TABLE OF CONTENTS *

OPENING STATEMENT OF CHAIRMAN MICHAEL CASTLE, SUBCOMMITTEE ON EARLY CHILDHOOD, YOUTH AND FAMILIES, COMMITTEE ON EDUCATION AND THE WORKFORCE, U.S. HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, WASHINGTON, DC *

OPENING STATEMENT OF RANKING MEMBER, DALE KILDEE, SUBCOMMITTEE ON EARLY CHILDHOOD, YOUTH AND FAMILIES, COMMITTEE ON EDUCATION AND THE WORKFORCE, U.S. HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, WASHINGTON, DC *

STATEMENT OF GENERAL BARRY MCCAFFREY, DIRECTOR, OFFICE OF NATIONAL DRUG CONTROL POLICY, WASHINGTON, DC *

STATEMENT OF WILLIAM MODZELESKI, DIRECTOR, SAFE AND DRUG-FREE SCHOOLS PROGRAM, UNITED STATES DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION, WASHINGTON, DC *

STATEMENT OF MR. TOM HEDRICK, VICE-CHAIRMAN, PARTNERSHIP FOR A DRUG-FREE AMERICA, NEW YORK, NY *

STATEMENT OF MS. ALYCE BOOTH, DIRECTOR OF COMMUNICATIONS, NATIONAL CENTER ON ADDICTION AND SUBSTANCE ABUSE, NEW YORK, NY *

STATEMENT OF MARY ANN SOLBERG, DIRECTOR, TROY COMMUNITY COALITION FOR PREVENTION OF DRUG AND ALCOHOL ABUSE, TROY, MI *

STATEMENT OF MS. FREDDIE LANDRY, COORDINATOR, SAFE AND DRUG-FREE SCHOOLS AND COMMUNITIES PROGRAM, MARRERO, LA *

APPENDIX A - OPENING STATEMENT OF CHAIRMAN MICHAEL CASTLE, SUBCOMMITTEE ON EARLY CHILDHOOD, YOUTH AND FAMILIES, COMMITTEE ON EDUCATION AND THE WORKFORCE, U.S. HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, WASHINGTON, DC *

APPENDIX B - STATEMENT OF GENERAL BARRY MCCAFFREY, DIRECTOR, OFFICE OF NATIONAL DRUG CONTROL POLICY, WASHINGTON, DC *

APPENDIX C - STATEMENT OF WILLIAM MODZELESKI, DIRECTOR, SAFE AND DRUG-FREE SCHOOLS PROGRAM, UNITED STATES DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION, WASHINGTON, DC *

HEARING ON DRUG ABUSE PREVENTION:

PROTECTING OUR STUDENTS

_______________________________

TUESDAY, AUGUST 3, 1999

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES,

SUBCOMMITTEE ON EARLY CHILDHOOD, YOUTH, ANDFAMILIES,

COMMITTEE ON EDUCATION AND THE WORKFORCE,

WASHINGTON, D.C.

The Subcommittee met, pursuant to notice, at 9:07 a.m., in Room 2175 Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. Michael N. Castle [Chairman of the Subcommittee] presiding.

Present: Representatives Castle, Petri, Roukema, Greenwood, Souder, Upton, Hilleary, Salmon, Tancredo, DeMint, Miller, Kildee, Payne, Roemer, Scott, Woolsey, Romero-Barcelo, Hinojosa, Kind, Sanchez, Kucinich, and Wu.

Staff Present: Linda Castleman, Officer Manager; Victor Klatt, Education Policy Coordinator; Sally Lovejoy, Senior Education Policy Advisor; Krisanne Pearce, Professional Staff Member; Michael Reynard, Media Assistant; Shane Wright, Legislative Assistant; Dan Lara, Press Secretary; June Harris, Minority Education Coordinator; Cheryl Johnson, Minority Counsel/Education and Oversight; Alex Nock, Minority Legislative Associate/Education; and Roxanna Folescu, Minority Staff Assistant/Education.

Chairman Castle. The Subcommittee on Early Childhood, Youth and Families will come to order. We wish a good morning to everybody. It's a little bit earlier than usual for Committees, and we are pleased to be here. We thank you for being here as we examine drug prevention efforts in our schools.

This Congress, the Subcommittee will authorize the Safe and Drug-Free Schools and Communities Act. In addition to funding anti-violence efforts, this Act also provides Federal funding for drug and alcohol abuse education and prevention programs.

Today, we will review the status of drug and alcohol abuse among school-aged youth and focus our attention on proven prevention programs.

We all know that drugs and violence have no place in our schools or our communities. Our children deserve a safe place to learn. Our teachers and school administrators deserve a safe place to work. And our parents and communities deserve schools that can educate students and keep their neighborhoods safe and drug free.

Yet, time and again, studies have shown that drugs and violence continue to disrupt classroom learning, and, as we have witnessed in recent months, threaten the wellbeing, and even the very lives of our students and faculty.

One of the concerns I often hear from those back home is of the dangers associated with drug and alcohol abuse in school and at school events. Barely a year goes by without one of my local schools suffering the anguish that accompanies the overdose or the drunk driving death of a group of students who thought they were too smart or too invincible to end up as a statistic. In each and every time, students, teachers, families, and communities look to government for answers.

Sadly, despite the fact that many studies indicate that students consider drug abuse the number one problem faced by teenagers, we have not made significant improvements in the creation of drug and alcohol free schools, even after an investment of billions of dollars and countless man hours.

These results send a clear call for better creation and implementation of prevention activities. As we continue our efforts to improve the academic performance of our students, we must also educate students on how to avoid activities that sabotage their education, short circuit their opportunities for success.

We must focus on those programs and interventions that will help our children make the best possible choices for their future. We must also ensure that the anti-drug and alcohol programs in our schools have been proven to be effective.

Today, I am honored to welcome General McCaffrey, who just recently announced that the nation's anti-drug campaign has succeeded beyond expectation in a reduction of marijuana use among teenagers. I look forward to learning more about his ideas on the national drug control strategy, as well as from Bill Modzeleski and all the other witnesses who work the front lines in the fight against drug and alcohol abuse and for safe and drug-free schools.

I thank all the witnesses for being here today. And I will now yield briefly to Ranking Member Kildee of Michigan for any opening statement he may wish to make.

[The statement of Chairman Castle follows:]

OPENING STATEMENT OF CHAIRMAN MICHAEL CASTLE, SUBCOMMITTEE ON EARLY CHILDHOOD, YOUTH AND FAMILIES, COMMITTEE ON EDUCATION AND THE WORKFORCE, U.S. HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, WASHINGTON, DC – SEE APPENDIX A

Mr. Kildee. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. I am very pleased to join Governor Castle in welcoming General McCaffrey and today's other witnesses to this hearing. General McCaffrey, your work has been an essential component of this Administration's focus and relentless intolerance of drug abuse. I personally have enormous respect for all your have and are doing for our country in your various capacities you have served the country. And I look forward to Governor Castle, though, for your testimony.

Clearly the work that General McCaffrey and Bill Modzeleski and all of you advocate to deal with this problem on the day-to-day basis is essential and must continue. And this committee wants to examine how we can help you carry out your job in even a better fashion.

This is not a challenge we should back away from. Rather, it's a challenge that we should continue to invest in and strive to meet. As we reauthorize the safe and drug-free school program, the incidence of violence that has plagued our schools is likely to focus our efforts in that area. It is my hope that we also do not forget the important other mission of this program--the reduction of drug use by our nation's students.

I believe we need to strongly examine this program to be sure that the emphasis is on research proven programs that really work. In addition, we need to improve the accountability of our Title IV, so that the success of our safe and drug-free programs can be documented. Tolerating anything else than that would be to shortchange our children and to shortchange the people of this country.

And thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you, General McCaffrey.

Chairman Castle. Well, thank you, Mr. Kildee. And we are pleased to have General Barry McCaffrey with us. Of course, I think as everyone here knows, he is the Director of the Office of the National Drug Control Policy in Washington, D.C.

Prior to his confirmation as that head, General McCaffrey was the Commander in Chief of the United States Armed Forces Southern Command, coordinating national security operations in Latin America, and is a much decorated warrior.

Before General McCaffrey begins, let me explain the ground rules, because we're going to get in trouble today for sure. General McCaffrey has 5,000 people to whom he has to speak, so he must leave at 10:15 a.m., and while not all the Members are here yet, I know this is one of these hearings that the Members are going to come in sort of at the last minute. We normally have a five-minute rule for questions and answers. I would just ask staff to help with that so we can give everybody an opportunity. Also, for some of the other witnesses who are in here in panel two, they have been told five minutes or they are out of here. General McCaffrey is given the latitude of taking as long as he wishes in his initial presentation to us, and then we will rotate through questions. But 10:15 a.m. is the bewitching hour for General McCaffrey. So I just need everybody to understand that.

And with that, we welcome you, General. We appreciate all that you have done and that you are doing, and we want to, I think probably more than any other public official, join with you and make this role that you have a success for the country.

General McCaffrey. Mr. Chairman, thanks very much to you and Congressman Kildee for the opportunity to appear here in front of your committee, and I really very much appreciate your longstanding support of the Safe and Drug-free Schools and Communities Program--indeed, for your collective leadership on critical education issues.

With your permission, I might offer two documents for the record. One is a written statement that we put a considerable amount of work in, and it represents our collective judgement in the Department of Education and others around Washington in trying to think through this program and what might we expect from it.

I have also got a letter from Secretary Dick Riley that I think captures his own--I asked him to write me a letter and give me his guidance, his thoughts, on how we can shape this program in the future. And, Mr. Chairman, I offer that for your consideration for the record.

Chairman Castle. Both of those are accepted for the record.

General McCaffrey. I would also be remiss and not take note, Mr. Chairman, of the presence here today of a lot of people who have actually shaped our national drug strategy. Sue Fowl, from Community Anti-Drunk Coalitions of America is present. Dr. Linda Wolfe Jones, Therapeutic Communities of America, has been a great partner, as well as the many witnesses you have assembled. And I take particularly note of Tom Hedrick from Partnership for Drug-Free America. They have been our really our partners, our right arm, in this national youth anti-drug media campaign. So Jim Burke and Dick Barnett and 30 colleagues in New York have been instrumental to shaping that whole effort.

I also note that Mary Ann Solberg, the director of the Troy Community Coalition for prevention of drugs is here. She is not only a member of our advisory board on the Drug-Free Communities Act, but she is an example of 4,000 anti-drug coalitions across America, who really are the heart and soul of the problem. We have said that there is no such thing as a national drug problem. There are only a series of community drug epidemics. So if you want to understand the problem, you have to collect data locally. You have to organize locally. And it cannot be based merely upon law enforcement, but it has to involved educators, health care professionals, religious leaders, coaches, and others.

We also were delighted that you have included a representative of the DARE Program, the biggest drug prevention program in the country--26,000,000 kids--and Boys and Girls Clubs. None of these approaches can solely be based on school-based interventions. These young people get out of school at 3:00 p.m. Between then and 7:00 p.m. arguably they leave the safest environment they are in, their school, and they are then, in many cases, on their own. So YMCA programs and other youth-based efforts it seems to many of us are essential what we are trying to achieve.

With your permission--Bridgette, if you will--walk through five charts very briefly to give you an overview of how we are trying to approach the problem. And I think we have offered for each of your committee members several documents, one of which is national drug control strategy. By law, this is what you asked me to do. And I did it after consulting literally thousands of individuals and organizations around America. Now, as you look at the national drug strategy, this is not a break-through in western intellectual thought. It is common sense stuff.

It says we got a prevention education-based program. We understand there are 4,000,000 chronically addicted Americans. We have got to do something about it. We find those 4,000,000 Americans invariably, when we go to the welfare system, the criminal justice system, or hospital emergency rooms. So the treatment capability has to be hooked into those three systems. And if we do not do that, we find we are never going to break out of it.

I would also call to your attention performance measures of effectiveness. When you reauthorized ONDCP last summer as part of the omnibus legislation, you instructed me in the law to develop a performance measures of effectiveness system, which I have been working on for two years. But it was part of a collegial cooperation, and I would argue, over time, we have got to have the person in my position come down here each year and explain what did we achieve with the money you gave us. And now, this one is a first-rate effort. It has got 12 outcome measures. It has got 86 intervening variables. We are deliberately trying to develop databases that will allow us to measure each of these variables. And we have hooked these performance measures back into the strategy.

