Testimony by Eric Sterling
President of the Criminal Justice Policy Foundation

This week (3/23), Drug Czar Barry McCaffrey released the annual
National Drug Control Strategy.  The strategy itself contained no
surprises, but McCaffrey's assessment of the drug war's success
did raise some eyebrows.

"For those who call this a war," said McCaffrey, "We are
winning."

But the document revealed that despite confident rhetoric,
centered mainly around a modest overall decline in the number of
young people who admit to past month drug use, by some measures
the situation is worse than ever.  Most notable among the
failures documented in the strategy is the fact that both heroin
and cocaine are more pure and less expensive than at any time in
history.

The National Drug Control Strategy can be found online at
<http://www.whitehousedrugpolicy.gov>.

Eric Sterling, President of the Criminal Justice Policy
Foundation and former Council to the House Committee on the
Judiciary from 1979 to 1989, submitted testimony to the House
this week in response to the Strategy.  Sterling is one of the
most knowledgeable, and certainly one of the most articulate
critics of US drug policy in the world today.  With his
permission, that testimony has been reprinted below.  The
Criminal Justice Policy Foundation is on the web at
<http://www.cjpf.org>.

Statement of Eric E. Sterling, President, The Criminal Justice
Policy Foundation, to the Subcommittee on Treasury, Postal
Service and General Government of the Committee on
Appropriations, US House of Representatives

March 23, 2000

Chairman Kolbe, Mr. Hoyer, members of the Subcommittee, the
National Drug Control Strategy, presented to you today, attempts
to sweep monumental failure under a rug.  General McCaffrey
insists that 'we are winning' our fight against drug abuse, but
his scoreboard must be broken -- deaths are up, high school kids
can get drugs more easily than ever, drug use by junior high kids
has tripled, drug prices are at historic lows, drug purity is as
high as ever, and we are still not treating most of the millions
of addicts desperate for help.

I have been following closely our national anti-drug strategy
since 1979 when I became the counsel to the House Judiciary
Committee principally responsible for anti-drug matters.  I set
up for the Committee dozens of hearings on every aspect of our
anti-drug effort, and accompanied the House Select Committee on
Narcotics Abuse and Control to Colombia, Peru, Bolivia, Mexico
and Jamaica in 1983.  I have heard almost every top Federal anti-
drug official testify since Peter Bensinger headed the DEA.  In
1986 and 1988, I was a principal aide in developing the Anti-Drug
Abuse Acts of 1986 and 1988 which created the source country
certification requirement, the mandatory minimum sentences, the
Federal crime of money laundering, and the drug czar's office,
among hundreds of provisions.  In 1989, I left the committee, and
have continued to work extensively on narcotics control matters
as President of The Criminal Justice Policy Foundation.

Mr. Chairman, sadly, I don't believe that General McCaffrey can
be trusted to give you an accurate appraisal of our drug
situation.

Gen. McCaffrey is claiming progress with declines in coca
production in Peru and Bolivia, just as he did when he unveiled
the 1999 strategy a year ago.  But when he testified before a
House subcommittee on August 6, 1999 he confessed, "In Peru, the
drug control situation is deteriorating... Peruvian coca prices
have been rising since March 1998."  (Clifford Krauss, "Peru's
Drug Successes Erode as Traffickers Adapt," The New York Times,
Aug. 19, 1999).

I suggest, Mr. Chairman, that the indices that Gen. McCaffrey are
most proud of are the least important -- the declines in casual
use of cocaine and marijuana by adults.  Casual drug users are
not the cancer at the core of America's drug crisis.

What is most important for our anti-drug policy to achieve?
Saving lives, keeping drugs out of the hands of kids, and keeping
as many people as healthy as possible.

What are the facts?  Deaths from drugs have more than doubled
since 1979, from 7,101 in 1979 to 15,973 in 1997 as reported in
the latest strategy.  Why aren't we more effective in saving
lives?  How can we be winning when more people die each year than
the year before?

Our policy is not keeping drugs out of the hands of kids.  High
school seniors report that heroin and marijuana are more
available now than at almost any point since 1975.  Marijuana was
"fairly easy" or "very easy" to get for 90.4% of seniors in 1998,
the highest point in history.  Heroin was "fairly easy" or "very
easy" to get for 35.6% of seniors, compared to 24.2% in 1975, and
18.9% in 1979, at the height of the modern drug epidemic.
Availability of heroin to high school students has increased by
1/3 since the Anti-Drug Abuse Act of 1986 was passed, when it was
22.0%.

