The National Methamphetamine
Drug Conference
Opening Remarks
Barry R. McCaffrey, Director
Office Of National Drug Control Policy
We welcome you to an important interactive conference; the most significant contribution you can make to these two days is your time and expertise. Senator Kerrey, thank you for your support of the Office of National Drug Control Policy and for your leadership in the fight against drug abuse. Governor Ben Nelson, thank you for hosting this conference. Luceille Fleming, president of the National Association of State Alcohol and Drug Abuse Directors, thank you for your support and leadership within the treatment community. We also thank Chancellor William Berndt, a noted pharmacologist and head of the University of Nebraska Medical Center. His institution was fundamental in bringing you here and putting together this meeting. Chancellor Berndt supported our efforts with a $10,000 grant and more than forty staff. We are enormously grateful for his sponsorship.
Barry R. McCaffrey, Director, ONDCP, provides opening remarks at the National Methamphetamine Conference, May 28–30, 1997. |
Many of us understand law enforcement, treatment or prevention, but we have not grasped the nature of methamphetamine abuse in a collective fashion. I asked the
President for authority to bring together a national group of experts to refine our strategy on methamphetamine abuse in America. I commend you to read the President's letter that expresses the conference purpose: to define and understand all aspects of the methamphetamine problem. This conference gives us the opportunity to exchange information about the methamphetamine threat. We intend to record the dialogue, reproduce it, and send copies to educators, law enforcement officials, and medical practitioners around the country.
Professor David Musto from Yale University will give our first presentation on the history of stimulant use. With his background in medicine, psychiatry, and history, Dr. Musto's contribution is critical. As Americans, we are extremely poor at finding the historical starting point when we analyze problems. With cocaine, in particular, it is astonishing that we overlooked the impact this drug had on our nation's history. We forgot the lessons learned in the past. We entered the 1980s and were inundated by cocaine and its derivative, crack; we overlooked what happened with cocaine decades earlier. There is no reason to accept this outcome with the methamphetamine threat. Professor Musto's work represents the hope that, if we use history effectively, we can improve our situation.
Dr. Alan Leshner, director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA), will speak. The National Institutes of Health (NIH) are an American treasure. Dr. Harold Varmus and other very special people affiliated with that institution are a reservoir of knowledge and provide a frontal assault on drug abuse. I borrow Dr. Leshner's charge and take it as my own: Let us replace ideology with science in the discussion of the drug issue so we can better understand what we say. When we deal seriously with policy issues, we go to the researchers and doctors for the scientific basis of a problem. Dr. Leshner is one of the nation's preeminent drug experts; we look forward to hearing his remarks.
Jeremy Travis, director of the National Institute of Justice (NIJ), is also here. He is one of the great people in our government. Janet Reno, who was heavily involved with this issue as a young prosecutor in Miami and who is an advocate for children, has promised creative research and activities from the Department of Justice. Jeremy Travis is her intellectual point man. We welcome his insight on the problem.
Randy Weaver from the National Drug Intelligence Center (NDIC) will address us and give us a picture of the national context in which we operate. The director of NDIC, Dick Caņas, is also here, and we look forward to hearing his remarks.
Tom Constantine will speak at lunch. He leads seven thousand DEA officers and professionals stationed worldwide and has been in law enforcement for thirty-four years. This man knows what he is talking about; he is a no-nonsense fellow. The law-enforcement aspect of drug abuse must be the fundamental base for prevention and treatment programs. No one knows more about the drug issue than Tom Constantine.
Attorney General Janet Reno will speak tonight. She is the author of the National Methamphetamine Strategy and will continue to be the quarterback for us. She will also help implement the National Methamphetamine Control Act, which proscribes certain illegal manufacturing and use of precursor chemicals. The Act gives law-enforcement officers another tool to limit illegal production of methamphetamine. We look forward, as always, to hearing her views.
Our work groups this afternoon will be infused with expert coverage of six key topics. In prevention, we have Martha Gagne, director of the American Council for Drug Education, and Leslie Bloom of the Partnership for a Drug-Free America, who will talk about public information initiatives at home and at work. If we have one fundamental goal to achieve, it is prevention. If we explain to the American people what methamphetamine is and how it affects human life, citizens will organize and make positive change.
The next topic we will address includes education, school, and community partnerships. This workgroup will be chaired by Ken Bird, superintendent of Westside Community Schools in Omaha. With partnership and coalition building, our efforts to reduce methamphetamine abuse will be more effective.
Dr. Everett Ellinwood, professor of psychiatry and pharmacology at Duke University, will chair the workgroup devoted to treatment, which may be one of the great gaps we need to fill. We must give our medical community, sociologists, and law-enforcement personnel a better grasp of treatment protocols and pharmacological prevention tools to address this problem.
Luke Galant, program manager of the Law Enforcement Branch of the Bureau of Justice Assistance, will serve as our chair on clandestine labs. Hydriodic acid, red phosphorous, and phosphine gases used in these labs are lethal to waterways and reservoirs as well as to people in hotels where temporary labs are set up. Law-enforcement officers tell us local political leadership is concerned that police not alarm the populace by wearing chemical protective clothing, kevlar helmets, and other gear during lab takedowns; this leadership wants law enforcement to adopt a more benign police presence. The time has come to wake up. It is not business-as-usual when we deal with methamphetamine labs. We face the potential for mass casualties as well as chemical processes gone wrong. We as a nation spend millions to learn which chemicals were released in the Gulf War; in the same manner, we must attend to hundreds of methamphetamine labs that are cooking off, burning down, or exploding in America.
