SPEAKERS       CONTENTS       INSERTS    
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49–157 CC
1998
U.S. ANNUAL DRUG CERTIFICATION

HEARING

BEFORE THE

COMMITTEE ON
INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS
HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

ONE HUNDRED FIFTH CONGRESS

SECOND SESSION

APRIL 29, 1998

Printed for the use of the Committee on International Relations

COMMITTEE ON INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS
BENJAMIN A. GILMAN, New York, Chairman
WILLIAM GOODLING, Pennsylvania
JAMES A. LEACH, Iowa
HENRY J. HYDE, Illinois
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DOUG BEREUTER, Nebraska
CHRISTOPHER SMITH, New Jersey
DAN BURTON, Indiana
ELTON GALLEGLY, California
ILEANA ROS-LEHTINEN, Florida
CASS BALLENGER, North Carolina
DANA ROHRABACHER, California
DONALD A. MANZULLO, Illinois
EDWARD R. ROYCE, California
PETER T. KING, New York
JAY KIM, California
STEVEN J. CHABOT, Ohio
MARSHALL ''MARK'' SANFORD, South Carolina
MATT SALMON, Arizona
AMO HOUGHTON, New York
TOM CAMPBELL, California
JON FOX, Pennsylvania
JOHN McHUGH, New York
LINDSEY GRAHAM, South Carolina
ROY BLUNT, Missouri
KEVIN BRADY, Texas
LEE HAMILTON, Indiana
SAM GEJDENSON, Connecticut
TOM LANTOS, California
HOWARD BERMAN, California
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GARY ACKERMAN, New York
ENI F.H. FALEOMAVAEGA, American Samoa
MATTHEW G. MARTINEZ, California
DONALD M. PAYNE, New Jersey
ROBERT ANDREWS, New Jersey
ROBERT MENENDEZ, New Jersey
SHERROD BROWN, Ohio
CYNTHIA A. McKINNEY, Georgia
ALCEE L. HASTINGS, Florida
PAT DANNER, Missouri
EARL HILLIARD, Alabama
BRAD SHERMAN, California
ROBERT WEXLER, Florida
STEVE ROTHMAN, New Jersey
BOB CLEMENT, Tennessee
BILL LUTHER, Minnesota
JIM DAVIS, Florida
LOIS CAPPS, California
RICHARD J. GARON, Chief of Staff
MICHAEL H. VAN DUSEN, Democratic Chief of Staff
JOHN P. MACKEY, Investigative Counsel
ALLISON K. KIERNAN, Staff Associate
C O N T E N T S

WITNESSES
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    The Honorable Jeane Kirkpatrick, Senior Fellow, American Enterprise Institute
    General Brent Scowcroft, The Scowcroft Group
    Mr. Gary Bauer, The Family Research Council
    The Honorable Bernard Aronson, Managing Director, Acon Investments
    Mr. John Walters, President, The Philanthropy Roundtable
APPENDIX
Prepared statements:
The Honorable Benjamin A. Gilman, a Representative in Congress from New York, and Chairman, Committee on International Relations
Mr. Gary Bauer
The Honorable Bernard Aronson
Mr. John Walters
Closing statement of Chairman Gilman
Additional material submitted for the record:
April 16, 1998 article from The Wall Street Journal by Edward Schumacher
April 24, 1998 commentary from The Washington Times by Chairman Gilman
May 4, 1998 article from U.S. News and World Report by Charles Petit
February 20, 1998 statement of Assistant Secretary Rand Beers
March 1998 letter from Col. Jose Gallego
Annual Presidential Drug Certification for Major Drug Producing or Major Transit Nations

U.S. ANNUAL DRUG CERTIFICATION

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WEDNESDAY, APRIL 29, 1998
House of Representatives,
Committee on International Relations,
Washington, DC.
    The Committee met, pursuant to notice, at 10:08 a.m., in room 2172, Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. Benjamin A. Gilman (chairman of the Committee) presiding.
    Chairman GILMAN. [presiding] The Committee will come to order. Members please take their seats.
    Today's hearing is on the annual drug certification process. My views on this topic reflect what I believe to be the strong opinion of the American public and, most surprisingly, many in Latin America as well.
    A renewed assault on the drug certification process is underway. It sounds very much like the old ''blame America first'' crowd is back in business, focusing this time exclusively on drug demand in the United States.
    Many here in our nation and in Latin America have made no secret of their desire to eventually ''bury'' the certification process. The heart of many of these one-sided and often ill-informed arguments is that our drug crisis is fueled by an insatiable demand in the United States. The view that demand is not affected at all by the availability of massive amounts of cheap drugs coming from abroad is certainly a great misunderstanding.
    We do have demand problems here at home, but the extent we do have demand problems here at home and the extent of its role in narcotics usage, is not so clear cut. Our DEA Administrator, Tom Constantine, recently informed the Congress that ''Colombian trafficking organizations are now providing free samples of South American heroin as part of their cocaine transactions in order to introduce users to their high potency and relatively inexpensive product.''
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    During a recent congressional delegation trip to South America, which I led, we learned from a member of the Chilean Congress that, just a few years ago, drug dealers bought up all the marijuana in Chile. Then they gave out free samples of cocaine by-product called ''basuco'' to help get youngsters hooked on this more potent drug. Supply does create and helps sustain demand. One very effective response to that supply from abroad has been the certification process for major drug-producing or major transiting nations.
    Bob Gelbard, President Clinton's former Assistant Secretary of State for International Narcotics, stated that certification ''is one of the most powerful tools'' that the United States has for combating international narcotics trafficking. His successor, Randy Beers, more recently described certification as ''a policy tool which is controversial, not because it has failed, but because it is working.''
    The certification law is based on the simple premise that our nation's taxpayers, who suffer the brunt of the misery wrought by illicit narcotics from abroad, should not have to provide aid to governments that are unwilling to assist us in fighting this scourge. The certification statute also reflects congressional concern that combating international narcotics trafficking should be made a top U.S. foreign policy priority, as many of our former presidents have done.
    When drugs were a key element of U.S. foreign policy, impressive results were achieved. One measure of the success of this no-nonsense approach was that between 1985 and 1992, monthly cocaine use dropped by nearly 80 percent. The annual certification to Congress is especially needed now because international narcotics trafficking simply has not been a serious foreign policy issue for the present Administration.
    That mind set, combined with the mistaken belief that supply has no effect on demand, and that drug certification only embarrasses our Latin American neighbors, made it inevitable that many in the Clinton Administration would try to eliminate certification.
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    The President's efforts to multilateralize the fight against drugs abroad by proposing a new counter-narcotics alliance under the OAS, may be a sound proposal, but it can never be a substitute for our own certification process.
    Last year, a task force of the U.S. Conference of Mayors, headed by Chicago's Richard Daley, explicitly supported certification, stating that ''foreign countries should be certified based upon their cooperation with the U.S. counter-narcotics efforts, and where appropriate, foreign aid should be denied to source countries which failed to cooperate satisfactorily.''
    A survey of the Family Research Council revealed that 77 percent of Americans consider drugs to be a major problem, and 75 percent said that aid to other countries should be based on their cooperation against drugs.
    The most recent Wall Street Journal poll showed that 65 percent of Latin Americans favor U.S.-imposed sanctions on countries that don't do enough to combat drugs. They've seen first hand the corrosive effect of drugs on their Latin American Governments, and clearly recognize the need for outside influence, particularly by the United States.
    Certification is here to stay, and the public, both here and in Latin America, are asking for it and demanding it. I was particularly disappointed by the Administration's decision not to send a witness to our hearing today because, we were informed, there is no unified position on the value of the annual drug certification process.
    This situation lays bare the false claim recently made in Santiago, Chile, that the multilateral Counter Narcotics Alliance at the OAS is not intended to replace certification. Otherwise, I think the Administration would be here today defending their policy and certification.
    Regrettably, fudging on the facts may be nothing new for this Administration. According to a report in The New York Times, the President himself told a group of visitors to the White House on Monday that sanctions laws create ''enormous pressures'' to fudge facts to avoid the enforcement of such laws, as was the case with Mexico's narcotics problem last year.
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    Until we hear from the Administration, we cannot act responsibly on any reforms or changes of a process that's been a vital tool for our State Department in waging the war on drugs overseas. And yes, it is a war we're fighting.
    I hope to hear from the Administration and others who have views on this subject that may differ from some of us in the Congress. From my personal experience in this long fight against drugs—it goes back to the 1970's—I know certification works to advance our vital national interests. I recall at a conference that was arranged by former President Carter in Atlanta last year, I sat next to the former President of Bolivia, and he leaned over to me as we were discussing the certification process. He said if it was not for the drug certification process, our nation would not have passed very significant anti-drug laws, such as asset seizure and money laundering. He said the mere threat of the certification process hanging out there was a motivation to this Parliament to act.
    In the interim, I will include in the record the recent supportive remarks of Assistant Secretary Randy Beers, which I referenced earlier, and consider to be the State Department's formal views until we're informed otherwise. And I welcome any comments that any of our Members may have.
    I turn to our Ranking Minority Member, Mr. Hamilton.
    Mr. HAMILTON. Mr. Chairman, let me, first of all, express my appreciation to you for holding the hearing on the drug decertification process. I know it's not been easy to work into the schedule, and I appreciate the fact that you've done it. I also appreciate the fact that we've really got before us today some excellent witnesses on this topic. I think all of us in the room would agree that our goal here is to stop drug trafficking, obviously. I don't question anybody's motives here. I think they're all aimed at the same purpose. And I think we want to generate the cooperation that we need to stop narcotics and narcotics trafficking. I think we all agree we can't solve the problem by ourselves. We've got to have some help in solving it.
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    All of us want to fight drugs, and my focus today is on the certification statute—what's right with it, what's wrong with it, are there better alternatives. I'm not here to talk about the drug war in general, Mr. Chairman. I know you've been a leader in that effort, and I commend you for that. I don't see how anybody who looks at the problem of drugs today can be satisfied with the status quo. And I'm not at all satisfied with the way the drug certification statute is working. Let me make a few, what I think, are basic points.
    First of all, the decertification law, I do not think fosters cooperation. Every single government in Latin America opposes the statute as an imposition and as an affront to their sovereignty. They view it as a report card from Washington. The practical impact of the certification process is to hurt leaders who are trying to promote cooperation with the United States, and to strengthen the arguments of the nationalists, who oppose cooperation.
    Second, I think the law requires every March 1 an impossible up or down judgment: whether each major drug-producing and drug-transiting country has ''cooperated fully with the United States or has taken adequate steps on its own to achieve full compliance with the goals of the U.N. Resolution on Narcotics.'' No country meets this impossible standard, and so the President is put, it seems to me, in an impossible box. If he certifies full cooperation, he's lying. If he doesn't find full cooperation, then the President puts our entire bilateral relationship with a country at risk pegged on a single issue; and there are many, many other issues with each of these countries.
    Third, I think the law is applied unfairly, and it is certainly seen to be applied unfairly. We have never decertified Mexico. Yet, every year, Mexico gets the benefit of the doubt. A small country, such as Paraguay, does not get the benefit of the doubt.
    Fourth, the sanctions under the law are applied unfairly. Bolivia this year has been certified fully, and its assistance from the United States has been cut 75 percent. Colombia has been decertified 4 years in a row, and its assistance has increased dramatically. So, here we take great pride in decertifying Colombia, publicly indicating how tough we are, but at the same time, we turn right around and increase assistance to them—and the reverse with regard to Bolivia.
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    Fifth, I think the sanctions under the decertification law have hurt U.S. businesses more than they've hurt the target country. One GAO study found that the impact of decertification in Colombia was to freeze $1.5 billion in export credits and loans for U.S. companies to make sales in Colombia. The effect on Colombian companies was negligible, so the impact is on U.S. businesses but not on Colombian businesses.
    All of this makes me think there ought to be a better way to do it, and I'm not sure I've got the answer to that. And that's why I'm interested in listening to this panel.
    The Chairman mentioned the Summit of the Americas, and I was pleased to see that he did not reject the initiative that is being taken there. The leaders in Latin America today are stopping the blame game. They admit that narcotics is a shared problem. They admit that it has harmful consequences, and that it's best addressed together.
    So I think we need to revise the decertification statute. I think the Chairman is correct: there are probably not the votes in the Congress to repeal the decertification statute. I'm not sure I'd vote to repeal it, but I certainly think it needs revision. The President should have more flexibility in the measures available to him to promote cooperation. He should be able to weigh and balance all U.S. national interests, including how best to promote cooperation prior to applying the sanctions. And Congress should be involved more in making U.S. policy, not just in the weeks leading up to March 1, but throughout the year.
