U.S. GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE

72–448 DTP WASHINGTON : 2001

THE MIDWEST METHAMPHETAMINE EPIDEMIC

HEARING

BEFORE THE

SUBCOMMITTEE ON CRIMINAL JUSTICE,

DRUG POLICY, AND HUMAN RESOURCES

OF THE

COMMITTEE ON

GOVERNMENT REFORM

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

ONE HUNDRED SIXTH CONGRESS

SECOND SESSION

JUNE 26, 2000

Serial No. 106–226

Printed for the use of the Committee on Government Reform

(

Available via the World Wide Web: http://www.gpo.gov/congress/house

http://www.house.gov/reform

For sale by the Superintendent of Documents, U.S. Government Printing Office

Internet: bookstore.gpo.gov Phone: (202) 512–1800 Fax: (202) 512–2250

Mail: Stop SSOP, Washington, DC 20402–0001

(II)

COMMITTEE ON GOVERNMENT REFORM

DAN BURTON, Indiana, Chairman

BENJAMIN A. GILMAN, New York

CONSTANCE A. MORELLA, Maryland

CHRISTOPHER SHAYS, Connecticut

ILEANA ROS-LEHTINEN, Florida

JOHN M. MCHUGH, New York

STEPHEN HORN, California

JOHN L. MICA, Florida

THOMAS M. DAVIS, Virginia

DAVID M. MCINTOSH, Indiana

MARK E. SOUDER, Indiana

JOE SCARBOROUGH, Florida

STEVEN C. LATOURETTE, Ohio

MARSHALL ‘‘MARK’’ SANFORD, South

Carolina

BOB BARR, Georgia

DAN MILLER, Florida

ASA HUTCHINSON, Arkansas

LEE TERRY, Nebraska

JUDY BIGGERT, Illinois

GREG WALDEN, Oregon

DOUG OSE, California

PAUL RYAN, Wisconsin

HELEN CHENOWETH-HAGE, Idaho

DAVID VITTER, Louisiana

HENRY A. WAXMAN, California

TOM LANTOS, California

ROBERT E. WISE, JR., West Virginia

MAJOR R. OWENS, New York

EDOLPHUS TOWNS, New York

PAUL E. KANJORSKI, Pennsylvania

PATSY T. MINK, Hawaii

CAROLYN B. MALONEY, New York

ELEANOR HOLMES NORTON, Washington,

DC

CHAKA FATTAH, Pennsylvania

ELIJAH E. CUMMINGS, Maryland

DENNIS J. KUCINICH, Ohio

ROD R. BLAGOJEVICH, Illinois

DANNY K. DAVIS, Illinois

JOHN F. TIERNEY, Massachusetts

JIM TURNER, Texas

THOMAS H. ALLEN, Maine

HAROLD E. FORD, JR., Tennessee

JANICE D. SCHAKOWSKY, Illinois

———

BERNARD SANDERS, Vermont

(Independent)

KEVIN BINGER, Staff Director

DANIEL R. MOLL, Deputy Staff Director

DAVID A. KASS, Deputy Counsel and Parliamentarian

LISA SMITH ARAFUNE, Chief Clerk

PHIL SCHILIRO, Minority Staff Director

SUBCOMMITTEE ON CRIMINAL JUSTICE, DRUG POLICY, AND HUMAN RESOURCES

JOHN L. MICA, Florida, Chairman

BOB BARR, Georgia

BENJAMIN A. GILMAN, New York

CHRISTOPHER SHAYS, Connecticut

ILEANA ROS-LEHTINEN, Florida

MARK E. SOUDER, Indiana

STEVEN C. LATOURETTE, Ohio

ASA HUTCHINSON, Arkansas

DOUG OSE, California

DAVID VITTER, Louisiana

PATSY T. MINK, Hawaii

EDOLPHUS TOWNS, New York

ELIJAH E. CUMMINGS, Maryland

DENNIS J. KUCINICH, Ohio

ROD R. BLAGOJEVICH, Illinois

JOHN F. TIERNEY, Massachusetts

JIM TURNER, Texas

JANICE D. SCHAKOWSKY, Illinois

EX OFFICIO

DAN BURTON, Indiana HENRY A. WAXMAN, California

SHARON PINKERTON, Staff Director and Chief Counsel

CHARLEY DIAZ, Congressional Fellow

RYAN MCKEE, Clerk

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C O N T E N T S

Page

Hearing held on June 26, 2000 ............................................................................... 1

Statement of:

Frisbie, Joe, chief, Sioux City Police Department; Marti J. Reilly, TriState Drug Task Force; and Penny Westfall, commissioner of public

safety, State of Iowa ..................................................................................... 10

Phillips, Linda, executive director, Siouxland Cares; and Carla Van

Hofwegen, president, board of directors, Hava Java ................................. 50

Schoon, Leroy, president, Schoon Construction; and Jamey Miller, Rudy

Salem Staffing Services ................................................................................ 70

Letters, statements, etc., submitted for the record by:

Frisbie, Joe, chief, Sioux City Police Department, prepared statement

of ..................................................................................................................... 13

Mica, Hon. John L., a Representative in Congress from the State of

Florida, prepared statement of .................................................................... 5

Phillips, Linda, executive director, Siouxland Cares, prepared statement

of ..................................................................................................................... 53

Reilly, Marti J., Tri-State Drug Task Force, prepared statement of ........... 20

Schoon, Leroy, president, Schoon Construction, prepared statement of ...... 72

Van Hofwegen, Carla, president, board of directors, Hava Java, prepared

statement of ................................................................................................... 62

Westfall, Penny, commissioner of public safety, State of Iowa, prepared

statement of ................................................................................................... 27

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THE MIDWEST METHAMPHETAMINE

EPIDEMIC

MONDAY, JUNE 26, 2000

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, SUBCOMMITTEE ON CRIMINAL JUSTICE, DRUG POLICY, AND HUMAN RESOURCES, COMMITTEE ON GOVERNMENT REFORM, Sioux City, IA.

The subcommittee met, pursuant to notice, at 9 a.m., in room 6,

Sioux City Convention Center, Sioux City, IA, Hon. John L. Mica

(chairman of the subcommittee) presiding.

Present: Representative Mica.

Also present: Representatives Latham and Thune.

Staff present: Charley Diaz, congressional fellow; and Ryan

McKee, clerk.

Mr. MICA. Good morning. I’d like to call this hearing of the Subcommittee on Criminal Justice, Drug Policy, and Human Resources

to order. I’m John Mica, and I Chair this subcommittee of the Government Reform Committee of the House of Representatives.

The order of business this morning will be first I will begin our

hearing with an opening statement, then I will yield to other Members for their opening comments.

This morning our subcommittee has three panels to hear from,

and we will proceed in hearing those three panels and the witnesses assembled this morning. Just for information of those attending, this is an investigations and oversight subcommittee of

the U.S. House of Representatives, and this is one of the hearings

that we’re conducting on the problem of drug abuse and illegal narcotics. The title of today’s hearing is Midwest Methamphetamine

Epidemic. We will proceed in that order.

As chairman of the Criminal Justice, Drug Policy, and Human

Resources Subcommittee, it’s my responsibility to help oversee our

Nation’s drug control efforts in the U.S. House of Representatives.

We’ve come to Sioux City, IA, in the Heartland of America this

morning to conduct an oversight field hearing in an effort to understand what’s going on throughout the Nation and particularly here

in the Heartland dealing with our Nation’s drug crisis. Congressional field hearings are a very crucial part of our work because

they allow us to gain a national perspective through the eyes of

local citizens and local officials. Today, we’ll learn about the manufactured use and trafficking of illegal drugs here in Iowa and the

surrounding regions.

I had a little geography lesson this morning realizing how this

is a tri-State area bordering South Dakota and also Nebraska and

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the tremendous impact illegal narcotics have had on these communities in this region of our country. Our focus in this morning’s

hearing is the growing methamphetamine epidemic that’s ravaging

the Midwest.

We’re privileged to have with us today a congressional leader

who strongly supports efforts to protect our communities from the

ravages of illegal narcotics. I am here foremost at the invitation of

that Representative, Tom Latham, who during my year and a half

as chairman of the Drug Policy Subcommittee has constantly reminded me about the need to pay attention to all of America, particularly this region, and the impact of illegal narcotics, and I

thank him for his leadership in that regard and also for the invitation to be with you today and visit this community.

We’re also joined by another leader in the House of Representatives, John Thune, who represents the adjacent district in South

Dakota. He also has taken on a leadership role in trying to find answers to this plaguing question that we have a problem of illegal

narcotics, and I thank him for joining us on our panel this morning.

Growing up in rural America used to be a shield against the

seedier side of America’s urban culture, including the problem of illegal drugs.

