matically point out to the community that we do have a drug epidemic in our town.

The point I am making is that we need to get everybody involved in solving this problem. There isn't any one solution. In September President Bush said, "To win the war against addictive drugs like crack will take more than just a Federal strategy." He said, "It will take a national strategy, one that reaches into every school, every work place, every family." If we are going to respond to that challenge, we need all of us, at the Federal, State and local levels. We must attack the substance-abuse problem on at least three fronts: education, to help prevent drug use and abuse; treatment, to help those caught in the web of substance abuse; and, three, lawenforcement, to come down hard on the criminal element and hold those involved accountable for illegal activity.

Most of all we need to let every American know they have a role to play in our war against drugs. My motto in Cleveland over the years has been: "Together, we can do it," and, Senator, together I am sure we can deal with this problem.

Chairman GLENN. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Very good, George. Thank you.

Cindy, you are up next. We appreciate your view from the council position here in Columbus.

STATEMENT OF CYNTHIA LAZARUS, COUNCILWOMAN,

COLUMBUS, OH 1

1

Ms. LAZARUS. Thank you, Senator, and welcome to our chambers. I want to assure you that we don't feel displaced and, in fact, we feel you are here as our partner and are delighted to have you. I am particularly pleased that you, as a member of our national legislative body, recognize the critical impact of chemical dependency in our country. Your willingness to not only seek information and opinions on this topic but to travel beyond the beltway to do so is an indication to me that you are sincere and aggressive in your desire to help our country face up to this crisis.

Much of the discussion about the drug war involves language and terminology that frequently sounds histrionic, and "crisis" is one of the words that is most commonly used. In Webster's Dictionary it is defined as "an unstable or crucial time or state of affairs whose outcome will make a decisive difference for better or worse.' Given that definition, I think that it is absolutely accurate to speak today of a national crisis.

If we are, in fact, at a turning point, it is important to have a clear understanding of what is the nature of the problem. I will probably depart from the remarks by some prior and probably some subsequent speakers, although I believe, Senator, I am speaking in accordance with your view when I say to you that if your committee, if the national legislature restricts its focus to the impact, cost and strategies of combatting illegal drug trade, particularly only through law enforcement, you will have missed the significance of this crisis.

1 See p. 141 for Ms. Lazarus' prepared statement.

We had an urgent problem in this country in this city with chemical dependency before the first piece of crack was ever sold on any of our streets, but because alcohol is a legal drug and marijuana was thought to be harmless and tranquilizers and amphetamines were prescribed by our family doctors, we individually, collectively and nationally managed to live as if we didn't have a problem. Maybe someone else's uncle might have too much to drink during the holiday season, or perhaps your college-age son may have experimented a little with pot and maybe your wife had a prescription for valium to help her cope, but people like you and me weren't affected by alcoholism and other forms of drug dependency.

One of the characteristics of chemical dependency is a concept known as denial. Now, that doesn't mean what a great many people think, that the person would dispute what happened in a particular series of events or circumstances, but that he or she is incapable of seeing those events as the rest of the world would.

For example, the career woman who gets drunk at the office party doesn't interpret those events as an indication that she might have a problem with drinking, but genuinely believes that if you had the same stress that she had, that if you had worked late on negotiations as she had, you might have had one too many drinks, also. The point is the rest of us were able to see it wasn't one too many drinks and it wasn't just that occasion. She, under the influence of chemical dependency, doesn't have the capacity to see that.

We as a nation have been singularly unable to recognize the extent or cost of the chemical dependencies that have ravaged so many lives before our streets were taken over by crack. Ask any staff person who works in an emergency room; ask any social worker with juvenile court; ask any judge and any domestic relations court about the prevalence and almost incalculable cost of chemical dependency.

I say all this not to nay-say the cataclysmic developments that have occurred in our country as a result of illegal drug trades but to stress to you that the desire for escape is the same whether the mood-altering substance is chugged, sipped, smoked, eaten, sniffed, snorted, or shot up. Our continuing inability to get beyond the mind-set that there are "bad drugs" that we need to do something about versus "acceptable drugs" that "everyone does" dooms us to failure in our effort to confront our national crisis in a productive, successful fashion.

