go up logrithmetically, if we did
this.
And so it's a deadly pathway. If we want catastrophe to this country,
go forward. Otherwise, I think we should listen to sanguine and very common
sense approach that the American people keep telling us as the drug czar
said, this is the wrong direction. We need to turn off the spigots. And we
need to hold these people that are pushing legalization accountable for what
they're doing, whether it's in California, Arizona or up in Washington state
for in fact, they're confusing our kids. They're, I think contributing to more drug use and contributing to more of the problems that we have in this country, not helping.
MICA: Mr. Barr, did you have any final question.
BARR: Thank you Mr. Chairman. We had asked Mr. Chairman, I believe, Mr. Soros to come here today and testify. I'm sorry he didn't. Perhaps he will in the near future. But we do know Mr. Chairman, that those associated with the drug policy foundation such as its founder Arnold Tribeck (PH), is a legalizer advocate. We know that Richard J. Dennis (ph) on the Drug Policy Foundation board of directors, likewise is an advocate for the legalization of all drugs, including heroine. Ethan Nadelman (ph) with the Linda Smith Center (ph), another one of Soros' conduits, organizations to which he channels money for legalization efforts, is also an avowed legalizer.
So, that really is Mr. Chairman what we're talking about here. We're
talking about the funding of an effort in this country similar to what we've
seen overseas, to legalize mind-altering drugs. And people can come up with
all sorts of very eloquent reasons why you know that isn't really what
they're saying and they really don't want people to use drugs, and see these
awful things happen to them, but that is what we're talking about here.
We're talking about legalizing drugs and saying it is OK for people in the
United States of America to rely on mind-altering drugs to get by in their
daily lives.
I don't know whether any of the panels would relish the thought of
going into an operating room and having the doctor that they see before they
are put under, probably for the last time, smoking a toke (ph) or doing a
line of cocaine. Maybe they would; I don't know. I certainly wouldn't. But
that's what we're talking about here. We're talking about legalization of
mind-altering drugs.
They're called mind-altering drugs because they alter your mind and one
can argue about the extent to which that happens, but they are mind-altering
drugs for that reason. I am somewhat intrigued and I know we don't -- time is short - but I'm still very intrigued by the Drug Policy Foundation and the work that it does. And perhaps we can get into that more later on if Mr. Soros would be with us. But just a couple of quick questions Mr. Ehlers. Does the Drug Policy Foundation -- is it a 501©(3) organization?
EHLERS:
Yes.
BARR:
Does the -- does the foundation lobby in support of drug legalization
policies?
EHLERS: No. Lobby on behalf of drug legalization policies, we do do some lobbying yes, as 501©(3)s are allowed to do.
BARR: And it's your view that that is permitted under 501©(3) status?
EHLERS:
Yes.
BARR: What sort of lobbying do you do? Is it limited simply to coming up and speaking with Members of Congress and members of the state legislatures?
EHLERS:
No. We do grassroots lobbying too. We put out action alerts for our
members to respond to and we also write about legislation which isn't
necessarily lobbying. I mean action alerts is the primary means of lobbying
for us.
BARR: You think it is not inconsistent with being a 501©(3)?
GLASSER:
Mr. Barr, maybe, maybe...
BARR:
Would you, would you...
GLASSER: ... since I'm also president of the Drug Policy Foundation Board, and am more familiar than Mr. Ehlers would be...
BARR: OK, Mr. Ehlers would that also be consistent...
GLASSER ... maybe I can also add...
BARR: ... with the position of the Christian Coalition which has recently come under fire for doing alerts and voter guides and so forth.
GLASSER: That's a politically partisan activity...
BARR:
I'm...
EHLERS:
Yes, I thought that...
GLASSER:
Mr. Barr, as you well know...
BARR: All right, hold it. I will give you a chance to...
GLASSER: I know you're talking to him but I'm going to answer the question...
BARR: You're not here as Mr. Ehlers' attorney. I'm asking him the question.
GLASSER: I am here as Mr. Ehlers' superior on the board. And if you want to know about what the Drug Policy Foundation does with respect to it's tax exemption, I will tell you. He doesn't know.
BARR:
OK, and if I wish to hear from you on that Mr. Glasser, I will I will
ask you and if I don't I am sure that in his usual objective style, Mr. Mica
will give you additional time if...