Unfortunately, all that’s changed. The National Center for Addiction and Substance Abuse recently announced that the rate of drug

use among teens in rural America is now higher than the Nation’s

large urban centers.

In a White Paper which was published last January, the center

found that eighth graders living in rural America were 104 percent

more likely to use amphetamines, including methamphetamines, 83

percent more likely to use crack cocaine, and 34 percent more likely to smoke marijuana than kids in the urban areas. These sobering statistics should serve as a wake-up call to parents and community leaders across the Midwest. Your kids are in fact at risk.

Drugs are no longer just a big city problem.

Nationwide drugs directly killed 15,973 Americans in 1998.

That’s our last year of reported statistics. And many of those unfortunately are young people. The number of all drug-related deaths

is much higher, and Barry McCaffrey, our national drug czar, testified before this subcommittee and said we’ve lost in the last year

more than 52,000 Americans as a result of both direct and indirect

causes related to illegal narcotics. This is in fact a staggering figure

when you consider that in the whole of the Vietnam war we lost

58,000 Americans. We’re losing that many almost every year in

this battle with illegal narcotics. Additionally drugs cost our society, and the range is somewhere between $110 billion and a quarter of a trillion dollars annually, $110 billion to a quarter of a trillion dollars annually. Clearly much more must be done to combat

the scourge.

We’re honored to have testifying before us today a number of

State and local officials as well as everyday citizens who are actively engaged here in responding to the drug crisis and its terrible

consequence on the youth of this region. These individuals serve on

the front lines in preventing, educating and treating illegal drug

use, both in our schools and in our communities as well as enforcVerDate 11-MAY-2000 09:47 Jun 11, 2001 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00006 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 C:\DOCS\72448.TXT HGOVREF1 PsN: HGOVREF1
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ing our laws. They are most in need of our support and assistance

at the Federal level, and also in joining together in a cooperative

effort.

This subcommittee is particularly interested in how many communities and how our communities and regions are dealing with

the critical responsibilities of successfully implementing our national, I say a national drug control strategy, not just a Federal

drug control strategy. It is important that this again be a cooperative and coordinated effort. After all, State and local officials have

their finger on the pulse of the community and can best respond

to threats like the illegal drug epidemic we’re facing. In Congress

we try to ensure that the Federal Government is doing everything

possible to assist you, both in reducing the supply of illegal narcotics as well as the demand for illegal drugs.

Today, we’re focusing on regional challenges and threats, like

Iowa and again this tri-State region. As we’ll hear, illegal drug production, use and trafficking pose special changes and dangers to

the schools, communities, law enforcement agencies and officials in

this region. The State of Iowa and the Midwest are increasingly becoming a primary consumption area for methamphetamine. While

many of the methamphetamines are imported from large labs in

Mexico and California, within the last several years this area has

experienced a dramatic increase in the number of clandestine

methamphetamine manufacturing labs. In fact in looking at the

statistics that were provided to me by staff, from 8 meth labs that

were seized in 1995, that’s only 5 years ago there were 8, to I’m

told more than 500 were seized in 1999, last year, a dramatic number, particularly given the population of this region.

These labs which use volatile precursor chemicals in dangerous

combinations pose an added risk to the dealers, to law enforcement

officials and to the entire community here.

In response to this terrible methamphetamine problem as well as

the continuing problems with a host of other illegal drugs, Iowa

along with Nebraska, Missouri, Kansas, North and South Dakota,

has been designated by the Office of National Drug Control Policy

as a high intensity drug trafficking area [HIDTA]. Our subcommittee is responsible for authorizing and overseeing the HIDTA program. We have 31 HIDTAs now across the Nation to help Federal,

State and local law enforcement entities better coordinate investigations, share intelligence, resources and conduct law enforcement operations. Today, we’ll learn more about the effectiveness

and operations of the Midwest HIDTA, hope to have a report on

that, including what progress it is making in combating illegal narcotics in this area.

I might say also that I’m extremely pleased at the leadership Mr.

Latham has taken in helping create a regional training center here

which I believe is the only center in the United States to provide

free training assistance to the local agencies particularly dealing

with the meth epidemic that you have had here. I salute him on

putting that effort together and we’ll hear a little bit about its success and challenges in this hearing.

Again, I applaud the continuing dedication and professionalism

of the witnesses who appear before us today, their willingness to

share their ideas, their needs, their recommendations with us. In

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Congress we always find the best ideas from those that we represent, and we try to take those ideas back and incorporate them

in our policy, and it is particularly important to our subcommittee

that we find successful solutions and cooperative efforts to face this

great challenge. And I might say too, I’ve been involved in many

things in business, in my life and personally, and I have never seen

a challenge like this that we face. It’s just an unbelievable challenge. I’m here in the Midwest today. We’ve been in California.

We’ve been in Louisiana, Texas. We’ve been in Baltimore, around

the Nation. And you aren’t alone. We are also facing an incredible

challenge with this drug threat and the problems that it has

caused for not only this community but our whole Nation.

I can assure you that the Representatives that we have here

today will be working with our subcommittee and with the other

committees involved in Congress to do everything we can to assist

you in ridding your community and others of the deadly poison that

is affecting our loved ones. I think all of us recognize that this drug

crisis demands a full utilization of all available resources and very

close cooperation in a comprehensive regional and national effort.

After all that’s what HIDTAs have been designed to do and it’s our

job in Congress to monitor and ensure their success. If obstacles

are identified then we must move to decisively overcome them.

This community, this State and this Nation really can’t afford to

wait. The drug crisis demands promising approaches and decisive

action, and we must act now.

Again I want to thank the witnesses for appearing before us, and

I want to thank my colleagues, Mr. Latham for the invitation to

be here, Mr. Thune also for his leadership on this issue and both

of them representing this area again on this tremendous problem.

With those comments I’m pleased at this time to yield to the gentleman from Iowa, Mr. Latham.

[The prepared statement of Hon. John L. Mica follows:]

5

6

7

Mr. LATHAM. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. And I very

much appreciate your taking special efforts to get here. We had the

opportunity to have breakfast together this morning and to hear

the saga of Mr. Mica making it to Sioux City yesterday coming

from upstate New York yesterday and the various flights and challenges that you faced to get here. Very much appreciated. And

what is most appreciated is your tremendous leadership in Congress on this most important issue I believe as far as the future

for our young people, and really gets to the whole fabric of what

our society believes it should be in maintaining the kind of society

that we can all be proud of. I also want to thank John Thune, my

very good friend and neighbor, for being here and his leadership in

Congress on this issue.

We really became aware in the last 5 years of what is a tremendously changing dynamic and problem in this part of the country.

As you stated before, back in 1995 there were eight meth labs. Last

year over 500. I think that’s just what the State officials found. In

addition to that with the DEA records there’s another several hundred actually in the State of Iowa. But this is an epidemic that has

absolutely exploded before us.

With your leadership, Mr. Chairman, and efforts in Congress and

the administration, I think we’ve made some very positive steps

for, No. 1, looking at the interdiction problem, coming from other

countries, No. 2, being of assistance to local law enforcement which

has done a great challenge. There are differing ideas in Congress

as to how to approach this problem, and who to support. I personally think that by supporting people on the ground, local law enforcement, that that is the way to go, because they are the ones

that have to deal on a day to day basis with the problem.

The education programs that we’re seeing today in the Siouxland

area was 1 of the 12 original pilot programs as far as the education

efforts, and what we found there was that with the media messages that were going out we had a great effect on young children.

But when we got to the high school age there was much less effect.

What the most important part of that effort is is to finally have

parents become aware of the fact that if they will simply sit down

and talk to their children about this problem, that is in fact the

most effective method of influencing these children never to get involved in drugs. And it’s something that I think we as parents

today think someone else is going to talk to our kids. Unfortunately

it’s going to be the drug dealer. If we don’t talk to them somebody

else will, and that person doesn’t have their best hope and aspirations in mind for them. They want to sell them drugs.

Treatment has also become a very, and is always a very important part of the four-pronged strategy that we’re trying to put forward. And that is something that we in Congress are putting more

and more money into, trying to make sure the treatment is available. But as people here in this district all know, and I’ve had 23

county-wide drug meetings, drug awareness meetings throughout

this 30-county district. And it becomes more and more apparent

that in fact what we have to do is to have all parents aware of

what’s going on, be a joint effort with communities, with the

churches, with the schools, with the community groups involved to

really approach this problem in a unified basis, to make sure that

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there is a statement in our society about zero tolerance for drugs.

And if we can do that I think we’ve set a standard in our communities. We do not want to destroy what is very, very good about the

upper Midwest, about Iowa, South Dakota, Nebraska, and this I

think is the biggest threat to the long-term well being and safety

of this whole part of the country.

