anyone to speak in favor of any legislation which would legalize this deadly poison in a false attempt to control the supply and demand shows a critical lack of perception and insight into the problems of drug abuse.

It further shows an insensitivity equal to those who currently control the flow of drugs into this country. Legalization of drugs would be one more step toward perpetuation of evil influence over the people instead of a more progressive step toward addressing the socioeconomic problems facing the people, such as poverty, lack of education, lack of sufficient health care, lack of adequate housing in poverty-stricken communities which are dumping grounds for drug dealers, all of these things which makes a person eager to escape into the tranquil oblivion of drug abuse: teen pregnancy, child abuse, incest, and, oh, yes, the very rich but very bored, depression, mental illness, mental retardation. I could go on and on. Not to address these conditions is certainly a sin against mankind, but to add to these problems would be a sin against God because it would be an overt move toward destruction of mankind. Drug abuse weakens the mind and destroys the will of those who fall victim to it. America should wage a real war against drugs using any means necessary to prevent them from entering our ports and crossing our borders. Think about it.

Mr. RANGEL. I have never heard a more eloquent statement. [The prepared statement of Mrs. Whitfield appears on p. 154.] Mr. RANGEL. Let us now hear from Richard Karel, Northern Virginia Journalist.

TESTIMONY OF RICHARD KAREL, NORTHERN VIRGINIA

JOURNALIST

Mr. KAREL. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

I was recommended for this hearing following my participation in Mayor Schmoke's drug workshop in August of this year. As a student years back, I tutored inmates in prison for drug offenses to help them receive their high school diplomas. I am very sensitive to these things just discussed.

As a journalist I have covered drug trials, interviewed law enforcement officials, and prosecutors, examined the issue of urine testing and seen the daily impact of substance abuse on a growing suburban community. Although my views have evolved over 15 years of observation, the policy paper submitted to this committee was formulated in direct response to Representative Rangel's tough questions.

In my unabridged paper, which I request of the chairman be entered into the record, I have addressed in great detail regulation, taxation and control of drugs. Let us soberly examine the possibility that a sensible and morally defensible approach to psychoactive substances must focus on legitimate distinctions based on the intrinsic pharmacology of each substance and the application of regulatory and fiscal mechanisms designed to protect the public health. As Mayor Schmoke so eloquently said, the war on drugs should be led by the Surgeon General, not the Attorney General. I believe I share the goals of Representative Rangel and others and believe sincerely that current policy is highly counterproductive.

Legalization, what Representative Scheuer has called the "L" word, is an emotionally charged word implying for many legitimatization.

My approach, in fact, is not across the board legalization. Indeed, I suggest that the more dangerous forms of illicit drugs remain prohibited to various degrees and that we focus on ways of making legally available less harmful forms of some substances.

I also recommend restrictions on age, advertising and points of distribution and in some instances rationing amounts sold per person within a certain period of time.

In brief, my recommendations are merely a variation on the old theme of using both carrot and stick. The carrot would be legalization of less harmful forms of certain currently illicit drugs in order to draw people away from more harmful substances. The stick would be retention of legal penalities on use or sale of other drugs and forms of drugs.

Whenever the issue of legalizing any of the currently illicit drugs arises, people point with fear to the high cost of alcohol legalization and the supposedly forgotten lesson, that despite crime and violence, public health improved dramatically during prohibition.

There is, however, Mr. Chairman, another even more dimly recalled lesson of the prohibition era, and that is that during the same period we in America were criminalizing alcohol to fight the negative health consquences of abuse, Great Britain was attacking the same problem through a combination of higher taxes, rationing and limited hours of distribution. When the Volstead Act was repealed in America, it did not take long for alcohol abuse to rise once again, and with it alcohol-related health problems, such as cirrhosis of the liver. In Great Britain, on the other hand, alcohol-related health problems declined steadily during our prohibition era and leveled off. They have remained relatively low ever sense.

