 The U.S. Effort to Fight Drug Use
By Senator Charles E. Grassley
The Congress of the United States is in the process of considering the budget for 1998 to combat the production, transit, and use of illegal drugs. President Clinton has asked for almost $16,000 million to fund a variety of programs designed to deal with the drug problem in all its aspects. Last year, the United States, at the federal level alone, allocated over $15,000 million. In the last 10 years, the United States has spent, again only at the federal level, $110,000 million to fight drugs. In addition to these sums, state and local governments in the United States have spent a comparable amount. On top of this, one must also include out-of-pocket efforts by businesses, communities, schools, and private individuals to deal with the range of problems associated with drug use. The conservative total from all these efforts adds up to close to $500,000 million. This figure does not count the indirect costs of drug use measured in human suffering, increased violence, and lost lives. What these numbers indicate is the terrible price the United States pays for its drug problem. It also indicates an abiding willingness on the part of the government and the people to fight back. The government and the American public are committed to this effort for one simple reason: kids. It is an unfortunate fact that the most vulnerable population for drug use -- whether in the United States or in other countries -- is children. The original drug epidemic in the United States occurred among teenagers and young adults, many as young as 15 and 16. Today, the target for drug pushers are kids as young as 11 and 12. No country can sit by passively and watch as its future is consumed by a plague that destroys lives and creates problems for future generations. No responsible government can passively accept such a situation. That is why the United States devotes resources, time, and effort to the war on drugs, at home and abroad. U.S. Efforts The U.S. effort at home consumes the overwhelming majority of federal funds and, of course, all the monies spent by state, local, and private groups. This totals more than $30,000 million annually. Federal counter-drug resources are spent in four main areas: treatment, prevention, law enforcement, and international programs. Considerable sums are also allocated to research in these same areas. The totals, in thousands of millions of dollars for 1997 and 1998, are as follows:
In 1988, Congress created the Office of National Drug Control Policy, the "Drug Czar", to coordinate all federal drug control programs. Congress requires the administration to present each year a national drug control strategy. As part of that strategy, the law requires the administration to submit a consolidated budget based on the strategy. The $16,000 million request now before Congress is in response to these requirements. This budget represents a national commitment to deal with the drug problem in all its aspects. Law enforcement resources in the budget cover a number of activities, including investigations, court proceedings, incarceration costs, and small sums for drug treatment programs in prisons. This request also includes some $10 million, for example, to the National Forest Service to combat illegal marijuana production in several parks. It includes support to state governments for marijuana crop eradication. Treatment assistance goes to support treatment programs for addicts across the country. The majority of these funds are provided in bloc grants to states to administer. This money supports a variety of treatment efforts, from long-term residential programs to various forms of intervention programs designed to help addicts. Unfortunately, there is no cure for drug addiction and treatment is often a lifelong undertaking. This is why we also support prevention efforts. The goal is to persuade potential users to never start. The majority of the prevention funds are allocated to individual states to promote education in schools and to support community coalition efforts to keep kids off drugs. In addition to these efforts, I am also working in Congress to pass legislation that would provide resources to communities for drug prevention. It is our experience that when parents, community leaders, schools, businesses, religious leaders, and students commit to drug prevention, we see the best results. Community efforts in Miami and in Cincinnati today serve as clear models and success stories. Our experiences during the 1980s and early 1990s also serve as an example. During those years, major efforts among the nation's young people dramatically reduced experimentation with drugs. Teenage drug use dropped by more than 50 percent, cocaine use by more than 70 percent between 1980 and 1990. Moreover, attitudes about the dangers of drug use similarly changed, the growing perception among young people being that drugs were dangerous and wrong. We achieved these declines despite the fact that drugs remained available. In addition to the resources that the United States devotes to control the domestic problems of drug use, we also spend considerable sums to interdict drugs at and beyond our borders. We support international efforts to stop the illegal production and transit of drugs overseas. Virtually all the drugs consumed in the United States are produced illegally in Asia and Latin America and smuggled into this country by major criminal organizations based outside the United States. In the last five years, the United States has spent over $500 million in Colombia, Bolivia, and Peru alone to support law enforcement, interdiction, alternative development, treatment and prevention, and military support. This money has gone to assist in local efforts to combat not only illegal drug production but also to deal with the threats posed by major criminal organizations that use violence, intimidation, and corruption to undermine the integrity of the courts, businesses, and political leaders. U.S. efforts to combat drugs have not stopped at spending money on the problem. The United States, particularly the Congress, has pioneered legislation