So again I want to thank you very much, Mr. Chairman, for

being here and making extraordinary efforts to be here. And I really look forward to the testimony from great people who are devoting their lives to addressing this problem, and these are the folks

here who are going to solve it. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. MICA. Thank you. Driving tornadoes, thunderstorms, going

through three different airports to get here, I don’t think there’s

anything that would have kept me from this, because Mr. Latham

has repeatedly brought this community and this region problem to

my attention, and I was going to be here come hell or high water.

Again thank you.

I’m pleased now to yield to the gentleman from South Dakota,

Mr. Thune.

Mr. THUNE. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Let me echo my colleague

from Iowa and say welcome to Siouxland as we like to call it here.

Thank you for coming in the summer. We would certainly welcome

the opportunity to return the favor and attend a hearing in your

State of Florida in January perhaps. I do appreciate the leadership

you have taken on in this issue. I would also say to my colleague

from Iowa, Tom Latham, who is as close to a delegation that I have

since I am the only member from South Dakota, we work very

closely on a number of issues, whether it’s agriculture or water development or transportation funding or anything like that in this

part of the country, we really do have to work as a team, so I appreciate very much the leadership that Tom provides to many of

those issues and the impact that they have on my State of South

Dakota.

I would just simply add to what has already been said and say

that this is a personal issue for me. I have two young daughters,

one of whom is in junior high and another who will be in junior

high in a year, and nothing is more important to me as a parent

than eliminating the scourge of illegal drugs that is destroying

minds and ambitions of our young people.

We just don’t have any alternative. We have to snuff this thing

out. I think that my experience is in a lot of issues like this that

our faith-based institutions, our families, our community-based organizations are much more successful in helping solve and address

these issues. Obviously there is a national responsibility here in

the area I think of interdiction and cutting off the supply at the

source, but when it comes to prevention, when it comes to education, when it comes to treatment, there are a lot of good things

that are going on out there, and we want to make sure that we are

good partners with local law enforcement, with those who are involved in efforts to combat, fight illegal drugs, and we want to

work closely with you to make sure the resources are there, the

tools are in place and we can successfully put together strategies

that will help us really attack this problem.

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It is a great concern. I never would have thought, I grew up in

the western part of South Dakota in a real small town, that we

would be talking about this in the terms that we are today in a

State like ours, and States like Iowa and Nebraska. But we are a

high intensity drug trafficking area. That’s a label, designation

that is a concern, but it’s also I think welcome in the sense that

it helps us attack this problem and work collectively in putting together regional strategies that will help us address it.

I am here today to listen and to learn and to find out exactly

what the dimensions of some of the issues and the problems are,

and then to hear from people who care very deeply about this,

about what we might do to better combat it.

So thank you for the opportunity to be here, Mr. Chairman.

Thank you for being here. And, Tom, thank you for hosting us in

Sioux City, and I want to work collectively.

I was noting in the testimony here too the number of deaths that

are directly attributed to drugs, and those that are indirectly, and

I would say that one is too many. We need to do everything we can

to get to where we have this issue in hand to where we’re not losing any of our young people to this problem.

Thank you for the chance to be here. I look forward to the testimony and I hope we have an opportunity to ask questions later.

Thanks.

Mr. MICA. Thank you, Mr. Thune. I didn’t get to see Mr. Thune

earlier, but Tom and I did have coffee this morning together. I told

him I feel a little bit like coming home. Actually my uncle who was

the first Mica to go to college came to Iowa and received his degree

here. My first job on graduating from college was in Iowa City

where I worked for a little over a year, and actually my last business venture was in Aberdeen, SD. I started the cellular RSA service in Aberdeen, so I felt a little bit of a kinship to this area and

pleased to be back, and to also conduct this most important field

hearing.

We’ll now proceed, and Mr. Latham moves that we keep the

record open for a period of 2 weeks, and without objection that is

so ordered.

I might just say for those visiting, we do have a limited number

of witnesses who are testifying because it’s impossible to hear from

everyone in these official proceedings. However, the action which I

just took and we passed by unanimous consent would allow anyone

who would like to submit comments or statements for the record

to submit them either to me as Chair of the subcommittee, or to

Mr. Latham or Mr. Thune for inclusion and part of the official proceedings of today’s hearing, and that will be open for a period of

2 weeks.

Now as we proceed, I would like to go to our witness panel, and

we do have three panels today.

The first panel consists of Mr. Joe Frisbie, and he is the chief of

the Sioux City Police Department. The second panelist is Marti J.

Reilly, and Marti Reilly is with the Tri-State Drug Task Force. And

then the third witness is Penny Westfall, and she is the commissioner of Public Safety for the State of Iowa.

Again let me explain, since I don’t think you’ve testified before

our subcommittee before, this is an investigations and oversight

10

subcommittee of the House of Representatives. In that regard we

do swear in our witnesses. Additionally, in our proceedings we

would ask that if you have a lengthy statement or statement beyond 5 minutes that you request and through the chair I will move

by unanimous consent that we make an entire statement part of

the record, a lengthy statement. We’ll also include data information

or background material upon similar requests to the Chair.

With those opening comments, if I could, would you please stand

to be sworn. Would you raise your right hands.

[Witnesses sworn.]

Mr. MICA. The witnesses, the record will reflect, answered in the

affirmative.

I’m pleased to welcome you before our subcommittee. Again

pleased to be here with you this morning. I’ll recognize first for his

statement the chief of the Sioux City Police Department, Mr. Joe

Frisbie. You’re recognized, sir.

STATEMENTS OF JOE FRISBIE, CHIEF, SIOUX CITY POLICE DEPARTMENT; MARTI J. REILLY, TRI-STATE DRUG TASK

FORCE; AND PENNY WESTFALL, COMMISSIONER OF PUBLIC

SAFETY, STATE OF IOWA

Mr. FRISBIE. Mr. Chairman, Congressman Latham, Congressman

Thune, thank you for being here today.

There’s no question that the methamphetamine problem in the

Midwest, specifically in Sioux City, has reached an epidemic proportion. We have a long history of addressing the drug problem as

a local problem. Communities in our tri-State area have suffered

jurisdictional problems in developing cases. We’ve suffered a shortage of resources that prevent us from addressing the problem beyond the street level.

In the past several problems have prevented us from conducting

investigations in an organized manner, such as a lack of training

funds, especially for smaller communities, a lack of collaboration

between agencies, the absence of a highly organized sharing of information of intelligence systems, the lack of an organized task

force to conduct collaborative investigations and a lack of Federal

support beyond peripheral involvement. We have made some

progress. While effort was made to address the problem in major

metropolitan cities and ports of entry, the Midwest remained an

open and lucrative market that offered little risk.

However, there have been some promising developments that

have been made over the last 8 to 10 years that have helped us

become more organized in our approach to dealing with the drug

problem in our area. In 1992, the Federal Government brought in

two DEA agents to Sioux City. In 1995, they formed a provisional

task force with the DEA with the help of Congressman Latham. In

1997, again with the help of Congressman Latham, we were able

to establish a resident office for the DEA here in Sioux City. In

1997, it had become apparent that a significant number of individuals driving the drug culture in our area were illegal aliens. Congressman Latham again helped us secure an INS agent for our

task force. In 1998 Congressman Latham helped secure funds to

build a facility in the Federal building to house the task force. In

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1999 again Congressman Latham helped us turn the task force into

a fully funded task force.

The task force today is made up of 18 sworn officers, 2 analysts,

3 of these are DEA agents, 6 are Sioux City police officers, and the

remainder represent the States of South Dakota, Nebraska, Iowa

DNE, the South Sioux City Police Department, the Woodbury

County Sheriff’s Office. Becoming a DEA-sponsored task force allowed us to deputize all officers in the task force giving them the

jurisdiction to follow the cases anywhere in the country. All this

was made possible by congressional help that we’ve received from

such grants as the Byrne and the HIDTA funding. Thanks to this

support we are able to address cases with as broad a scope as

Sioux Falls, SD, Fort Dodge, Norfolk and Omaha, NE, Worthington, MN, and many other communities.

Recently HIDTA conducted a survey to assess the perceived

strengths and weaknesses in law enforcement agencies today. Perceived strengths included a more cooperative approach to law enforcement with better communication, sharing of equipment and facilities, multi-jurisdictional task force which removed boundaries

among jurisdictions, fueled a law enforcement cooperative effort

and leading to the dissemination to not only drugs but property

and violent crimes as well. And better prosecution has been secured by the U.S. Federal attorney’s office who has increased the

number of prosecutors dealing with the drug problems in our communities, specifically through HIDTA grants which help us tremendously.