Finally, when I worked for General Powell, he would say, do not tell me about your programs; tell me about your budgets. And last summer, you ordered--last year, you ordered me in the law to develop a five-year budget projection. So I hope each year, we will come down and submit for your consideration the five-year budget projection, and the debate can take place not around the coming budget execution year. We can get our horizons out a little bit farther. Until we do that, I would suggest we won't see these tradeoffs between prevention and the criminal justice system; between drug treatment and the health care system. We have got to have a debate where our headlights see out farther in the dark.

That is the five goals of the national drug strategy, and clearly goal number one, educating and enabling America's young people to reject illegal drugs, as well as alcohol and tobacco. And we have included that in the drug strategy. And I tied it back into the President Bush era to my distinguished predecessor Mr. Bennett. And I also asked the Congress to change the law and to make underage use of alcohol and tobacco part of my portfolio, which we did not do.

Having said all that, I think these are date weighed drug-taking behaviors, so our statistical correlations between this cluster of personal behaviors by adolescents and later compulsive using problems. Bridgette, if you would, please.

The next chart tells you why we got to care. I mean, this is a huge problem. We put alcohol abuse, as well as drug abuse, on the chart. One of the sort of short-hand ways of talking about it I have used is that every addicted adolescent costs you and I and society $2 million. But we just put the numbers up there, and we showed the social cost of drug and alcohol abuse are going up. And that is most of us who are not using drugs know someone who is involved in this behavior. It is six percent of the population. It has come down dramatically in the last 15 years. But the costs of it are simply enormous, not only in 52,000 dead a year, but $110 billion a year damages.

Next chart, Richard. Thank you.

[Chart.]

One argument has got to be made--there is a continual attempt to differentiate among drugs--you know, are you unhappier about methamphetamines and heroin. Do you think crack cocaine is worse than powdered cocaine. I think many educators, many health professionals, most parents, most employers believe that drug dazed behavior is at the heart and soul of it. And it is polydrug abuse. And, by and large, it tends to be pot and alcohol in combination, which have a detrimental effect on people's ability to work, to relate to their family members, to act responsibly.

We are sure that there are anti-social behaviors that statistically are clearly linked to marijuana use. We tried to track this. You know, basically, if you are a home room teacher or a mother, you have got to be sad when you see your 12- to 16-year-old young persons, start to get involved in extensive use of beer and marijuana--a failure to learn, vulnerability to assault, teenage pregnancy, tendency to violence--all these behaviors seem to go along with it. Bridgette, next chart.

[Chart.]

Most important chart arguably I show--this is University of Michigan data--Dr. Lloyd Johnson from the Survey Research Center. It makes the argument, which I think is substantiated by Dr. Alan Leshner at the National Institute of Drug Abuse and by most studies--Joe Califano and Dr. Herb Kleber at Columbia University--that links attitudes and behavior. When young people have attitudes that are resistant to drug abuse, when they think it is not cool, when they believe it is dangerous for them personally, their drug abuse rates are lower. And we saw a period of much better attitudes and lower drug use for years. In 1990, the attitude, do I disapprove of drug use turned around, started in the wrong direction. In 1991, the attitude, do I fear drug abuse for me personally turned around. And in 1992, drug abuse rates among kids went up for five years. Secretary Shalala and I have been trying to sort of modestly downplay the significance, but in the last two years, those curves have leveled off, and there are modest, but statistically significant decreases in drug abuse rates among 8th, 10th, 12th graders.

Now, I think what we have got is a struggle for the attitudes and shaping the sort of the character of young people going on, and we are starting to bite in. When I say we, it is these organizations you have invited here. Bridgette?

[Chart.]

If we want to understand drug abuse rates 10 years from now, look at our 8th graders. And in the space of five years, drug abuse rates among 8th graders tripled. Drug abuse among young people in general doubled. And it is so--you know, people ask me what the most dangerous drug in America is--it is an 8th grader smoking pot on weekends. And that young person probably also smoking cigarettes and abusing alcohol. Now the statistical correlation between that behavior is 79 times more likely to be a cocaine user than one who is not. And I--again, I chose my words carefully. We do not have yet causal scientific linkages. What we have got is statistical correlations that are so overwhelming if we were talking about seat belt use in cars or fatty foods and heart disease, there would be no question about our conclusions. And so that right there, it seems to me, is another glimmer of good hope that parents and community coalitions are starting to bite into this problem. Bridgette, if you would please.

[Chart.]

The case for school-based prevention is pretty powerful. I think there is--that your subsequent witnesses, particular Bill Modzeleski will go on to make a very credible argument that it can reduce drug use. The DARE program comes under significant attack. I think we ought to listen to our critics very carefully, but basically there are a series of prevention programs that are--that have very compelling evidence that they absolutely affect in the short run drug abuse rates. The problem is how do we develop a coherent system so that kindergarten through the 12th grade you have something there that is relevant to the kids you're talking to.

We do know that reduced drug use improves learning. I think the hardest person in the U.S. Government on this issue is Donna Shalala, because, at heart, she is a teacher, a professor, a university president. If there is anybody more adamantly opposed to pot smoking and alcohol abuse, it is her, and not just for the failure to learn but the general impact on the quality of young people's lives.

And then finally, we are confident that this drug use is related to violence; that some of these disgraceful situations we have seen, not just the high profile shooting incidents, but the lawless atmosphere that is present in some of our school systems is related not only to drug use, but drug sales; and not only to drug sales among young people but whether mom and dad have a drug or alcohol problem at home. Is mother being physical abused? Is that young person coming to school involved in a violent home life? And clearly, it affects their own propensity to violence. Next chart.

[Chart.]

We go some problems with the kind of programs. Secretary Riley has looked at it. The GAO has done a study. There has been some very critical investigative journalism pieces, particularly in the L.A. Times and other newspapers. We think there are problems, and Secretary Riley has written a bill that I think has a good opportunity to make it better. And that is the problem. The problem of spending is not tied to measurable outcomes. There is no accountability. We are putting out $556 million last year, but there is no report that goes to the governor necessarily. There is no oversight function necessarily, from State level down to school superintendent or principal level.

Secondly, we think this lack of accountability creates problems. That is not to deny that the program itself does enormous good, but that when there is no oversight function, some of the expenditures probably are inappropriate or even worse ineffective.

And then finally, I think you get the typical problem. If you--if your money is distributed instead of in accordance with the priority of where the problems are, if it just goes out based on school density population, you end up with everybody getting something and a lot of school districts having checks that are simply insignificant. And so they take the check and a well meaning principal says, what can I buy with this amount of money. And what they buy are programs that have no necessary measurable outcome on drug abuse or safety of their young people. And we ought to do something about that. And then final chart.

[Chart.]

Finally, Mr. Chairman, I think Dick Riley has put together a pretty good proposal. It essentially says, let us make sure we maintain a focus on drug prevention. Violence is a huge challenge, but drugs are at the heart and soul of it. I think it says let us go to research-based programs. You have got to be able to demonstrate that the prevention education approach you are selecting is based on studies.

We have got to target the places where the problems are. The problems are not similar across the board. We have go to have some local decision making. We got to ask the governors and their authorities to get involved in this.

And then finally, there has got to be a report. Secretary Riley has got to be able to see where this money is going, and whether it is having a measurable impact.

Mr. Chairman, if you will, let me conclude my sort of formal remarks here, and to thank you for the chance to appear in front of your Committee. And I look forward to responding to your own questions.

[The statement of General McCaffrey follows:]

STATEMENT OF GENERAL BARRY MCCAFFREY, DIRECTOR, OFFICE OF NATIONAL DRUG CONTROL POLICY, WASHINGTON, DC – SEE APPENDIX B

Chairman Castle. Thank you very much, General. For those Members who just arrived, I want to repeat it, the General has to leave at 10:15 a.m. I would like to give everyone a chance to ask questions, which means that if we take five minutes, we are not going to get there. So I will start the questioning, but we will hopefully use less than five minutes, so we can set an example. These examples do not always work with Members of Congress, but we will just try our best to do it.

You said a lot of things that I thought were very interesting. Unfortunately, we cannot go and do them all. But I want to talk about the accountability aspect that you mentioned under Secretary Riley's transition, which you and I talked about with Mr. Kildee and Ms. Roukema a little bit before. I mean, to me, there's a proliferation of these programs, some of which work, some of which are extraneous. They are almost not even dealing with the problems that we have to face, and I would assume that the accountability that you and Secretary Riley are talking about is an accountability that would also have some reward-punishment end to it; that is, if a program is not working, it would be recommended it not be funded in the future. If it is working, that we encourage more use of it--perhaps a reduction of the programs; perhaps replication of those programs which work. Am I on the right track when I ask that question?

General McCaffrey. Governor, I think you are. If a program cannot produce measurable outcomes, then we may be measuring the wrong thing. That is the first thing you can argue.

The second one is you got a program that is not being executed effectively. And a lot of these prevention-based programs are pretty decent, but they are put out there without training or they are not executed according with the scheme.

And then finally, some of them do not work. But over time, if you cannot produce results, you ought to not get funded. And if you do produce results, you ought to attract more resources.

Chairman Castle. You mentioned DARE, and it has become surprisingly a bit of a controversial program. I believe it is your position, based on what you said privately and publicly, that you think that DARE is a good program and that it works. There have been reports indicating that it has not worked any better than other programs. I would be interested in your comments about the DARE program. That ends up being an issue we debate on the floor of the Congress, in terms of funding, virtually every year now.

General McCaffrey. Mr. Chairman, I came into this with no--you know, my kids were too old. They were in their late 20's to have encountered the DARE program personally, so I have tried to look at the evidence on both sides of that argument. I personally have concluded this is one of the better things we are doing in America. It has got a huge amount of young people in it--26,000,000 kids; 9,000,000 in the international community. It is all throughout Latin America. They have revised their curriculum four times. It is enormously popular among teachers and local law enforcement. And, oh by the way, in today's America, you know, do not we need to not only produce an anti-drug message, but also a notion that in a nation of laws we have to respect law enforcement. So you get little kids--5th, 6th graders--who are responding to a female deputy sheriff in uniform. I think it is an extremely good program.

But it is not enough. So if I talk to a school principal and they say, why, of course we have drug prevention. We got the DARE program and an annual lecture to the high school seniors about your brain on drugs--we are missing the point. And it has to be integrated into the community. We cannot stick these things on school systems alone. The Boys and Girls Clubs, the YMCA, have to be part of it. I think the DARE program is first rate.

Chairman Castle. My final question is--you mentioned marijuana, and there are many who would advocate that marijuana should be legalized or at least legalized for medical purposes, which may be a different issue but is a close cousin at least. But you indicated some concern about marijuana vis a vis alcohol, and I consider alcohol to be as much of a problem in this country as any illegal drugs which are out there--the overuse--a piece of it, I should say.

Is it your concern that we should continue to focus on marijuana as a drug issue, too?

General McCaffrey. Absolutely. Yes, I think basically--you know, alcohol is a tremendous problem. But it is legal. It is socially acceptable. It is mildly addictive. It does not cause a problem with most people who use it. But because it is so immersed in our culture, it does have 10,000,000 to 16,000,000 Americans who are chronically abusing alcohol. It is a terrible problem. And the question is, do we want to throw marijuana into that issue also? And most of who have looked at it say absolutely not. We clearly do not want our adolescents, our employees, our family members smoking pot. We do not want them driving trucks. We do not want them flying planes.

We know when we see our kids get involved in pot use, normally polydrug abuse, their grades suffer. They stop playing soccer. They start, you know, into a developmental pattern that causes them problems. So I think most of us are adamantly opposed to seeing marijuana more extensively used than it is.

Chairman Castle. Thank you, General. Mr. Kildee.

Mr. Kildee. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. General, the Administration has proposed that in the safe and drug-free school program that we go into a competitive type of grant rather than the formula type of grant. Would you have any comment on that?

General McCaffrey. Well, I think there is an awful lot of good to be gained by that. Again, I think the tendency over time for these programs is to distribute money in accordance with an algorithm, so that nobody gets much. Everybody gets something. It reduces the decision making complexity. But I think people ought to come in every year and lay their cards on the table and say, what did we achieve last year. And if it is not working, you ought to lose your funding. And if you are doing something useful, you ought to get resources.

