J. Kerrey

Mr. KERREY

Mr. KERREY. I move to lay that motion on the table. The motion to lay on the table was agreed to.

Mr. KERREY. Mr. President, as I understand it, we are going to go out relatively soon.

Mr. KERREY. We have no objection.

Mr. KERREY. We have no objection.

Mr. KERREY. I move to lay that motion on the table. The motion to lay on the table was agreed to. Amendment No. 5214 (Purpose: To provide funding to the Postal Service for payment of nonfunded liabilities)

Mr. KERREY. It has been cleared. We have no objection.

Mr. KERREY. They have been cleared. We have no problem with the amendments. Amendment No. 5209 (Purpose: Technical correction to H.R. 3756)

Mr. KERREY. Right.

Mr. KERREY. If I could comment on the substance as well. I think both the Senator from Oregon and the Senator from North Carolina identified a very important problem in the current health care system. He is quite right. It is one thing to say to a patient, I am not going to pay for a procedure; it is quite another to say you cannot talk amongst one another, or I am going to be prohibited from telling you about a procedure that you may say you want. We are moving into an environment, not just on the private-sector side, but, also, in many of the Government programs in Medicare. Many of the States are using managed care with Medicaid as well. I think the Senator from Oregon has identified a very, very important consumer problem. It is far better for us to give the consumer more information than they need, far better for us to make certain that the consumer, the patient, is well-informed of what the choices are, as opposed to on the basis of being concerned they might ask for something that I am going to say no to if I am running the managed care program. It is far better to give them the information, it seems to me, than to deny it to them. So my hope is we will be able to clear both this and the amendment of the Senator from North Carolina, subject to no serious problems being raised.

Mr. KERREY. I move to table the motion. The motion to lay on the table was agreed to. Amendment No. 5216 (Purpose: To provide for assistance to Special Agents of the Department of State's Diplomatic Security Service)

Mr. KERREY. It has been cleared. We have no objection.

Mr. KERREY. I move to lay that motion on the table. The motion to lay on the table was agreed to. Amendment No. 5211 (Purpose: Technical correction to H.R. 3756)

Mr. KERREY. I move to lay that motion on the table. The motion to lay on the table was agreed to. Amendment No. 5213 (Purpose: To strike Title VII)

Mr. KERREY. We have no objection to this amendment.

Mr. KERREY. Mr. President, I move to lay that motion on the table. The motion to lay on the table was agreed to. Amendment No. 5212 (Purpose: To strike section 632)

Mr. KERREY. We have no objection.

Mr. KERREY. I move to lay that motion on the table. The motion to lay on the table was agreed to. Amendment No. 5210 (Purpose: To strike language to conform to other bill language)

Mr. KERREY. Mr. President, I looked at this amendment, as has the chairman. It is similar to an amendment offered by the Senator from North Carolina. We are having some review done on it. It is likely that we might be willing to accept the amendment. If the Senator would be willing to wait for a bit until we can get that language reviewed to make sure there are no problems with it, it is likely we will be able to accept it, as we did the Senator from North Carolina's amendment.

Mr. KERREY. I move to lay that motion on the table. The motion to lay on the table was agreed to. Amendment No. 5206 To Excepted Committee Amendment Beginning On Page 16, line 16, Through Page 17, Line 2 (Purpose: To prohibit the restriction of certain types of medical communications between a health care provider and a patient)

Mr. KERREY. If the Senator from Oregon would allow me to dispose of this, I have to dispose, I believe, of the underlying committee amendment that we just attached an amendment to. Mr. President, I urge adoption of the underlying committee amendment.

Mr. KERREY. Mr. President, if the Senator from Alabama will just withhold and give me a couple of minutes here?

Mr. KERREY. It seems to me what the Senator is asking for is quite reasonable. We will work with him to try to get it done.

Mr. KERREY. No objection.

Mr. KERREY

Mr. KERREY. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that Senator Jeffords, Dorgan, Conrad, Inouye, Harkin, Leahy, Thurmond, Akaka, and Daschle be added as cosponsors of the IRS reorganization amendment that I offered earlier.