Perceived weaknesses revealed in the responses included insufficient funding for equipment, investigations and training, and insufficient manpower, especially in smaller agencies to spare officers to

attend training. Congressman Latham approached me several

years ago about the idea of establishing a training center in Sioux

City that would address these problems. The goal of the training

center is to provide training to agencies previously not able to train

effectively, either due to a shortage of funding or manpower, especially smaller agencies. Over the past 3 years we have provided

training to over 5,309 students within a 150 mile radius of Sioux

City. Training is offered in such courses as clandestine laboratories, drug awareness recognition, the Reid technique on interrogation for narcotics and many others.

Training through the center is offered free of charge to officers

of law enforcement agencies of Iowa, Nebraska, South Dakota and

a part of Minnesota. The response has been overwhelming, but we

need to work harder to reach the small agencies that can’t afford

the loss of manpower to send officers even if the training is free.

The training center and the seminars provide available opportunity

for officers to share information and make contacts that can later

help them develop cases in the future, and it’s imperative that we

receive congressional support in this endeavor, we plan to develop

a multi-jurisdictional geographic information system [GIS], to coordinate drug intelligence information for agencies through the triState area.

In closing, you can see that where we came from and where we

are today are light years apart, and yet we have to travel much

further to eliminate the methamphetamine problem in our country.

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I ask for your continued support for the programs such as the

Byrne and HIDTA grants, the multi-jurisdictional task force that

have provided proven methods for improving our approach. We

thank you for the support and urge its continuation.

However, the drug problem does not exist in isolation. Other

problems considered include the illegal alien problem that drives

the drug trafficking problem and the need for demand reduction

programs.

Also, we have become victims of our own success. By further contributing to the jails that are already filled beyond their capacity,

and it’s a terrible problem all across the country.

We urge Congress to keep all these issues in mind as they initiate and guide policy that guides both our local and our national

fight against the problem of methamphetamine.

Again I’d like to personally thank Congressman Latham for his

overwhelming support in this committee and Congress as a whole

for their efforts. Thank you very much.

Mr. MICA. Thank you for your testimony.

[The prepared statement of Mr. Frisbie follows:]

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Mr. MICA. We’ll withhold questioning until we have heard from

all the witnesses.

I’ll recognize now Marti J. Reilly who is with the Tri-State Drug

Task Force. You’re recognized.

Mr. REILLY. Good morning, gentlemen. My name is Marti Reilly.

I’m a sergeant with the Sioux City, IA, Police Department. I have

been a police officer for 19 years. My current assignment is the TriState Drug Task Force where I am the group supervisor.

The Tri-State Task Force is a multi-jurisdictional drug investigation group located in Sioux City. The task force was formed in 1995

to combat the ever-growing drug problem in Nebraska, Iowa, South

Dakota area which we refer to as the tri-States. By 1995, it was

obvious to those of us who worked drug investigations that we had

a larger problem, primarily with methamphetamine, than we as individual agencies could handle alone. With Federal assistance

through the Drug Enforcement Administration, local and State law

enforcement agents could work together as deputized task force officers. This did allow us to operate without jurisdictional boundaries around us. That didn’t stop the drug dealers, and instead it

was stopping us.

Our group today has 18 agents and officers working together in

a centralized office. The group receives funding from DEA, through

HIDTA, and through the Gothic grants.

I worked drug investigations in Sioux City for 7 years over three

different periods of time. I started working drug investigations in

1988. The drugs we were seeing available on the street at that time

were powder cocaine and marijuana. I stopped working drugs in

1990 and then returned to working drug investigations in the fall

of 1993.

In that 3-year period while I was gone the new drug that hit the

streets of Sioux City was methamphetamine and it hit in a big

way. The first seizure of methamphetamine that we had in the

Sioux City area was 92 percent pure, and we discovered a pound

at that time. That was controlled by a Mexican male subject who

was not interested in cooperating with law enforcement on where

his drugs came from.

This marked the beginning of a disturbing trend that continues

to this day. While the Hispanic population has grown in our community, Mexican drug dealers have been able to blend into neighborhoods and communities. While attempting not to paint a picture

with a wide brush, we have found that drug dealers at the top of

the distribution network in our area predominantly are resident

aliens or illegal aliens from Mexico.

New terms have sprung up in the drug community, terms like

Mexican Meth and Mexican Mafia. The term Mexican Meth is due

to the fact that in our investigations the higher up the source scale

you seem to go, Mexicans seem to control the drugs. The term

Mexican Mafia seems to identify the methods used by these drug

dealers in the way that they conduct business.

We have very good Hispanic families in our community. Dealers,

like I said earlier, try hard to blend in. We have a disproportionate

number of Hispanics involved in drug trafficking in this area. Meth

laboratories or lab manufacturing has somewhat increased in our

area. It’s not as overwhelming as it is in the rest of the State, but

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our particular area has increased mostly due to the quality of the

methamphetamine going down significantly and the prices remaining the same. Therefore, they’re getting into manufacturing on

small scales.

In the tri-State area we have approximately 120,000 people. We

received intelligence information reports of much larger amounts

than we could possibly support in this area. We in the area are referred to as the hub city, a title that we are working hard to

change. One of the things that go hand in hand with large amounts

of drugs are large amounts of money. The task force is working

hard to interdict and intercept as many and as much methamphetamine as we possibly can.

An area that we could use help in is with financial investigations. Many drug investigations have a member of the Internal

Revenue Service working with them who specialize in investigations. We do not have an IRS agent in our group. I believe the seizing process away from drug organizations hurts the drug organization more than seizing drugs.

Last, I request that this group seriously look into the problem of

illegal immigration in this country. The problem facing us now is

that we have to take the good with the bad. The bad control drug

trafficking in our area. We deal with subjects who get arrested and

flee back to Mexico. These subjects have several identities and are

gone out of the area before their true identities are known. We also

see many transient transporters who show up with multiple

pounds of methamphetamine who know little of the organization or

who are willing to tell us anything about their organizations or cooperating. We have found that only through cooperative approaches

to investigating and information sharing from law enforcement has

an impact on the problems that have been faced in the Midwest.

Thank you.

Mr. MICA. Thank you for your testimony.

[The prepared statement of Mr. Reilly follows:]

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Mr. MICA. As I said, we’ll withhold questions till we’ve heard

from all of the panel.

On the panel the last witness is Penny Westfall and she is the

Commissioner of Public Safety for the State of Iowa. You’re recognized.

Ms. WESTFALL. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. We did bring along

additional graphs and information that we would ask—— Mr. MICA. Without objection those graphs and that information

will be made part of the official record. Please proceed.

Ms. WESTFALL. Over the last 5 years Iowa has been subject to

dramatic increases in the number of meth labs that we have seized.

Due to that the Department of Public Safety created a specialized

team which is made up of members from different divisions within

the department, the Division of Narcotics Enforcement, the Iowa

State Patrol, the State Fire Marshal’s Office and chemists from the

Division of Criminal Investigation criminal laboratories. This team

provides assistance to Federal, county and State law enforcement

through the State of Iowa.

As you know, the labs have increased tremendously from a small

number to over 500 seized by the State last year. In addition to

that there were 300 seized by the city and county law enforcement

agencies, so we were over 800 labs seized.

Two manufacturing methods are used in Iowa, the Nazi method

and the red phosphorus. The primary one is the Nazi method. We

have seen a change in clan lab operations. Labs are getting larger,

capable of producing larger quantities of methamphetamine. The

pooling of efforts and precursors by the smaller lab operators is occurring. The agents of the Division of Narcotics Enforcement are

working major methamphetamine lab conspiracy cases involving

multiple lab operators. Our intelligence gained through cooperating

individuals indicates several out-of-state organizations view Iowa

as a fertile ground to set up large-scale operations.

The locations of Iowa’s lab sites tend to be seasonal in nature.

As the weather warms, the clan lab operations move to the rural

open areas, and as winter approaches they become more urbanized

by migrating back indoors. We have found labs in major metropolitan areas and in most rural areas. They have been found in various

locations, and we have several small farm communities along the

Iowa-Missouri borders that have experienced a large number of

labs.

The Department of Public Safety has sponsored four 40-hour

OSHA certified lab certification schools during 1999 to assist local

law enforcement agencies in combating the meth problem. Sixtynine sworn city officers and 11 firefighters attended and were subsequently certified. We’ve also done several, four 1-day re-certification courses. The Division of Narcotics Enforcement, supported

by the State Fire Marshal’s Office, presented 90 classes on methamphetamine clandestine lab recognition to over 6,500 people.

These classes were comprised of sworn officers and full and voluntary firefighters.