More importantly, the governor, the mayors, the county executives need to focus on problems that require resources. I do not think drug prevention is necessarily strictly a resource problem. The essential messages have to be woven into the curriculum, the sports program, the auditorium meetings, et cetera. But I think the resources need to go to certain places where the problem is intense. They ought to compete for them.

Mr. Kildee. There seems to have been an industry that has grown up around the--our anti-drug program in this country. Could you evaluate that industry?

General McCaffrey. Well, I think when people get not much money; when a school principal has a check for a few hundred dollars, and she says, what can I buy for this amount of money, the marketplace will give her a solution. And, in many cases, the solution may be well meaning, and even entertaining, but not necessarily demonstrably affect drug abuse rates among children.

We have to go to certified prevention programs, certified by the National Institute of Drug Abuse. The Congress gave NIDA a half billion dollars last year. I hope we now something about drug abuse. If we do not, then Alan Leshner needs to reformulate his program. We have got good evidence on what works, and that is what we ought to be using in the school system.

Mr. Kildee. If a principal has, say, $126 on a program, that probably goes back to my original question, whether it should be under competitive or formula grant--a $126, might they pick up a $126 lecturer to come in and--

General McCaffrey. Well, I think that is--I think that is what ends up happening. Having said that, like many of you, having been in communities where I was in charge of scouting programs and had to use bake sales to go get enough money to buy stamps to send out invites, I am not willing to, you know, make fun of $126. That could be a key aspect of buying posters or, you know, getting videos to show young people. I think the biggest things what we are doing is Secretary Riley also has the drug expert counselor program. We are going to get people who know what they are talking about out in the middle schools of America. That will combine with this safe and drug free schools money so that we have got somebody who knows what he is talking about to advise these principals.

Mr. Kildee. One final question. Do you have any suggestions for us how we can improve accountability for the programs?

General McCaffrey. I think, basically, most of these programs cannot get run out of Washington. We have to get governors and mayors and county executives involved in it, and then ask them to report and certify whether what they are doing works. And when we do that, we will get more responsive programs.

We also need the Secretary of Education now to get to some feedback on where his money is going, and then we will be in a better position to shape this program in the coming years. I think that is the bill that Secretary Riley turned in, and will try and do that.

Mr. Kildee. Thank you very much, General.

General McCaffrey. Yes, sir.

Chairman Castle. Thank you, Mr. Kildee. Ms. Roukema.

Ms. Roukema. Thank you. General McCaffrey, we are really pleased to have you here today. And, in a sense, the Chairman and the Ranking Member have asked my questions. But I want to get a little more specific, and particularly mention to you in a related area that I and a number of other Members on this Committee are members of what is now the bipartisan working group on youth violence. And we certainly will look forward to you as a resource for us on that subject, so I would hope that you would be looking forward to working closely with us.

Now, following up on what you said, I do want to express my complete support on the fact that the DARE program has been successful, and we will put that aside. But you quite correctly pointed out that that is only for a limited number of students, and what we are really looking for, and should be in this legislation, is something that applies K through 12, but particularly for the later years.

Now, you said in answer to the question that there is good evidence on what works. Based on your experience and your knowledge, not Secretary Riley's or the local system, but your knowledge, what could could we do in this Act that would be a step farther than the DARE program for the upper grades, based on what we know already works? How can we apply that across the country rather than reinventing the wheel in every community? Is there something or do you think it is--

General McCaffrey. Well, there is a certain--

Ms. Roukema. That you would endorse?

General McCaffrey. The first thing I passed out is Dr. Alan Leshner's NIDA Drug Prevention Guidelines. And they are based on decent evidence--here is how you go about influencing attitudes among young people. There is also some first-rate work, not only out of the government, but out of Columbia University--CASA, Center for Alcohol and Substance Abuse, that has certified programs as having--

Ms. Roukema. Which was that? I did not hear you. Where was that you say?

General McCaffrey. Columbia University.

Ms. Roukema. Oh, Columbia. Yes.

General McCaffrey. Mr. Joe Califano and Dr. Herb Kleber--the CASA Institute. But I think NIDA's Drug Prevention Guidelines are a good place for us to start.

Ms. Roukema. And how extensive are the drug expert counselors in the schools? Should that be a requirement?

General McCaffrey. Well, we are only into year two.

Ms. Roukema. I see.

General McCaffrey. So I do not think we have gone very far. To be honest, I started with this because Senator Arlen Specter, as a price of the confirmation hearing, asked me to immediately go to Philadelphia, right after I took this job; we sat in a grade school classroom, and I saw the impact of the--having an expert for the principals in five schools in the Philadelphia area--$35,000 salary--this young man had made such an incredible impact on these schools. And so I think Secretary Riley, as we get these drug counselors out there, we ask for it to be fully funded at $50 million. We will end up with them in half the middle schools in America. That is going to change this whole equation.

Ms. Roukema. All right. But it would not be optional. Would it be on an application basis or a requirement?

General McCaffrey. To do drug prevention?

Ms. Roukema. Condition? Yes.

General McCaffrey. Well, I think in every case, you really we are still leaving in the--you know, Mr. Modzeleski may want to address this--we leave in the hands of the school principal, the district, how they integrate these activities. The poor school teachers are sitting there with a--being barraged with social programs from their perspective. They have to find ways to weave it into what they are already doing.

Ms. Roukema. But you say, again, let me just repeat, I do not think we should be continuing to reinvent the wheel.

General McCaffrey. Right.

Ms. Roukema. Based on the experience that we have had. So, if we can be creative in terms of--

General McCaffrey. We absolutely have the--

Ms. Roukema. Extending.

General McCaffrey. Programs--

Ms. Roukema. But.

General McCaffrey. That, and I think Bill Modzeleski will address this--

Ms. Roukema. Excellent.

General McCaffrey. That we think are working.

Ms. Roukema. Excellent. Thank you very much.

Chairman Castle. Thank you, Ms. Roukema. Mr. Scott.

Mr. Scott. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. General, I agree with you on the DARE program. I think it is a great program. But I am little concerned about what the research shows. Can you explain a little bit about what the research shows about the DARE program?

General McCaffrey. Well, there have been a series of critical evaluations of the program, all of which I think are probably useful to force them to reexamine what they are doing. They have revised their curriculum. They are working in concert with the Department of Education and others to make sure they are responsive to other people's view points. I think the latest study that just came out that it--that attacks it--I certainly would not repeat or necessarily endorse the DARE president's view of it as voodoo science, but it is somewhat bizarre. The latest study, the American Psychological Association looks at fifth and sixth grade DARE kids under two iterations ago of their curriculum 10 years later and finds that their drug abuse rates are no different than other drug education prevention programs. Well, you know, sort of wonder what to conclude out of all this.

First of all, DARE is not enough. A fifth and sixth grade program. You have got to have consistent coherent approaches--

Mr. Scott. Am I led to believe that there is no evidence that it works?

General McCaffrey. No, I think there is evidence that it works. I think there is very powerful studies that say in the short term, the DARE program impacts, affects youth attitudes. I go to these DARE programs all the time. You can see it--the teachers, the parents, and the kids.

Mr. Scott. But I know of the visual impact. I am talking about research.

General McCaffrey. Right. There are research evidence that is compelling in my view that says the DARE program affects youth attitudes and reduces drug abuse.

Mr. Scott. Can you tell me what--do you have the performance measures of effectiveness? What are they--have they been in place long enough to have shown what works and what does not work, and what initiatives are getting us towards our goal?

General McCaffrey. Well, we are on our second year of the PME, and they are starting to come into play. Where we had an existing database, for example, if we can use the Michigan--the University of Michigan annual study as one indicator of youth attitudes, then we can monitor changes. What is extremely difficult to do is to take a program and try and determine how did that program affect youth attitudes--that alone. Since it is tied up in dysfunctional families, dual income families, after school activities. It is very tough to do that. But again, I think there are studies of individual programs that do indicate whether or not they appear to have value that are done in a rigorous fashion.

Mr. Scott. Are there--what does the research show about mandatory minimums, the effectiveness of mandatory minimums?

General McCaffrey. Sentencing?

Mr. Scott. Right.

General McCaffrey. Well, you are in another really tough area, Mr. Congressman, that is really disturbing to three people in particular--Attorney General Janet Reno, Secretary Donna Shalala and I. It is our intention in the 18 months we got left to try and get a more rational linkage of drug treatment and criminal justice system and to look at the associated aspects--that is up front, the drug court system. How do you keep people who are addicted mandated into coerced drug treatment? How do you get into the prison population? And then how do you have some reentry vehicle? You cannot give people drug treatment in a prison-based setting and turn them loose to their community with no follow on care. We are wasting our time.

Mr. Scott. Well, the question was on mandatory minimums. Does the research show that mandatory minimums are, in fact, a waste of the taxpayers' money, and the question would be: what are your views on that and where are those views?

General McCaffrey. Well, as a general sense--

Mr. Scott. The Administration?

General McCaffrey. This is a larger issue now. It is my general sense, and I think shared by a lot of people that the notion that you can go to a chronic drug and alcohol abuser and deter their behavior by telling him it is eight years behind bars in lieu of three years is silly. It simply does not work. We end up adding to the prison population at $26,000 a year, without any demonstrable linkage in my mind to reducing drug use. It is bad drug policy. It would argue it is bad corrections policy.

It seems to me, but, again, I understand this is a pretty heavy issue, that we are taking authority away from judges and giving them to prosecutors and investigating officers; and that we are doing so at enormous expense. What we get out of it is, you know, the longer you keep the young male population locked up arguably it will have an impact on criminal justice. But it is a lot cheaper if you tried drug treatment and community based coercive monitoring than locking people up. So, by and large, we are--I think, I personally do not think it is good drug policy.

Mr. Scott. Thank you.

Chairman Castle. Mr. Scott. Mr. Petri.

Mr. Petri. Thank you. General, it is my impression that people in the military spend an awful lot of time studying past battles in order to avoid them, and, in some ways, learning more from defeats than from victories because then you can avoid the mistakes that happened that led to that defeat.

And in that connection, I wonder--I was struck by the University of Michigan chart, and it looked as though we were doing pretty well on marijuana use, attitudes toward--youth and marijuana use moving down, and then suddenly something happened in 1992, and the attitudes completely changed.

What is the cause of that, or what can we learn from that? Or what were we doing right before 1992 that we have been doing wrong since it started back down again but from a much higher level?

General McCaffrey. A lot of discussion about that, Mr. Congressman, and I would give you a--you know, an informed viewpoint. But, first of all, I am not sure 1992 was the year. I think there was a minimum of two years before that where we see changing dynamics in the way young people think about drug abuse. So the first change was 1990. Do I disapprove of drug use. The curve starts in the wrong direction.

The next change was in 1991--do I personally fear drug use? The curve goes in the wrong direction; 1992 drug use among youth starts up, and it continues up. And by the way, it only got about half as bad as it did in 1979, when it was just a disaster. It was headed back where it was before.

I think there is a lot of factors. The dominant one, in my view, is that when America gets disgusted about drug abuse, the 1870s, the early part of this century, the 1970s, 1980s, we get organized at community level, the business community, we do something about it. It goes down. It went down. The Armed Forces went from being marginally effective as an institution and nearly drug free. So did the college campuses. Then we stopped talking about it, and along came another crop of little kids who were inadequately socialized to reject drugs. Some of that may have also been a factor that one-third of adult Americans today have used an illegal drug. They smoked pot. They used LSD; 30,000,000 people used cocaine. They are not using drugs now. They are fearful of it. They do not want their children using drugs, but they are a little bit ambivalent about what am I supposed to say to my kids. That is another argument we are making, which you say is, look what my generation learned is these are dysfunctional drugs; and they are devastating your personal development.

So I think there is a lot of reasons for it, but we stopped talking to our children adequately.

Mr. Petri. Do you think Mrs. Reagan's "Just Say No" to marijuana use policy was a success and that fact that that focus has dissipated has led to this change, or is that too simplistic?