Interestingly the most recent study on cirrhosis in the United States indicates a steady decline in the last decade. We are not sure exactly why, but speculation centers on the general American trend toward exercise and health. In the United States, we have seen education, labeling, and enforcement of restricted sales of tobacco to minors greatly cut tobacco use and related health problems. No prohibition is necessary, and few think it is advisable. Let us keep this evidence in mind when we consider regulation and control of illicit drugs.

My recommendations are based on the concept of making regulatory distinctions between different drugs and forms of drugs and applying a combination of fiscal and regulatory mechanisms to protect the public health. With prohibition focused on keeping substances such as crack and PCP away from the public, particularly children, and on keeping clinically controlled drugs from being diverted, law enforcement would finally have both a moral justification and a practical focus working in its favor.

I would be happy to provide examples of my specific regulatory approaches to interested members. Thank you.

Mr. RANGEL. Thank you.

[The prepared statement of Richard Karel appears on p. 159.]

Mr. RANGEL. We have been joined by Robert Dornan of California. We welcome your participation.

Let us hear from Paul More, Development Director, the Scott Newman Center.

TESTIMONY OF PAUL MOORE, DEVELOPMENT DIRECTOR, THE SCOTT NEWMAN CENTER

Mr. MOORE. Thank you, Chairman Rangel, committee members, Co-Chairman Gilman.

My name is Paul Moore. I am the Community Liaison for the Scott Newman Center. Since 1980, the center has been dedicated to preventing drug abuse through education. Our efforts include media education and the development of prevention films, school curricula and books aimed at young people and their parents.

Our center's headquarters is in Los Angeles and as an Angeleno, I am intimately aware of how smog affects us. At its most benign it obscures a clear view of reality; at its worst, it is unhealthful and may cause permanent damage to your health, even to the point of death.

The same can be said about the legalization of drugs.

The center is unequivocally opposed to the legalizing of drugs. The more time we spend debating this polluted idea, the more currency we give it, the greater risk we run of permanently damaging our society. Why are we not spending this time in the more constructive task of developing sound prevention, threatment and rehabilitation policies?

The answer, of course, is the topic of legislation is media-glamorous, you aren't going to get this many cameras for a prevention meeting. It makes for a facile, sensationalized discussion on talk shows, in op-ed pages and in news magazines. We as a society seem addicted to the hype of miracle solutions that look good but don't work.

In arguing for the legalization of drugs, proponents mistake effect for cause. In their simplistic world view, crime and official corruption here and abroad seem to have been invented by illegal drugs, and only the magic word "legalization" is needed for these problems to disappear. Do they think the American public just fell off the turnip truck?

Drugs, drug abuse and associated crime are the ugly, visible sores of deeply rooted problems in our society, nation and world. They are the chickens of neglect coming home to roost. Drugs did not invent poverty, broken homes, gangs or unstable, profiteering foreign governments. Drugs did not invent greed, nor latchkey children nor the human desire for a quick fix and easy out. Nor, for that matter, did drugs invent the general breakdown of moral and ethical values.

Without drugs, these problems remain. With legalized drugs, they become more insidious, more intractable, because society will have deemed one more poison legally acceptable.

There is a darker, underlying current in the arguments for legalization-that somehow, if only we would let the ghettoes and barrios have the drugs we assume they want, the druggies won't be breaking into the homes and apartments of the rest of us. We will have "sanitized" the problem. The facts are, of course, that drug use and abuse extend well beyond ghettoes and barrios to suburban

living rooms and back yards, even to the Gold Medal stand of the Olympics.

Not only is such a thought immoral and irresponsible, it accepts real suffering from drug use and abuse as a "cost-effective" tradeoff for an imagined decrease in crime. We at the center do not believe in benign neglect.

The center, already deeply concerned about media influences, is horrified at the possibility of sending a whole new set of mixed messages to our young people. Let's be honest with ourselves: drugs already have a glamorous and sexy image. If we legalize them, we won't be able to keep drugs, any more than we have cigarettes and alcohol, out of the hands of our kids. We are not that smart as a government, we are not that smart as a people. If we legalize drugs, our national efforts in the past decade, which have resulted in a measurable effect-decrease in drug consumption and, more importantly, a change in the attitudes of our young people and of people throughout our country-will suddenly be thrown away in one moment.