    So I look forward to hearing from this very distinguished panel, and I want to thank each one of them for their willingness to come here and tackle what I think is a pretty tough issue.
    Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
    Chairman GILMAN. Thank you, Mr. Hamilton.
    I am pleased to recognize the distinguished chairman of our Subcommittee on International Economic Policy and Trade, Ms. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen.
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    Ms. ROS-LEHTINEN. Thank you so much, Chairman Gilman, Mr. Hamilton.
    I also agree in firm accountability to U.S. taxpayers for their use of their hard-earned funds, which partly goes to help countries in fighting this drug trafficking, this scourge in our community. And this is one of the reasons to continue a drug certification process. However, I'm not convinced that this drug certification process is the one to maintain. I do find it an insulting process, which is not clear cut, nor objective, nor really a one that's unbiased. For example, as has been pointed out, after NAFTA's approval by Congress and after the U.S. bailout of the Mexican economy, it's a foregone conclusion each and every year that the Clinton Administration will certify Mexico as a positive participant in the drug fight, and that they are cooperating fully in spite of the rampant corruption from the top on down. While Colombia, because the Clinton Administration wants to rebuff that government, has to fight each and every year to prove its case, even though the Colombian people, the Colombian military, the Colombian judiciary have done so much, have sacrificed so much in blood and guts to fight in this battle. We do need a new model, one that's less subjective to ensure that U.S. taxpayers' funds are being correctly used and to hold the foreign leaders' feet to the fire even more so that they do more to fight the drugs that they are producing. We've got to recognize our own problem in the United States: that we are the ones that are demanding those drugs. The other countries are producing them, but the consumption is right here in our country as well. So we've got to do more ourselves as we hold our other foreign leaders accountable and make them cooperate fully. It is our U.S. funds that they are receiving; and they've got to do more to earn it. And we've got to answer to the taxpayers to make sure that we are using them wisely. And I think that out of this hearing, we hope that we'll be able to discuss what changes we need to make in order to improve the current model.
    Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
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    Chairman GILMAN. Thank you, Chairman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen. Any other Members seeking recognition?
    Mr. Mica. I'm pleased that Mr. Mica joined us. He was part of the initial team working in the Senate with Senator Paula Hawkins in formulating this measure. Mr. Mica.
    Mr. MICA. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
    Thank you also for the wonderful cooperation between your Committee, and I serve on the Subcommittee on International Affairs—National Security, International Affairs, and Criminal Justice, the Oversight Subcommittee that also deals with our national drug policy, headed by Denny Hasrick.
    We are very concerned about any modifications—I personally am—of the drug certification law. The drug certification law was enacted many years ago in the mid–1980's, and it's a simple process. It simply says that in order to be eligible, to receive U.S. financial assistance, aid, trade assistance, military assistance, that a country be certified by the Department of State in a simple process that says that they are cooperating to eliminate either drug production, trafficking, or any type of drug activities. And we make that determination to make them eligible for the U.S. largesse. That's the process. To turn this over to any multi-national jurisdiction would be a total farce—to have other countries decide who is eligible to receive our benefits. Now, when we first devised this in the mid–1980's, it was devised primarily with that cooperation in certifying that they were cooperating and making progress against drug trafficking and production, that they received foreign aid. And it was primarily in poorer countries that we had targeted. Some of that has changed but the mechanism is still there to withhold trade, finance, and military assistance, and, if anything, needs to be strengthened. We need to get an even stronger strangle hold on these countries that are dealing in death, that are bringing chemical weapons raining upon the United States, and that's what it is.
    Just, finally, let me say that the problem with the certification has been the misuse and misapplication and abuse by this Administration and this President. There are provisions in the law that allow for granting of waivers. You can decertify and grant waivers in national security interests. There are provisions in this. But when you certify Mexico and decertify Colombia, which made no sense—the last time certifying Mexico, which was totally wrong. They had the ability like they did this last time with Colombia to grant a waiver in national security interests. And even since they've done that with Colombia, they still haven't gotten the equipment to Colombia that this Congress has mandated, and the assistance to fight the drug war. And now we see Colombia basically on the verge of collapse because of a misapplication of this law and the intent of Congress.
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    So the law is good. It should only be strengthened. It should remain, in fact, in the U.S. domain of the Congress and our agencies to determine who gets aid, who gets benefit, who gets financing assistance, who gets military assistance. And if they aren't cooperating in this area, which is raining the worst havoc in the history of this country, greater than any war, greater than any war in this nation's history, with the drugs that are flowing in unabated through some of these countries, we make a great, great, great mistake if we change this process and destroy it in any way.
    I appreciate so much the opportunity for inviting me, for giving me the opportunity to speak, and look forward to this hearing.
    Chairman GILMAN. Thank you, Mr. Mica. We thank you for joining us today.
    I am pleased that we have five very distinguished witnesses here with us.
    Mr. MARTINEZ. Mr. Chairman. Mr. Chairman.
    Chairman GILMAN. Who's seeking? Mr. Martinez.
    Mr. MARTINEZ. You know I don't normally ask to make an opening statement basically because my dad told me a long time ago, don't argue with a wall. It doesn't have a mind, so you can't change. And its feet are embedded in concrete and not going to move. But both of my colleagues, Mr. Mica and Ms. Ros-Lehtinen, suggested that the only person that has certified Mexico is President Clinton, and he's bound to do it, regardless. But this bill was passed in 1986, and Mexico has been certified something like 10 times, and not all of those times it was Clinton. It was Bush and Reagan both certifying Mexico because they, too, realized that Mexico is too important a country in our scheme of things of being the closest country to us on the border other than Canada. The fact is that I agree with Mr. Hamilton that maybe not to repeal the law or the idea to repeal the law is a bad one. But it does need some justification beyond what it has today. And it does need to be revisited.
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    The fact is that it's more of an insult to countries than it is an aid to us to helping them encourage them to fight drugs. They are doing the best they can. The fact is that we are not doing the best we can. We look at things in an isolated way. In the war against Colombia, we've isolated on Colombia, not realizing that Venezuela, who we hear little from, is an area that on their border they need to combat drugs because the trafficking is through there and through that river. In fact, the area just immediately north of Venezuela is one where most of the poppies are growing and most of the activity is taking place because it's an isolated area and the Colombian military and narcotic authorities do not have the equipment or men to cover that entire area. Now, there's where we could step in and form a coalition with a country where we need to form some kind of strategy to be able to fight and curtail it.
    Beyond that, we need to do something on the receiving end, because, if we weren't the market for it, they wouldn't be able to produce. And we are the market and that decertification bill tends to emphasize the supply rather than the demand. And I think that if we're going to really combat drugs in this country, we need to concentrate on the demand as well as the supply.
    Mr. Hamilton has alluded to the fact that it is an insult to countries. I remember the last time we were talking about decertifying Mexico. And maybe it's the people on the street you ought to talk to if you don't think that the South American countries take umbrage with being decertified or realizing that it's going to affect their economy in a lot of ways that have nothing to do with drugs. And it actually affects our economy in a way that has nothing to do with drugs. That's not good positive thinking—to think of an isolated situation, to condemn all of the rest of the situations that exist there. The fact is that the individual on the street, when that last talk of decertification of Mexico was taking place, they all said well, why don't you stop using them and then they wouldn't have to be flowing through our country. And that's a good statement, I think. We don't we do something about stopping the people from using them and being the big market. We are the big market for almost everything, including drugs.
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    So I think that when we look at this situation, we ought to really seriously look at it in a way that we can do it in a constructive way rather than a destructive way. Right now it's being done in a destructive way.
    Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
    Chairman GILMAN. Thank you, Mr. Martinez.
    Our first witness will be Dr. Jeane Kirkpatrick.
    Dr. Kirkpatrick has had a distinguished career as our former Ambassador to the United Nations as well as a member of the National Security Council under President Reagan. She has also served on the President's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board, and the Defense Policy Review Board.
    Currently, Dr. Kirkpatrick serves as a Senior Fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and is Lavy Professor at Georgetown University. Welcome, Ambassador Kirkpatrick.
STATEMENT OF JEANE KIRKPATRICK, SENIOR FELLOW, AMERICAN ENTERPRISE INSTITUTE
    Ms. KIRKPATRICK. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. And thank you for inviting me to testify this morning. I'm pleased to be here as always.
    Mr. Chairman, I believe that drug certification and our drug certification program is based on the undoubted facts that the overwhelming majority of American people desire to combat the scourge of drugs, that they desire their government to do everything that is possible and feasible to keep drugs out of the country, off the streets, and that they desire to deal with it at every level that is possible and feasible.
    We know, Mr. Chairman, that it is possible to affect the amount of drugs headed for the United States. And arriving in the United States. We know that was proved beyond reasonable doubt in both the Reagan and the Bush Administrations, when monthly use of cocaine was reduced by 80 percent. The certification program, it was generally believed by students of the problem, made a major contribution to this success.
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    Mr. Chairman, there is no question that Americans desire to wage and win this war on drugs. No question that three quarters of Americans desire to make foreign aid contingent on countries' cooperation with the United States in the war on drugs. The drug war, as the majority of Americans understand, not only brings drugs, but it also brings crime and terrorism and a variety of problems to our country and our streets.
    Mr. Chairman, I believe it makes no sense at all to the U.S. Government to give taxpayer money to countries that do not cooperate with the United States in the pursuit of major objectives which are of broad concern to the American people. To give foreign aid to countries whose governments are passive in the war against drug dealers, when those drug dealers export their poisons to American streets, simply tells that government and the world, in my judgment, that the United States is not really serious, when it urges action against the international drug traders. Just as giving aid to countries that violate human rights, with serious violations of human rights of their own citizens testifies that we are not really serious about those human rights violations and those practices. No foreign country which engages in the drug trade and declines to cooperate with the United States in suppressing the drug trade, I believe, has a right to receive foreign aid from the United States. They do not have a right to receive foreign aid from us, but American taxpayers, Mr. Chairman, have a right not to have our taxes used, to distribute it in fact, to those who acquiesce in the violation of our laws and our values.
    The fact that certification is not wholly successful, the fact that certification does not wholly solve the problem is assuredly no reason to abandon it—any more than we would abandon a medicine that did not wholly eliminate a disease. Neither should we abandon certification because some foreign government might be offended by it—or indeed, is offended by it, or embarrassed by it. The fact is that our foreign policy should be designed and implemented to serve the most basic values and goals of the American people. The American people should be offended by the failure of their government to take full account of their views and values in the implementation of our laws and the design of our policies.
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    Mr. Chairman, during the Reagan Administration, the United States adopted a policy of linking, it's called, U.S. foreign assistance with several issues, with the manner generally in which other countries, the recipient countries treated our most basic interests and our most basic values. At the United Nations, for example, we made it a point to inform other governments about those very few issues in which there were significant U.S. interests and significant U.S. stakes. If another government deliberately opposed those serious interests and values, we took that into account—and gave advanced notice that we would take it into account—in deciding whether or not to grant aid in the coming year. There were few instances in which aid was, in fact, reduced. But in those few instances, there was, in fact, a visible, marked improvement in the behavior of the countries, subsequently. That's just a fact. I mean, you may regret it, but it's a fact. In a few cases—a very few cases—the flow of U.S. aid was entirely eliminated. I do not forget that an ambassador of an African country with a decent government said to me on one occasion after his country had had his foreign aid from the United States reduced, a policy of deliberate continuous neglect of U.S. interests—important U.S. interests, not trivial U.S. interests and values—said to me, ''we really never knew you really cared about that issue.'' That's a comment that I do not forget. This was a very intelligent African ambassador. And he said, ''now we know you really care.''
    I know that it is often said that such policies and such an approach damages our relations with other countries. I believe that policies which seriously violate and damage American values and interests damage their relations with the United States, and should damage their relations with the United States if they are pursuing policies which break our laws, seduce our youth, and introduce crime to our streets. I read the report in which, Rand Beers, the Acting Assistant Secretary of State for the Bureau of Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs said of certification, ''it is policy that is controversial not because it has failed but because it is working.'' Not popular, but working. He has also emphasized that it is the law of the land.
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    There is a statutory requirement that that policy be enforced. Certification is an imperfect tool with which our government seeks to serve deeply held values, strongly held desires of the American people—a great majority of the American people. It is not an exercise in traditional diplomacy any more than concern with human rights is an exercise in traditional diplomacy. Interestingly enough, many of the same people who oppose drug certification also oppose taking account of human rights practices and violations in the conduct of our foreign policy.