General McCaffrey. Well, I think 80 percent of the kids 12 to 17 today have never touched an illegal drug. And for that population, telling them just say no is entirely appropriate. The person saying it should not be the--Mrs. Reagan. It should be their mother, the coach, somebody close in their lives they love and respect. The problem is we need to get more sophisticated than that. That is not enough. And so the message has to resonate with kids who are undergoing a series of different environmental considerations. We have got to equip them with--you know, if mother is not going to be at home, if kids are going to watch 15,000 hours of television while they go through 12,000 hours of formal instruction, then we ought to make sure we are talking to them over the television and the Internet about developing attitudes to get them through life.

And I am all for just say no, but I do not think that is enough.

Chairman Castle. Thank you, Mr. Petri. Mr. Roemer.

Mr. Roemer. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I just have one question. First of all, I want to thank the General for visiting South Bend, Indiana, and Notre Dame. The people back home are still talking about your visit and are very excited about you coming back in the not too distant future.

A number of people running for president, General, have talked about faith-based organizations and charitable organizations becoming more involved in the fight against drugs. You have mentioned that Boys and Girls Clubs, YMCAs, YWCAs should become more involved in this. In order to get the message permeated out in the community, it cannot just be at schools. It has to be throughout the community. How do we accomplish that and still tighten down the accountability that Secretary Riley is trying to do, and tighten up the effectiveness?

General McCaffrey. It is a very difficult proposition. You know, there--the magic drug treatment ingredient in America is Alcoholics Anonymous, Narcotics Anonymous. It is incredible. It is all around us; it is all around the country. There is probably maybe 16,000,000 Americans in recovery. And if you look at the 12-step process, one component of that is the small ``s,'' the spiritual component of recovery. So the more I look at successful recovery programs, there is always an element of that there.

And I have been to an awful lot of enormously effective treatment centers--this--I went with Congressman Rangell to the Stryver House in Harlem. No Federal dollars. Nobody has an M.D. degree. Nobody's got a master's in psychology. You got a bunch of ministers who got sick of human suffering, and they went out and they got people off the street, gave them a shower, a place to sleep, a ham sandwich, hold hands, talk about brotherhood, sisterhood. And a year later, bunches of them are not using drugs.

You know--I--there is an element of, as a I look at successful programs, that say that the faith-based community has to get involved in it, clearly. A wonderful book out, The Selfish Brain, by--golly--Dr. DuPont--that I am an unpaid salesman for, and this guy has done this for 30 years. He is a psychiatrist, a former earlier variant of the drug czar, the first NIDA director; and he basically talks about the requirement--you cannot live a spiritual life while you are chronically addicted. But once you are detoxified, and you are in recovery, then this population responds to that message.

So I absolutely support the separation of church and state, and we got to remain ever vigilant to do that. But the ministers of faith leadership of America have to get involved in speaking out on this issue, to include the prevention component.

Mr. Roemer. I appreciate your answer and look forward to working with you in following up on that answer.

Chairman Castle. Thank you. Mr. Salmon.

Mr. Salmon. Thank you, General McCaffrey. It is great to have you here today. I really appreciate your help, along with Secretary Golden on an amendment which I offered on the NASA authorization bill, posting anti-drug messages on the Web sites.

As you know, there are hundreds of millions of hits on the NASA Web site. Many of the schools have made it part of their science curriculum. So there is a really good place to start, and I appreciate your help. We are also looking at the possibility of expanding that to other governmental Web sites as well, and I am interested in your thoughts on that.

One other question: as you know, you have worked very diligently with our delegation in Arizona to try to deal with the aftermath of having passed the Medicalization of Marijuana Act, which I think is just a ruse for trying to legalize all kinds of drugs--illicit drugs. And I fear, because now a handful of States have passed this so-called medical marijuana act, which is a--the camel's nose under the tent--we all know what their motives are. They want to legalize illicit drugs. What can we do collectively here at the Federal level to stop this onslaught and this big money, these special interests that are out there basically buying campaigns in States, confusing people and buying these elections. What can we do to better effectively combat this?

General McCaffrey. You know, the medical marijuana issue has been--you know, as a former professor of American Government, an interesting one to me to watch a reasonably small amount of money, $15 million or whatever, and four or five people so cleverly intervene in the American policy debate. That is one of the only easy intellectual issues I have run into in four years.

If you want to be a medicine, you ought to go to the National Institute of Health and the Food and Drug Administration, and through controlled clinical trials if you demonstrate safe and effective impact on disease, you get authorized for use by the best medical system on the face of the earth. That system, over time, screens out thalidomide and laetrile, and allows these remarkable drugs to come into the marketplace. So I think where we are now probably is not bad. We paid a significant amount of money to an independent body, the American Academy of Sciences, Institute of Medicine, to do a study--what do we know and not know about smoked marijuana as medicine. It is a good report. It has been misused predictably by many people. But I would stand behind the IOM study. Let us give that credibility.

The second thing we did was we went to Dr. Harold Varmes, the Director of the NIH, a reasonably astute lad, with his Nobel prize laureate in research, and we asked him to try and do--reinvigorate some clinical trials on, in the interim, does smoked marijuana have any benefit. And we are doing that. There has been one funded, and I think two more in trail.

In the meantime, we have got five States and possibly the District of Columbia who have passed so-called medical marijuana legislation. It is not supported by the professional organizations--the AMA, the California Medical Association, the American Cancer Society, the American Ophthamological Society. This is a muddy way to go about delivering health care to the American people. We do not vote on heart remedies, cardiac care. So, I do not know how we are going to break out of it, but I do not think American doctors are going to do the wrong thing. I really do not. I think we have a lot of faith in the health care professions to not prescribe pot for glaucoma in the absence of an FDA certification that it does some good.

And by the way, it does not do any good. That is what the IOM study says. I, you know, I spent probably two and half years of my life in hospitals--multiple surgeries. I do not think we do pain management well in American medicine at all. And that is another contributory problem. We have got some training programs going on. I think medicine has finally starting to focus on it. That has been an anxiety in the back of the mind of a lot of Americans that said, well, maybe, maybe we need smoked pot to protect ourselves if we get in trouble. But this is not science. This is an argument over drug legalization going on in a different venue.

Chairman Castle. Thank you, Mr. Salmon. I am going to call Mr. Payne next, but before we go to him, again, for those who were not here, I have to repeat that General McCaffrey must leave at 10:15 a.m. There is about 15 minutes or so left in the questioning, which, if you do the math, means that not everyone is going to be able to question. We had the list here and the seniority or the order in which people came. So, if you are desperate to ask a question, you might want to talk to somebody about yielding to you, because we are going to have to keep it in order out of respect for the Members who came in a timely way. Mr. Payne

Mr. Payne. Thank you. That wasn't my time, was it? You called my name?

Chairman Castle. That was not your time. But please start quickly.

Mr. Payne. Let me just ask a quick question. The most effective way to combat drug abuse, of course, is not, and we try a lot of things. But I know some years ago, there was a lot of criticism about community-based programs, you know, midnight basketball was ridiculed by people on the other side about, you know, its ineffectiveness where the purpose was to try to get young people together. And then try to use some prevention programs. What do you think about sports and other kinds of prevention type community-based programs as a prevention alternative?

General McCaffrey. Mr. Congressman, you and I have talked about this before. It seems to me that, although we do owe, children, young people, an education about drug abuse, they should know what methamphetamines are, and they have got to understand why we argue that pot and alcohol are inappropriate for their development.

At the same time, the way we shape their attitudes is by giving them positive alternatives. And so the disappearance of the sport programs in the school systems of America, it seems to me, is a major error, not just in drug abuse, but in all those attitudes that shape young people.

I noticed General Powell was in the press again in the last couple of days, standing behind Junior ROTC, which we completely support, not as military training device, but as a way to keep young people involved in something they can believe in and a disciplined activity. We are absolutely working with the Sports Associations of America right now to try and get them online--Major League Soccer has been tremendous help; 16,000,000 American kids play soccer. One of my associates, Rob Hoffman, just passed me a note. It says, basketball--data indicates 49 percent lower drug use rates among kids who played basketball.

Now, I do not think there is any question. That is, again, the Boys and Girls Clubs, the YMCA, the Elks Youth Programs. Kids got to have something to engage in.

Mr. Payne. Okay. Thank you. Since I won't abuse the time, one quick question, and you might answer it very quickly. As you know, the disparity between sentencing and crack cocaine sellers as opposed to those of powdered cocaine is about 10 to 1 disparity. As you know, the majority of Black youth that are in prison are in there because they have sold crack cocaine, whereas in mandatory sentences; whereas, a person could sell 10 times more powdered cocaine, which is not used primarily in inner cities, and the sellers are not necessarily African American kids do not have to go to prison. What do you think about--and I am opposed to some--either one of them. What do you think about the disparity between crack and powdered cocaine sellers?

General McCaffrey. We--

Mr. Payne. Oh, excuse me. It is 100 to 1. Bobby Cox, my legal advisor--

General McCaffrey. Yeah, I was going to--

Mr. Payne. My legal advisor here is always correct. I mean, make it more dramatic--a hundred to one. Okay.

General McCaffrey. Well, the way the Federal law was written, it said five grams of crack, a mandatory five-year sentence; 500 grams of powdered cocaine. Pharmacologically, it is the same drug. It has the same addictive potential. It has the same treatment modalities. It comes into the country clearly as powder. That is the way it comes in from--80 percent of it--from Colombia. Mr. Big, I get it--I got 499 grams of powder. I sell it to Mr. Little. I sell him--by the way, it transfers at .1 gram of powder to point .89 grams of crack. I sell it to Mr. Little. He ends up with six grams of crack. He gets a five-year mandatory minimum. I do not. It does not make sense as law enforcement policy. It does not make sense as a drug abuse policy. It does not make sense as corrections policy. We sent--Janet Reno and I studied it. We listened to U.S. Attorneys. We went to the President with a recommendation. It came over to the Hill, and it was dead on arrival--from everybody's viewpoint, because the consensus I worked out was--the most important thing I said was raise the floor to 25 grams, so we stop having scarce assets, DEA agents, who think they should be prosecuting what is minor street drug sales and focus on vertically integrating crime organizations. We raise the floor to 25 grams. We put the powder at 250, and nobody supported the consensus solution.

Now, it is a minor problem and a larger problem than mandatory minimum sentencing, but it was the one easy one we should have corrected. The Sentencing Commission wants us to correct the disparity in crack versus powder cocaine sentencing guidelines. We ought to do that.

Chairman Castle. Thank you, Mr. Payne. Mr. Souder.

Mr. Souder. First, for the record, because sometimes we split these things into different Subcommittees. On the 1992 question, there is a near perfect correlation with the reduction in interdiction funding, which is only part of the factor, but it is a part that, in fact, cheaper supply creates demand and can overwhelm education systems or any other prevention system. And we need to realize that this isn't the sole thing, and General McCaffrey well knows that because he is in front of every Committee that deals with drugs.

I had a very particular question, and that is that one fundamental difference that we're likely to have as we move through Safe and Drug-Free Schools is on this question of whether we prescribe the method and the program that different schools do based research in NIDA and everything else, or whether we prescribe and have a certain amount of--because I think we all want to see better measurements. We realize a lot of this is the low amount of funding go to each individual school. But if, indeed, these programs work, if we prescribed measurement performances or some sort of standards, or required the States to have some sort of standards, would that not accomplish the same program, and if--or result--and if so, could--or even if not so, you have in your testimony, you say, proven effective and incorporate measures of performance? In another place, you have objective measures. What would some measures of performance or objective measures be that we could look at putting into these--reduce the number of kids arrested in schools; reduce the number of drug busts in schools. But what you do not want to do is to have an unintended consequence of then schools not enforcing laws in their schools or putting in rules. In other words, you can say it is the number of suspensions. They stop suspending kids.

General McCaffrey. Yes.

Mr. Souder. Yet, we need some sort of an outcome-based performance, because most of these programs really depend a lot on the enthusiasm of the school, the mix of the school. So just saying, you need to put X program in does not work either, and I wondered if you, not--if not just here as we develop the specifics of this Act can come back with the outcomes and measurements because we actually have to have that in legislation as opposed to just talking about it.

General McCaffrey. Well, I think you are entirely right. I do not think we ought to specify the programs that are acceptable through safe and drug-free schools. I think we ought to leave that to local authorities. We ought to say that you must have programs that are based on research. Secretary Riley's bill does state that localities and States set PMEs and track results, and then have to report to the Secretary of Education.