The Federal Government has a unique role that it can play in combatting chemical dependency in our country. Let me be blunt and tell you that the role I see is that of a primary funder of some of the most expensive components of the anti-drug arsenal-increased prison capacity, increased law enforcement staffing, increased judicial resources and federally-funded coverage for treatment services for the indigent. Like everyone in this room, I have the capacity to read certain people's lips. Let me say to you, however, that our constituents are our neighbors or sons and daughters and our grandchildren will not want to hear from us 5 years from now, "Well, I wanted to do something, but George wouldn't do it."

None of us have any time left for making excuses about a failure to act decisively. Every day we fail to act we continue to broadcast the message that crime does pay. Our dealers are laughing all the way to court and through the revolving doors back into our children's school yards. It is a mockery to have public officials engaging in a "macho-off" over who can propose the stiffest sentencing legislation when virtually no one who is convicted of drug trafficking charges is going to serve his or her full sentence as they stand. You must have the capacity within the Federal judicial and penal systems to mount an all-out assault on illegal drug trade, to identify dealers, to convict them within a credible period of time and then to have them serve sentences that are real deterrents to them if not to their associates. If you and the other members of the Congress are not able to mount a bipartisan effort to do this at least, then we will have surrendered this country to an enemy far more fierce than we have ever met on any battlefield.

In Franklin County there has been an exciting willingness to blur lines of authority, to combine limited resources and to attempt to address cooperatively, comprehensively, the issue of chemical dependency among our children and adolescents. The results have been far from perfect, and I can spend the rest of the morning with you telling you all the things we have done wrong and all the ways we could do it better.

The point is, however, that we have chosen not to do that. Rather than spending our money and resources Monday-morning quarterbacking someone else's efforts, we have joined together, the city, the county, juvenile court, the Franklin County Board of Alcohol, Drug Addiction and Mental Health Services, Franklin County Children's Services, the Metropolitan Human Services Commission, the public schools and private providers to develop a sequence of activities from assessment to treatment that will make it possible for our community to respond to this crisis in an effective manner. There are no pat answers for us. We are writing the script as we go, knowing that tomorrow we may know better than we do today, but that today we must make a start and we must start together. That is why, Senator, I am so grateful to have you in our community today, because we desperately-desperately-need to have you as a part of this collective effort. I would like to consider the Federal Government to be among our list of resources. We have no real hope of succeeding if the Federal Government does not have the will to make realistic levels of financial assistance available. There is no price that is too dear when a family member's life is in jeopardy, and as you know and I know, all of our families are at risk today.

As Mayor Rinehart mentioned, you can have a conversation with a high school student in any school in this country, private, public, parochial, and they will tell you there is no longer a safe neighborhood where we can go and buy a house and build a fence and be safe with our children. We don't have the option of thinking about the problem tomorrow. Will you and the members of the Congress and the executive branch please join us in this struggle to save our community, our families, our children. Will you, at the Federal branch of government, provide us with a Profile in Courage, people who are willing to stand up and make the difficult decisions that

you have already referenced this morning, but to say to the thousands and thousands of citizens who are pleading with you to stand up and provide real leadership on this national crisis. Thank you, Senator.

Chairman GLENN. Thank you.

Before we get to questions, one more witness. Captain Jackie Flannery, Deputy Chief of Police of the city of Hamilton. Captain Flannery, we appreciate your being with us this morning. You are really at the grass roots; you are where the rubber meets the road on this. You are where every day you have to direct the actual operations out against some of these people. We look forward to your testimony.

TESTIMONY OF JACKIE FLANNERY, DEPUTY CHIEF OF POLICE, HAMILTON, OH

Captain FLANNERY. Thank you, Senator, good morning.

I represent our mayor, Gregory Jolivette, and our city manager, Hal Shepherd. We are in Butler County, sir, down in the southern end of Ohio. I appreciate the opportunity to be here, although I don't know why I am here. I am grass roots, but I appreciate the opportunity.