    Mr. Chairman, those who do not feel embarrassed by an explicit effort to make American foreign policy represent and reflect deeply held views and values of the American people, I think are forgetting what foreign policy is for. Foreign policy is not and should not be insulated from the views and values of the American citizens. It is not the preserve of professional diplomats and should not be the preserve of professional diplomats.
    Our Constitution, I don't have to tell the Congress—our Constitution explicitly and specifically provides a role for the Congress in the making of our foreign policy, and our Constitution not only provides it, but, of course, our founding fathers in the Federalist Papers as elsewhere made entirely clear their intention to provide a role for the Congress in the making of foreign policy, because they believed that the direct dependence of the Congress on the people was an insurance that our foreign policy would be representative and responsive to the people of the country who footed the bill and who felt the consequences.
    In giving a role to the Congress, the Constitution makes entirely clear that foreign, as well as domestic, policy should be responsive to the people—to Americans, to ordinary Americans. It may be true that the certification process communicates distrust and breeds hard feelings. It also gets attention and forces other governments to take account of our needs as a price of our support. That's, I think, not unreasonable.
    U.S. economic and military assistance is not equally available to all countries. It is and should be available to those countries to whom we are related by mutual respect and mutual regard. Certification seems to me to be one means, and until we get something better, an important means for ensuring that this will be the case. Obviously, a drug certification program does not solve the drug problem. That's perfectly clear. But our drug certification program, as I understand it, does, in fact, reflect a realistic understanding of the limited powers of other governments in some cases to deal with the problems themselves and it provides assistance in some cases, and does not hold governments responsible for doing things which they cannot do—for controlling sectors in their own society which they cannot control. But it offers help. It asks for cooperation and effort.
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    Mr. Chairman, when we look at the list of countries that were last year decertified for assistance, it's striking—Afghanistan, Burma, Colombia—maybe there's a question about Colombia—Iran, Nigeria, Syria. All of these, interestingly enough, are—or almost all are countries that are also our short list for the systematic and continuing violation of the basic human rights of their own people.
    I believe that this is no accident; that the drug trade thrives in countries with repressive governments which do not respect the rights of their own people. It thrives in countries which do not feature a rule of law; which are governed by violent dictators. It thrives in countries in which there is little regard for any American values, including certainly the promotion of the drug trade. I believe, Mr. Chairman, that insofar as the drug decertification program fails to achieve its goals, then the challenge to the Congress is to improve it. The challenge to the Congress is not, in fact, to abandon it—and in favor of some multinational effort over which we would have little control and over whose standards we would also have very limited influence.
    If the process does not move us toward the goals, then the Congress should improve it. The alternative to an imperfect policy, in my opinion, should be a better program. It should not be the abandonment of any effort to achieve those goals.
    Mr. Chairman, I have a longstanding concern for U.S. relations with other countries in this hemisphere, and that concern remains very strong for me. I believe, in thinking about the countries and the drug decertification and certification, and so forth, it is important to bear in mind that this is not simply a hemispheric problem, but a global problem. We have not only problems with countries in this hemisphere but also countries elsewhere in the world. And I believe that any action by this Committee should take all those into account and should take as its goal the improvement of this unquestionably imperfect instrument.
    Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
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    Chairman GILMAN. Thank you, Ambassador Kirkpatrick.
    Our next witness is General Brent Scowcroft, founder and president of the Forum for International Policy. Prior to his current position, General Scowcroft served in the Office of National Security Affairs for both Presidents Ford and Bush, the Organization of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and Office of the Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security Affairs.
    General Scowcroft.
STATEMENT OF GENERAL BRENT SCOWCROFT, THE SCOWCROFT GROUP
    General SCOWCROFT. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. It's a privilege to appear before this Committee this morning to discuss an issue of such importance to our country.
    I will be very brief.
    First, it's beyond question that we have a massive problem confronting. It's also beyond question that there are no easy answers in dealing with this problem; otherwise, we would have solved the problem. But in dealing with the issue, I think it is important, when we look at drug certification, to keep in mind what our goal is with this instrument. Our goal is to maximize international cooperation in keeping drugs from reaching U.S. shores. In other words, we need others to help us solve our problem with drugs.
    Now the theory of the certification may be fine, but I think the practice is seen primarily as one of threatening punishment, which seems to me a dubious way to solicit voluntary and enthusiastic cooperation. If that threat is followed by actual decertification, it builds enormous hostility and resentment generally, not only in the decertified country, which, again, is hardly conducive to the goals we are pursuing.
    Further, this whole process puts us in the position of judging other countries and other peoples. The way we do it is bitterly resented by people proud of themselves and of their countries, flawed though some of their practices may be—as it would be by Americans in similar circumstances. Most countries consider it supreme arrogance for the United States to sit in solitary judgment on them, especially in this case, since if America didn't buy the drugs, the traffic would dry up. This statute, I think, contributes to an unfortunate image of the United States, which I encounter increasingly as I travel internationally—that of supreme arrogance and disdain for others who do not do as we demand.
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    So my conclusion, Mr. Chairman, is very simple. It is that the means we employ are counterproductive to the ends we seek. I'm not certain what improvements ought to be made. I certainly do not believe in internationalizing the problem, but it seems to me that we ought to look for a process which would elicit positive cooperation rather than one which is seen as punishing in its attempt to get that cooperation. The cooperation has to be voluntary. We cannot demand it. By appearing to demand it, we put barriers in front of those countries who may wish to cooperate, but whose people say, ''why should we cooperate with a country so arrogant as to try to dictate to us how we must behave?''
    So it seems to me that we should seek a way to improve and strengthen cooperation in a manner that does not impugn those whose help we seek or implying that we ourselves are judge and are wholly guilt free.
    Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
    Chairman GILMAN. Thank you, General Scowcroft.
    Our next witness is Gary Bauer, president of the Family Research Council. Prior to joining the Family Research Council, Mr. Bauer served as President Reagan's Assistant for Policy Development, and Director of the Office of Policy Development at the White House. He was also appointed Under Secretary of Education and Chairman of the Working Group on the Family.
    Welcome, Mr. Bauer.
STATEMENT OF GARY BAUER, PRESIDENT, THE FAMILY RESEARCH COUNCIL
    Mr. BAUER. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. It's a real honor and pleasure to be included in this distinguished panel this morning, and I appreciate the opportunity to share some thoughts with you.
    I have a prepared statement, which I'd like to submit for the record with your permission.
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    Chairman GILMAN. Without objection.
    Mr. BAUER. OK.
    Let me just make a couple of comments, if I may. I've listened with interest to some members of the panel and others suggest that the man on the street in Colombia or Bolivia or Mexico may feel insulted or develop feelings of hostility if the United States continues with our policy of certification. And I must tell you that, in all due respect to the man on the street in Colombia and Bolivia and Mexico, I am much more interested in what the man on the street in Pittsburgh and Cincinnati, and Des Moines is thinking. It is, after all, their money that we are giving to various countries.
    I'm sorry if certification or decertification or the threat of decertification is seen as punishment. But I don't know how someone can take it as punishment unless they think they have a right to the largesse of the American people. Clearly, there is no such right. It is, I think, profoundly a commonsense position for Americans before they give something of value to someone to want to see some evidence that that individual or that nation is acting in the deeply held interests of the United States. Now we don't have to have anecdotal evidence of what the man on the street in Pittsburgh or Cincinnati is thinking, as has been alluded to several times.
    There is polling data that is absolutely voluminous at this point. The Family Research Council did a poll at the beginning of this year across the country. I won't go through all of it. I will also submit it for the record. But let me just mention some of the high points. Seventy-four percent of the American people said the United States should focus more resources on stopping the flow of illegal drugs across the border, even if it means reduced trade with Mexico. And I think we all know the American people are generally very much in favor of trade with other countries. The fact that nearly three quarters of them would put trade as a lower priority than stopping the flow of drugs is extremely significant.
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    Seventy-five percent agreed with the statement ''the U.S. Government should base our foreign aid to and trade with nations on how well those nations cooperate with the United States in stopping the production and distribution of illegal drugs.'' This view was held widely, across the political spectrum, by those that self-identified themselves as conservatives, moderates, and liberals. In fact, the view was held by Hispanic voters and others that were sometimes told will be somewhat less demanding on this issue. In fact, they're as demanding as other Americans are.
    Fifty-eight percent of voters were even willing to use the American military—thought it was an excellent way to deal with the problem. So I think the evidence here is overwhelming.
    A number of people have commented that we need a new model here for certification. I would like to suggest that there is no model possible that can be constructed that will work if those charged with implementing it don't have the character and will and courage to do so. I don't believe there's anything wrong with the current certification model that couldn't be dealt with with a little bit more will at the other end of Pennsylvania Avenue.
    Well, I was particularly moved by Ambassador Kirkpatrick's comments because I think she reminded us of something that, it seems to me, ought to be at the basis of all of our deliberations on these issues—whether it's this question or foreign policy in general—and that is the basic idea that American foreign policy cannot work, cannot have the support of the American people if, in fact, it doesn't reflect the deeply held values of the American people. We know what those deeply held values are. It was those values that helped us win the long cold war struggle. Those values will help us win this struggle in keeping drugs away from our children and our families. But it will take, I think, everybody in Washington rededicating and rediscovering those values and making them central to our drug policy and our relationship with other countries on this issue.
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    Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.
    [The prepared statement of Mr. Bauer appears in the appendix.]
    Chairman GILMAN. Thank you, Mr. Bauer.
    Our next witness is Mr. Bernard Aronson, chairman of Acon Investments. Mr. Aronson has served as Assistant Secretary of State for Inter-American Affairs. He also served in the White House under President Carter in the Office of Chief of Staff. He's a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and the Inter-American Dialogue.
    Mr. Aronson.
STATEMENT OF BERNARD ARONSON, MANAGING DIRECTOR, ACON INVESTMENTS
    Mr. ARONSON. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. It's a pleasure to be back before this Committee.
    I also have a prepared statement, which I would like to submit for the record——
    Chairman GILMAN. —Without objection——
    Mr. ARONSON. —and in the interest of time summarize the highlights.
    First I want to commend you and the Committee for holding this timely hearing on certification and counter-narcotic strategy. Our historic mistake toward Latin America is to fail to pay attention, so it's good to see this Committee paying attention on a subject as important as this.
    Latin America faces many important challenges, but the single greatest threat to the consolidation of Latin America's hard-won democracy is the violence, corruption, and impunity bred by narco-trafficking cartels.
    As you know, I worked on these issues during my 4 1/2 years as Assistant Secretary of State. I was involved in the certification process, and I worked with this Committee also to pass the Andean Trade Preference Initiative to foster alternative economic development.
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    Let me say something about certification, and then, because certification is a tactic in a larger battle, I'd like to say something about the way we approach counter-narcotics policy in the hemisphere.
    Personally, I do not share the view of some Latin Americans, who argue that simply because decertifying a country provokes a negative reaction, the policy should be abandoned as counterproductive. Mr. Mica, I think, quoted my former deputy, Bob Gelbard, as saying he thought certification was an important tool. I share that view. In foreign policy too often we shrink from making clear public judgments about sensitive subjects such as narcotics trafficking, corruption, and human rights for fear of offending foreign sensibilities. We forget that when the United States speaks clearly and forcefully, it sometimes serves as a catalyst for the society in question to debate and discuss an important question which everyone acknowledges privately, but is sometimes reluctant to express in public. And I believe that was true vis a vis Colombia 2 years ago when the Administration made its decision to decertify. I was in Colombia all last week—in Cali as well as in Bogota. And I spoke to a number of Colombians who are very active in that nation's public life, and they agreed with that judgment—that, in fact, what we did and said, helped force a debate in that country that was long overdue.
    Having said that, I think the process of certification is far less effective than it could be and far more offensive than it should be, and I would urge the Administration and the Committee to take steps to change that. You know, there's an old saying that when the executive deals with the Congress in formulating new legislation that if you don't include Congress on the take-off, you can't expect them to be there on the landing. I think the same could be said vis a vis the way we deal with Latin America in the certification process. We appear to be sitting on a self-proclaimed political and moral Mount Olympus, issuing pronouncements and judgments unilaterally about smaller, weaker countries in our hemisphere. It doesn't take a foreign policy expert to understand that such a posture breeds resentment and a nationalist backlash, which sometimes makes it harder for a government, even when it has the will, to cooperate with the United States. What I think we should try to do is to develop a process, such as we began in the Cartagena Summit and later in San Antonio, where we sit down with the drug-producing and transit countries in the hemisphere and try to set clear, definable targets for reducing production and consumption; and involve other countries in the actual setting of standards that we will use in the certification process. If they don't cooperate, or if that turns into just a rhetorical exercise that has not substance, we are free to act unilaterally. But I think we will be stronger for having gone through the exercise, and I think we might be surprised at the cooperation.