We ought to be a little humble, a little modest in our assurance of which programs work and do not. And decision making, if we can push it down to the States, that is where it ought to be.

Mr. Souder. What do you mean by results? That is really my fundamental question.

General McCaffrey. We need to devise--we are telling the States to set PMEs that make sense to see if they are getting results from these programs. I personally would try and draw the net pretty narrow. I would not talk about--does the program affect drug abuse rates among twelfth graders. I would talk about shaping youth attitudes among the targeted audience. I would talk about behaviors that are visible and consequential to drug abuse that you see in the school system.

You are right, though. When you start measuring things, if you are not careful, you will change people's behavior as they manipulate the measurement system.

Mr. Souder. I also want to thank you for concentrating on junior high kids, because I believe that is a critical point.

General McCaffrey. Yes, sir.

Mr. Souder. I yield back.

Chairman Castle. Thank you, Mr. Souder, and the final person we will call on in this segment, and I would point out that anyone who has not had a chance to ask questions, we will start with the second panel if they are still here, is Mr. Hinojosa.

Mr. Hinojosa. Thank you, Chairman Castle.

General McCaffrey, thank your for coming to visit with us, and to allow us questions. I want to talk about the 2,000-mile border that we have between the United States and Mexico, and what can be done to prevent middle school and high school students from being recruited to sell drugs to our students.

And the second question is what are you doing to combat money laundering on this huge 2,000-mile border from Texas to California?

General McCaffrey. There has been an enormous amount of energy, which--and I thank you for your personal involvement and your leadership on the issue on how do we address this common border. The biggest open border on the face of the earth. I mean, the numbers are staggering. It is 82,000,000 cars and trucks cross the border every year; 350,000,000 people; a half million rail cars. Mexico now--the goods news is Mexico is our second biggest trading partner on the face of the earth. Canada is number one.

And the associated problem, however, is that I would assert 10 years ago, there was no border between the two countries. In the last six, seven years, we have started to put one in place. We have to, in our view, have federal law enforcement institutions who work with the Mexico to create condition of law and order across that border, and that means technology and intelligence, not just throwing more manpower at it.

And having said that, we have increase the border patrol thankfully to some 8,000 people. I have personally asserted a debate number ought to be 20,000 men and women in the border patrol. We got 2,000 miles of Mexico; 5,000 miles with Canada; 12,000 total miles of frontier. Some Federal agent, not the United States Army has to guard that.

Money laundering is a tougher issue, because it is not just the cash in boxes going south into Mexico or out of Miami and into Colombia, it is cybermovement of dollars. It is Casas de Cambios; it is wire houses. It is probably the most prevalent practice of all is, which is ruinous to the economies of places like Colombia. It is a mass buying of televisions in the free trade zone of Panama, at $500 piece, where you sell them at $400 a piece in Colombia. And you ruin the local businessman.

Secretary Rubin and now Larry Summers have made enormous progress in anti-money laundering programs. This Ray Kelly, the new Customs Director, is one of the best police officers in our country. We are starting to get automation, the Financial Enforcement Center, right outside of Washington here, which is absolute magic--a new fellow named Richard Sloan running it. We are driving money laundering out of the U.S. banking system. I think it has largely gone, and they are using other media.

And I think Mexico is moving in the right direction. The Treasury Department has given them three huge computers, training package, software. They have got a new law on suspicious bank reporting. We put a center in Panama. We are working with the Colombians. The Colombians have a huge problem. We have got hemispheric agreement in the OAS that if we do not work together on money laundering no one of us has as possibility of addressing this problem. So I think there is some good news on money laundering. But this is going to be a long struggle.

Mr. Hinojosa. Thank you, General. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Chairman Castle. Thank you, Mr. Hinojosa. General McCaffrey, we thank you very much for being here. We have tried to keep you on time. We have done a reasonably good job--in fact, down to the second, I think. And we know you have a lot of important things to do. What you do we consider on this Subcommittee to be of extraordinary importance, and we value your testimony, and we wish you well in your job.

General McCaffrey. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. It is an honor to appear in front of your Committee.

Chairman Castle. Thank you, sir. We will now take a very brief break, only to set up the second panel, and get the names up, and get the microphones in place. And we will resume session immediately thereafter. Thank you.

[Recess.]

Chairman Castle. The Subcommittee will resume order, if we could. The second panel will--thank you, Mr. Modzeleski. I thought you were going incognito there for a minute. I was not sure what you were doing.

I am going to introduce all five witnesses, and then we will go down the line. I have already talked to Ms. Solberg about this, but unfortunately, you all get five minutes, and because the business presses as the day goes on here, as you all know, we need to try to keep it as close to five minutes as we can, which we can, and you know the light system. The green is on for four minutes. The yellow is on for one minute. And the red is on until we start banging gavels and doing wild things like that up here.

Let me first of all thank all of you for being here. It is always an inconvenience. It is always difficult, and secondly we, of course, have your written statements, and it is probably easiest to summarize those as opposed to try to necessarily read them. And that is made a part of the record. Because of the press of business, for example, I am supposed to be at another Subcommittee meeting right now. We are going to have people in and out, but all the staff gets this, and it is distributed and it is made part of the record of what we are doing; and we appreciate that, because it is not a simple thing to come before a Congressional Committee.

We will have all five of you testify, and we will go from my left to over to Ms. Landry, our clean up hitter today. And the witnesses will be as follows: first, of course, will be Mr. William Modzeleski, who is the Director of the Safe and Drug-Free Schools program at the United States Department of Education here in Washington. He was formerly with the Department of Justice, where he worked on a variety of juvenile justice issues. Mr. Tom Hedrick is Vice Chairman of the Partnership for Drug Free America in New York City. As the national Director and President from 1987 to 1994, he helped lead the Partnership into the largest private sector communications program in America's history. Ms. Alyse Booth is the Vice President and Director of communications for the National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse, which is CASA, in New York City. CASA has annually surveyed youth regarding drug abuse prevention for four years, and will soon announce the results of its most recent survey. Ms. Mary Ann Solberg is the Director of the Troy Community Coalition for Prevention of Drugs and Alcohol Abuse in Troy, Michigan. In addition to her current work, she has over 10 years of experience as a classroom teacher. And finally, Ms. Freddie Landry is the coordinator of the Safe and Drug-Free Schools and Communities program in Marrero. Did I say it right? Marrero, Louisiana. Ms. Landry has an extensive background in drug abuse and violence prevention and education in general, and has been recognized for her dedicated effort.

You are highly qualified and talented group of people, and we do appreciate your being here. Mr. Modzeleski, the time is yours.

Mr. Modzeleski. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman; good morning. On behalf of Secretary Riley, I want to thank you, Mr. Chairman, and Mr. Kildee for the opportunity to testify before you this morning.

I look forward to presenting ED's views on drug and violence prevention programs and reauthorization of the Safe and Drug-Free Schools Program. And with your permission, I would like to ask for consent to place my entire testimony into the record.

Chairman Castle. Without objection, all of your statements will be placed in the record.

Mr. Modzeleski. Thank you very much. You are aware in 1994 Congress passed and the President signed the Improving America's Schools Act, which included Title IV, the Safe and Drug-Free Schools and Communities Act. This Act joined provisions of the Safe Schools Act of 1994 and the Drug-Free Schools and Communities Act together, creating a program designed to help school districts create safe, disciplined, and drug-free schools and to strengthen programs that prevent illegal use of alcohol, tobacco, and drugs.

As we look back over the four years of operating the Safe Drug-free Schools and Communities Program, it has become clear that we use baseball parlance, the program has had some hits, even a few home runs, and unfortunately some misses or strike outs.

Unfortunately, those successes have not been as widespread as one would hope, and have not always been sustained over time. As mentioned, I think it is fair to say that the program has also had a number of misses or programs which have not quite hit the mark. These misses are attributed in part to changing times, needs, and circumstances, as well as some structural deficiencies in the Safe and Drug-Free Schools Program. We should not generalize these misses to the entire program, for every State has examples of programs that do work. Our task, as we proceed with reauthorization is to put it simply: to find a way to ensure that we have more hits and home runs and fewer misses or strike outs.

In order to do this, we will need to make some very difficult decisions, as we believe that the program as currently structured cannot yield the type of high quality drug and violence prevention programs that our children need, to keep them safe and away from alcohol and other drugs. The reauthorized Safe Drug-Free Schools and Communities Program must acknowledge that there have been significant changes in our student population, and in our understanding of what it takes to create and implement effective prevention programming, and build upon its strengths to ensure that safe and drug-free schools funds are used only for programs that work or have a high likelihood of working, and not for programs which do little to curtail alcohol or drug use or create safe environments for learning.

And how can we do this? As I stated, I think the program has to build upon its strengths, which include its capability to recognize that every school system is different, having different problems and different resources, and granting districts a considerable amount of flexibility in how they use their funds; in linking its efforts with other community efforts; in beginning the process of setting goals and planning objectives, and emphasizing prevention while permitting school districts to use a portion of their funds for school safety and security issues.

We must also work to eliminate the obstacles which have hindered the development of sound, comprehensive drug and violence prevention programming. These include a disconnection between drug prevention and violence prevention programming and to system coordination between the State Education Agency and the governor's program; lack of a plan to deal with alcohol and drug use and school safety, including responding to serious crises or tragedies; lack of full accountability; ensuring funds are used for programs that work; and ensuring there is sufficient funds to support these successful programs.

I would like to take a minute to talk about the last two issues: funding and programs that work.

We believe that while we must continue to conduct research on what it takes to create safe, disciplined, and drug-free learning environments, and youth who have the ability to resist using alcohol or drugs, we are not bereft of knowledge in this area. We know the principles that are the underpinnings the successful programming, and we know which programs have proven to be successful.

Identifying programs that work is one part of the problem. The other is getting school districts to actually implement the programs. We believe part of the reason school districts do not use programs more frequently is they do not have sufficient funds. One fact I would like to note is that while 97 percent of school districts receive funding from the Safe and Drug-Free Schools program, 59 percent receive less than $10,000. As a result, school districts are likely to implement the kinds of programs they can afford, not the types that their students need and deserve.

In closing, I would like to point out that as we build upon the strengths of this program, we need to keep in mind the interconnectedness between this program and other programs and activities related to educational reform and academic achievement. We also need to keep in mind that the job of creating safe, disciplined and drug-free schools and healthy students is not the task that should be placed solely upon the shoulders of schools. Over the past several years, we have become acutely aware of the fact that creating safe, disciplined, and drug-free environments cannot take place unless the entire community is engaged and involved.

Finally, let me say that while you recognize that some of the changes we have proposed may be contentious, we feel that the changes are necessary if we want to ensure that funds from the safe and drug-free schools and communities program are used to develop the types of programs our children, teachers, administrators, parents, and public expect and deserve. We look forward to working with the committee to ensure passage of such a bill.

[The statement of Mr. Modzeleski follows:]

STATEMENT OF WILLIAM MODZELESKI, DIRECTOR, SAFE AND DRUG-FREE SCHOOLS PROGRAM, UNITED STATES DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION, WASHINGTON, DC – SEE APPENDIX C

Chairman Castle. Thank you, Mr. Modzeleski. Mr. Hedrick.

Mr. Hedrick. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and Mr. Kildee. I am pleased to join you this morning. I want to thank you and the entire committee for your efforts to strengthen both the quantity and the quality of school-based prevention programs, along with community-based and media-based prevention programs. We believe that is unlikely long term that we can have drug-free children if we cannot institutionalize prevention better in our public schools.

Our experience and expertise is in media-based prevention. However, the Partnership's extensive research over the past 13 years in prevention communication we think can be useful in our mutual objective of getting more and better prevention information to our kids so that they can and will reject illegal drug. And an outstanding example of how the public and private sectors can work together in developing and delivering better anti-drug information is this new booklet, a couple of which were sent to your office the end of last week, Growing Up Drug Free: A Parents Guide to Prevention. And it is a comprehensive, yet concise and research-based communication guide for individual parents, community organizations, schools, and other groups in drug prevention that was developed with the partnership from a grant--with a grant and support by the U.S. Department of Education.