Ecstasy availability has almost doubled since 1989 from 21.7%, to
38.2% in 1998.  LSD availability is greater than at any point in
the 1970s or 80s, and at 48.8%, is easily available by half our
high school seniors.  PCP availability is near record highs, at
30.7%.

More kids in 8th grade -- junior high school -- report that they
are using illegal drugs according to the Monitoring the Future
Survey.  Use in past 30 days of marijuana among 8th graders
tripled from 1991 to 1997, from 3.2% to 10.2%.  Cocaine use
almost tripled from 0.5% in 1991 to 1.4% in 1998.  Use of LSD by
8th graders almost tripled from 0.6% in 1991 to 1.5% in 1997.
How can General McCaffrey, with a straight face, tell you and the
American people that we are winning?

In the streets, our policy is a failure.  As best we can reckon,
the street prices of heroin and cocaine are near historic lows.
A pure gram of cocaine was $44 in 1998, down from $191 in 1981.
Heroin prices have fallen from $1200 per gram to $318 per gram
over the same period.  This means traffickers are discounting the
risks they face.  This means the traffickers are finding it
easier to get drugs to our streets, not harder.

Purity of cocaine, even for the smallest quantities, has
increased on average from 40% in 1981 to 71% in 1998.  Heroin
street purity has increased from 4.7% in 1981 to 24.5% in 1998.
How can the "drug czar" tell the American public that "we are
winning" when there has been a 500% increase in heroin purity?

This high purity is sending more people to hospital emergency
rooms -- the 1998 number of drug-related ER admissions was the
greatest recorded.

Despite repeated promises, we are failing to help the people who
are most hurt by drugs -- the addicts.  The crudely estimated
number of persons needing drug abuse treatment has grown from 8.9
million in 1991 to 9.3 million in 1996.  The number of hard core
addicts needing treatment has grown from 4.7 million in 1992 to
5.3 million in 1996.  The are still 3 million untreated hard core
addicts, more than in most of the 1990s.  And it is the untreated
drug addicts who are the core of our drug abuse problem.  Their
tragedies rip American families apart.  Their desperation drives
them to crime.  Their demand finances the Mexican and Colombian
cartels, and pays the farmers of coca and opium around the world.

Treating the addicts is not only the most humane thing we can do,
it is the most effective.  Our failure to adequately treat the
drug addicts, independently of the criminal justice system, is a
national disgrace.

Gen. McCaffrey will tell you his strategy is based on hard data
and he has promised measurable results described in so-called
"Performance Measures of Effectiveness."  Several years ago he
announced 12 Key Drug Strategy Impact Targets.  He promised, for
example, to:

 * Reduce the number of chronic drug users by 20% by 2002, and by
50% by 2007.

 * Reduce the availability of illicit drugs in the US by 25% by
2002, and by 50% by 2007.

 * Reduce the rate of shipment of illicit drugs from source zones
by 15% by 2002, and by 30% by 2007.

 * Reduce the domestic cultivation and production of illicit
drugs by 20% by 2002, and by 50% by 2007.

His documents reveal that for each of those important objectives,
there is no actual US government estimate for the base.

Regarding the number of chronic drug users, "At this point
[February 1999], no official, survey-based government estimate of
the size of this drug-using population exists."  (National Drug
Control Strategy 1999, Performance Measures of Effectiveness:
Implementation and Findings, p. 15, hereafter PME:IF).

Regarding the availability of illicit drugs in the United States,
"The problem is that there are no official government estimates
of the available supply of drugs in the United States."  (PME:IF,
p. 16).

Regarding the rate of shipment of illicit drugs from source
zones, "There is no official US government estimate for the
outflow of drugs from source zones."  (PME:IF, p. 17).

Regarding the domestic cultivation and production of illicit
drugs, "Currently there are no estimates of drugs of U.S. venue
available in the U.S. for distribution."  (PME:IF, p. 18).

Mr. Chairman, how can a cabinet-level official look a Member of
Congress in the eye and say that he has a strategy to reduce a
complex problem by a precise percentage by a certain year, when
he does not know -- with any precision -- the size of the problem
he is promising to address?

These are all worthwhile objectives, but as presented to you and
the nation, they are fraudulent.  This is a Potemkin Village
anti-drug strategy, Mr. Chairman.  Mr. Chairman, I urge you to
hold a follow up hearing on this "strategy" to look at it in
detail, and to invite a broad range of experts to testify.

Americans can no longer tolerate a strategy that brazenly insists
that our "National Anti-Drug Policy is Working" because the trend
of anti-drug spending is up.  (1999 National Anti-Drug Strategy,
p. 9).  It is time for a completely different emphasis.

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