Ultimately, whether we legalize drugs or not is a litmus test for our society and its values. Will we abdicate our responsibility to our children because the going got tough? We must not. Let us instead get ourselves in gear.

Thank you.

Mr. RANGEL. Thank you.

[The prepared statement of Paul Moore appears on p. 180.]

Mr. RANGEL. Mr. Marvin Miller, member of the Board of Directors, NORML.

TESTIMONY OF MARVIN D. MILLER, MEMBER, BOARD OF

DIRECTORS, NORML

Mr. MILLER. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

I appreciate the intelligent and sanguine effort this committee has made in the last day-and-a-half to try and address this problem. Everybody agrees that drugs are a problem in our society, and crack and heroin addiction are creating tremendous drains on our financial resources.

As you have pointed out repeatedly, Mr. Chairman, and other members of this committee are aware, and as the witnesses have said, there is no funding for the educational and training programs that we so desperately need. And what are we doing with this underground economy? We are letting it run rampant and letting it control the marketplace, letting it control purity. We are treating all drugs the same. They are not all the same, and no one will agree that they are the same. Everyone agrees that they are differ

ent.

People say that we need education and training, but the first and foremost approach is to use law enforcement, police, jail cells, arrests, court time. We spend a combined state and Federal budget of $10 billion a year fighting drugs. Of that amount, most of it goes to marijuana possession. Of all drugs, marijuana represents the largest number of arrests, 40 percent. The remainder is spread out among all other drugs combined. Of that 40 percent, 93 percent are for simple marijuana possession. There are 50 million marijuana

smokers in the United States that are criminals simply because of their choice of that substance. Otherwise, they are law abiding, they are productive, they pay taxes.

What we are talking about here is an enormous waging of war on our American population. There are 2800 DEA agents; FBI agents are not included in that number, Customs are not included in that number. Local and State police forces and the local sheriff departments are the prime law enforcement people in this country. We are not a government of national police.

We are a Government where crime is controlled by local States. That is where the biggest war is fought. That is where a lot of money and coordination goes.

What we are doing is having this $10 billion budget with five percent going to education and training. There is no national education program.

There is no national treatment program, as you are aware. There is no money for it either.

The last bill which passed a week or so ago was under-funded. Where is the money going to come from to deal with training, treatment and education? I have a suggestion.

We have put together a bill to make marijuana a regulated, controlled, available substance. As was pointed out by my colleague at this table, Mr. Karel, when alcohol prohibition ended, all the breaks were removed, so the problem increased. In Britain they did not remove the breaks.

They left the breaks on and the problem did not increase to the degree it did here and the problem there is less. Marijuana is a different substance, a benign substance. A DEA administrative law judge ruled that it is the most benign substance known to man.

It is not addictive. It doesn't generate violence. We are talking about change here, dare to question. We, of all countries in the world, have become great because we don't sit on our hands and look at fixed solutions.

We always question and examine and try to look at old ideas and look for new solutions. Let's not march with the Light Brigade, into a march of folly, into a policy that everybody says does not stop drugs on the streets.

Mr. Keating, when asked by Congressman Rangel in December 1987 whether all this had stopped one ounce from hitting the streets, he answered the truth, no, it did not. Let's look at new ways.

We cannot legalize everything but why should 50 million Americans be made criminals? Why can't we take that funding, that tax resource, and raise the level of education?

We will not be a free society if we wage war on the population at home. We cannot continue to give more and more power to law enforcement to the degree that the end justifies the means because once we do we are really in serious trouble.

I ask for you to consider something different. Look at something from a new way and give it serious thought.

Thank you.

[The prepared statement of Mr. Miller appears on p. 183.]

Mr. RANGEL. Thank you.