We believe that our mutual efforts to successfully reduce demand for illegal drugs depends on our ability every day to positively affect the decisions our children are making, one kid at a time, hundreds of thousands of decisions every day, in every city and town in America. Research over the past 25 years has demonstrated, as General McCaffrey showed earlier, that the outcome of these decisions is primarily a function of the attitudes and perceptions they have toward drugs, not the color of their skin, not the amount of money their family makes, and not where they live. Attitudes drive behavior. If they perceive drug use as harmful and socially unacceptable, they are less likely to use. Conversely, when they perceive drug use as beneficial and socially acceptable, they are more likely to use. This principle underlies all successful prevention communication, whether it be media-based or school-based.

These two critical attitudes are shaped and changed through information from a variety of sources, including schools, parents, peers, the media, music, the Internet, fashion. We view the so-called war on drugs would be better described as a battle for the minds our kids. To win this battle, to persuade more kids to decide to remain drug-free, we need more and better science-based relevant and credible information for more of these sources.

A second crucial component of the Partnership's communications strategy, and we believe effective prevention communication is to encourage more parents to talk with their kids about drugs. Our research indicates that kids who have learned about the risks and unacceptability of using drugs from their parents are about half as likely to use as those who do not. The bad news is that only about one in four teens report learning a lot about the risks of drugs from their parents. This supports the need to include in school-based program materials and or activities designed to involve families. Too many parents tend to believe that it is not my kid who might use drugs. Surprisingly, baby boomer parents, most of whom have tried drugs are out of touch with the vulnerability of their own children to trying drugs, especially during the critical transition into middle school or junior high, where exposure and use leaps so dramatically forward.

A third and final and crucial element of successful prevention communication is that we simply must put more resources toward younger kids. The average age of first use of illegal drugs of adolescents is now between 13 and 14. The younger drug use starts, the more likely other serious problems, including addiction, are likely to occur. And the transition from elementary school to junior high and middle school is the absolutely most crucial part to successful prevention. As fourth and fifth graders become sixth and seventh graders, sometimes referred to the tween years, exposure to drugs and drug use increases dramatically. Stronger anti-drug attitudes of the preteens are being evaluated and changed in this crucial time. Parents and school-based programs and media messages have to concentrate more on strengthening the anti-drug attitudes of these kids during these crucial years. Thank you.

[The statement of Mr. Hedrick follows:]

STATEMENT OF MR. TOM HEDRICK, VICE-CHAIRMAN, PARTNERSHIP FOR A DRUG-FREE AMERICA, NEW YORK, NY – SEE APPENDIX D

Chairman Castle. Thank you, Mr. Hedrick. As you may have noticed during your testimony--I always apologize for this--a vote was called, two votes actually--or no, three votes, I think. So when we break, we are going to be gone for a little bit of time; a 15 minute and then two 5-minute votes. There is about 11 minutes left in this first vote. Ms. Booth, I am going to call on you, and we are going to try to get your five minutes in, and then we are going to have to take a break probably for about 20 minutes before we can resume, for which I apologize, and when that break comes, we are going to have run so we can take our votes. So, Ms. Booth, the time is yours.

Ms. Booth. Okay. On behalf of Joseph A. Califano, Jr., president of the National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse at Columbia University, and our research team of about 75 professionals and researchers, I appreciate this opportunity to speak to you today.

I do want to say we are releasing our new teen survey on August 31. We do see some signs of optimism, and I will make available to every member of the committee a copy of the 1999 survey when it is released.

In 1995, CASA began to survey middle and high school students, and over the next few years those who influenced them most--parents, teachers, and principals. For the fourth straight year, in 1998, responding to an open-ended question, more 12- to 17-year olds named drugs the most important problem they faced than named social pressures, violence, crime, or any other problem.

The number of high school students who reported that drugs were used, sold, and kept at their schools reached an all-time high of 78 percent in 1998. By age 13, half the nation's teens said they could buy marijuana, and 43 percent of them could buy acid, cocaine, or heroin. More than a third of older teens, 15- to 17-year-olds, said that they had personally seen drugs sold on school grounds, as had 16 percent of middle school students. And that year, a majority of high school students, about 51 percent told us the drug problem in their schools was getting worse.

What about parents, and middle and high school teachers, and principals of America's teens? Well, nearly half of middle and high school students told us in 1998 that their parents had never, never discussed the dangers of illegal drugs with them. Many parents do not even have drugs on the radar screen of concerns that they think their children have.

In 1997 and 1998, we looked at those who we believe have the most influence on our teens besides parents and teens' friends. To that end, we interviewed about 800 middle and high school teachers and 800 principals. Amazingly, more high school teachers, around 50 percent, think a student can smoke pot every weekend and do well in school than do students. Only 23 percent of the students agreed with this statement.

Overall, 43 percent of middle and high school teachers and 35 percent of principals believe a teen can smoke pot every weekend and do well in school, compared to 17 percent of teenagers.

While only 18 percent of high school principals think their schools are not drug-free, 78 percent of high school students say that drugs are used, kept, and sold at their schools. Seventy-one percent of high school teens say more than half their classmates have tried pot, while only 27 percent of principals and 26 percent of teachers think that.

It is also interesting how wide this disconnect is between what teens say is their most important problem and what teachers and principals think it is. As I said, more teens said drugs were the most important problem facing them than anything else. Problems with parents were barely noted. Yet, teachers and principals thought problems getting along with parents or bad parents were the teens'--by far the teens' biggest problem, with social problems coming in second, and drugs third. That tells us something about what educators think about parents these days.

On one grim assessment, middle and high school teachers are near agreement with their 12- to 17-year-old students. In middle school, 33 percent of teachers and 36 percent of students saw the drug problem getting worse in their schools. In high school, 41 percent of teachers and 51 percent of students saw the drug problem getting worse. Yet, only 10 percent of middle school principals and only 15 percent of high school principals admitted that the drug problem was getting worse in their schools.

One of the most important findings over the past three years was the--how dramatically a teen's risk of substance abuse increases when the teen attends a school which is not drug-free. In 1997, we analyzed this and discovered that students in schools with drugs were nearly four times likelier to have tried marijuana than kids who attended drug-free schools. We believe kids in schools which are not drug-free experience a forced proximity to those substances which we identified in our first national survey in 1995 as a major contributing factor to substance abuse behavior.

We also found that schools where smoking and drinking on the grounds is commonplace are also schools where illegal drugs will be found.

A key question we have asked the students is would you report a drug user or seller in your school? While 84 percent of 12-year olds say they will, that dropped to 49 percent of 13-year-olds--I won't read all these numbers--37 percent of--it came down to 37 percent of 17-year-olds. Given the denial of many principals, it is no wonder so few kids will take a stand against drugs in their schools.

One other thing, I just added that while 48 percent of teens say they received no more than two hours of anti-drug education, compared to 6 percent of principals, and 12 percent of teachers; 69 percent of principals, 50 percent of teachers, and only 27 percent of students say students receive 10 or more hours of anti-drug education. So what these kids are telling us that they are just not getting enough drug education in the schools. Many of them do say that drug education is effective.

I am going to skip through a lot of this and get to sort of the conclusion, which is that the survey does reveal that parents have significant influence over their children and that teens who do not smoke pot credit their parents for this decision. Parental involvement is a critical protective factor. The more often teens eat dinner with their parents, the less likely they are to smoke, drink, or use marijuana. Parents who insist on knowing where their teens are after school, who eat dinner with them frequently, and who talk to their kids are likeliest to be parents of teens who do not smoke, use marijuana, or drink.

Religion is also a very important significant--a very significant factor in keeping 12- to 17-year-olds off drugs, cigarettes, and alcohol. Teens who attend religious services at least four times a month are far less likely to smoke, drink, or use marijuana than those who attend religious services less than once a month.

At schools, teens, teachers, and principals believe by whopping majorities that locker searches, drug testing of all students, a police presence, and a zero tolerance policy are effective anti-drug measures. We were surprised at how the students actually even believed in harsher measures than the teachers or principals.

So there is plenty parents, teachers, and principals can do to save our children. And there is something students can do to help themselves. Students should be encouraged to report another student who is using or selling drugs on school premises. In our survey, students, teachers, and principals say that schools would be drug-free if students, teachers, and principals wanted them to be drug-free. If that self-assessment is correct, then the parents of this nation who are sending their children to these schools and all of us who care about our young people should demand that students, teachers, and principals take the actions necessary--excuse me--necessary to make our schools drug free. Thank you.

[The statement of Ms. Booth follows:]

STATEMENT OF MS. ALYCE BOOTH, DIRECTOR OF COMMUNICATIONS, NATIONAL CENTER ON ADDICTION AND SUBSTANCE ABUSE, NEW YORK, NY – SEE APPENDIX E

Chairman Castle. Thank you, Ms. Booth. I know it is hard to squeeze in the five minutes or a little bit more. We will now take a break very quickly, so we can run to make our votes. And, as I said, hopefully we will resume in about 20 minutes. And, of course, we will start with Ms. Solberg at that point, and then go to the questions and answers by Members present. So we stand in recess for 20 minutes or so. Thank you.

[Recess.]

Chairman Castle. Sorry for the delay. It was a little bit longer than I anticipated, but I never know what exactly is going to happen over there. And at this point, we are ready for your testimony, Ms. Solberg.

Ms. Solberg. Okay. Chairman Castle, Congressman Kildee, and Members of the Subcommittee. Thank you for the opportunity to discuss a three-pronged strategy for youth drug abuse prevention that is extremely successful in Troy, Michigan.

I am the director of the Troy Community Coalition for the Prevention of Drug and Alcohol Abuse. I am sure that you are aware of community coalitions, many of the members of this committee probably participate. My own Congressman, Sandy Levin, is an extremely active member of the Troy Community Coalition and all the coalitions in his district, and I do not know what we would do without congressional participation, because it is very, very important to our success.

In Troy, Michigan, we take a comprehensive approach to drug abuse prevention. We believe strongly that our young people rise to the standard that the community sets for them. They either rise or fall depending on what we expect. So if the community sets the standard, then that is all adults in the community. That is not just the schools. That is not just the parents. But it is all adults.

Back in 1990, the Troy School District did a youth survey among students, and they found that drug use was very, very high. In addition to that, they found that students felt that there were low consequence and low risk for using drugs and alcohol. They felt that it was easy to access alcohol and drugs, and they felt that their parents and the community had a tolerance of that behavior. So the school district read the research. And, as a result of that, they established a three-pronged strategy.

They started a parent group, Troy Families for Safe Homes, where parents network and learn how to talk with their kids about drugs and alcohol. And they started a community coalition. The community coalition works over all sectors of the community, all ages in the community, with multiple strategies.

We involve the entire community. In addition to Congressman Levin, we work with Senator Levin, Senator Abraham. Our public officials, our business people, our physicians, our faith community people, our police, our judges--the entire community. We work on public policy. We work on community awareness. We work on community education, and we attempt to provide safe, alcohol-free activities for our young people. We also--and this is critical--provide the support that school districts need.

Young people learn in the classroom. We need to support that in the community. We have a very strong comprehensive safe and drug-free schools program in the Troy schools. We have a K through 12 program. We have student assistance programs that target young people at risk. We have peer mediation, conflict resolution. We track our statistics. We realize that we must show effectiveness.

The Coalition works in exactly the same way. We use research-based programs. We continually do needs assessments, because we want to attack the problem as it really is, not what we think it is. And we have comprehensive evaluation through Oakland University, and we are successful. We have outcomes.

Last year, we saw an 8.8 percent reduction in alcohol abuse among twelfth graders, seniors--very difficult to get those statistics. We also support with public policy. We have an ordinance that prevents the unsupervised shelving of alcohol. Our students said access was a problem. We are eliminating access. We also trained 100 judges in consistent enforcement of alcohol laws--important accomplishment. Important also with the alcohol laws because a recent Journal of the Community Policing magazine said that communities that have consistent, strong enforcement of underage alcohol laws have less youth violence. That is the case in Troy. Our partner, the Troy Police Department, is very active, and we have very low levels of youth violence. We credit the Coalition and our partners with that.

We send a strong message to our young people: alcohol, tobacco, and other drug abuse is not acceptable in Troy. And, although it has taken 10 years, our young people are listening.