to create the appropriate legal framework to combat drug production and money laundering. In this regard, the United States created some of the first major anti-money laundering and criminal enterprise legislation. These include reporting requirements on bank deposits on sums over $10,000 as a means to prevent large cash and non-cash transactions to disguise the sources of the money. These laws also include confiscation provisions that permit the seizure of assets directly and indirectly acquired as a result of drug smuggling and selling. These laws have been aggressively employed against individuals involved in the drug trade, in the United States and abroad. As part of the effort to control drug production, the United States also pioneered legislation to control the sale and transit of the precursor chemicals used in the production of illegal drugs. This law gave U.S. law enforcement agencies a powerful tool to prevent the diversion of key chemical components in drug production. The United States has encouraged other countries to adopt similar laws and has worked with individual companies to develop self-regulating mechanisms. Unfortunately, many countries have yet to adopt rigorous standards to actively enforce existing laws. As part of its overall efforts to promote comprehensive drug control, the United States has also worked with the international community. The United States has worked with the G-7 countries to promote international standards for appropriate financial controls through the Financial Action Task Force. Congress has also put great emphasis on international compliance with the 1988 U.N. Convention on Psychotropic Drugs. In addition, the United States has supplied money to the United Nations Drug Control Program to promote treatment prevention, crop eradication, and alternative development projects in many different countries. All of these efforts, along with domestic programs, are part of on-going progress to deal with the range of problems created by international drug production, trafficking, and use. Misconceptions There are a variety of misconceptions about the drug problem in general and what the United States is doing about it. The biggest misconception involves oversimplified distinctions made between supply and demand. The most common argument is that if Americans did not consume drugs -- no demand -- there would be no incentive to produce and smuggle drugs -- no supply. While this seems plausible, it does not reflect the complexity of the relationship between supply and demand generally or with drugs more specifically. In many cases, it is supply that drives or creates demand. No new product, for example, for which there is no current market, begins with demand. The creator and manufacturer of the product must create the demand through marketing, pricing, and advertising. Similarly, when a business wants to break into a market, it will often try to flood the market with large quantities of its goods at low prices. This is true whether we are talking about computer chips or cocaine. The criminal organizations involved in drug production are big businesses and many of their practices and activities mirror those of legitimate business. Like many legal enterprises before them, they recognized that the United States was the world's largest market. For drug traffickers, breaking into the American market was tapping into the opportunity for huge profits. As part of a business strategy, these groups targeted the American market and aggressively worked to create a demand for their product. The evolution of these activities is easy to trace. The United States in the early 1970s had no serious cocaine problem. Use was confined to the cultural elite with the money to pay the high price for the drugs. Carlos Lehder, an enterprising smuggler, realized the possibilities for creating a new market. Using his connections in Colombia and his smuggling networks, he began to increase the supply of cocaine in the United States. He targeted middle class users. By dramatically increasing the supply and lowering the price, he made cocaine more available, helping to create a demand. Once the demand began to grow, supply and demand began to complement one another. While he was doing this, U.S. law enforcement and policy makers missed the significance of what was happening. It was not until there was an explosion of violence and spreading addiction problems that authorities realized what was going on. By then, cocaine had established itself across the country as a major drug of choice. A similar story can be told about the rapid expansion of methamphetamine use in the United States. The drug organizations are also expanding their user networks in Latin America, the Caribbean, and Mexico. They are paying local traffickers in drugs. They are offering drugs at very low costs or, in some cases, giving it away, in order to build a base of users. Unfortunately, one of the characteristics of drug supply and demand is that large supplies at affordable prices drives demand. No country is immune to this pattern. In discussing this aspect of the drug problem, I am not arguing that the United States has no responsibility to deal with drug use. Quite the contrary. We have a responsibility and an obligation, not only as responsible members of the international community but also as parents trying to protect our children, who are the primary victims of drug use. My point in discussing the issue of supply and demand is to make clear that the problem is not a simple one. There is a further issue to consider in addressing this misconception. It is a moral question. The question is simply put: Who is more responsible for the drug problem, the person who chooses to use illegal drugs, or the person who produces, transits, and sells them? There are no simple answers, but the point is that neither producing countries nor consumers can afford to ignore the problems created by illegal drugs. Serious efforts to fight back are not the result of simplistic distinctions between supply and demand, especially if they are an attempt to shift responsibility in order to do nothing. A second misconception