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    I want to make it clear to Mr. Mica I'm not advocating that the United States cede the decisionmaking process to a multi-lateral process. I don't agree with that. But I do think we would be in a stronger position in making the judgments if we sat down at the beginning of the year in a cooperative process and tried to set standards, including standards for our own consumption.
    The second point I would make is I think Congress should amend the certification process to provide far more flexibility to the President in exercising the option to certify and decertify and in mandating our withdrawing sanctions. Right now, in my experience, the certification process is a blunt instrument, sometimes too blunt, to allow the United States to offer both incentives and disincentives—carrots and sticks—to reward our friends and sanction our adversaries effectively. When you're fighting a war, as President Bush and General Scowcroft showed so well, such as we did in Desert Storm, the President sets the broad strategy, but he should let his battlefield commanders make the tactical decisions. I would we could develop enough trust between the executive and Congress to give the President that sort of flexibility in deciding when or whether to decertify, when and whether to levy a sanction, and to allow the President to make decisions even within the year to waive a sanction if there's cooperation.
    In Colombia, after our decertification, in fact, the private sector and some very brave independent legislators worked to strengthen the asset seizure law, worked to strengthen the criminal penalties for narcotics trafficking, worked to strengthen extradition at great risk to themselves. But the President a year ago did not appear to have the flexibility within the statute to reinstitute OPIC or EXIM financing, which I think would have been a signal to the business community, which were allied to us, that we recognized their efforts and were willing to reward them.
    So I think we should try to build that sort of flexibility in while preserving the basic substance of the certification statute. I understand Mr. Hamilton and Mr. Menendez have a amendment that passed the Committee. I think it moves in the right direction, and I would urge the Committee to consider that.
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    I would make some final points.
    If we're going to be serious about combating narco-trafficking in Colombia in particular, which is the No. 1 coca producing country in the world and in this hemisphere, the United States needs to work with the new Colombia Government, which will be elected and take office in July, to create a peace process to end the guerilla war and violence in that country. The guerillas control 35 percent of the countryside, including many of the prime coca leaf growing regions, and I think that it creates an enormous umbrella in which the traffickers operate. And I think we need to try to bring that war to an end, recognizing that Colombians must take the leadership.
    Finally, I suppose when you've been around this town awhile, you seen an issue over a period of time. I've seen enormous interest in counter-narcotics in Latin America. I've seen Congress devote great resources, but I've also seen during my own tenure that when results did not come quickly budgets were cut, and there was enormous frustration and impatience.
    I think we should have enormous moral and political outrage about this. I think we should do everything necessary to combat that threat. But I also think we need to recognize that we as a nation waited too long to face this drug menace and so did countries like Colombia. And it's going to take a generation to combat it. We have to deal with consumption here at home, a culture that glamorized drug addiction and drug use and drug peddling in the 1960's. And we need to provide material, intelligence, military, and other support to countries that are battling to defend their democratic institutions against very well organized and very well financed drug cartels. And I would just note that for 50 years if you went to New York City, the Mafias in our own country controlled the garment industry, the cement industry, trash hauling, the Fulton Fish market, and major trade unions. And only in the last decade, with the development of Ricco statutes and intelligence gathering methods sanctioned by the courts and vigorous, determined prosecutors, have we begun to disband our own homegrown Mafias. But when Colombia fails to do so in a year, I have sat before committees of this Congress and heard Members argue that we can't win this battle. We should cut budgets and give up on interdiction.
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    I think we should hold everyone's feet to the fire. I'm not suggesting we have lax standards, but we have to be realistic about how long it takes countries to confront this enemy. We need to provide more assistance, not less. And I think that if we make the kind of changes that I suggest in the certification statute—giving the President more authority and flexibility—that it can be a useful tool in that battle.
    Thank you very much
    [The prepared statement of Mr. Aronson appears in the appendix.]
    Chairman GILMAN. Thank you, Mr. Aronson.
    Our last panelist, Mr. John Walters, is president of the Philanthropy Roundtable. Prior to that position, Mr. Walters was appointed by President Bush as Deputy Director for Supply Reduction in the Office of National Drug Control Policy. Mr. Walters is a member of the Council on Crime in America. He's written numerous articles and spoken many times about anti-drug policy. Welcome, Mr. Walters.
STATEMENT OF JOHN WALTERS, PRESIDENT, THE PHILANTHROPY ROUNDTABLE
    Mr. WALTERS. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
    I too have a longer prepared statement which I ask to be included in the record.
    Chairman GILMAN. Without objection.
    Mr. WALTERS. I also want to say one disclaimer: the current organization I work for, the Philanthropy Roundtable, doesn't take positions on public policy matters, and I'm obviously here because of my past work in the drug area, so I want to make clear I'm not representing a group here.
    Chairman GILMAN. Duly noted.
    Mr. WALTERS. I'm representing myself.
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    I'd like to just mention two areas to amplify some of the comments of others here today.
    First is the context of the certification process in the overall anti-drug effort, and why I think it's particularly important. And second, a few remarks about the certification process itself, because when I hear this discussed, frequently in public circles as well as governmental circles, there is a lot of misinformation about what the process does and doesn't allow and how it operates.
    In terms of the drug issue, I think we have to reflect the fact that today, on both demand and supply, we are losing badly. Not only has there been a massive increase in casual use, particularly by young people and children, but also there's no measurable decline in the addict population in this country, and there's no evidence, even with the current drug control strategy, that we have policy or programs or trends in place that are likely to reduce significantly either the supply or demand of illegal drugs.
    Today, we have an expanding problem after years of decline already referred to, fueled on the demand side by a collapse of cultural and political leadership to set a tone in the country against the use and trafficking in drugs, I think, and also reflected in the growing number of initiatives to, in fact, decriminalize and legalize particular—or in some cases, categorically the use and possession and distribution of illegal drugs. That's a failure and decline and decay of political will in this country that is dramatic and is deep seated and will be difficult to reduce.
    We have an institutional failure to maintain and make effective the programs that are designed to reduce both the consumption and the trafficking and supply of drugs. Today, as you know, most illegal drugs are cheaper and purer than they have ever been since we recorded information on this going back almost two decades. None of the institutions are working. None of the strategies presented by the current Administration show promise, or even promise themselves to statistically reduce drug trafficking. I also would take issue with those that claim that we don't measure ourselves. You have and the Congress created at the end of the Reagan Administration specific requirements that the Federal Government create a drug control policy, with specific statistical goals, short-term and long-term. The Bush Administration did that. The Clinton Administration with the exception of the most recent strategy failed to do that, and failed to tie policies and programs to actual numerical, measurable goals.
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    We measure use. We measure addiction. We measure supply availability. We measure arrests. We measure flow. We have more measures holding ourselves accountable—if we chose to make them hold us accountable—than any nation on earth has ever had. And we can improve those. But it is not true that we are asking others to be accountable and not asking ourselves. I don't think we're asking ourselves hard enough or I don't think we're imposing consequences for the failure to perform sufficiently.
    In the case of the current environment, I submit to you there is no evidence in the history of drug epidemics in this country or internationally that shows you can substantially reduce levels of consumption we currently experience without controlling supply. No matter what you do on the demand side—no matter what lesson, no matter how much you put into treatment programs—if drugs are widely available, cheap, widely accepted as a commodity, we undermine the prevention and treatment efforts of every program you fund, and every participation by State and local government in those programs and family members as well.
    The certification process, of course, was created, I think, largely by a Democratic Congress to help hold a Republican Administration's feet to the fire because there was a concern that in the diplomatic discussions with foreign countries, we were not, as government officials, representing the will of the American people on this issue. And it was the desire again, as has already been noted here once to simply prevent the giving of U.S. taxpayer dollars—there are trade sanctions associated with this measure—the giving of U.S. taxpayer dollars to countries that didn't cooperate or didn't take sufficient steps on their own to reduce or eliminate trafficking.
    This is not an up or down decision. The law has always required and used—and Administrations have effectively used arguments about national interest that override the drug issue in specific cases. It does force an argument. There has been frequent use of certification with qualifications. The law also allows, as you have already pointed out, the continuation of anti-drug funds to countries that are decertified in order to sort of boot strap them into better performance and a complication.
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    What the law does do, and why there are arguments about how offensive it maybe is, it tries to make the people cooperate who are working at the level of the real war in the countries, the people who are supported by their national leaders and by the national elites because this does get their attention. I don't think there is any question that the certification process produces results and that dismantling the certification process and weakening it would delay those results. The weakening of it that's occurred in the last number of years has weakened the results.
    And today, as some of my colleagues who have much more experience than I have noted, and I concur, drug trafficking is the single greatest threat to democratic institutions in this hemisphere since the end of the cold war. And it is growing. And there is no sign in any of these countries that I see that are major trafficking countries that that cancer is declining. It is growing.
    Let me just say one last thing about this. We use sanctions—trade sanctions, aid sanctions, and other sanctions—in a variety of areas, as you know. We use it in areas of airport security, complicity in the death of a U.S. citizen by a foreign government, human rights abuses, violations of intellectual property rights, confiscation of U.S.-held property in foreign countries, dumping of goods in this country, spreading weapons of mass destruction, supporting international terrorism, failure to protect Americans adequately if they were to travel to foreign countries, violation of environmental standards, even failure to pay parking tickets in the United States by foreign nationals representing their governments.
    To the best of my knowledge, there is no serious effort to repeal any of these particular sanctions to enforce interests of the United States abroad. Only one—drugs. Now if this is such an offensive vehicle of expressing U.S. national interests, why isn't it categorically being repealed? And I think the real reason that we have a problem with this issue now is a failure of the executive branch.
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    In my experience working in the Bush Administration with some of the people on this panel, the certification rule was a buttress to a series of policy efforts that involved all kinds of cooperation agreements and understandings in addition to the certification process. That has largely collapsed. And that process, particularly today, given how bad and how much worse the problem is getting, will require the active participation of the President of the United States. President Bush had to pick up the phone and call other Heads of State, and senior officials in our Administration had to make particular contact with their counterparts to get the intermediate steps going—to establish the trust, to make the programs work, to overcome obstacles. I do not believe anyone believes that's happening today. And I do not believe that anyone can credibly expect that the rest of the Clinton Administration is going to be any better.
    By dismantling the certification process, if that's what we're talking about, or weakening it—that's the proposal—all we are likely to do is accelerate the only remaining brake that once a year puts people on the spot and makes them have to perform domestically in terms of our government and in foreign governments. The certification process today is actually more about our institutions than it is about foreign governments, even though it is about foreign governments, and the failure of those institutions and the feeling in the country among the American people that nothing works and that nobody will make any difference is the single biggest factor, the public opinion polls tell us, leading Americans to support the legalization of drugs.
    If you want to turn that around, I don't think you dismantle one of the tools—not the only tool and not the tool that's going to do it alone—but one of the principal tools for expressing U.S. national interests where the supply of drugs is rooted and that is in foreign countries. Not the only place. But nobody produces cocaine and heroin in the United States.
    Thank you.
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    [The prepared statement of Mr. Walters appears in the appendix.]
    Chairman GILMAN. Thank you very much, Mr. Walters. Before we proceed to questions, I'm going to ask that this article from The Wall Street Journal dated April 16, 1998, entitled ''A Meeting of Minds from Peoria to Patagonia: Poll Finds Yanks and Latins Often Agree on Trade, Security, and Drugs'' be made part of the record.
    I'm going to ask our panelists if they would to respond, as I direct the questions to all of our panelists. And I want to thank our panelists once again for being with us here. Diverse opinion has been extremely helpful to our Committee and will be helpful in the days ahead.
    Is it too much for us to ask a major drug-producing or transit nation to cooperate with us in fighting drugs before that same nation will be considered eligible for U.S. assistance? And I ask any of our panelists if they would like to respond to that?
    Ambassador Kirkpatrick.
    Ms. KIRKPATRICK. Could you repeat the question, Mr. Chairman, please.
    Chairman GILMAN. Is it too much to ask any of the major drug-producing nations or transit nations to cooperate with our nation in fighting drugs before we decide whether that nation is going to be eligible for U.S. assistance? I think that's what it boils down to when we think about whether we ought to abandon decertification.
    Ms. KIRKPATRICK. I thought that's what you said, but I wanted to be certain that that was the question. I think that the answer is almost self-evident. I stated in my remarks that no country has a right to U.S. assistance, economic or military, in fact. Nor does the United States have an obligation to provide economic or military assistance to any government. It is perfectly clear to me that the purpose of U.S. assistance, as of all U.S. foreign policy, is, in fact, to serve and represent the values and goals of the great majority of the American people. And it seems perfectly clear to me that we should—in the Congress—in its stewardship of tax monies, for example, as well as the executive in its stewardship of tax monies—give priority first of all to those values and goals of the American people. And if some country was indifferent or hostile to the values and goals of the American people, then I think we should not provide assistance. I mean that that's fairly clear cut. It seemed only reasonable and I would urge, in fact, this Committee and indeed other committees of the Congress to bear this obligation in mind as they think about U.S. foreign aid programs.