The three-pronged strategy worked--of parents, school, and community--worked in 1991 when it started, and it is working today.

The Coalition serves as an advisor to the school district. We participate in every school district program. And very importantly, in something that was asked earlier that I feel very strongly about, we leverage the amounts of money that the school district gets. The school district has a tobacco prevention program in middle school. We go out in the community and raise money to provide a tobacco prevention program throughout all the middle schools that last the entire year. We do not have as much prevention in the high schools. It is in the health class. We need more. So we went to General Motors, and we said, General Motors we need youth leadership training. They agreed to pay for the Franklin Covey seven habits of highly effective teenagers, and to provide the facilitators. So we now have a youth academy for our high school students. We leverage continually all of the programs that the school district has.

We do not think Troy is unusual. We think all communities could have the same results if they have strong research-based programs, a strong drug abuse prevention curriculum; if they understand the relationship of alcohol and drug abuse to violence; if they do needs assessments so they attack the problem that they actually have rather than the problem that they think they might have.

If, in fact, school districts do that--if they use research-based programs; if they have a strong ongoing partnership with their community, they can have the same results. Three prongs--school, parents, community. It works. Thank you.

[The statement of Ms. Solberg follows:]

STATEMENT OF MARY ANN SOLBERG, DIRECTOR, TROY COMMUNITY COALITION FOR PREVENTION OF DRUG AND ALCOHOL ABUSE, TROY, MI – SEE APPENDIX F

Chairman Castle. Thank you, Ms. Solberg. Ms. Landry.

Ms. Landry. Chairman Castle, Representative Kildee, Members of the Committee. It is, indeed, an honor and privilege to come before you today to report on the successful implementation of the Safe and Drug-Free Schools and Communities Program in Jefferson Parish, Louisiana Public School System.

Jefferson Parish is a large suburban district immediately adjacent to New Orleans, with very diverse populations and neighborhoods, from affluent suburbs to public housing, from rural communities to Cajun fishing villages. The public school system is comprised of 84 public schools, with 54,000 students. We also provide services for 36 private and parochial schools, with an additional 23,000 students.

The systemic structure of the Jefferson Parish program, which delivers direct services to its students contributes greatly to its overall success. Each school has the substance abuse prevention education team, chaired by a school team chair who serves as liaison between the school site and the system wide coordinated program. Ten safe and drug-free facilitators provide technical assistance to their assigned school, working closely with the school team chair, identifying at risk students, providing classroom presentations on drug and violence prevention issue, facilitating student support groups, conducting staff development programs, and training parents.

In order to break the cycles of family addictions and violence, we believe that early identification of and interventions for children of substance abusers and children affected by violence are imperative. As such, for the past two years, approximately 4,000 students have received these student services.

Also in place is a detailed referral process, utilizing behavioral characteristics to identify not only children of substance abusers, but also those students who are being affected by their own use and abuse of mind altering substances.

Interventions are conducted. Referrals are made to community agencies for assessment, and the students are placed in school-site self help support group.

In order for any school district to make an impact in the reduction of the use of mind altering substances, and effective policy must be consistently in force. In Jefferson Parish, such a policy has been in place for 10 years, with a recidivism rate below two percent. Students in possession of or under the influence of any mind altering substances, including look alikes, are arrested, brought to the juvenile detention center, and suspended from school for nine days. During those nine days, the student must be assessed by an approved treatment program and the student and his or her parent must attend a three-hour drug educational component. Failure to do so will result in a suspension for the remainder of the school year. The students are also suspended from extra curricular activities for 18 weeks, and upon return to school, the students must participate in a mandated support group for one calendar year.

With numerous special programs in place for at-risk students, we must not overlook the need to provide primary prevention strategies for all students. As such, Jefferson Parish has implemented the infusion of character, values, multicultural education into the core curriculum, emphasizing the eight tenets on a daily basis.

During health classes, the students receive the cognitive information they need to make appropriate choices regarding drugs and negative behaviors.

In continuing efforts to make our schools safer, Jefferson Parish has implemented a peer mediation program at each of the middle, junior high, high schools of Jefferson Parish. Over 500 students have been trained with peer moderators coordinating the programs at the school site. This year, the peer mediation program will be expanded to include a cross-graded mentoring component, using the Character Counts curriculum.

Another significant component of a successful drug and violence prevention program is staff development and training. Each year, in Jefferson Parish every employee who directly impacts children, about 6,500, receives one hour of drug and violence prevention in-service, prevented by the safe and drug-free facilitators.

This year's in-service is entitled Breaking the Silence, encouraging teachers and staff to listen to their students to avoid future tragedies like we experienced this past school year.

In addition, 900 staff members, serving on school site crisis management teams, have been trained in the skills of non-violent crisis intervention. The two-day training teaches staff members how to de-escalate potentially violent situations in a manner that avoids harm to the child and the staff member.

For any Safe and Drug-Free Schools and Communities program to be successful, it is imperative to develop cooperative interagency collaboration within the community. In Jefferson Parish, these collaborative efforts have resulted in an opportunity to co-fund numerous programs, such as Parents Against Neighborhood Drug Abuse; Jefferson Citizens for a Safe Community Summer Teen Institute; the District Attorneys' Juvenile Diversion Program; GRAPE, Gang Resistance Education and Training; and two substance abuse prevention intervention facilitators funded by East Jefferson General Hospital.

I hope this information has shown you the importance of, and the impact of the Safe and Drug-Free Schools and Communities funding in Jefferson Parish in providing prevention and intervention strategies in our schools and community.

I, again, thank you for the privilege of sharing the efforts of the entire Jefferson Parish community with you. Your continued support of these programs is vital in the prevention of drug abuse and violence among our nation's youth.

[The statement of Ms. Landry follows:]

STATEMENT OF MS. FREDDIE LANDRY, COORDINATOR, SAFE AND DRUG-FREE SCHOOLS AND COMMUNITIES PROGRAM, MARRERO, LA – SEE APPENDIX G

Chairman Castle. Thank you very much, Ms. Landry. I now turn to Mr. Greenwood to start the questioning.

Mr. Greenwood. Mr. Chairman, I would like to ask a question or two of Mr. Modzeleski if I could. Reading from the Department of Education's longitudinal study, as we have heard several times today, they found that "few schools employed program approaches that have been found to be effective in previous research," and in your testimony you said that the administration supports a requirement that the LEAs "use their SDFS funds for research-based programs." So clearly, this is a statutory change that you are looking for here to require that the programs are research-based. The question I have is what is your view of who would be determining what is research-based, and how effective--I mean, there are a lots of programs that are out there. Many of them have been studied. Some of them have been found to be so effective; others to be very effective. So, how does a school, an individual school, or a school district determine what is research-based and is the Department going to set any kind of thresholds or prescribe certain programs as meeting that test?

Mr. Modzeleski. Thank you, Congressman. Let me first say that while this is a change in the legislation, in July of 19--of last year, we basically, through our rule making authority issued what we called principles of effectiveness to help steer the program and further--in a different direction to ask for greater accountability. Those principles of effectiveness that we are asking that they be codified as part of the overall Improving America's Schools Act--I should say and part of Title IV. They ask for schools to do four things: one is to conduct an assessment. Two is to set measurable goals and objectives. Three is to use research-based programming. And four is to conduct evaluations.

We see that there is a role for the Federal Government in this; a role for the State government, and a role for the local government.

The Federal Government's role I think is to identify programs that work. We have an exemplary review panel that actually is in the process as we speak of looking at 132 submissions that have come in from communities all across the country saying--being measured against some goals and objectives and the criteria. So I think our role is to work with the Office of Juvenile Justice, the National Institute of Drug Abuse, and other groups and organizations to identify what we know from research and get that information out, but not to mandate it, because I really--we really feel that this needs to be a State and local program; and that there are significant differences in the five--15,000 school districts that we have in this country; and that school districts at the local level need to be making decisions about what programs they put in their particular jurisdiction, using models which have been developed or models which have been identified by the Federal Government, models which have been developed or identified by the State government, and models which they have at the local government.

What we are saying is basically that as you get down to the local level and if you are developing programs or strategies which are unique and have not been proven through any research to be effective, that you set up some mechanism to evaluate to ensure their effectiveness. But clearly, we see this as a State and local decision making process, and not one that we will be doing at the Federal level.

Mr. Greenwood. Not to put words in your mouth, but it is a relatively toothless requirement then, because if in my school district, my--and I am not being critical of this--but I am just saying if in my child's school, it is determined that they want to go off in a direction that they do not find in the Federal Government or even the State government's list of research-based approaches, they can, in fact, do that, and they won't lose their funds.

Mr. Modzeleski. Well, it is toothless in the sense of getting at which programs that we could get. Again, that because it is a local issue, but it is not toothless because in the legislation, what we are clearly saying is that the State or the local education agency needs to have measurable goals and objectives. And so if they are not meeting those measurable goals and objectives, then the State Education Agency can and, in fact, should deny them further funding. So that is where the really the teeth come in. The teeth come not so much in the program, but the outcome measures, and really trying to get schools to look at outcome measures very much as we talked about--

Mr. Greenwood. I understand that but they can use an approach that has not been researched, it is not research-based, and then their research would be prospective because they would be measuring results, but it would not be based--let me try to sneak another question in here.

I have a county that has 13 school districts, and for many of them, probably each of them, the dollars that they receive are relatively minor, and it is hard for them to generate any kind of a concerted effort. And particularly, because of some of the testimony that we have heard and what we know about the need to coordinate outside of the school and into the community, the question that I have for you is, would you approve of the notion of that those 13 school districts could pool their funds, and, by that pooling, create a bigger instrument that would enable the community as a whole to respond and to integrate the entire community of our county with our 13 school districts as opposed to 13 independent, uncoordinated programs?

Mr. Modzeleski. The short answer is yes, very much so.

Mr. Greenwood. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Chairman Castle. Thank you, Mr. Greenwood. Mr. Kildee.

Mr. Kildee. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. The President's proposal for this year would change the program for the Safe and Drug-Free School Program from a formula program to a competitive grant program. Let me ask you this: I am trying to find ways that we can improve accountability, and the General and the Chairman and I were talking about that earlier this morning. Do you think that the competitive grant method rather than the formula method could be an instrument in improving accountability?

Mr. Modzeleski. Very, very clearly, Congressman, we feel that it is one part of the measure for improving accountability because what it would do is force local education agencies, I think, to think more clearly and cogently about what types of programs that they need to implement, and also base those programs upon what their actual needs are. It is not the only thing we could do, but I think it is clearly a giant step forward in the accountability area.

Mr. Kildee. It would have at least a kind of a preaccountability; they would have to tell what they were going to do, right?

Mr. Modzeleski. Yes, well, that is the first step. I think the first step--what we are saying is part of the accountability, and accountability is woven throughout out this, is that we want to get very much--as you heard what they have done in Louisiana and in Troy, Michigan--is get local education agencies to do some assessment of the problem. I think one of the things that we see as we look at school districts across the country is that there is an assumption about what problems they face in the school district when there is not really a good realization of what those problems are. So assessment is one. Setting some goals and objectives that you could work towards is number two. Using those sound programs is three and then periodically going back and checking to make sure that you are meeting those goals and objectives, and if you are not, either changing your program or moving on to a new program, I think is the fourth thing. It is very basic. But nevertheless, it is--there is--it is more of strategy for accountability than just doing one thing.

Mr. Kildee. Is this competitive for a one-year grant then?

Mr. Modzeleski. We see it as competitive for a three-year grant.

Mr. Kildee. Three-year grant, okay. And they would have to get in line and compete again for a renewal of that; that you would be competing with all the others again, those who were not funded before?

Mr. Modzeleski. Yes sir.

Mr. Kildee. The Administration's reauthorization calls for closer coordination between the governors' programs, which I think is about 20 percent of the funding, and the SEA programs. You believe--well, why do you believe--what will be accomplished by that? And do you think it might lead to greater gubernatorial control over the entire program?

Mr. Modzeleski. What we see right now is that in some areas, and, again, this generalization is that you have the 20 percent of funds which the governor has going in one direction in regards to drug prevention and violence prevention, and the 80 percent of the funds that the State Education Agency has and sends down to the local education agencies going off in a different direction. And we are trying to bring some synergy or collective force to these funds, and so we are asking that they be linked closely together; that the governor's office, and the State Education Agency office really work as one rather than two to try to identify and come up with common goals and objectives, technical assistance, and training plans so you really have 100 percent of those funds going to reach some common goals and objectives. And we think that the legislation does that.