involves the certification process in the United States. Many seem to believe that this is an unfair process that singles out other countries arbitrarily for blame while the United States does nothing to combat drug use at home. As I noted above, the United States devotes considerable resources to the drug problem. We do this because we are fighting for the lives and futures of our children. We take the drug problem very seriously at home and we expect others to do the same. The certification process is the mechanism that we use to determine that seriousness of purpose. Many critics of certification argue that the United States has no right to judge the efforts of other countries on drugs. This is not a very tenable position. Few countries around the world, in fact, fail to judge the behavior of other countries on a whole range of issues. And they are prepared to take action if they believe that important interests are involved. This is true whether we are talking about environmental concerns, trade issues, intellectual property rights, international terrorism, or human rights. As members of the international community, we expect countries to adhere to certain standards of conduct and we are prepared, individually and collectively, to respond when those standards are violated. In addition, every country reserves the right to take necessary steps to protect its sovereignty and the well-being of its citizens. The certification process is essentially a domestic concern. The Congress instituted the certification requirement some 10 years ago to force U.S. administrations to make drugs a key element in our foreign policy. What certification requires is that the U.S. president must identify those countries that are major producing or transit countries for illegal drugs. This is not some arbitrary determination, but based on actual estimates of crop size in individual countries or on specific information on smuggling activities. Congress further requires the president to certify each year which countries on this list are taking realistic and credible steps to deal with drug production or transit. Again, this is not an arbitrary decision but is based on an assessment of specific actions and efforts. These are covered in a comprehensive report, the International Narcotics Control Strategy Report, that Congress also requires the administration to submit every year. The requirement for certification is not an absolute success. The expectation in the law is not that country X will have eliminated drug production or transit in order to be certified, but that it has taken meaningful steps leading to the suppression of these activities, either in conformity with the 1988 U.N. Convention or in bilateral agreements with the United States or others. Certification recognizes the difficulties involved in dealing with drug production and the criminal gangs that engage in it, but it also takes into consideration whether a country is doing what it can and should under international law. Moreover, drug production is illegal under the laws of most of the countries affected by certification and many of these countries have signed agreements with the United States committing them to specific action in exchange for assistance of various kinds. The expectation is that these countries will take adequate steps to enforce their own laws and to meet the requirements of bilateral and international agreements. If the president determines, based on an evaluation of a number of factors, that a country is not meeting its obligations, then the president must report this to Congress and must take steps to withhold U.S. assistance to that country. That the United States has a right to determine whether or not a country is qualified to receive U.S. assistance should not be a matter of debate. U.S. assistance is not an entitlement. The fact that the United States, as a democratic country, discusses its decisions in public as a matter of public business, likewise, should not be a surprise. Nor should it be surprising that the United States is prepared to take steps designed to protect its sovereignty and its citizens when deemed necessary. Drugs are produced overseas and smuggled into the United States by organizations operating from foreign soil in violation of local, international, and U.S. laws. The substances that they produce and smuggle cause incalculable damage to American citizens daily. Indeed, drug smugglers cause more deaths and more harm in this country annually than have international terrorists in the past 10 years. To ignore these activities is not possible, nor is it responsible. To expect other countries to cooperate in the effort to control these illegal activities is neither unrealistic or unprecedented. To be prepared to take unilateral steps in order to protect the nation's interests is also not extravagant. The third misconception that percolates through the debate on drugs is that the United States does nothing to deal with its own problem. I hope that my earlier remarks address that misconception. There is one further issue in this vein that I wish to address, and that is the notion that legalizing drug use would solve all the problems. In this view, simply legalizing dangerous drugs for personal use would end criminal activities, would reduce the harm of punitive legal steps against consenting users, and would do away with the need for the whole, expensive architecture of enforcement. None of these views is accurate. Indeed, as a formula for public policy they court disaster. At a minimum, they would dramatically increase the number of current users of dangerous drugs. Rather than reduce the harm currently caused by drugs, they would redistribute the harm to a large number of individuals and foist the costs for this onto the public purse. There is no royal road to a solution of our drug problem, either supply or demand. What is required is determination to deal with the problem, a willingness to act, and stamina to stay the course. The consequences of failure mean losing more kids and giving free reign to the criminal thugs that push the drugs.
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