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    Chairman GILMAN. Thank you very much, Madam Ambassador.
    General Scowcroft.
    General SCOWCROFT. Mr. Chairman, I agree with Ambassador Kirkpatrick. The answer is self-evident, but I think it is not that simple. Our aid programs with other countries are part of an overall fabric of the relationship and of the value we place on a relationship with that country. Most of those programs are in place now. We're not granting new ones, so it's a different kind of an issue. And it's not an accident that many of the countries that have been decertified are the countries where we have no such valuable relationships, so it's easy to decertify them. And decertification has no value to the countries, some of which are the greatest defenders, because we have no aid programs with them.
    The real problem is those where we have a strong relationship, multifaceted relationship that's important to us, and we hold the whole thing hostage to one particular issue. And I think that's what we need to get at. And we need to get at a way to elicit cooperation rather than to hold a club over their heads. More aid if they cooperate would be better than less aid if they didn't. That would be a positive incentive.
    Chairman GILMAN. Thank you, General Scowcroft.
    Mr. Bauer.
    Mr. BAUER. Yes, Mr. Chairman. You know there's always a lot of joking about attitudes inside the Beltway compared to attitudes outside the Beltway. This is a no-brainer for most Americans. I mean, if you stopped the average guy on the street and asked him this question, he's going to scratch his head about why the question's even being asked.
    If we are going to have largesse toward other countries, out of the pockets of the American taxpayer, it is reasonable for that taxpayer to assume that the money is going to go to places that recognize the interests of the American people.
    Now, General Scowcroft rightly points out that we have very complicated relationships with countries, and this is just one facet. But this is, for most Americans, perhaps the most important part of those relationships. Whether you're on 14th street in Washington, DC, or you're sitting in the suburbs around this city, your kids are surrounded by the easy availability and access to drugs. It has turned many of our cities into hell holes. It has made our schools almost impossible to engage in the educational process. This ought to be a high priority in the bilateral dealings we have with foreign countries.
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    Chairman GILMAN. Thank you, Mr. Bauer.
    Mr. Aronson.
    Mr. ARONSON. Mr. Chairman, as I made clear in my statement, I think tying our assistance to counter-narcotics performance is the right thing to do. I think certification has been useful, but there's an implication in some of our conversation that the producing countries are simply not on our side. And these are complex societies. In Colombia, there are many very decent citizens who are very much our allies, who are very much the victims of the traffickers, and who've paid dearly. So my sense is that we need to make this a smart weapon. That's my point; that we need to make it more flexible so that a President who has the will can use it well—reward our friends, punish our enemies. But I don't think we should shrink from making clear judgments when a country is not cooperating.
    In Colombia, in the second year, after we decertified, as I said, some very brave people, at our urging, stood up to the traffickers, pushed through some very tough legislation. I think it would have been in our interest to find a way, to send a signal to reward them at the same time as which we made it clear that we were totally unsatisfied with the performance of the chief executive. So I think it's a useful instrument. If you looked at the Gulf War, the best weapons were the smart weapons. I think we should turn this into a smarter weapon. That's my point.
    Chairman GILMAN. Thank you, Mr. Aronson.
    Mr. Walters.
    Mr. WALTERS. Well, I agree with my colleagues that this is an important tool and that the premise that taxpayer money ought not go to countries that don't cooperate is virtually not subject to serious argument.
    But I also think that the point here is, in part, it's not just about American performance, if you want to talk about being open and concerned about our allies in foreign countries who are putting their lives on the line. Those of us that have worked this have all talked to people who are putting their lives on the line who tell you, if you talk to them, that one of the key supports for them is that the United States will tell the truth; that the United States, through the certification process and proper national leadership in Congress as well as the executive branch will hold their elites and their leaders accountable for not supporting them.
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    We make the life of those who are trying hardest and making sacrifices that few Americans make in some cases, to fight this war for themselves and for us much harder if we weaken this tool. This isn't going to help these countries. This isn't going to make it easier to fight the battle. It's going to make it harder, to put a veneer over it, to allow the corrupt to continue, and to allow everybody to look the other way. That's what's kind of shocking about the discussion of this is that somehow the opponents of certification want to suggest that we are going to help the people who are going to fight the battle abroad if we look the other way; if we weaken this; or we make it multinational, or we don't do it. The opposite is true.
    Chairman GILMAN. Thank you, Mr. Walters, a great deal has been said that this process needs to be reformed, that maybe we should look to a better method. Let me ask, many of these drug-producing nations face an influence of massive amounts of illicit drug money on their governments and their institutions often affecting their ability even to govern. What leverage other than a cutoff of U.S. aid, a cutoff of our assistance, of trade and loan guarantees do we have? What can you suggest would be some reforms or alternatives if you have any in mind? And I'll start at this end. Mr. Walters.
    Mr. WALTERS. Well, of course, the focus here is on the certification law, but a number of the trade laws in place with Latin America in particular, but others have cooperation with drugs as a provision. The Andean Trade Preferences Act has such. There have been no compliance hearings. There has been no trigger of any of those sanction provisions which would be trade sanctions against these governments. Now that's also a sign of seriousness on the part of the American Government. We have these tools, which are quite well known in the foreign governments and economic interests there that are concerned. We haven't used that.
    The other area here I think that's important, and it doesn't get spoken of enough is our leadership in the international community. I think you have to have true actions to back up your words, but there are no serious words here. I mean, President Bush, I think, got considerable and proper credit from the American people of making the brave act of going to Cartagena, Colombia. Not only his physical safety was an issue, but his political safety was an issue—of making a commitment to work with these governments. We used the carrot and the stick. What you've got now is no carrot and we want to throw away the stick. I think that is a ticket to no performance and worsening performance at a time when, on the supply side, what you have is the dumping of illegal drugs in the United States at massively cheap prices fueling consumption—consumption by addicts and consumption principally in the expanding area by our children. And we don't seem to be able to mobilize ourselves institutionally to take effective action against that. And that's a sad commentary on the state of American institutions.
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    Chairman GILMAN. Well said, Mr. Walters.
    Mr. Aronson.
    Mr. ARONSON. Mr. Chairman, John mentioned the drug summit at Cartagena. I think it's an important point. The President of the United States on two occasions sat down with the chief executives of the principal producing and transit countries to forge a common strategy. I think if we're serious about counter-narcotics, we need that level of attention.
    As I said, I think we should go back to the process for setting standards for our own performance and sitting down with Latins to set standards for their performance. I think it makes it easier for us to then say, ''you didn't meet the standards we all agreed to.'' If they're not serious, we still have the right to do it unilaterally.
    I would note that at the time when we were pursuing this strategy, we also offered positive incentives. There was an economic program that was geared directly to help Latin countries develop alternative economic development. That's what the Andean Trade Preference Initiative was about, and so was much of the Enterprise for the Americas Initiative, which was actually born at the Cartagena Summit. And I would note that the Congress has not given the President fast track to move forward on Free Trade in the Americas. I understand there are legitimate issues to be debated. But let's have the debate and see if we can come up with a fair compromise between the advocates of free trade and those who are concerned about labor and environmental issues, so we have something to offer these societies that are waging very, very tough battles.
    And the final point I would make is we need to be serious as a country. During my tenure, we significantly ratcheted up the budgets for interdiction and counter-narcotics, and within 3 years, they were being cut already. And if you were to ask people to literally risk their lives in the survival of their country and commit resources and be on the front lines, then we need to have the staying power to see this battle through. I agree with what John said about demand and supply—that if you're not serious about supply, you're not going to deal with demand. I think we need to do both, and not one or the other. But we have to make a national decision that this is not just an issue that we debate once in a while. We have headlines. We ratchet up the budgets. And then in a couple of years, when it fades from the headlines, we go on to something else. This is a generational struggle in our country and in Latin America. The stakes are enormously high, and we need to be serious about it.
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    Chairman GILMAN. Thank you, Mr. Aronson. Mr. Bauer.
    Mr. BAUER. Mr. Chairman, a couple of points. You know, I was sitting here thinking during some of the exchanges about how during the 1980's, Mrs. Reagan's ''just say no'' program was mocked. It was mocked on the editorial pages of many newspapers. It was mocked on the late-night comedy shows, et cetera. And I don't think I'm saying anything that we don't all know; it was mocked, quite frankly, from a partisan standpoint here on Capital Hill. The fact of the matter is that those years of us giving out of Washington a consistent message to just say no sent a message to the American people and to our children about the seriousness of this issue. You know, the certification tool is not the only tool in this battle. It's an important one, I think. We do have to do more, however. There do have to be some incentives. But I think the bottom line here is exactly what John said—that there is a lack of seriousness right now on drugs, not among the American people, but among the leaders of the American people. And I think that lack of seriousness, whether it's proposals, we've seen in recent weeks to pass out clean needles to drug addicts or some of the other things that are floating around, I think they're sending a terrible message to our kids about whether or not we are serious when we tell them that we don't want them to use drugs.
    Chairman GILMAN. Thank you, Mr. Bauer.
    General Scowcroft.
    General SCOWCROFT. Yes, Mr. Chairman. You rightly point out that a number of the countries of concern are besieged by the drug problem and the effects of it—the mafia and so on. The governments of these countries—let's leave out the ones that are the thug governments, if you will, because decertification has no effect on them anyway—let's take the ones that we're concerned with, mostly in Latin America. Those governments do not support the drug trade. They're besieged; some of them are being overwhelmed. To get them decertified and to cut off aid to them certainly doesn't help them in dealing with this problem or any other problem. So it may make us feel good, but it doesn't go to the solution of the problem. We need to help them mobilize. We need to help them put more resources in it. We have a crusade in the United States, but is it on drugs? No. Look from the outside—our crusade is tobacco. If we were to mobilize on drugs the way we have on tobacco, we would first of all get more cooperation from elsewhere because we would look serious, which we don't now.
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    Chairman GILMAN. Thank you, General Scowcroft. I just would like to note that while we had cut off most aid to Colombia, we did support many of their efforts in counter-narcotics and try to help the police. They've lost 4,000 police officers as we supply them with used helicopters from Vietnam.
    Ambassador Kirkpatrick.
    Ms. KIRKPATRICK. Yes, well, I think I agree with everybody, Mr. Chairman, that it's perfectly clear that we obviously should not decertify a country which is overwhelmed by its own drug traders as it tries to bring that group in its society under some kind of control. I mean, what the decertification program calls for is full cooperation. It doesn't call for solution to the problem. Presumably, fully cooperating would move the country toward a solution to the problem, but it doesn't—in time it recognizes the existence of realistic obstacles and it purports to help those who are helping themselves or ready to help us and themselves in dealing with this problem. It is assuredly true that the narco-traffickers constitute a major source of corruption and destruction of new democratic governments in Latin America; and it's deeply disturbing. But it is true that as those countries and people cooperate with us on these problems, they also move toward more adequate dealing with the impact of those problems on their own society and their own government.
    I don't think there's a choice here about whether we abandon certification or do some other things. Obviously, this problem is so noxious in its impact on our society and on other societies in this hemisphere that we need to do anything that we can conceive that has a reasonable chance of being somewhat effective, moving us toward better control over the problem. Certification, I believe, as I understand it—I'm not an expert in this subject at all—but as I understand it, it has helped us in dealing with the problem in some places at some times. It, therefore, seems to be perfectly clear that it shouldn't be abandoned, and I am frankly suspicious of people who propose to simply abandon the only principal instrument that we have for dealing with this problem rather than come with some other instruments that they propose. And what's been proposed so far is just not serious.
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    I'm sure we've all been struck by the fantastic contrasts, extraordinary contrasts between the mobilization of the White House and the President, and the Vice President against tobacco as compared to the relative passivity with regard to illegal drugs. It's shocking.
    Chairman GILMAN. Thank you, Madam Ambassador.
    Mr. Hamilton.
    Mr. HAMILTON. Mr. Chairman, first of all I want to say that I thank each of the panelists. I think we've had a very, very good panel this morning, and I'm indebted to each of them. I'll just ask a question—it has two parts to it—and ask you to respond.