Mr. Kildee. I think some of us have some concern about too much gubernatorial control. Several years ago, in Michigan, the governor of Michigan really took the money, through some legal legerdemain, from the Department of Education and assigned it to a drug czar. I think we want to be careful that the money continue to be used basically an SEA level, with some local input and local needs addressed rather than just have strong gubernatorial control over that.

Mr. Modzeleski. Well, we agree with you, and we are very aware of the Michigan model and what happened in Michigan, and this is not for the governors to take control of the money by any stretch of the imagination. Clearly the State Education Agency will still have control over the 80 percent of the funds that they have, and in sending those 80 percent of the funds down to the local area. What it will do is to really move the governor, I think, closer in the direction of what the State Education Agency is doing rather than the other thing, and to get the governor's office to clearly understand that what he or she is doing in that office is consistent with what the State Education Agency is doing.

Mr. Kildee. I certainly would hope so, because we would did have a rather bad experience in Michigan on that. Thank you very much.

Mr. Modzeleski. You are welcome.

Chairman Castle. I am shocked at all this concern about the governors taking control of these programs. But I will let that slide for now. I am looking for concise and cogent answers. I want to ask a few questions, and I want to start with you, Ms. Booth.

What confidence do you have that you are getting straight answers in the surveys which you take? I often wonder about surveys which ask people about their actions which may not be socially acceptable or maybe a child will say, oh, yeah, I started drugs at 12, and they did not. Or maybe they do not want to say they used drugs or whatever. I have always worried about these kinds of surveys.

Ms. Booth. Well, there are some caveats when you do a telephone survey amongst teenagers, and we know that generally our numbers, as far as usage, have been a little bit lower than the national surveys like monitoring the future, and the national household survey, which are done in the school and in, from what I understand, a very private situation where a teacher is not present, and they are writing down the answers. In this case, there is a possibility that parent might be in the room or even listening in. We certainly hope not. We try to make sure that is not happening, but we do find that our numbers as far as actual usage are actually lower than those numbers, certainly not higher.

So what we are looking for are attitudes. We are looking for more than we are for, you know, trends as far as how many, how many kids are actually using marijuana versus how many kids are drinking or whatever. So that is why we have been probing more deeply into questions about attitudes and how they relate to behavior, looking at the home and other issues about, you know, do they go to--attend religious services. How often do they have dinner with their families.

Chairman Castle. Did we ask them about--not to interrupt you, but I want to keep moving, too. Did we ask them about free time?

Ms. Booth. Yes, we did. We asked them what they do after--

Chairman Castle. Like in terms of drug usage as it relates to free time?

Ms. Booth. We did. We looked at what do you--we asked them, what do you do after school? Do you go home? Do you do homework? Etc. We found that kids that are engaged in activities are definitely less likely--structured activities they are less likely to use drugs. The kids that are most at risk are those that say that they hang out with their friends after school, as opposed to kids who just go home and say, they are doing homework or even watching television.

Chairman Castle. Let me skip to Ms. Solberg and Ms. Landry for the follow up on that, which is what I am interested in. The President has pushed--and I agree with him--very hard on the after school programs; that we--and I am not too sure this should not be more State and local--but nonetheless I think the Federal Government has a role in this, and I believe in it, too. I mean programs from 3:00 p.m to particularly 6:00 p.m., when hopefully somebody will be home. In your particular programs--for either one of you actually--but in your particular programs, are some of the activities that you look at in that time frame or are they just in-school activities?

Ms. Landry. Most of our programs are during the school day, because of a transportation issue.

Chairman Castle. Before 3:00 p.m.?

Ms. Landry. In Jefferson Parish. However, at 42 of our elementary schools, we do have after school care programs wherein we provide safe and drug-free schools programming at those school sites. So, we are in this program, and we even facilitate some of our support group at the school site.

We do expand our program into the summer months. In our summer school sites, we provide support groups for those students who are attending summer school. And we realized many years ago that those kids in summer school, for the most part, are there because they are at risk for academic failure. So we have offered the school site support groups during the summer school. This year, we had to open up extra sections, because there were so many children and their parents who wanted to participate in the support group. And this entails parents having to bring their students to summer school earlier or come and get them later so that they could participate in the support group.

We also, through our community education program, have summer camp site, and our safe and drug-free schools we hire facilitators to go in and do awareness programs at the camp sites. We visit each of the two camp sites at least twice during the summer to continue that ongoing awareness that the children need during the summer months.

Chairman Castle. How about you, Ms. Solberg, you specifically mentioned alternative activities. Are any of these aimed at after-school hours or weekends or summer?

Ms. Solberg. Yes, especially for late elementary and middle school. We had many programs between the hours when school is out and parents come home, and then for the older young people we have weekend programs. We have a program called JamFest with our police department. They act as chaperones. Amazingly, the kids asked for that--where they dance and have activities because the risk is on weekends for our high school students and definitely after school for the middle school students, so we keep them very busy.

Chairman Castle. Just one comment, and then I wanted to ask Mr. Hedrick a question, but it is interesting, Ms. Landry, you mentioned the transportation issue. I had seminars on this at home, two of them, and in both cases the transportation came out, actually, as the major impediment to these programs, and I had not expected it. I mean, it was a little bit unexpected when I raised the questions. To me, you know, we should not be too inflexible with respect to all that. I mean, I think the time has come to start to introduce some flexibility into the transportation, including coordination with the Ys and the Boys and Girls Clubs and whatever the activities are. I just think it is something we need to look at in this country a little bit more.

Mr. Hedrick, my question is how does the Partnership go about determining what reaches youth? I struggle with this question myself. Sometimes I go to an auditorium; I give a speech, and I say, God, is anyone listening out there. Is anyone listening here for that matter, but is anyone listening out there, and that kind of thing.

How do you make such a determination in assessing needs for anti-drug programming et cetera?

Mr. Hedrick. A lot of hard work on a moving target, as you noticed. I mean, what works today may not work tomorrow. I think there are two basic elements to it. First, is the principle of communication, the basic strategies. We know, through our research, and research that CASA has done, and the Institute for Social Research that General McCaffrey talked about, that the two basic components we have got to communicate to kids are increase their understanding of the harmfulness and the social unacceptability of use; and also, as adults, what the clear expectation are of their behavior. I think clear, and when we just give information without expectation, I think we are in error.

What is much more difficult is how to couch those basic messages. Who gives it? Should recovering rock stars give it? Or should champion skateboarders do it? Should professional athletes give it? And we find that it is a mixture of those things, a mixture of people that the kids can relate to. But you really have--we have to ask the kids themselves. The most important information on how to communicate with kids comes from doing hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of focus groups around the country to find out who they relate to and how they relate to it. And that is basically where we get our guidance--is from the kids themselves.

Chairman Castle. You know, it is interesting the point you make, because I have seen different approaches to it, too. I mean, I have seen a power lifter and all kinds of music coming in, and I was wondering, God, is this an effective method. And the media might think it is important, too, in terms of television versus somebody delivering it, you know, in person--those kinds of things. So I think those are vital issues that we need to understand. I am not sure we totally--and everybody is different, and I understand that. But do you we totally grasp the best methodologies by which we are reaching children. We struggle with that as elected officials. How do we advertise to people. I think businesses struggle with that, and how do they get their particular product sold or whatever it may be. These are difficult questions. But when you are dealing with kids, I think it becomes even tougher in some ways.

Mr. Hedrick. It does, but I think the biggest missed opportunity now is with parents and adults. I think parents in particular think that peer pressure is more important than parent pressure. And all the data and all the testimony you have heard today suggests that that is the opposite, that that is just simply not true.

Chairman Castle. Yes, I am involved with teenage pregnancy, too, and we have heard that in all those, the kids do listen to parents. They may not want the parents to think they are listening, but they actually listen to parents more than anybody realizes.

Mr. Hedrick. Particularly if the target audience we are talking about--I think, again, you are hearing that end of elementary through middle schools is the absolutely most crucial time for these activities, and that is when kids are most receptive. Again, once they are into high school, they are a little less receptive to listening to adults.

Chairman Castle. Mr. Kildee.

Mr. Kildee. Just one question to Ms. Landry. The number of students suspended for nine days you mentioned for possession of drugs in school, what percentage are suspended for the remainder of the school year due to their failure to fulfill the drug education requirement?

Ms. Landry. Very, very few. I mean, but those who have been suspended, we have been very successful in having the parents come participate, and it is minuscule the one who do not follow through.

Mr. Kildee. So basically, that nine day period does have a salubrious effect?

Ms. Landry. It is the nine days, along with the fact that they have to go be assessed at a treatment center, plus the parents are then involved when we are working on breaking down the denial with the parent, trying to show the parent that there is a problem; and they are also involved with the court system. By being arrested, they will be appearing before a judge through the families in need of services program, the THINS program. So they see not only what happens to them in school, but they are looking at the treatment component, as well as the legal ramifications of their involvement in these types of behaviors.

Mr. Kildee. Those nine days are something positive, not a vacuum with nothing really positive for the students to--

Ms. Landry. Absolutely, I think because they have to understand that there is a consequence for their behavior, but they also need to be given the services to try to make constructive changes and make better choices in the future.

Mr. Kildee. Our society has changed. When I was teaching school, to smoke tobacco in school, one was suspended for five days. And those five days were just five days I think the kids could hang around the campus corner or some place like that. But things have changed. We were worried in those days about smoking tobacco, and society certainly has taken on some additional problems. But I am glad to see that those nine days are days in which some really help is given to those students.

Ms. Landry. We feel like this is total program, where they are being punished, but we are also trying to get them the help that they need so that they can do better in the future.

Mr. Kildee. Yes. Thank you very much.

Ms. Landry. Okay.

Chairman Castle. Let me thank all of you very much for being here, and sharing your testimony. I am sure what you deal with is difficult, because there are ups and downs, and progress and retrenchments in terms of what you are doing. But we appreciate the difficulty of it. It is important for us to identify those things which work and which do not work. As you can imagine, in this area in particular, there are lot of things, which after review--and Mr. Modzeleski more than anybody can tell us this--after review of five years, you think, my God, why did we ever start this? This does not work at all. But sometimes it is trial and error; you need a little a bit of trial and error, quite frankly, in order to find out what does work. And I recognize that, so I do not mean to argue that we should not try some of these things, but your testimony has been very helpful to us. As a Committee, I apologize for some of the delays and interruptions that occur from time to time. I hope none of you missed planes or anything of that nature in terms of getting around. And we will take all of what you stated and make it a part of the record here.

So we are appreciative and let me see if Mr. Kildee has any closing statements he would like to make. Dale, do you want to say anything?

Mr. Kildee. No, I just want to, first of all, thank the witnesses. Where you are dealing with something that is extremely important to the lives of children themselves, who someday will be the adults of this society, and having taught school for 10 years, I know all of you have an enormous responsibility. And I admire you very much for it, and I really appreciate very much your testimony here today, because it is very helpful to us. I think when we deal with this, we deal with this with the most seriousness, because you recognize that this is a serious problem that can eat away at the very core of our society, and that, you know, sometimes we like to have great victories and declare victory, but this is something where it is a constant thing, and we have--if we can make progress, that is really success and continue to make that progress. We want to work with you, and we cannot do this without people like yourself out there doing the work in the field and also giving us information we need to reauthorize this. Thank you very much.

Chairman Castle. Thank you, Dale, and again thank you all and have a good balance of the day; we stand adjourned.

Thank you.

WRITTEN STATEMENT OF REPRESENTATIVE DENNIS KUCINICH, SUBCOMMITTEE ON EARLY CHILDHOOD, YOUTH AND FAMILIES, COMMITTEE ON EDUCATION AND THE WORKFORCE, U.S. HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, WASHINGTON, DC – SEE APPENDIX H

WRITTEN STATEMENT OF MRS. HOPE TAFT, FIRST LADY OF OHIO, COLUMBUS, OH – ON FILE WITH THE COMMITTEE ON EDUCATION AND THE WORKFORCE

[Whereupon, at 12:03 p.m., the Subcommittee was adjourned.]