Mr. KERREY. Mr. President, we are about to go out here pretty soon. I want to talk a couple of minutes prior to that. Whenever we get ready to propound the UC to come back in tomorrow, I will cease and desist and pick it up again tomorrow. I indicated earlier my support for the administration's selection of General McCaffrey to be the drug czar, the head of OMDCP. Indeed, I must say that I believe that some of that change can be attributed to last year Senator Shelby and I objected to the funding of the OMDCP office. That is when Dr. Brown was still there. We objected. We didn't see much progress. Change was made, and Senator Shelby and I support General McCaffrey and his position. There are three things that I think we need to focus on. One is you have to reduce the number of young people that are starting to use drugs to zero. That is only going to occur with the President leading. A lot of people made fun of Ronald Reagan and Nancy Reagan when they did this, ``Just say no.'' But the fact is it works. Kids do not know gray. They do not know in between. It is either yes or no, hot or cold, black or white. You have to say ``no'' over and over. Otherwise they will start. So that is issue No 1. You can see one of the reasons that we were concerned last year. You can see that of all the problems that we have--I do not know if you can see it on this pretty small thing compared to what we normally put up down here: marijuana, LSD, inhalants. In Nebraska we had a young man recently who was killed as a result of consumption of methamphetamine. Every State in the country is now seeing a substantial increase in methamphetamine. It is a drug more dangerous than cocaine because of its impact upon the body, more difficult to detect, and we are seeing increased consumption. That is why people are concerned. In spite of some success in other areas, we are not willing to battle it when it comes to youth. This is another little chart that shows alcohol and marijuana use in Nebraska in 1993 through 1995. It is up. I just do not think there is any other workable solution than the President of the United States on national television saying to the youth of America, ``Just say no.'' Over and over and over, we saw in the entertainment industry the bad guys who are the ones who smoked, drank, and did drugs--not the good guys. You have to send a message out there that these drugs are dangerous, and say to young people, ``Just do not do them.'' Second, the big area is in the area of interdiction and reducing the amount of drugs coming in. Senator Shelby has been on our committee taking a big lead in making sure that our law enforcement people have the resources they need to knock those drugs down. The third area that I would like to call a little bit of attention to is the area of hardcore drug users. I am going to go through a couple of charts very quickly just so people understand how we spend our $15 billion. This little thing you probably can't see. That is the drug czar up there; $137 million; Justice spent $7 billion; HHS, $2.3 billion; Treasury, $1.1 billion; even Veterans' Affairs spent $1 billion; Defense $800 million; Education $658 million. That is the proportion. The pie is put together something like that. But one of the most interesting, and I think telling, facts for an awful lot of us trying to figure out what to do, tell the kids ``no,'' and give the law enforcement people the resources. There is almost universal agreement on that. But one of the most difficult problems is this fact. This is how much every single year since 1987, and this is how far this goes back--10 years. You can actually track it all the way back if you want to. We have been spending more and more, with a different mix of expenditures; different sort of combinations; one year a little more interdiction; one year maybe prevention, and treatment--all of this different mix of efforts. The number of hardcore drug users stayed the same at about 2.7 million. It is a very important fact. I do not have an answer to it. I do not really know myself what we need to be doing with hardcore drug users. I had some experience in it. I was trained in pharmacy prior to getting a preinduction notice from my draft board and signing up for the world's hardest, most powerful Navy. I was trained in that. I was a patient in a hospital. My roommate was addicted to Dilantin from serious burns. So I got some experience with addiction. It seems to me that just in general terms the solution lies somewhere out there in the market. The solution I would love to see would be the President--because he is the guy in the pulpit--saying to the pharmaceutical companies, ``Look. You sell about $80 billion of over- the-counter and prescription drugs every single year to 260 million Americans, plus or minus a few millions. That is $80 billion a year.'' The Senator from South Carolina was talking about jobs in America. The pharmaceutical industry is one of the most important employers in the United States. These 2.7 million hardcore drug users spend $60 billion a year to feed their drug habit. That is a lot of money, as I see it. It is almost three-fourths of all the money that is being spent on legal drugs by Americans through pharmaceutical companies. I believe the pharmaceutical companies know a lot about addiction. It is an addiction. They know a lot about addiction. They have done research on it. They have had experience all the way for the last 30 years. I know that when I was practicing pharmacy in 1965 our No. 1 moving pharmaceutical in the store in Lincoln where I worked was Dexedrine. They then said that Dexedrine was not habit forming. We now know it is very seriously addictive, and we have restricted access to it. I would put a challenge to it. There must be some better solution to what we have right now. Again, I have not reached any conclusion. I am not talking about legalization. I am not talking about basically throwing open the door and letting people have at it. But I know that when something is constant, when a number remains relatively constant, we ought to pay attention to it. I pay attention to gravity. I pay attention to things that stay the same no matter what I do. And the number of hardcore drug users in the United States of America has stayed the same regardless of what we have done. I think it deserves some additional attention by any Member who is trying to figure out how to make this $15 billion-plus expenditure that we make every single year work so that we can say that we are getting the job done. Again, I want to repeat. When it comes to kids, it has to be, ``Just say no.'' It has to be from parents. It has to be from political leaders, and the most important political leader is the President of the United States. When it comes to interdiction, you just have to play hardball with these guys. They are bad guys. They have to be dealt with very firmly. You have to put an unwelcome sign out in the United States, in every single State. You have to make sure that local law enforcement people have the resources to get convictions, and on and on. But as for these hardcore drug users, I have to tell you, Mr. President, I am not persuaded at all that the status quo is working. All I have to offer right now is a big question mark. I have no answers, which is not altogether unusual for me when it comes to these more complex and difficult subjects. I am through with my remarks here. We are ready to go out.