    My interest, as I indicated early on, is how you improve the statute, the decertification statute. I'm not arguing for repeal of it. I know many of you have gone after that point, but I'm not satisfied with the way it's operating either. So the first question is do you leave the statute as it is, or do you make some improvements in it? Now, Mr. Aronson has spoken to this. He's talked about more flexibility. So part of the question is what do you mean by flexibility here? Ambassador Kirkpatrick, you said it's an imperfect statute, and so I'd kind of like to draw you out on that if you're willing to do so. How do you improve the statute or do you just leave it as it is?
    The second question relates to one that is the multilateral approach. Now I know that's a naughty word for some people. But in Santiago the other day, the alliance there, the 30—what was it 33 or 34-–33 nations I guess—adopted a provision which called for multilateral evaluation of actions and cooperation to prevent and combat drugs. I'll go into that in just a moment a little more. But my question is, what role do you see for multilateral action, if any? Nobody was talking in Santiago about giving up the right to apply sanctions unilaterally. Nobody was talking about sanctions in the multilateral activities. What they were talking about was multilateral cooperation on these kinds of things. And I'm kind of summarizing here very quickly—how you prevent drug consumption, how you improve treatment and rehabilitation, how you develop greater social awareness of the drug problems, how you put into place cooperative mechanisms to prosecute and extradite individuals who are involved in drug trafficking, how you eliminate illicit crops, and of course, the heavy emphasis was on analysis and data. That's the kind of thing, as I understood it, that was being discussed at Santiago there. So, my question comes down to this, and please feel free to comment or not as you want. How do you improve the statute or do you leave it like it is? That's the first question.
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    The second question is, what role is there in multilateral approach to the problem? What are the risks? What are the dangers? What are the benefits of a multilateral approach?
    I'll just ask each of you—in any particular order doesn't matter. And that's the only questions I'll have, Mr. Chairman.
    Thank you.
    Chairman GILMAN. Panel—any of the panelists?
    Mr. ARONSON. Well, on the two parts. I wouldn't touch the statute.
    Mr. HAMILTON. You wouldn't touch it?
    Mr. WALTERS. I wouldn't touch it. In this environment, I do think that it will probably result in a weakening of the statute by measures in the process between the chambers and conference and so forth that would be detrimental. I hate to be suspicious like that, but I am. The statute has, within the realm of the possibility of this tool as a tool, the necessary flexibility, including, I would again repeat, the national interest waiver. The problem is it requires the people who use it to explain themselves to the American people, and that's not always easy in this case. But it does connect the American people to their governing officials and has a debate. I also think, frankly, Congress should do more oversight of the decisions made by the executive on this, and they ought to be more vigorous in challenging different points of view. I think that's an important part of also making the policy.
    On the multilateral approach the Administration and I worked in on this issue—we multilateralized as much as we could within the rubric of these current institutional processes. Cartagena was a meeting, in part, to bring together multilateral agreements, and we continued that with a variety of nations in the hemisphere—everything from information exchanges to intelligence sharing, to procedures for joint operations, to standardized laws against corruption, money laundering, moving chemicals involved in the drug process. We tried to build as much of that in as possible. It requires what I don't see today frankly—it requires a very active and a Presidentially directed effort, with senior officials involved, working those issues because a lot of kinks happen. A lot of things have to be moved in order to make these decisions, and once the decision is made to implement them; and it requires contact by the Secretary of State, by Justice people, by National Security people, and by the President. And I just don't see that happening. This isn't something where we say we want to multilateralize things and you just kind of throw the things on the ground and they grow. They don't. We have to make it work as an important leader in this area with resources and national leadership. I think obviously you have to get these nations, with everything from aid to extradition, to work together. And that is the way to go. But it doesn't happen if you take away the certification process and the focus of national interest that will make the President's attention be realistically something you can expect.
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    Mr. ARONSON. Mr. Hamilton, I think those are two good questions. Let me start with flexibility and how to amend the statute. I take John's point that the current atmosphere may not be a good one to amend the statute but then my solution would be to change the atmosphere and build more trust between the executive and Congress and bipartisanship, which I tried to do when I was Assistant Secretary. I would amend the statute in three ways.
    First, I would let the President delay the decision for up to 6 months as a bargaining tool. I think he should be able to say to the President of a given country, I'm going to decertify you, but if these five things are done in the next 6 months, I won't. And you have 6 months to do it. I just think that's smart negotiating.
    Second, I would amend it to give the President a menu of sanctions to choose from so he can target the groups or the institutions that he wants to sanction and perhaps give a benefit to the groups that are fighting on our side. So that would be another change.
    Third, I would similarly allow the President with—even after having decertified—if in 6 months he sees cooperation, or as in the case of Colombia where we got the business community and some very brave legislators to pass some good tough legislation—allow him to reinstitute a benefit, again, in a targeted way. So that really is a matter of flexibility.
    Multilateralism, you know, has a bad name. But NATO is a multilateral approach, and the 27-nation coalition that the President, Secretary Baker and General Scowcroft created to go to war in the gulf was multilateralism, and it was very effective, so it doesn't have to mean mush.
    What I think multilateralism has to mean is, as John suggested, a revival of cooperation at the Head of State level, where this becomes a fundamental issue in our dealings and we make it happen. We have meetings in which we forge a common strategy. And the point I was making, and I think it would strengthen certification, is if as part of that process, we collectively set the standards by which we would all judge each other, including consumption. But if at the end of the year, the President of the United States decertified a given country because it failed to meet a standard that it had agreed in a drug summit attended by their Head of State, it would be very hard to suggest that this was either unilateral or arrogant or imperial by the United States. If you can't get other countries to set real targets, so be it. Set them yourselves. But I think that's just smart politics.
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    And I agree with John's point about more oversight. I think this issue has to be discussed more, though I would note that some of the debate that we conduct about Latin America blows back and, in fact, hurts our effort. There's a lot of Mexico-bashing that is very popular these days, and it's easy to do. But it makes headlines in that country, and it doesn't help us build cooperation. And maybe we could find a slightly less offensive way to state our concerns about the terrible problems in that country.
    Thank you.
    Mr. BAUER. Mr. Hamilton, I'm sure that every law on the books can use some improvement. But I would agree with John that in this current atmosphere, my fear would be that any change in the certification process right now would be almost inevitably taken as a sign of weakness. If the overall anti-drug effort in the United States was being strengthened and improved, then I think you would create an atmosphere where perhaps you could do some fine tuning on something like certification. So I would urge real caution right now on doing anything that would look like a further retreat on the issue.
    On the second question of multilateralism, I don't think there's anything wrong; in fact, we would all want to encourage countries to work together on this problem. I think where the difficulty comes in, however, is when you get to the bottom line of the resources of the American people and where those resources are going and under what criteria, that is a decision I think that needs to be made by elected officials of the American people, who are answerable to them on election day. It should not be a situation where the American people are told, ''Well, I'm sorry. It was an OAS decision. There was nothing we could do about it.'' I think the American people need to feel that their elected officials at the end of the day are in charge of what happens to the resources that we ask as Americans to send to Washington.
    General SCOWCROFT. On revising the statute, Mr. Hamilton, I would be inclined to try to turn it on its head—maybe make the President with a broader waiver leave it in place, but to look at the countries that are now besieged by the drug problem and try to fashion a program that will actively help them deal with the problem—a program which they would receive if they're inclined to cooperate and do whatever they can. It seems to me that's a far better way to attack it than simply threaten to make their situation worse if they don't.
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    On multilateralism, if you can do things multilaterally, I think it is always preferable. But we can never give up our right to act. So we ought to use all the multilateral levers we have. The Cartagena conference has been mentioned several times. That should have continued. Just the process of getting together and talking these things over and encouraging countries is very, very valuable. And when they're willing to act as a block, willing to act together, you have more effective results.
    Ms. KIRKPATRICK. Congressman Hamilton, once again I think I agree with everyone. I especially agree with those persons who are cautioning against dropping the program or undertaking the kind of revisions that would be seen generally as tantamount to dropping the certification requirement. I think it would be a real mistake. I think it would be widely understood as dramatic decline in interest in the whole drug issue in the United States and by the U.S. Congress; particularly because there is not as much emphasis actually from the White House, as there has been in recent past times. But I think that an additional flexibility could be useful if it were combined with additional, more vigorous oversight by the Congress—additional flexibility for the President and the executive departments in the administration of the certification program, within limits and with tighter oversight. I believe that, again, the essence of the issue is to make clear that the American Congress and the American people care deeply about the issue and are determined to take whatever effective action they can take on it.
    With regard to multilateral mechanisms, I'm in favor of the utilization of any mechanisms that can make a significant contribution to the goal of significantly reducing the inflow of drugs into the United States. We have typically undertaken consultation with those countries who are allies and friends and with whom we have worked and who have fully cooperated with us in working on the reduction of the production of drugs in their own countries, and the reduction of, therefore, import-export to the United States. When I was in the government, I visited the Golden Triangle, with representatives of the Thai Government at a time that guerillas as well as drug dealers were operating in the Golden Triangle. The U.S. Government was working with the Thai Government in crop substitution programs and village relocation programs. And there was, I think, some fairly strong feeling that they were making some headway. My understanding is that we have worked with the Government of Peru and that we have worked with the Government of Colombia. I presume that we should continue all of those efforts and that if we can devise useful approaches through the OAS, I'm all in favor of it. I think that large multilateral organizations, such as the OAS, and certainly such as the United Nations, are well able to make a contribution through discussion, through bringing the most diverse perspectives, through collecting information rather than through enforcement. I was very pleased by the Santiago Declaration on Democracy in this hemisphere.
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    And I note, however, that it's more moving as a declaration that it has been as a program, and that happens with large multilateral organizations often. But I think by all means cooperate when we can, and get from our hemispheric partners, who are perhaps not directly involved in our programs, as much help as we can get. But continue ourselves to press toward our goals, which are, in fact, American national goals.
    Thank you.
    Chairman GILMAN. Thank you. And thank you, Mr. Hamilton. I regret that I'm being called to a meeting. I'm going to ask Ileana Ros-Lehtinen to chair the remainder of the meeting. I'm going to ask that my closing statement be made part of the record. And we're going to call on Mr. Mica who's being called to an important hearing for questions at this time. Mr. Mica.
    [The statement of Mr. Gilman appears in the appendix.]
    Mr. MICA. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and I apologize. I'm going to have to run to the floor. We've got a needle exchange debate going on—I'm in the middle of that. But I appreciate all of your testimony, and your efforts to hopefully improve the law if we do, in fact, make revisions.
    General Scowcroft, you had said, I don't have the exact quote, but I might paraphrase your comment that we develop a program so that these nations can receive some assistance or something like that if they cooperate. And I, sir, think that, in fact, that is what we already have in place is that the certification is a very simple law. It just says that in order to receive foreign aid, foreign assistance, military assistance, international financial assistance, or trade benefits that we ask these countries to work with us and develop a program and make progress to stop drug production, drug trafficking. That's what's in place.
    General SCOWCROFT. I understand that, Mr. Mica. But what happened is most of these aid programs have been in place for a long time. And they have nothing to do with drugs. And so, they're termination is looked at as punishment. What I'm trying to do is to add incentives. And what I'd like to do is to provide more assistance to deal with the drugs, providing that they will cooperate. That's all that I was saying.
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    Mr. MICA. Well, we don't have a problem that some of them don't need our foreign aid. They do need our aid, our votes in trade. It's important to Mexico. It's important to Colombia. It's important to all these countries that they have good trade relationships. That may be the one thing that I would like to see tightened up—that we could give some advantage if in exchange. I view this as the most serious social problem that I have ever seen in my 55 years of life, and it's just devastating. I mean, the proportion is and impact on our children, on this society is just unbelievable. We brought our Committee down to my district, and the local sheriff said that 80 percent of the people that he's arrested in our community are there because of a drug-related offense. The Administration in its first 2 years dismantled the interdiction, many of the eradication programs, involvement of the Coast Guard, the military, the overflights. They destroyed for a while the shoot-down policy that we had supported in cooperation with those countries. We have seen a flow unparalleled of hard drugs—heroin, cocain, coming in. We have gotten great cooperation from Peru, from Bolivia, now Colombia, which is basically out of control. It is a great problem.
    In Mexico—and Mr. Aronson referred to sitting down with these folks—we sat down with them and we asked them for cooperation. They still haven't put in place a maritime agreement—no cooperation with our DEA agents. We gave them a list of six things that we wanted done. They have not extradited one single drug dealer to the United States—all around the periphery, but not cooperated. So what do you do? And then what they've done to avert and distort the law is spend tens of millions of dollars now in lobbying campaigns. That's what brought all this up to the Congress and made an issue of it. I never heard a peep out of Bolivia. They cooperated, Peru. But Mexico has now taken this on as a personal campaign, and they are so embroiled in cooperation from one end to the other.
