We welcome Ed Towns from New York, a hard-working member of the select committee. If we can take a break now, let's discuss a proposed schedule.

This is the Department of Defense appropriations budget on the House floor now. I understand Mr. Whitfield has a statement. We will take a break, vote and come back and then the committee will have an opportunity to question.

The Chair hears no objections. We will break until 11:15. [Recess.]

Mr. RANGEL. When the committee went to recess we were about to hear from Ray Whitfield. Mr. Whitfield.

TESTIMONY OF RAY WHITFIELD

Mr. WHITFIELD. Thank you.

Members of this select committee, I welcome your invitation to testify regarding the proposals to legalize drugs.

As you know, I am an ex-drug abuser and ex-offender, but I ask you to hear my testimony as not only coming from those two life experiences because today, I am also a husband, parent, grandparent, taxpayer, a professional and productive member of the Washington, D.C. community. Hopefully, my testimony will reflect these dimensions as well as my concern about drug abuse.

I am very concerned about drug abuse in all its dimensions, prevention, addiction, treatment and the public and private consequences of this destructive behavior. I will try not to duplicate what my wife has said, but I agree with all of the points she made. And consequently I will support any proposal that works positively to reduce or eliminate drug abuse. But I do not view the legalization of narcotics as one of those positive proposals. This is based on what may be a false assumption that the proposal is made as a measure to reduce drug abuse. Perhaps I am wrong. Come to think of it, I have heard proponents say many things, but I have not heard them say legalize today and be drug free tomorrow.

When I look at one of their proposals, that legalization will reduce the number of drug-related murders, I am not totally convinced. Let me abuse semantics and change drug-related murders to drug-related deaths. When I hear about drug-related murders, I think about shoot-outs in the street with the possibility of innocent people being killed, gangland style executions which are documented and glorified in our movies and history books, with victims left in dark alleys, rundown apartments or secluded wooded areas, with the media there to inform us of the lawlessness which is threatening the very fabric of our lives. This vision is very threatening, scary.

But when I hear drug related deaths, somehow the vision is altered. First of all, the media usually is not there to help us formulate our vision. It just isn't very spectacular and so much easier to ignore. It doesn't threaten us in the same way that drug related murders do, even if the body count is very similar. It doesn't occupy the headlines in the metro sections of newspapers week after week, or provide the obscene pictures on our nightly news broadcasts. And if it isn't reported, it must not be news, therefore,

it doesn't present a problem. At least it doesn't present the kind of problem that demands our attention.

Yes, I am convinced that the number of media worthy drug-related murders would decrease. I am also equally convinced that the number of drug related deaths would be increased. Good health and long life is no more a by-product of heroin, PCP, cocaine and its derivatives than is tobacco and cigarettes.

Obviously, I don't think much of legalizing narcotics, but there is still the question of what shall we do to win this so-called war on drugs. In closing, I would like for us to consider some of the things that I believe have brought all of us together today around the issue of drug abuse.

Perhaps in reviewing them we may be directed toward searching even harder for solutions. Hopelessness, privilege, a twisted sense of values, and duplicity are the things I have in mind.

Hopelessness is the primary reality of one segment of our popula

tion.

Some have turned to drug abuse to ease their pain and find escape from a reality they feel ill-equipped to deal with. Others in this same category, without the educational background to compete in our structured society, have used their entrepreneurial skills on the wild side. They are the young local drug sellers who will put me or anyone else in their graves in an attempt to hold onto what they view as their ticket to success. We have nothing to threaten them with. Many of their lives have been worse than anything the criminal justice system has been able to devise. And I would add, probably are able to devise.

Privilege is the primary reality of another segment of our population. Over the last two days I have heard some of those sentiments for privilege. They have turned to drug abuse for recreation. They are confident that the term "dope fiend" doesn't apply to them. They are educated, not deprived in the traditional sense, and do not commit street crimes. Still they don't realize that drugs and recreation are diametrically opposed.

A twisted sense of values is shared by both groups and is partially responsible for their susceptibility to drug abuse. It allows one group to feel they have no choice and the other to feel that they are marching to the tune of a different drummer.