The city of Hamilton has 70,000 people. We have been in a drug war for over 2 years, and it's a crack cocaine war. We are losing the battle. We have young officers who have quit on us. During the past 12 months we have made over 800 crack cocaine felony arrests on users and dealers, and we have confiscated over $2.45 million in drugs from our city streets, but we are losing the drug war.

The cocaine use in our community is rising significantly, also the social strata. During 1989 so far we have had 12 homicides, five of them related to crack cocaine. Even though we don't have any Federal or State resources, as far as the police department is concerned, we have had overtime in our vice squad and our officers, we have committed $5 million so far this year to law enforcement. I recently talked-yesterday-to our vice commander, and if we had the place to put them, due to our undercover operations we could have arrested at least 60, but we did not want to jeopardize our undercover operations.

I am not so sure that the majority of people in our great country realize this drug problem. But I am on the street level. I am not an elected official, sir, nor am I a public speaker. I am a police officer. I have been a police officer for 33 years. I have served in every facet, and I am here to tell you we are in trouble.

Now, everyone wants to change the laws and make them rougher. Fine, but what do we do after we arrest them? Do we O.R. them? Where do we put them? We have made the first step in our DUI clinics in Butler County by converting an old furniture store. We are so alarmed in Butler County that we are going to have a Butler County drug summit due to our honorable Governor Celeste. I attended the Drug Summit in Columbus, OH, last week.

We don't have enough officers to have the DARE Program. To have an effective DARE Program you have to have an officer who has empathy with the children and can talk to them. They need to spend a lot of time in the school. We have the "Say No" Program.

We have parents and school intervention where the police, the parents and the school intervene on a child that is suspected of drug involvement. It's called the CAPP Program, Chemical Abuse Prevention Program, and we have been planning since 1982 and finally have that. It's a model program.

Before they reach the judicial system, we have a Parents' Care Group that's been started. We are working hard. We are going to continue to work. But I will have to say-and I am all for law enforcement, because that is where I am in dispatch—but you have to start young and you have to start in the schools.

And I have seen what other programs have done with advertisement on TV, for instance the Seat Belt Program, and I believe that you start in grade school and you teach these youngsters.

You have to work with the people that are addicted. They have to have treatment. We have no place for the indigent who are on cocaine, the crack cocaine mothers, the homeless. But I have faith that we will solve this problem, and I have faith that our Federal Government will help us.

But now our drug traffickers are outnumbering our police officers. We keep them incarcerated in our city jail for 8 hours, and if there isn't any room in the county jail we have to let them out, O.R. them. We do need incarceration facilities for drug felons that has rehabilitation involved, vocational education.

Do you realize the dropout rate in this country of young people in high school? It's really phenomenal. We notice it in our city. We are a little Butler County in the great country of the United States, of 70,000 people. I just see the city. Of course, we cooperate with the county officials, and it is time that all of us, parents—we are starting a-you know, you are not born with the ability to be a parent. Parenting is something that you raise your children the way you were raised, and if you were not reared in an effective manner, you can do a poor job on your children. So parenting needs to be taught in our high schools.

Our Parents Care Group by the women of our city are having parenting classes. This is a job, a problem that the government doesn't have enough money to solve it unless we-we have to start-we are going to lose a lot at the top level, now, of the dealers, but we have to start with the young people.

Sure, we need more prisons, but, you know, pretty soon everybody is going to be in and there is going to be just a few of us guarding, because it's going to be such a problem.

We have to give treatment. We are going to have deaths, we are going to have overdose. I think we need more education. Sure, we need more arrests, we need more police officers, but we have to have a place to put the people we arrest.

And even if we had more prisons, are we going to stop the drug flow? I doubt it very much. I think we would have to put ships and planes and put an armed fence around the country, and we can't do that. So we have to use education. We have to start somewhere, and now is the time.

Thank you, Senator. I have always been told I talk too much, I talk too fast, and I say it just like it is, and maybe I am not very diplomatic. But I thank you all, and I can't follow this act, because I don't have any votes. Thank you.