The next topic this conference will examine is drug courts. We have Judge Richard Shull, of Wichita, Kansas, to help us. Janet Reno and others in southern Florida originated the drug court innovation. Three years ago, we had a dozen drug courts in this county. Today, there are 200, and another 150 are in various stages of development. Drug courts are not a magic bullet and will not eradicate the drug problem or achieve a comprehensive cure. However, law enforcement personnel assure us that drug courts are extremely useful. If we can save a third of the Americans involved in drug abuse through drug court treatment programs, we will make progress. Drug courts are better than the revolving-door alternative. We need programs with strong judicial oversight, options for incarceration, and more monitoring. We look forward to hearing Judge Shull's ideas.
The final workgroup area is precursor chemicals. Laura Birkmeyer, assistant U.S. attorney in San Diego, will serve as chair. Handling the chemical problem is difficult. As soon as we find one solution, such as when we outlawed chemicals like P2P in the methamphetamine production process, the illegal manufacturers find other methods for ephedrine production. We must control precursors; we cannot allow small stores and pharmacies that know full well what they are doing to sell thousands of dollars worth of a product per day. These chemicals will then be used to devastate the environment and our families.
On Friday, we add a clinical panel to the conference agenda. Dr. Richard Rawson of the Matrix Institute, Dr. Everett Ellinwood from Duke University Medical Center, Dr. Tom Leland of the Community Health Center in Hawaii, Dr. Scott Lukas from Harvard and Dr. Michael Sise of Mercy Hospital in San Diego will speak. We shall discuss the drug challenge facing our physicians, peace officers, and our entire society.
The material we assembled for you today is most important, starting with the 1997 National Drug Control Strategy, which we write to coordinate national drug control policy as required by law. On pages 30 and 31, this document summarizes our strategy in five goals and 32 objectives. The President published this document in April. We hope to gain support among our Congressional oversight authorities to retain the National Drug Strategy as a conceptional structure for the next decade to organize our thinking, to organize our budgets, and to organize our approaches to this problem. We are writing performance measures to gauge the effectiveness of the strategy. We will go to Congress this year with the thirty-two objectives and the next generation of a five-year budget. We will reveal the targets we can achieve and the outcomes we seek.
I do not think this task will be easy. Within three to four years, we must operate the National Drug Control Strategy with the same degree of seriousness and purpose with which IBM or the national security process operates. I urge you to learn more about the National Drug Control Strategy. It entails a dynamic process to meet a dynamic threat. The approach must be comprehensive and sustained, lasting for at least ten years. James McDonough, our senior strategist, will talk more about the Strategy tomorrow.
The next document is the 1996 National Methamphetamine Strategy. Attorney General Janet Reno and many people in the Department of Justice, along with the assistance of ONDCP, produced this strategy. We will eventually update this document, but it already provides very good guidance. We have the bipartisan support of Congress, and many committed people are involved, including Senator Bob Kerrey.
A must-read publication from the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) is the Proceedings of the National Consensus Meeting on Methamphetamine. This document has implications for prevention, treatment and research. When we talk to the public, we constantly warn about the effects of drugs on the brain. Studying the impact of drugs on human behavior helps us understand what methamphetamine does, in particular, to young people. Medical information is also useful when discussing methamphetamine with the news media. This publication provides another baseline data point and deserves your attention today.
The final document is the 1997 Methamphetamine Strategy Update for the President. This was an internal document, but we published it to offer an overview of current events in the field. With the results of this meeting, we expect to publish another white paper that will complete our understanding of our posture against this drug threat.
More than 375 atendees from across the nation attendedthe conference. |
Methamphetamine is a dangerously subtle drug. It may be used as a tool for weight loss. Athletes use methamphetamine to give a burst of energy to their athletic capabilities while long-distance truckers use it to stay awake longer. In years past, offshoots of the amphetamine family were used by combat pilots and ground units on long patrols. For the weak, this drug conveys an illusion of empowerment: a 120-pound boy may feel like a giant killer after taking this drug. It produces an extended high for those seeking pleasure. Nevertheless, the drug's impact on bodily functions, mental acuity, social sense of responsibility, and psychological stability is deleterious.
We must get the word out. We must reveal the entire story about methamphetamine. Violent, irrational behavior will become increasingly common in our society if we cannot prevent methamphetamine abuse. Such abuse may become a nightmare that causes long-term damage to children. This threat to American kids, who are also exposed to byproduct vapors during the drug's production, involves a dangerous chemical hazard. We must start working now.
When I shouldered this responsibility a year or so ago, I found many people on the Hill, in both parties and both Houses who are knowledgeable about drug abuse in America. Among the people who have devoted their entire lives to fighting drug abuse are Orrin Hatch, Joe Biden, Denny Hastert, Rob Portman, Steny Hoyer, and Charlie Rangel. Many reasonable men and women want to make a contribution in this area and will support common-sense thinking when it is presented to them.
Senator Bob Kerrey has been a leader in the field. His background as a pharmacist gives him special insight into the problem while his years of public service help him understand policy implications. He is also a successful businessman who knows how to make change happen. He has been reticent to take credit for his efforts on the Hill, but I frequently benefit from his counsel and support. Please join me in welcoming our co-host, Senator Bob Kerrey.