The Iowa State Patrol established a full-time 11-person highway

interdiction team in July 1999 to deter the importation of meth.

Approximately 85 percent of our meth is believed to be imported

from outside States. The Iowa State Patrol has 48 troopers who are

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clan lab certified. These troopers reside throughout the State and

can respond to assist as needed.

Last year the Division of Narcotics Enforcement requested and

received additional sworn officers, permitting the assignment of 11

agents to full-time meth lab enforcement efforts. The State Fire

Marshal’s Office has seven lab certified officers which respond to

clan lab sites to assist in the identification and removal of explosive

substances and devices when found. The State Fire Marshal’s Office is responding to more fires that are the result of accidents occurring during the manufacturing of meth.

The Division of Criminal Investigation’s crime laboratory is also

severely impacted by the number of active labs and seizures.

Prompt analysis of the evidence is critical to any prosecution. Many

of the lab sites seized require the presence of a chemist. This in

turn slows down the evidence analysis. The DCI has six certified

clan lab chemists. Last year they earned over $21,000 in standby

time and over $52,000 in actual overtime at lab sites. This total is

just under what is expended for the remaining 40-member crime

laboratory staff. The current crime laboratory is severely limited in

space. New facilities are needed as soon as possible to meet the demand for prompt testing. The passage of the National Forensic

Science Improvement Act is imperative.

These labs are extremely resource-demanding. Officers are diverted from their regular assignments, requiring overtime pay, the

specialized equipment and physicals continue to rise. The clan lab

related overtime costs to the department exceed thousands of dollars each quarter, including the recertifications.

The specialized equipment required to safely enter lab sites is cost-prohibitive to most agencies. Even a small lab may cost $1,200

in expendable items. The actual cost of physicals is also quite costly. They are truly a safety concern. Lab sites are not only places

where illegal substances are produced, but innocent people are subjected to possible explosion, fire and carcinogenic wastes. These

labs are manpower and resource draining, costing thousands of dollars to clean up.

It is imperative that the DEA be funded for their lab site cleanups and they help refund the States that had to cover the costs

when they ran out of money.

In closing, the labs create a true public safety hazard that demands law enforcement response. We appreciate your being here to

address that.

Mr. MICA. Thank you so much.

[The prepared statement of Ms. Westfall follows:]

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Mr. MICA. I appreciate all of the witnesses on the panel providing us with testimony this morning.

Let me start with a few questions if I may.

You’ve cited a couple of areas that are national responsibility,

and that we need attention on this problem. One is the problem I

guess of illegals coming into this area. What percentage of illegals

of those who are involved in this meth production activity or criminal activity are illegals, is it a small percentage?

Mr. FRISBIE. I talked to Sergeant Reilly about this recently, and

the figure we come up with is around 50 to 60 percent.

Mr. MICA. Fifty to 60 percent.

Mr. FRISBIE. Of the people that have been arrested in our community for the drug problems, methamphetamine, have been Hispanic, Hispanic individuals. They’re highly over-represented.

Mr. MICA. I’m talking, they’re illegals, they’re not people who are

here legitimately?

Mr. FRISBIE. That’s right.

Mr. MICA. What about cooperation from INS, a Federal agency,

in removing these individuals? I mean, if we have that many people who are here illegally to begin with, not to mention their criminal activity, it is a Federal responsibility to remove them. Are you

getting proper attention from INS, or is there proper resources to

deal with the illegal alien problem here?

Mr. FRISBIE. From the investigation standpoint, we have an INS

agent in the task force, but, however, the removal I think is by justice, there has been a problem. And of course the housing, where

to put these people, the length of time it takes to——

Mr. MICA. Process and move them out.

Are you also getting repeats now, are they coming back some of

them? You talked about some use of aliases.

Mr. REILLY. We have illegal re-entry problems. The thing is that

many times we have problems identifying them in the first place.

We do have an INS agent within our task force. The thing is that

they have to be convicted of a felony before deportation hearings

generally take place. So jail space is becoming more and more burdensome toward beds available. I think the standard is going to

continue to raise on what it takes to actually deportate.

Mr. MICA. That seems strange, because we get cases in Florida

all the time where people who are here innocent and come in, they

may have overstayed their stay, but they move them out in a

hurry.

Mr. REILLY. You’re a lot closer than we are.

Mr. MICA. So that’s one of your problems, geographic.

You said you don’t have an IRS agent as part of your effort here,

and you said you can also go after these folks through either a tax

evasion or some financial improper activity. Was that a recommendation?

Mr. REILLY. Yes, it was. IRS has a division called CID, Criminal

Investigation Division, that they’re law enforcement agents, not

just accountants, who specifically work on money laundering, and

that’s the type of agent we would like to see assigned to our task

force to assist us in the financial investigations of some of these organizations.

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Mr. MICA. I’d like to come away from these hearings with something positive. Maybe we can do a joint letter from us to local members, and may get some others to IRS. When I was chairman of

Civil Service, I had over 110,000 employees and thousands of criminal investigators. Maybe we can get one for this area. And if the

staff will remind me, we’ll initiate that good recommendation.

We know, and I’ve heard testimony among all three of you that

we have Mexican illegals or Mexican traffickers involved which is

kind of mind-boggling considering again the Heartland of America

here. How far back are we able to trace these? I know that you

probably have a certain number of people who immigrated here

and worked here and conduct themselves very well. But you have

got this illegal or criminal activity, and it must stem back to Mexico at least as far as supplies or finance. Is there a good connect

here? Is this something that the DEA and FBI are following up on?

And do we have the cooperation of Mexican officials in going after

the bad guys? Chief.

Mr. FRISBIE. I wish I could answer that.

Mr. MICA. You’re not seeing that?

Mr. FRISBIE. No.

Mr. MICA. Ms. Westfall.

Ms. WESTFALL. We work closely with the DEA and the FBI in

trying to develop the conspiracies and working with the Federal

drug task force. I can’t speak directly as far as the cooperation

from the Mexican Government, but we certainly are receiving the

cooperation from our Federal agencies in reaching, trying to reach

the conspiracies. It’s difficult.

Mr. MICA. Are there specific cases that you have been able to go

after and they’re tracing them back to Mexican dealers, and are we

seeing success, or was there some lack of resource or attention from

the DEA or FBI to this area and your specific problems? Be candid.

If you don’t want to tell me publicly, I’ll be glad, I don’t want to

embarrass anyone, and I know you work with these officials. But

our purpose in being here is to get the resources here and to make

certain that the Federal agencies are cooperating with the locals,

and sometimes that doesn’t always happen.

Mr. REILLY. Let me go ahead and explain a case to you to kind

of give you some idea what we see. We had an organization that

involved several family members that ran a business, an auto parts

business. In that business there were two, there was one in Iowa,

actually it was in Nebraska, and one in California. We continually

received information that this group was responsible for large

quantity shipments, 30 to 60 pounds methamphetamine coming

into this area every 2 to 3 weeks. We intercepted through a courier

that came out here without drugs with her, but she had a pickup

ticket at a local common carrier. We went out and with her cooperation we seized that auto part and x-rayed it. That auto part

contained seven pounds of methamphetamine, completely wrapped

in fiberglass, painted up to look like a spoiler on a car. When we

started working that conspiracy from that particular seizure, that

business disappeared. We sent agents immediately out to California because we figured that that was where they were going, is to

the other auto parts store. They disappeared from there also and

were back in Mexico within days.

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Mr. MICA. So the operation was linked to Mexican traffickers,

and this operation was just a front. Did the part come in from California or from Mexico?

Mr. REILLY. From California. Most of what we see is it seems

like the Hispanic groups that control the drug trafficking have

their last setup in California. I believe the chemicals come into

California, they’re manufactured in California, they’re shipped

through the Southwest.

Mr. MICA. Being shipped through legitimate carriers, too?

Mr. REILLY. Not ordinarily. I would say a vast majority of what

is shipped is in compartmentalized vehicles. The interdiction teams

are seeing more and more hidden compartments in semi-truck

trailers, in regular vehicles. They’re using families to look like mom

and pop and the kids in an RV that may contain 30 to 60 pounds

of drugs hidden in the vehicle. I think our roadways are inundated.

Mr. MICA. You also testified that 80 percent of this stuff is coming in already produced and you have got the labs on top of it producing it here. You have described the transport and entry of the

product and some of the routing. What about precursor chemicals

that are being used in the local production, what are we finding

here?

Mr. REILLY. That we have seen in our area, and I’ll let Penny

address the statewide, are mostly the meth labs where you could

get the precursor chemicals at a local hardware store, more like a

Wal-Mart type store.

Mr. MICA. So the precursors are not necessarily coming in from

Mexico?