GLASSER: If you wish to know the answers to the question, you will ask me. If you wish to harass Mr. Ehlers, you will ask him.
BARR:
I really don't think that asking questions of somebody who comes up
here representing, representing a foundation or a legal entity about the
work that that legal entity or organization is doing, and the legal basis
ion which it is operating, without getting into all of the ins and outs of
legalisms, which I'm not doing, is harassing. And if I do, then every single
witness that comes up here and is questioned about their work by any member
of any panel on either side of the aisle is harassing witnesses. And that's
not...
GLASSER:
Well, if you want to know the answer you will direct it to the person
who knows the answer, wouldn't you.
BARR: Well, with all due deference here you're a great man but I don't think you're the only one that can answer questions Mr. Glasser. I very much...
GLASSER: I am the only one on the panel who can answer those questions.
BARR:
We will see...
MICA:
We don't want to get into an exchange at this point. Mr. Barr was
yielded the time. Mr. Barr, do you have further questions of the witness Mr.
Ehlers?
BARR:
Just very briefly Mr. Chairman, following on to again some of the
policies regarding the Drug Policy Foundation. If the Drug Policy Foundation
providing support to the drug legalization efforts in various states,
including Florida, Maine and Oregon?
EHLERS:
No.
BARR: Thank you. It's not engaging in any sort of activities in terms of the gathering of signatures or whatnot for referenda or petitions?
EHLERS:
No.
BARR:
Are you aware of any work by Mr. Soros currently, similar to what was
engaged in the California effort with regard to signatures or petitions and
referenda in other states?
EHLERS:
No.
BARR: Is the Drug Policy Foundation or George Soros to your knowledge presently accepting any money from any foreign entity which promotes drug usage such as certain companies or entities from Colombia or Mexico?
EHLERS:
Not that I'm aware of.
BARR:
Do you, does the Drug Policy Foundation receive any money from any
foreign sources?
EHLERS: We have members in other countries, yes.
BARR:
That donate money?
EHLERS:
Yes.
BARR:
Provide money?
EHLERS:
They are members, yes.
BARR:
Is that just from individuals?
EHLERS:
As far as I know.
BARR: Does the Drug Policy Foundation assist any individuals or groups who are seeking to obtain drugs for personal use?
EHLERS:
Could you repeat that?
BARR: Does the Drug Policy Foundation assist any individuals or groups seeking to obtain drugs for their personal use?
EHLERS:
No.
BARR:
Mr. Glasser, I would be delighted to entertain any information you
would care to provide to supplement what Mr. Ehlers provided in response to
questions concerning the tax exempt status and lobbying efforts of the Drug
Policy Foundation.
GLASSER: Sure. The 501©(3) organizations are permitted to do a certain amount of lobbying under 501(h) of the internal revenue code which permits various percentages of your total expenditures up to certain maximums. So lobbying is permitted. That is different from activity that is electoral, which is not permitted. The Drug Policy Foundation does no such electoral activity. It does do lobbying, both grassroots and direct, with in the limits of 501(h). And it has elected under 501(h), as has the American Civil Liberties Foundation and many other 501©(3) organizations.
BARR: When you talk about electoral, does that include seeking to influence the results of a ballot or referendum or ...
GLASSER:
No. I just mean elections of individuals to public office. Referenda
and initiatives are a form of lobbying. It is direct instead of legislative,
but it is lobbying.
BARR: Is that the sort of activity that is permitted in your view?
GLASSER:
Yes.
BARR:
For the Drug Policy Foundation?
GLASSER: Yes, it is permitted under 501©(3). It is elective under 501(h).
BARR:
So, if for example, the Drug Policy Foundation were asked to engage in
activities in support of a particular candidate and you were advising him on
that, you would advise him that would not be permissible and they should not
do that.
GLASSER:
That is correct.
BARR:
But if they came to you and said would it be permissible to lobby in
support of a drug referendum or a particular initiative or proposition
concerning drug legalization, and to, I guess, indirectly support those who
favor it, that would be permissible.
GLASSER:
Well, that's permissible within very restrictive amounts. Somewhat less
than 20 percent of your total expenditures. Unless your total expenditures
are very high, then you don't get to spend very much. But you can spend
within those statutory amounts, yes.
BARR:
But if the organization has a generous benefactor, and that person
donates large amounts of money, then in your view, the amount of money the
organization would have to engage in that sort of lobbying would increase.