Duplicity describes the way that our governmental agencies and policy makers have dealt with the issue of drug addiction during my lifetime. By that I mean while official governmental policy has not overtly supported drug addiction, many of its policies have contributed to it, i.e., the lack of anti-drug abuse education and addiction treatment facilities in major black ghettos during the 1940s, 1950s, 1960s, plus closing the only two Federal treatment centers in Lexington, Kentucky and Texas.

During that period of time it was not considered a national problem. Minorities and poor whites were mostly addicted to heroin, while middle and upper income whites were still dealing with the myth of cocaine suiting their lifestyle and it not being addictive. Over the last two days I still hear people say they are not certain of the addictive qualities of cocaine. Drug addiction did not become a public problem until it reached suburbia in the late sixties and early seventies. That is duplicity. It is also duplicity if our govern

ment policy requires us to support drug dealers in the fraudulent name of fighting communism, or stopping drug related deaths. A twisted sense of values can only create havoc and confusion.

As a drug abuse consultant, I continually meet youngsters from a variety of environments. The common denominator among them is drug abuse with one or more of the things I have mentioned as a contributing factor.

If nothing else, I sincerely hope that these hearings illustrate very forcefully that drug abuse is not the root problem. Drug abuse is a very destructive symptom indicating a number of other problems.

If this is not recognized, we may be doomed to continually treating symptoms in the form of drug abuse, or other behaviors that are equally destructive. I hope my testimony will help to move the issue of drug abuse prevention beyond dialogue toward accomplishment.

Thank you.

[The prepared statement of Mr. Whitfield appears on p. 226.] Mr. RANGEL. Thank you.

Now, the members will be recognized to inquire.

For those who talk about legalizing marijuana, are any of you familiar with a report issued last June by the Maryland Institute for Emergency Medical Services in Baltimore where the nine-month study indicated that 1,023 patients out of that study, 34.7 percent, were found to have used marijuana within four hours of admission to the center?

They attributed the direct relationship to the use of marijuana and automobile accidents.

Mr. MILLER. I am familiar with it and I appreciate your bringing that forward, because it makes my point.

In uncontrolled, illegal substances, you have no control over potency. If you drink a glass of beer with a sandwich and only have one and two hours later get in your car, you are going to know what the beer will do to you.

If you have an uncontrolled market place, you have no idea what the marijuana cigarette will do to you. If you control the potency, you will have no problems like that.

If you took just ten percent of the money used to criminalize marijuana, you could make films like those that were shown to the soldiers in World War II to warn them of some activities involved in World War II.

Mr. RANGEL. Do you believe if the marijuana cigarettes were manufactured by the cigarette manufacturers, do you think that it would be dangerous?

Mr. MILLER. NO. I think the purity and potency can be controlled and regulated. If we separate marijuana from the hard drugs and tell our people the truth, then they will listen to us.

Mr. RANGEL. You are saying it would be no different than cigarettes if it was controlled, regulated and legalized?

Mr. MILLER. It would not be any more dangerous than the subsidized tobacco market and in some ways less dangerous than the alcohol market.

Mr. RANGEL. You would then suggest that we treat marijuana basically the same way we treat cigarettes?

Mr. MILLER. I would have no advertising, no vending machines, not even posters in the stores, no advertising in magazines, newspapers or T.V. You would have that kind of ban.

Mr. RANGEL. The private sector would produce it and they would not be able to compete as to which marijuana cigarette was better than the other.

Mr. Miller. It could be done without advertising. In the Commonwealth of Virginia, as in other jurisdictions, alcohol is marketed in stores with no advertising in the stores. We could ban it effectively in a regulatory mode and as the bill we provided a few moments ago states, there would be no advertising of any type.

Mr. RANGEL. How would a smoker know which manufacturer was offering the best quality of marijuana?

Would it be just word of mouth? How would you know which brand name to buy, You would expect that one can get high off these cigarettes, right?