Mr. REILLY. No. In fact, what we see the most of are smaller labs

that manufacture an ounce or less, and most of those precursor

chemicals are purchased at local department stores.

Mr. MICA. Finally let me ask you about the HIDTA. We’ve put

a lot of money in the HIDTAs. It’s sort of a food fight, everybody

going after the money. So many areas have such a tremendous

problem right now. We have limited resources, and we’re cutting

the pie slices a little bit thinner. How is your money spent here,

and do you feel it’s effective?

What I’d like to know is that some places build their own little

HIDTA bureaucracy. Some of them put money into different agencies. Some of them have cooperative efforts. Perhaps you could describe how your money is being spent and do you feel that that’s

the most effective way? Then if we had a few more dollars where

would you target, Chief Frisbee?

Mr. FRISBIE. We have six members of our task force right now

that are supported by HIDTA grants. Those, all six of those people

are investigators. Most of the money we have in our task force at

least is supporting investigative efforts. In fact it’s almost all of it

really.

Mr. MICA. How do you physically operate? Do you have a building? Some of these HIDTAs are buying buildings.

Mr. FRISBIE. That’s an interesting question.

When we first got in the business, we actually built our own out

of an old warehouse, and Congressman Latham came down and

took a look at it 1 day and said we probably should have something

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a little better than that. We actually built a center over in the

basement of the Federal Building.

Mr. MICA. Using an existing Federal resource and converting it.

What about administrative staff?

Mr. FRISBIE. One secretary. It’s a fairly nice arrangement.

Mr. MICA. But the bulk of your money is going into personnel

that are actively involved in investigating?

Mr. FRISBIE. Yes.

Ms. WESTFALL. Mr. Chairman, if I may, for the State, I think

speaking across the State, the HIDTA funds are essential for continuing the enforcement efforts across the State. I know with the

Department of Public Safety, ours goes to personnel, to overtime,

to equipment. We just recently received, asked the State, what are

you needing for interdiction, and we added equipment and items

that they’re needing also. So it’s multi, it covers several of the divisions within the Department of Public Safety.

Mr. MICA. Your HIDTA money is really for multi-state efforts,

too?

Ms. WESTFALL. Yes.

Mr. MICA. What ends up—like in Iowa, is there some kind of equitable distribution between Iowa, South Dakota and Nebraska? Is

Missouri in this area?

Ms. WESTFALL. Yes.

Mr. MICA. Tell me how that’s divided and is that a fair way to

do it?

Mr. FRISBIE. Mr. Chairman, if I may, if we could recognize Tim

Carter who is with us today from DNE, he was the chairman of the

board of the Midwest HIDTA, who could really address these questions quite well, if that would be permissible.

Mr. MICA. I’ll tell you what we’ll do. We can add him to the next

panel. He’s not on it. Or the last panel.

Ms. WESTFALL. We believe that it is being equitably shared, although some of the States have not been as active as Iowa and

Missouri has. So as other States become more active, then their requests are increasing for additional moneys, which means they will

be taking it from the States that have been using it in the past.

There are, I also understand, additional HIDTAs being formed that

will also—— Mr. MICA. My final question was again, we’ll put more money in

this time. Fortunately, we’re in a surplus position, and more money

will end up in HIDTAs overall. But then you get down to the specific activity that should be supported. If you had to list your top

choices, one or two, where we might put more funds, maybe you

could, Chief Frisbie and Ms. Westfall, maybe you could tell us what

you would do with that, the biggest need.

Mr. FRISBIE. Obviously always there’s a need for more manpower

for investigations.

Mr. MICA. So that would be the most effective use of our dollars

if we add them would be for additional investigative staff.

Mr. FRISBIE. Yes. Followed by prosecution.

And again I’ll tell you, one of the biggest problems that I see, I

keep hearing about it on a national level, we have over 1 million

people a year coming into this country illegally, which I think is

fueling the entire problem. It’s absolutely a huge problem. I don’t

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know that this exactly ties to HIDTA in any way. Something has

to be done about the influx of people into this country illegally. I

think everybody understands that.

The other problem is what bogs us down, some of the other problems we’re having is the administration of handling these people

once we do come up with them. When I said the jails are a problem

here, it’s not an exaggeration. Our jails are overflowing here to the

point there’s just no place to put anybody anymore.

Mr. MICA. How many of those are illegal?

Mr. FRISBIE. There’s no solution to it. I’d have to ask the sheriff

for a breakdown, but there’s a lot. The fact of the matter is there’s

no relief anywhere for this. We’ve been all over. We’ve been to the

State. We’ve been out to DC, here recently, talked about the problem, and quite honestly there isn’t anybody anywhere. We’re very

exasperated by this problem. We just don’t know what to do with

it.

Mr. MICA. We also conduct oversight and investigations, have

that responsibility over INS. Similar problem we’ve been hearing.

We did a hearing north of Atlanta, GA. I think there were 20,000

illegals in this small county north of Atlanta. I couldn’t believe

those figures, but the same thing we’re hearing. That may be something else we could weigh in and address. Did you want to comment in closing?

Ms. WESTFALL. We would use the additional moneys for personnel costs and equipment. The expendable equipment, the equipment that’s routinely needed and is extremely costly, the physicals

that are required to keep a certified lab person certified, all of that

is very expensive. Those would be some of the personnel costs that

we would be utilizing.

Would also note that in your earlier questioning with the INS,

they have been very responsive to us. It’s not unusual for the State

patrol to stop vehicles and find maybe 15 people in a van, maybe

30 persons in a rental truck, the kind you don’t know how people

have survived in such tight, tight quarters. They try to be very successful. There was publicity in the last couple of weeks of a stop

north of Des Moines in the Story County area where there were not

enough INS personnel to respond, so two people, without really

knowing who they were, had to be released because they couldn’t

come and take them. But they are really attempting to respond as

much as their personnel can be allowed to.

Mr. MICA. Thank you. I’ll yield now to Mr. Latham.

Mr. LATHAM. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.

I want to thank this panel very much for testimony. First of all,

I want to say as far as bringing another IRS agent in here, I’ll reserve judgment on that.

Mr. MICA. Maybe he can work on this.

Mr. LATHAM. To work specifically here, yes. I wish we had time

for all the entities to be on the panel here. I will tell you the local

law enforcement throughout the district, the sheriff offices, Sheriff

Amick back here does a great job. I see the State patrol here, and

the tremendous work that they have had, the tremendous job they

do. The State DCI, the INS. I was going to say as far as INS, and

we can get off into days of discussion, at the local level they do everything they can and I think do it very, very well. The people we

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have on the ground here are outstanding, working with the TriState Drug Task Force. We have a quick response team here in

Sioux City. And we have more than quadrupled the budget for INS.

I am on one of the subcommittees that funds it. It’s not a matter

of money.

Mr. MICA. It’s the resources.

Mr. LATHAM. Well, it’s a dysfunctional agency. It’s probably the

most dysfunctional. As an organization, it’s systemic in the INS.

The Federal DEA does an outstanding job here in cooperation.

I do want to make one point about what we’re seeing. We don’t

always identify people who are here illegally with intentions to sell

the drugs and to destroy what we have in our community. Let’s not

in any way stereotype a group of people who I think are outstanding citizens and contribute greatly to this community. And it’s unfortunate that there is this element who hides out in a tremendous

part of our community. I’m always nervous when we kind of sometimes lump people together, because that simply is not the case.

It’s a tiny part of a community that are using them as cover basically for their illicit actions.

As you know, Mr. Chairman, back several years ago, and I’ve

seen maps were the upper Midwest actually was targeted and a

marketing plan put into place by the Mexican drug cartels for this,

this is the only part of the country that wasn’t already taken over

by certain organized crime, so this is no accident of what’s happening here. There is a marketing plan in place to kill our kids basically.

That’s a statement again rather than ask questions here.

I would like to ask Penny, we talked a lot about law enforcement,

the challenges they face, what have you seen, local fire departments, we have all these labs out here. We had a situation over

in Cherokee a couple months ago, 6 weeks ago, with a house fire

and basically they went in and found out there was something

strange. They were basically told to back off. Found out later there

were booby traps and things in place. What do we do to assist in

that way? And they’re toxic waste sites basically.

Ms. WESTFALL. We have 16 hazardous materials teams first, to

respond to your question, that are made up of fire personnel across

the State. They have a real interest in being able to come in and

assist law enforcement in the clan lab sites that are not criminal

sites. There are many that we find that there is just not much evidence there, and they’re really not probably going to ever find

somebody to charge with it. So we have been working with particularly the hazmat teams at this point to see about certifying them

so that if it’s not a crime scene, law enforcement arrives first, they

find it’s not a crime scene, allow them to remove themselves and

go on with other investigations, and have the people from the

hazmat team come in and clean up.