You say it's on a percentage ...
GLASSER: Yes, it would to a dollar limit. The limit in the law is that no matter how much money you have and no matter what the applicable percentage is, you can't spend more than a million dollars. In any case, the amount of money that Mr. Sorros provides to the Drug Policy Foundation is entirely for a grant program in which we make grants to other organizations. So none of that money is used for any of those purposes.
BARR:
When you use the figure a million dollars, is that per state or per
issue?
GLASSER: No, that's per organization. If a 501©(3) organization elects under 501(h) of a code to do a certain amount of lobbying, it can do, it's a percentage, it's a graduated percent of amounts, but in no situation can you spend more than a million dollars no matter what the percentages are. So it's say 20 percent or a million dollars, which ever is less.
BARR:
Could you increase that if one established subsidiaries for example
under that parent organization?
GLASSER:
No, because that statute defines and the regulations defines affiliated
organizations in ways that have to do with whether you're controlling them
or not. So you can't multiply those limits by having subsidiaries that you
control.
BARR:
Thank you very much. That may be the sort of thing that we get into
more later, but I very much appreciate, Mr. Glasser, your elucidation. And I
appreciate the testimony of the witnesses and I appreciate the chairman for
calling this very important hearing.
MICA:
I thank the gentleman. I have a unanimous consent request to include in
the record an article, this one entitled "Should Safer Smoking Kits Be
Distributed to Crack Users?" Other unanimous consent requests, I have a
unanimous consent request to insert crack smokers directions here from the
drug treatment services of the Bridgeport, Connecticut health department.
Additional unanimous consent requests to submit an article entitled "Hi, I'm
Alive," by Daniel Levine. And any other materials submitted without
objection will be made part of the record. As I've said -- we've already
taken care of that one. As I said, we'll leave the record open for at least
two weeks here if additional documentation wishes to be submitted either by
the public or other groups. There being no further business to come before the subcommittee, I'd first like to thank each of the panelists for their patience, for their participation, and for their contribution today. Difficult subject and a lot controversy surrounding it, difference of opinion. But we hope to continue this discussion and again hear, these topics fairly and openly in future panels. But I thank you for participating. This meeting of the subcommittee. The FDCH Transcript Service June 16, 1999
---- List of Speakers: U.S. REPRESENTATIVE JOHN MICA (R-FL), CHAIRMAN U.S. REPRESENTATIVE BOB BARR (R-GA) U.S. REPRESENTATIVE BENJAMIN A. GILMAN (R-NY) U.S. REPRESENTATIVE CHRISTOPHER SHAYS (R-CT) U.S. REPRESENTATIVE ROS-ILEANA LEHTINEN (R-FL) U.S. REPRESENTATIVE MARK SOUDER (R-IN) U.S. REPRESENTATIVE STEVEN C. LATOURETTE (R-OH) U.S. REPRESENTATIVE ASA HUTCHINSON (R-AR) U.S. REPRESENTATIVE DOUG OSE (R-CA) U.S. REPRESENTATIVE PATSY MINK (D-HI), RANKING MEMBER U.S. REPRESENTATIVE EDOLPHUS TOWNS (D-NY) U.S. REPRESENTATIVE ELIJAH CUMMINGS (D-MD) U.S. REPRESENTATIVE DENNIS J. KUCINICH (D-OH) U.S. REPRESENTATIVE ROD R. BLAGOJEVICH (D-IL) U.S. REPRESENTATIVE JOHN F. TIERNEY ((D-MA) U.S. REPRESENTATIVE JIM TURNER (D-TX) GENERAL BARRY MCCAFFREY, DIRCETOR, OFFICE OF NATIONAL DRUG CONTROL POLICY DR. ALAN LESHNER, DIRECTOR, NATIONAL INSTITUTE ON DRUG ABUSE DONNIE MARSHALL, DEPUTY ADMINISTRATOR, DEA JAMES MCDONOUGH, DIRECTOR, OFFICE OF DRUG CONTROL POLICY, STATE OF FLORIDA SCOTT EHLERS, SENIOR POLICY ANALYST, DRUG POLICY FOUNDATION ROBERT L. MAGINNIS, SENIOR DIRECTOR, FAMILY RESEARCH COUNCIL DAVID BOAZ, EXECUTIVE VICE PRESIDENT, CATO INSTITUTE IRA GLASSER, EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, ACLU |