    So my question, Mr. Aronson, is how do you deal with this subversion and perversion of the process by having a foreign government come in, lobbying, spending tens of million dollars and then using trade against us in this effort? How would you deal with that element? And we have, I think, been trying to be reasonable—to lay out a plan to work with them.
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    Mr. ARONSON. Mr. Mica, let me first answer the question you asked General Scowcroft about additional incentives if I might. After we negotiated NAFTA, there was a real competition in this hemisphere to be the country that would be the next in line. And every country that wanted to be a part of the North American Free Trade Agreement, including many of the drug-producing countries that have been mentioned here, understood that they would not be eligible and that they would not be considered unless they did far more than they were doing on counter-narcotics. We've reduced the incentive because there's no authority to expand the Free Trade Agreement of the Americas, so I would hope that if you are considering incentives, that's one that you and your colleagues would take a look at. I understand it's a very sensitive issue, but for 25 years the President of the United States has not had authority.
    As far as Mexico, I'm not in any way suggesting that if there is not cooperation that we're not tough on our own standards and we shouldn't shrink from making decertification decisions on the merits. I happen to agree with you on that. I do think some of the rhetoric up here vis a vis Mexico is not entirely helpful. There are plenty of very good citizens in that country who have been battling for a long time to clean up their country and to democratize and to clean up corruption. We need to ally with them. It's going to take a long time, and I'm frustrated as well. I think you saw the recent court marshall, kangaroo court of a general in the Mexican army who essentially was trying to clean up that institution. I think it's not a very hopeful sign. I do think President Zedillo himself is trying to wage this battle. I think he's an ally in that. You've got to find the best way to approach a country.
    As far as the other issue raised about lobbying, I just don't know the facts. I have confidence in the Congress and this Committee to withstand any foreign lobbying campaign and do what they think is right on the merits.
    Mr. MICA. Mr. Bauer.
    Mr. BAUER. Mr. Mica, I think that the situation you describe and the lobbying campaign is just outrageous. Obviously, there are many good and decent people in Mexico that are deeply concerned about the drug problem. They've suffered directly as a result of the drug cartels in that country—people on both sides of the border who want to do something about this. But I must say it seems to me that there are too many people in the bureaucracy in Washington, DC, that are worried about offending the sensibilities of the Mexican Government. And there are too few people in the Mexican Government concerned about the sensibilities of the United States. It's an important relationship we have between them, but it's got to be a two-way relationship. And you're absolutely right. The cooperation, in many ways, has been zero. The lack of action on extradition is unbelievable. It is scandalous, and the American people would be outraged about it if more of them knew what the details were.
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    Mr. MICA. Well, our former U.N. Ambassador knows the tremendous support that we've had from some of these nations. When push comes to shove, they abandon us. I mean, there are a couple of exceptions in the United Nations, and we do everything we can. In most of these countries, we underwrite their financial stability through some of these world financial organizations. If we don't use leverage, Ambassador, in these international organizations, with trade and with other of our resources, what do we do?
    Ms. KIRKPATRICK. Mr. Mica, I believe that if we do not respect our own values and goals, we can be certain that other countries will not do so. And if we do not seek in bilateral relations and regional relations and multilateral relations to serve our own seriously deeply held values and pursue our goals, we can be certain that our neighbors and associates will not do so.
    I believe that foreign relations improve when the United States behaves in a serious and consistent fashion in the pursuit of our own goals and values. I believe that happened, if I may say so, during the Reagan years. I believe we became more effective in global arenas and regional organizations, not less effective, because we were seriously pursuing our goals. And asking of our associates that if they desire from the United States respect for their countries, that they understand that this must be reciprocal; that they too must respect us and our goals. And not simply asking it, but making clear that there were consequences for the respect and the reverse of American goals and values. I think our foreign relations suffer when we behave with self-respect and offer respect for other countries as compared to when we subordinate our own goals and values in a kind of continuing fashion to some sort of concern that someone else may be offended by our pursuit of our most deeply held values and seriously held goals. I think we make a terrible mistake. And our foreign relations suffer rather than improve.
    Ms. ROS-LEHTINEN. [presiding] Thank you so much.
    Mr. MICA. Thank you, Mr. Mica.
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    Mr. ROS-LEHTINEN. Mr. Clement to finish off the round of questions.
    Mr. CLEMENT. OK. Thank you, Madam Chairman. I've been very impressed with all of you, listening to your testimony today. We sure have an outstanding panel and I respect all of you. I agree with much of what you've said. I do think you can have a difference of opinion without having a difference of principle. And I don't think there's any doubt that you all differ to some degree on certification or decertification, but you also are very concerned, as I am, about the scourge of drugs and how it's affecting our society. I'll never forget years ago when young people started experimenting with drugs, and a lot of people said, ''Well, it's just a fad. It's just an experiment. It's not going to last very long.'' But the fact is, it has. And it's really grabbed our society. I work with the police very closely at home as well as across the country, and it's unbelievable to me how many crimes are drug-related. And I just hear it over and over again, whether it's violent crime or other crimes. Somehow, some way it goes back to illegal drugs.
    The question is asked, how do we solve the problem? I mean, do we use the carrot and stick approach? Do we use the penalties and the punishment, but also the incentives? And I think maybe both is necessarily the answer. I do know we need the cooperation of the Latin American countries as much as we can because they're the source countries. But yet, said very well by the Ambassador a while ago, that when it comes to values in our country, we're sure not setting a very good example when our people—young people and adults—are using drugs as much as they are now. I'd like to know from all of you, and I know on the tobacco settlement, we're talking about incentives for tobacco farmers to move maybe in another direction, not growing tobacco. I'd like for you all to comment that you want us to utilize that approach in the Latin American countries.
    And also, are you encouraged or discouraged going into the 21st century when it comes to our battle on drugs? I hate to say this, but I've been outraged by both Democrat and Republican Administrations when it comes to our war on drugs. I just wish, as General Scowcroft was commenting a while ago, about tobacco, I wish we'd have a fight and battle and a true war on drugs, as we seem to have on tobacco. And I come from tobacco country, and I sure don't want our young people to ever take up the habit of tobacco products. But we do have a real problem, and I sure want to do everything I can to correct it, and I know you do as well.
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    Mr. BAUER. Well, Mr. Clement, it's one thing to pay tobacco farmers not to grow tobacco, but I think it's going to be a very hard sell, indeed, to convince the American people it would be a good idea to pay folks in Latin America to not produce drugs. I'm not sure what part of tobacco country you're from, but I would think long and hard before you raised that possibility in Tennessee. I don't think it's going to go very far.
    On the question of optimism or pessimism, I worked for Ronald Reagan for 8 years and so any tendencies I had toward pessimism was beaten out of me. He was a profoundly optimistic President. And, of course, looking back in retrospect at his optimism about winning the greatest struggle of this century, the cold war, and how the statement of moral principal about who we are and the nature of man was, in fact, what brought the evil empire down. If we defeated the Soviet Union in the great battle between communism and democracy, this is certainly a winnable war. But I think to win it, we've got to have the same focus we had during those long years of the cold war.
    And we need the kind of leaders, quite frankly, that we've got at this table that—not myself—but Ambassador Kirkpatrick and General Scowcroft who acquitted themselves so well in having a consistent policy under a number of Presidents that always had their eye on the ball—what the final purpose here was. And it always reached back to America's most deeply held values as a justification for our policies. I think if we do that now, if we're that focused now on drugs, and if we keep reaching back to the most deeply held values of the American people, as formidable as the drug culture is, we'll bring it down just as the Berlin wall came down.
    Mr. WALTERS. Can I say one thing about tobacco? I actually started on the drug issue at the Department of Education, on the prevention side. And policies have consistently treated alcohol and tobacco use by young people under age as a legitimate part of drug control policy. And I do think that there is the interesting contrast that General Scowcroft brought up about the attention focused on moral bully pulpit use on the cigarette issue for young people.
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    It's also important to point out that cigarette use by teenagers has not declined significantly during the last several years. And that the preponderant way this is now being moved is increasingly by criminalizing the sale of cigarettes to minors; and second, to now try to find ways to drive up the costs, i.e., reduce the availability or the ability to consume tobacco because we don't have the kinds of declines despite what I think is a kind of unchallengeable record of prevention messages from the White House on cigarettes. Now why?
    I think this says something about the issue that you're talking about today—measures to control supply—because you have a virtually unlimited supply of cigarettes in the country that can be purchased at reasonable prices and are available to young people and you can't control it. In fact, the latest data from HHS suggests that the mean age of first use by Americans for cigarettes is only 1 year older, that is 16.7 years, than marijuana, which is 17.7 years. And two-thirds as many Americans, I think in 1995 was the year that they used the baseline, as many Americans as 2.3 million initiated use of marijuana as the over 3 million who initiated the use of cigarettes. So we are approaching a pattern of drug use that is rivaling tobacco in some regards or cigarettes by young people. And the effort to try to focus simply on the demand side or one part of the equation of consumption and supply hasn't worked there.
    Mr. CLEMENT. Well, I might say, Mr. Walters, you know in this country, we tax tobacco. We don't tax illegal drugs. And about 40 to 50, maybe 60 percent of President Clinton's new initiatives when it comes to education and child care and other issues relate to that new revenue that would be generated from taxing tobacco.
    General Scowcroft.
    General SCOWCROFT. Well, Mr. Clement. I think at the moment, I'm pessimistic. I'm pessimistic because I don't think we're mobilized in this country the way we were a few years ago, and as Mr. Walters said, the cancer is growing. And I guess my position on doing something a little different is, you know, if you're in a hole, at least stop digging. And what we're doing now has not solved the problem, and so all I'm suggesting is instead of going on saying we're going to punish you if you don't cooperate, turn it around and say, we will help you if you do. That's all.
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    Ms. KIRKPATRICK. I would only add that that's what we do. We've been helping countries who are engaged in an active drug eradication problem and crop substitution problem for quite a long time. I take it we will continue to do that. I think it's one of the things at issue here. I believe that it would be very valuable to have more leadership from the White House. And frankly and finally, I don't think there's any substitute for active leadership from the White House. And I'm not quite sure what you Democrats can do about that.
    Mr. ARONSON. Mr. Clement, when I first took office, there as a Newsweek article about the Medellin cartel called ''The Kings of Cocaine,'' and the thrust of the article was that these drug lords were so powerful that they were invincible and that the Colombian state and we would have to live with them. And they listed, I think, about 39 individuals. At the end of our tenure, every one of them—including Rodriguez Gacha and Pablo Escobar—were either in jail or dead. So I think that the problem is not unsolvable, but I think the real problem is what others have said. We like everything instant in this country. We like to go to war in the gulf and get it over with in 17 days—and if you can do that, that's the best way to wage a war. But this war has to be waged like taking back the Pacific in World War II, island by island, and it's a bloody long struggle. And I'm not sure we have the will. We charge up the hill and we charge down the hill, and we put resources on the table and then we cut them. If we're going to do something with Latin America, we have to use both incentives and disincentives. The drug chieftains are our enemy. Campesinos are growing coca leaf because that's the only product.
    We need to have economic alternatives, one of them is trade, as I tried to see. And we need to be more engaged with these countries in a positive way. I think we ought to settle, as I said, our trade debate and get on with expanding free trade in this hemisphere. It would create a lot more prosperity in countries which we're trying to do something about.
    And I also think we have to refrain, even though there's a great temptation, of turning this into an endless partisan issue—in my experience in foreign policy where issues were heavily polarized and partisan, we were less effective. When we could create some consensus, there was a greater chance of success.
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    Mr. CLEMENT. Thank you, all.
    Mr. ROHRABACHER. [presiding]     Mr. Graham.
    Mr. GRAHAM. Thank you. It's been very interesting to sit and listen. I want to bring up a point that's a little different wrinkle on the problem, and the way I got involved in this is on the Judiciary Committee there is legislation by Representative Chabot from Cincinnati to deal with the problem we have in our drug laws, and that's being able to go to Mexico and get prescription-controlled drugs issued by a Mexican doctor, and bring it back for a 90-day supply. And those tablets get out into the marketplace. Date-rape drugs are being purchased there that can't be purchased here. And he's trying to tighten up the laws that we have. We have custom laws about how much you can bring in. But my take on it was, well, where is the Mexican Government?
    The footage that the TV stations showed to the Committee had secretaries writing prescriptions, and they had a laundry list of items out in front of the so-called doctor's office that had prices. And you could buy any combination. You never talked to the doctor. And the people that were writing prescriptions were non-physicians. And the one time they had a doctor, he was espousing the virtue of this drug to mimic the date-rape drug and how effective it would be. Then you go to a pharmacy and they basically give you anything you want.