There’s been a couple problems. One is a 40-hour DEA certification required for site certification. The hazmat material persons

have an extensive amount of training on hazardous materials. So

we have been able to work with them to get it to a 24-hour course,

as I understand, 24-hour course for the hazmat people that will be

taught here at the training facility, so that they will be certified,

but without the cost of going through that 40 hours.

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But we also have a problem with who can clean up. Right now

there’s only one or maybe a couple certified companies or companies that the DEA will pay for that they will come in and clean up.

We are wondering if it wouldn’t be possible, if it’s not possible on

at least some of the smaller sites, that the hazardous materials

teams be allowed to clean them up and get paid for them at a lesser cost. At this point we’re being told that can’t happen, that it has

to be the full group that comes in, and if somebody takes the risk

of having someone else clean up hazardous materials, they will not

receive the Federal funding for that cleanup. That’s certainly a tremendous risk.

In addition to that there were several fire fighters trained as we

went around looking at the hazardous, at the lab recognition. We’d

like to do additional training on that. We don’t have any plans at

this time. We do have concern for firefighters’ safety. We have had

deaths now from fire scenes, where there has been an explosion or

a fire. So we do have concerns for their safety.

Mr. LATHAM. Joe, do you want to comment as far as your training? And I want to publicly thank you for the tremendous job that

you have done at the training center out here. It’s been remarkable, the success you have had.

Mr. FRISBIE. Thank you. Congressman, I’ll tell you, I think one

of the problems that we’d like to address at the training center in

the future is we’re still finding that it’s extremely hard to get the

small communities to attend, the mom and pop operations, the one,

two, three, four-man departments. A lot of that is even with the

training being free, they have to have somebody watch the community when they’re gone, and in these small communities that’s a

very hard problem. We’re going to be looking at going out and trying to do some recruitment with these folks and encourage the

sheriff’s departments in their areas and the local police departments to help each other out, to backfill.

I talked to Sheriff Amick who has done that, where they backfill

while officers from the small communities are in the training center. We’re going to try to encourage some of that. In the absence

of that we’re going to have to figure out a way to pay for the backfill to get these officers in there. I think this is crucial.

The larger communities have a lot more capability of handling

problems, because they have the investigative resources, a lot more

at least than the small communities throughout the area. In the

course of drug dealers realizing there’s a lot of activity that goes

on out in the rural areas, in the smaller communities—that’s why

we’re trying to train the smaller departments on drug recognition

and to be able to identify a lab when they see one.

And then we hold a seminar each year so that all of these small

entities and all of these people that have been taking this drug

training from us can get together with our task force, and our task

force comes in and talks to them about how you actually set up a

case, or what level you have to be at to start a Federal case with

them, or how to get assistance from the drug task force, so that

these small departments can go from a one or two-man department

to overnight they can be a 20-man department if those resources

are necessary to go out there to aid and assist these folks and take

care of this problem, because this problem is no longer a local probVerDate 11-MAY-2000 09:47 Jun 11, 2001 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00048 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 C:\DOCS\72448.TXT HGOVREF1 PsN: HGOVREF1
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lem. It’s a regional problem. What’s going on out here in the regional area is affecting us as well.

So I think that’s one area we have to put a lot more effort into.

And I think this training is absolutely crucial. If the officers don’t

understand and cannot identify the drug problems in their community or what it takes to do these investigations, they’re just basically out there doing their routine things and they just can’t identify it and can’t deal with it.

The other thing that we’d like to see come out of the training

center is that the GIS system which I was talking about, which is

global information system, see if we can develop that, which is another way of handling intelligence information, where it’s doing

layering mapping, where you can identify different places of whether they sell precursors, where you have had known drug houses,

and you start doing these relationship maps and a much better system of intelligence sharing. We think that that can make a tremendous difference. We’re trying to develop that right now. Hopefully

in the future we can get some support on that. We’ll be talking to

you about that in the future.

Mr. LATHAM. Surprise.

Mr. FRISBIE. One thing I’d like to say is or encourage other locations or police officers or sheriffs or what have you, that one of the

best things I think that has happened for us is being able to develop a relationship with the congressional office such as yours, to

come in and take the time to talk to us, identify the problems. And

I want you to know that we really appreciate it when you come to

town. I never thought I’d see this in politics, but it actually happens that Congressman Latham will come to town, it’s not a photo

op, he actually comes in unannounced sometimes. We go in and

look at the training centers; comes in and talks to the men on the

task force to find out what’s wrong.

We don’t always need congressional hearings to get these things

done. I think more work gets done directly through the Congressman’s offices on individual bases, because we’re continually taking

our problems to him. We’re inundating him with our problems.

Mr. MICA. He does the same thing to me.

Mr. FRISBIE. I think that’s extremely important to have those

lines of communications wide open. And we do hear, as you can see

over the last 8 to 10 years the progress we’ve made, not even having a DEA office here. We worked out of a Sioux Falls office 8 years

ago. Now we’re a fully funded DEA task force here. That’s tremendous progress. The only way you can do that is through constant

collaboration between ourselves and Congress, not just in these

kind of hearings here, but ongoing when these hearings are over.

I think it’s extremely important, because you’re not going to hear

it all here today.

Mr. LATHAM. Check’s in the mail, Joe. We’re going to run up

against time here. We knew this was going to happen.

Mr. Chairman, I wanted to express, there is an initiative to help

small local fire departments, have some resources. We do a lot with

law enforcement. But it’s something that I’ve been very supportive.

I believe you have too. I think these people along with local law

enforcement are on the front edge as far as danger, and the training that Joe can give them, and also some resources as far as

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equipment for self-protection out there on the local level, and these

volunteer fire departments are really stressed today. We really

need to help there. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. MICA. The gentleman from South Dakota is recognized. Mr.

Thune.

Mr. THUNE. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Chief Frisbie, I was noticing in looking at your resume, you have

a degree from that extraordinarily fine institution up the road,

University of South Dakota.

Mr. FRISBIE. I also teach there, Congressman.

Mr. THUNE. Your stock’s going up all the time.

Just a question. We had in South Dakota the biggest meth bust

here in the last week, 8 pounds, some $200,000 street value, and

it was actually initially detected by the Postal Service, because it

came in a package that they thought looked suspicious, and that’s

what prompted the investigation.

I’m wondering, you were using statistics here in part of your dialog earlier with the chairman, in talking about the amount of meth

that is actually homegrown in labs and meth that is imported. I

guess I’m wondering in your experience, your assessment of that,

does a lot of this come from across the border, not just into Iowa

or Nebraska or South Dakota, but is it coming from Mexico or outside the United States borders into this country, and

percentagewise how much of a problem is that relative to that that

is grown locally?

Mr. FRISBIE. Talking to Sergeant Reilly here in the past about

this, the southwest part of the United States and Mexico is my understanding where a lot of our meth is coming from. But I think

you would be better to address that.

Mr. REILLY. It would primarily be coming from California. We

still see large shipments of marijuana coming up that sometimes

accompanies methamphetamine that I believe probably is grown in

Mexico and brought up. But it seems as though primarily the

methamphetamine is coming from the southwest United States.

Ms. WESTFALL. Our intelligence shows that about 85 percent is

coming in from outside the State. That was a couple years ago at

90 percent, so it’s decreased a small amount it appears by intelligence. Primarily it’s coming from Mexico into California, then

across. Of the people who are cooking meth here in Iowa, they’re

primarily Caucasian, primarily upper 20’s, early 30’s, you may get

into the 40’s.

Mr. THUNE. This is a question too, I guess, is how actually does

this get into the hands of our kids, I mean what is it, the dealers,

the distributors, once the supply comes in, how then is it making

it out there to the kids?

Mr. REILLY. In my report that I submitted I kind of looked at the

history of what we saw locally was almost grocery store marketing.

When we initially saw methamphetamine coming in, it was extremely pure and it was given out pretty much, hey, I just met you,

I don’t know the people around here, I don’t speak the language

very well, here, have a half pound, go distribute to your friends,

bring me back the money. That type of grocery store marketing, almost like free sampling started it.

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That became a peripheral network. That dealer had several people then that he could deal down to, one person dealt to several

people, and trickle down.

You have to be at quite a high level to actually be dealing with

one of the bigger people in this community. You work through several layers, and mostly those layers go through what we have as

a local population, Caucasian males, Caucasian females, hand to

hand to hand to hand several times before it gets down to a small

level that’s getting to your kids in the middle school. If you follow

that up that seems to be where it’s coming from.

