Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, charged Tuesday that President Clinton is not only failing to fight the war on drugs, he is aiding the enemy.
"Just as Nero fiddled while Rome burned, the Clinton administration fiddles while the crisis gets worse and worse," Hatch said as he released a Judiciary Committee report saying drug use among youths has skyrocketed in the past three years.Hatch, committee chairman, blames increases in part on Clinton not actively attacking drug use, cutting funds to agencies that combat drugs and focusing on treating hard-core addicts rather than waging an all-out war on drugs.
Meanwhile, Hatch said, "The number of youthful marijuana users jumped from 1.6 million in 1992 to 2.9 million last year. . .. 48.4 percent of the Class of '95 had tried drugs by graduation day."
Hatch said, "The core cause of this increase in youthful drug use is that as a nation, we have let our guard down.
"We have simply failed to make the continual investment of effort needed to fill young people with disgust at the prospect of even experimenting with illegal drugs. I'm sad to say it, but the president's unwillingness to lend a strong voice to the issue has become part of the problem."
Hatch called a Capitol press conference to release the report and attack the president, and followed immediately with a committee hearing he said he hoped would build support to rekindle a full-blown war on drugs.
The report by Hatch's committee was filled with statistics from numerous studies showing recent increases after drug use rates had fallen continually between 1979 and 1992. Examples include:
- Since 1992, the number of high school seniors using drugs on a monthly basis has jumped 52 percent.
- One in three high school seniors now smokes marijuana. Also, marijuana use among 14- and 15-year-olds increased 200 percent from 1992 to 1994.
- Methamphetamine-related emergency room cases rose 256 percent between 1991 and 1994.
Hatch and the committee report blamed that in part on more lax drug enforcement and seizure activities by the Clinton administration.
Hatch noted that Clinton budgets had cut hundreds of drug-enforcement positions at the FBI, Customs Service, Coast Guard, Drug Enforcement Agency and the Immigration and Naturalization Service - and mothballed many of their ships and airplanes used to intercept drug shipments.
The report charged that has made cocaine available at the lowest prices ever because the cost of doing business for drug kingpins has dropped. It added that between 1993 and June 1995, the amount of drugs seized before entering the United States dropped 53 percent.
It noted studies show that when the price of drugs increase, they coincide "with diminished evidence of cocaine use in the United States, including drug-related emergency room admissions and overdose deaths."
Hatch also complained that the number of drug-related federal prosecutions has dropped 12 percent in two years during the Clinton administration.
Hatch also noted that U.S. aid to Latin American countries to help counter drug production and shipments there also fell from $334.9 million in 1993 to $131.8 million in fiscal 1995.
Hatch complained that while the Clinton administration is spending more on treatment of hard-core drug addicts - and made that a central part of its anti-drug strategy - hard-core drug use is actually increasing.
"We cannot permit the administration's failure to be the last word," Hatch said. "I hope President Clinton reads this report, and takes it as another wake up call to get serious about this issue, to regain some of the ground we have lost in the war on drugs."