    And my concern is not so much we need to obviously tighten our laws up, but where is the Mexican Government? Surely, they have laws that would prevent a non-physician writing prescriptions; surely, if they don't, they should. What do you do about a problem like that where the government's lack of action in something within their domain, where they're not dealing with the bad guys, how does this come into play and have you seen examples of this situation in other countries?
    Anybody that would like to take a shot at that?
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    Mr. BAUER. Well, I have heard about it, Congressman. Congressman Mica—I'm not sure if you were in the room yet—was talking about some of the other policies by the Mexican Government that leave a lot to be desired. My first reaction is that this is one of those cases that was alluded to earlier, where you need an Administration, a President that's going to pick up the phone and call his counterpart and say that this is an intolerable situation. We're sure you don't like it either. What's going to be done about it?
    And I'm in agreement with others at the table here—that I just don't see a consistent pattern of that. There have been some high points in this Administration's foreign policy and their involvement in areas where they did take an interest. It's just a mystery to me why there isn't more interest on something that has such an effect, and such an impact on American families and American children.
    I would hope that we could get more help from the other side of the aisle because I think there are many democratic Members of the Congress who feel strongly about this and presumably they have the ear of the President and maybe we can get by some of the partisanship here and light a fire at the White House.
    Mr. GRAHAM. Well, along those lines, I'm sure there are many Members of Congress on the Democratic side that would join in efforts to combat this problem. I, along with Mr. Chabot, will introduce a resolution in this Committee urging the Secretary of State and the President to contact the Mexican Government about being aggressive in trying to do something about regulating this problem. And, you know, put your shoes in the Mexican Government's position, I'm not so sure it would be welcomed to be dictated to by another country. But we're all in this together. This is an example of where the Mexican Government, without having to fight the bad guys, could come to the table and pass laws if they don't have any to solve the problem. And I believe they would if we brought it to their attention. And sort of the carrot and stick approach here.
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    Ambassador Kirkpatrick, you were shaking your head. There are no laws to regulate prescribing drugs in Mexico?
    Ms. KIRKPATRICK. Well, there's a tradition in a good many countries, including Latin countries, but not only Latin countries, a lot of other countries in the world, of much less regulation of what we think of as prescription medication of all kinds—antibiotics—medications of all kinds literally. And that tradition makes those medications more readily available across the counter.
    It's fine to have people talk to the Mexican Government. I'm all for that—always about any problem that we share with them. But I think the most promising route is education of Americans about the desirability of ensuring the safety and reliability of the medications which they, in fact, acquire that way.
    Mr. GRAHAM. Now this is definitely an enterprise people engage in knowing the risk. They buy percodan and percoset in large quantities and they come back here and sell it, because we do control the prescriptions—the issuance of these drugs. And as soon as you get across the border in Laredo—if you're the right profile—people come up and say, ''for a dollar I'll take you to a doctor who can write whatever you want.'' And to me, people are knowingly doing this. I mean there are folks in America who are the bad guys.
    But the Mexican Government, I think, could come in and quickly shut down the easy availability of hard narcotics through kind of a phony prescription process. And that may be an example of what you're talking about, General Scowcroft, as let's get them on the phone and say, here's the problem, help us. And if you will, we'll certainly appreciate it and try to help you in areas that we can. But if you don't—now this is outrageous, if you saw the tapes, where you've got a supposedly ''doctor'' talking about the virtues of this date-rape drug. And if you give her two, you can do anything you want to. And this is a laundry list of some dangerous drugs taken in combination can kill you. And it's feeding our college campuses with cheap available hard-core drugs they couldn't get otherwise. There's no reason for this to exist, so I'm going to ask the Administration to make the phone call and hopefully they will.
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    Thank you, all.
    Mr. ROHRABACHER. Mr. Chabot.
    Mr. CHABOT. Thank you. I want to thank Mr. Graham for bringing up that question, and I want to apologize for bouncing in and out of here. We've got a markup going on down in the Judiciary Committee right now as we speak, so I apologize. But I have had an opportunity to read the statements of a number of the witnesses here and will read the others as soon as I can because this is a very, very distinguished panel. But I'll be very brief here because we're getting late and you all probably have a lot of other things you have to do.
    In your statement, Mr. Bauer, you had mentioned that President Clinton has by no means maximized his personal attention on the issue of drugs. And you state ''there is no substitute for leadership, and, on an issue like drugs, that leadership must be sustained.'' And that's been one of my concerns. It seems in the short time I've been up here, about 4 years now, it seems like the President will pop up on the issue and make a statement or perhaps bring somebody else out to talk about it, and then they go back underground and we don't hear anything for a long time. If we're going to be successful, we're going to need leadership at the top, and I think that's one thing that's lacking. And I assume you agree with that, and what advice would you give the President or perhaps some future President on this issue as to what they should be doing and what leadership should they actually show?
    Mr. BAUER. Well, you know, Congressman, one of the things that for me has been a positive development in recent years is that almost anybody in elected office, or anybody running for elected office now wants to be thought of as pro-family. And I take that as some progress on the work that we've been engaged in. But I must say I don't believe you can pass the pro-family straight-faced test if you're a political leader in either the Congress or in the White House and you're not willing to spend serious political capital on what has to be one of the greatest problems facing the average American family. There's not a school in the country that's immune to this. There's not a parent in the country whose head will hit the pillow tonight who hasn't sometime during the day thought about this, wondered whether his child has been exposed to drugs.
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    The President, even though he's not a man of my party, has a reputation of being very eloquent and of being able to speak to people's hearts. And it is a puzzle to me that, on this issue, the performance, has not only been inept, but at times it's been directly counterproductive. I mean, I go back to one of the earliest statements that we've all joked about—I've tried marijuana, but I didn't inhale. I don't think anybody knew at the time that that first step was going to be in some ways symbolic of what would follow. And I think it is a record that I don't believe many folks on Capitol Hill, of either party, would want to be closely associated with.
    The President has several more years. The great thing about American politics is that every day is a new day. He's got the high ground as President in American politics. He can turn this around tomorrow if he wants to devote serious political attention to it. I hope that he does. I think it would be good for American families and American children if he would do that.
    Mr. CHABOT. I thank you very much. In the interest of time, I'll yield back the balance of my time.
    Mr. ROHRABACHER. Thank you very much. I know all of you have been here for a while, and I'll be very brief.
    I wrote many of the speeches, probably the majority of speeches, that Ronald Reagan gave concerning this problem. And, you know, with the danger of being egotistical here, I believe it was Ronald Reagan's personal leadership on a moral level that did more to bring down the drug problem in the United States in the 1980's than any other single factor. And Ronald Reagan did go to the entertainment industry and say, ''we don't do any more music or movies glorifying the use of drugs.'' And we didn't do this with the threat of legislation. He went through with moral suasion. And from the 1970's to the 1980's, there was a dramatic change in the attitude at least to what was presented to the young people of America through the entertainment industry as to the use of drugs.
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    With this said, however, there's a double edge to what I just said. And the double edge is that the Mexicans, when they face the criticism that they have on not dealing with this problem, have a legitimate criticism of the United States when they say, ''you are not now dealing with the demand side of the problem. How can you blame us and put all the responsibility on us, when you have not taken the steps in your own society to try to convince your children not to use drugs?'' And I think there is some legitimacy to that argument. And I think that when we're dealing with the Mexican Government, we have to understand. I don't think this Administration has gone anywhere near what the Reagan Administration went to in order to bring about a condemnation, socially and morally, throughout this country of the use of illegal drugs.
    Now with that said, I want to go to the supply side in a given area. First, let me ask you very quickly if you can just say this. Would you put heroin and cocaine on the same level of problem in terms of the challenge that we face in the United States? Or would you say one is worse than the other?
    Mr. WALTERS. Well, I think cocaine is worse. It's worse because of the violence. It's a bigger dollar driver of the problem, although the indications are it's not declining but it's not increasing as much as heroin.
    Mr. ROHRABACHER. And heroin's on the upswing.
    Mr. ARONSON. You know I would defer to John's domestic experience, but I would just note that the Colombian cartels are getting into the poppy growing and heroin so they obviously see opportunity there.
    Mr. ROHRABACHER. Gary.
    Mr. BAUER. I would defer to John, too. But I think the latest figures—John, correct me—is in the last year 141,000 new heroin users. Obviously, the problem is growing.
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    Mr. ROHRABACHER. General? I'm not an expert on this, Mr. Chairman, but it seems to me that at least from what I've read, while cocaine is a much more serious volume problem, that heroin is a more seriously addictive drug. But I don't know that.
    Mr. ROHRABACHER. OK.
    Mrs. Ambassador.
    Ms. KIRKPATRICK. I'm really not an expert on it, either, and I would defer to the other people on the panel.
    Mr. ROHRABACHER. OK.
    From what I understand, heroin, as we said, is a growing problem in all sectors of our society. And just to go to the supply side, I was in southeast Asia this break, mainly talking about the IMF, but I also talked about the heroin trade.
    No. 1, it is clear that China is up to their eyeballs in the heroin trade, and we will have to decide whether we're going to ignore that violation of the Communist Chinese as we are ignoring their others. But the source of a huge chunk of the world's heroin, perhaps 90 percent of the world's heroin can be traced back to Afghanistan and Burma. And I was told when I was in Burma, by the DEA people there, it is very definitive as to where those poppy fields are. We know where 90 percent of the world's heroin grows. We have satellite projections there that look down on the heroin fields and at that time of the year, we can identify exactly where all the poppy fields are—in both Afghanistan and Burma.
    Why do we have billions of dollars worth of enforcement going on when we know where 90 percent of it grows. We know where the spigot is. We know where to turn the knob, but we're not turning that knob. And the DEA agent described to me how we could have planes just come down and spray those fields, and 90 percent of the world's heroin would be gone. What's going on here? What's the problem?
    Ms. KIRKPATRICK. Well, the problem is clarity and lack of clarity of our goals and the failure of our political will and our government, quite frankly. That's simple. We have done that in some past times. We have destroyed poppy fields which were the source of a large proportion of heroin at that time. I think that there is nothing except a lack of clarity and a lack of will in dealing with the problem.
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    Mr. ROHRABACHER. OK. I'm going to just end with this. The Government of Burma and the anarchy of Afghanistan is something that needs to be dealt with by our own government. It is not being dealt with. And I believe, and this Member of Congress believes, that if we had leadership in the Federal Government that could deal with those two issues—this brutal dictatorship in Burma which has been corrupted by the drug trade and the anarchy of Afghanistan which probably is continuing because people who want to make profit off drugs, are making sure it continues—if we can deal with those two issues, we can easily cut off 90 percent of the world's supply of heroin. And so it comes right back down to a lack of leadership in the foreign policy of this Administration as far as I'm concerned on the supply side.
    On the demand side, you know, actually I think there's a problem with this Administration as well.
    So I hate to point fingers and act like I'm being political, but I'm not. I'm trying not to be political. But the fact is that all the fingers seem to be pointing back both from lack of moral leadership and lack of foreign policy leadership in the White House.
    Mr. WALTERS. Mr. Chairman, if I could just add one point here because it's kind of not in season, but I think it's important from my experience in government. Everybody's for bipartisanship and, in fact, in some ways open debate of different points of view if one party's on the other side is now discouraged actively, I think, in the climate because it can be charged was partisanship. Actually having worked more on drugs in the Bush Administration, but also on the demand side during the Reagan Administration, I think the vigorous debate, which was sometimes mixed with partisan motives, made institutions work better. It was called accountability. And I think we need more oversight.
    But I also can't help but make the observation that what you're talking about would require a level of political will to unilaterally eradicate, if necessary, the production of certain crops in other countries.
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    The hearing was called here, and I thought some of the critics were concerned about the unhappiness of foreign leaders, about us saying publicly that they're not cooperating with us fully about drugs. I mean, we are a long way from the kind of political will necessary to get some traction on this problem, and I think partly is reflected by your concluding comments and some of the comments at the opening of this hearing.
    Mr. ROHRABACHER. Let me point out that when Ronald Reagan became President it was unthinkable for the United States to be providing weapons to people who are fighting Soviet troops anywhere in the world. That was an unthinkable thing. And ultimately, I believe it was our willingness in Afghanistan and in Nicaragua and elsewhere to provide weapons to those people who were struggling against what I called Soviet imperialism that broke the will—that was one of the major factors if you have five factors—that broke the will of the Kremlin and ended the cold war. Perhaps it's going to take the same kind of courage to deal with this war as it did with the cold war.
    And with that, I thank you all very much. This hearing is adjourned.
    [Whereupon, at 12:42 p.m., the Committee adjourned subject to the call of the Chair.]

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