Mr. MILLER. Yes, but I think the consumer would rather have the problem in his life of saying, "Is this better than that?", than have the problem that, "I smoke marijuana, which means that I was afraid to call the police when my house was burglarized."

Mr. RANGEL. In talking about legalization, you don't want the manufacturers to compete, the marijuana manufacturers, but still the consumer would want to know which reefer is better than the next one being manufactured.

Mr. MILLER. The consumer may want that, and let them do market testing in the way they do in the market place today.

Mr. RANGEL. Please don't talk too fast, I can't understand you. Mr. MILLER. The marketing device in our market society on facial soaps is one person recommending it to another. I don't think that is a problem.

Mr. RANGEL. So you suggest that the cigarette companies could get into the manufacturing but you would ban them from advertising their products to the consumer?

Mr. MILLER. No advertising and no displays and a very controlled, regulated market.

Mr. KAREL. May I respond?

Mr. RANGEL. Do you agree?

Mr. KAREL. In some aspects. In the shock trauma study, I am familiar with that, it is an example of something else. The headline in the Washington Post said 34.7 percent of patients used marijuana. If you did a statistical analysis, you would find something in the range of 18 percent of the people tested positive for marijuana alone.

The other people had consumed alcohol. In one of the most infamous disasters, the Conrail disaster, the headline in the Post blared that marijuana was involved. However, Ricky Gates also said he had consumed alcoholic beverages. He also had a DWI conviction.

Mr. RANGEL. The problem is that when you have lost a loved one as a result of marijuana, alcohol or cocaine or heroin, no one gives a darn what the cause is.

I don't see how you can use that as a legitimacy for marijuana. Use is abuse.

The fact that we have made one-million-and-one mistakes in the distribution of alcohol, to me, is not an excuse to do the very same thing with other drugs.

Mr. KAREL. It is not an excuse.

Mr. RANGEL. Would it have made any difference if they said this engineer that drove this train was drinking too much beer? Would that make anyone feel better?

Mr. KAREL. Representative Rangel, I have tremendous respect for the work you have done and I would not say that if I did not believe it. No one advocates that it is okay.

Mr. RANGEL. Would you make your point again?

Mr. KAREL. Whenever you look at statistics, for example, that 34.7 percent of the trauma patients used marijuana, the statistics show alcohol was the primary drug. Perhaps an old baseball story will help me make my point. Babe Ruth, during a 7th inning break, went back to the locker-room, ate 12 hot dogs, 13 pastrami sandwiches, drank half a gallon of Orange juice, ate an apple and then he threw up. The coach came over and said, what is the problem? He said, I should not have eaten that apple.

When a person has consumed a lot of alcohol and then smokes a joint, you cannot say the marijuana is casual. People should be prevented from driving while impaired for any reason.

I do not think you have done this, but other politicians have demagogued the issue of marijuana and driving.

All I would like is a rational, sober debate to look at facts, to try to make distinctions based on pharmacological differences, to not talk about a universal drug problem, to not look at the drug user as an outcast-and I agree with Mr. Whitfield on this-to take away the stigma, try to look at people.

You know people talk in one breath about compassion and treatment and in the next about locking more people up. There is not a person here today or yesterday who doesn't believe in the compassionate treatment of people with drug problems and we need more treatment.

I find a dichotomy between that and legal persecution of users. We are not talking about selling crack to children on playgrounds. We are talking about draconian penalties. Are we making things worse or better? If I didn't believe that the scenario that I suggested stands a possibility of accomplishing the goals that you, Representative Rangel, want to accomplish and Mr. Dornan and the other people who have sat on this panel for the last two days, I would not make those recommendations.

I believe that there are possible ways of looking at the problem and helping, of lessening the number of kids exposed to harmful drugs, of reducing the problems. I don't accept implied assumption that things will get worse.

I don't accept that if X number of people are using a substance, use, per se, is abuse. Where do we hear that distinction between use and abuse?

Semantics are not trivial in this debate. As a politician you are far too sophisticated to not recognize the importance of semantics and distinctions and labels.

Mr. RANGEL. I will tell you one thing, an addict is an addict. I don't see people talking about giving alcohol to people with the