Mr. FRISBIE. One of the problems that we’re having with local

law enforcement of course is we spend so much time and effort into

the larger problem, trying to get to the sources. One place some of

my investigators and other people tell me that is a bit of a problem

is working the street level, because all our efforts and our manpower and resources are dedicated toward the larger cases, where

the small cases, the street level stuff we need to pay a little more

attention to in the future. And that usually will work its way into

some of the larger cases.

Mr. THUNE. Sergeant Marti, I’m curious too as to the efforts of

your task force, to what degree does South Dakota figure into those

activities, I mean as far as what you’re seeing activity in our State,

and I have a followup question to that. But anyway if you could

tell me.

Mr. REILLY. Many years we have attended meetings with the

agents who work the Sioux Falls area, and we’ve been beat up by

them for quite a long time saying all their dope problems are in

Sioux City, and if they built a snow fence across the interstate they

would have no problems. Quite honestly we work together with

agents from South Dakota. We have a South Dakota agent now in

our task force.

I don’t think State lines have an effect on how a drug trafficker

traffics his drugs. It only affects law enforcement really who has

to deal with the jurisdictional boundary. I believe that right now

a lot of the drug problems that they do have in Sioux Falls and

throughout that little corridor between Sioux City and Sioux Falls

are fed through us. We are kind of a hub city and I believe that

a lot of the drugs are being filtered through Sioux City to Sioux

Falls. So through that cooperative effort, and we deal with those

agents coming down and working with our task force to identify

people, they may be trained in their area but actually live as residents in our area. We have worked quite a few investigations together to combat the jurisdictional problem and the territorial

problem between the two States.

Mr. THUNE. You talk about Sioux City-Sioux Falls corridor. I suspect probably over to Yankton and areas like that, are you seeing

this going out into the rural areas, are you seeing much activity

in the smaller towns? Like I’m thinking west of Yankton, you get

to places like Tyndall, Tabor and up in Freeman, those areas surrounding Sioux Falls and Sioux City.

Mr. REILLY. I believe because we are kind of a hub city, and if

you have a network distribution that the drugs probably are filtering that direction, there are dealer sources out there in the small

communities who are getting their drugs from somebody that

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would probably relate back to Sioux Falls, Sioux City, the major

cities of the two. There is probably a nexus there. A lot of those

people go undetected for quite a long time. Actually you would

think in a small community they would be immediately identified,

but people who traffic small amounts, and if they know and have

known for years their clientele, people aren’t willing to give them

up as rapidly, especially in smaller communities, because they’re

actually relatives or friends.

So sometimes what would appear to be very opposite, it would

be very, everyone would be very upset in a small community, I believe they are, but it goes undetected and unknown for long periods

of time. I do believe our drugs probably filter into those smaller

communities.

Mr. THUNE. I guess I’m interested, Chief, in what you said too

about the whole training effort.

It would seem to me at least that part of the problem in our

small towns is going to be detection, making sure you have people

who understand what to look for. I think to me that would be, just

from my observation listening to you all speak this morning, something that we are going to have to step up our efforts on.

Mr. FRISBIE. There is no question about that.

As a matter of fact, the intelligence sharing is going to be extremely important there as well. We’re actually building our intelligence network by when those people come in to train. We establish relationships with these other communities where before they

have been kind of isolated. We didn’t see them much. I think it’s

going to make a big difference. But we need to step up our efforts

in training those individuals in the smaller communities. They literally have no training funds and no capabilities, and that’s a tragedy.

Ms. WESTFALL. Let me make a comment. One of the things that

you need to keep in mind though, too, is that as you increase this

training you will increase the amount of drugs being found and the

need for more expendable equipment and equipment for the folks

who are finding them.

When we did the training across the entire State, the 6,000 people, we wondered what impact that would have on the labs being

found, and our numbers show it went from 320 up to 800 some. We

think at least some of that if not a lot of that increase is due to

what happens when you train the folks. You need to not only provide for the training, you also need to be willing to go further and

provide those people with the equipment and the capability to respond to what will be an increase in found drug activity.

Mr. FRISBIE. Like I said before, we often become victims of our

own success. This whole thing funnels to all kinds of support services that are required once you get into these things. When you

start identifying more labs, you know, we start buying pounds

rather than ounces. It’s not that it wasn’t out there, it’s our efforts

increased and our capability of getting into these areas has been

increased. Then we start making more arrests. We’re dealing with

large conspiracy cases.

And I’ll tell you a lot of our worries again, you look at the jail

situation, the ability to process the drugs at the lab, different

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things of this nature, all support services out there with the INS,

if we can get that straightened out.

Mr. THUNE. Last question, Mr. Chairman. Last question I had on

this is when you catch the bad guys what is the success rate with

prosecutions?

Mr. REILLY. One of the things that we see on the task force level,

we take many of our cases federally because a lot of the cases are

large and the thresholds are met for Federal prosecution. The sentencing guidelines in the Federal system are much different than

what we see in the State of Iowa. We have a problem in the State

of Iowa with truth in sentencing. It’s extremely poor. What sounds

like a good deal, that you have got a drug dealer and he’s going

to get 10 years and he actually does 18 months, that’s pretty disheartening. In the Federal system they will do 80 percent of their

sentence.

And the sentencing is just a very good structure, and we are having very good prosecutions in the Federal court system in our area.

To go along with that, and what Chief Frisbie just mentioned too,

as far as the support services to that, the U.S. Attorney’s Office in

Sioux City in 1993 had one drug prosecutor. Now they have five

drug prosecutors. They had a district, a Federal district court judge

and a part-time magistrate. Now they have a full-time magistrate

and two Federal district court judges.

One has taken senior status, but he’s hearing full time cases primarily. It’s working. The Federal system works slightly slower

than the State system, but we are getting good sentences. And the

Federal bite is a bigger dog than the State.

Mr. THUNE. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and I thank the panel.

Mr. MICA. I’m pleased to hear the comments about Federal prosecutions. They were going down, down, down. We finally got them

going up, up, up. We’re under a tremendous amount of pressure to

change the minimum mandatory, from which I hear all the local

witnesses that we have before our panel, do not change that. It is

very effective, and it’s a deterrent, at least those that are active

traffickers and we catch them and convict them.

I was just telling Congressman Latham that now we have the

problem, we’re getting prosecutions back up, but the administration now has, we’ve just got a report back that the sentencing is

going down. So we’re constantly trying to stay after the Federal enforcement prosecution and the judicial fuss to at least exercise the

will of the Congress and the people I think in this case.

I thank all of you for your testimony this morning. Chief Frisbie,

you had said that you wanted a HIDTA director to provide some

testimony. Who is that?

Mr. FRISBIE. Ken Carter has been the past HIDTA director.

Mr. MICA. Rather than have him testify, we have to go through

the swearing in and all of that, we have the panel, I’m going to ask

unanimous consent that we submit questions to him. We’ll do that

so his testimony will be made a part of the record. And we’ll have

some specific questions that I already outlined to you that you said

he could respond to without objection.

I do again want to thank each of you for coming forward. We look

forward to working with you, your local Members of Congress, to

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see that we can do a better job at addressing some of the problems

you have outlined for us today. Thank you. We’ll excuse this panel.

Let me call the second panel. The second panel consists of two

individuals this morning. The first is Linda Phillips, and Linda

Phillips is the executive director of Siouxland Cares. The second

witness is Carla Van Hofwegen, and she is on the board of directors of Hava Java, a local, I guess, faith-based organization. And

both of them are testifying before our subcommittee today. Again

I don’t know if they were here when I made the introduction or

comments. We do ask you to limit your oral presentation to the

subcommittee to 5 minutes. You can submit lengthy testimony or

additional data or information upon request to the Chair and that

will be granted and made a part of the record.

This also is an investigations and oversight subcommittee of the

Government Reform Committee. We do swear in our witnesses.

You will be sworn. If you will please stand, raise your right hands.

[Witnesses sworn.]

Mr. MICA. The record will reflect that the witnesses answered in

the affirmative.

I would ask the record reflect that the Chair recognizes first

Linda Phillips, and she is executive director of Siouxland Cares.

You are recognized.

STATEMENTS OF LINDA PHILLIPS, EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR,

SIOUXLAND CARES; AND CARLA VAN HOFWEGEN, PRESIDENT, BOARD OF DIRECTORS, HAVA JAVA

Ms. PHILLIPS. Thank you. I have been the executive director of

Siouxland Cares for the past 10 years. And primarily what

Siouxland Cares is is a community anti-drug coalition. That’s probably the easiest way to define it.

First thing I want to do is thank Representative Latham. I think

had he not stepped in years ago to really identify drug abuse as

his No. 1 issue, we’d be talking about a lot of different things today

than we are right now. The problem would be much, much worse.

He has given us assistance as far as our community anti-drug coalition, as far as the meth training center, and the national antidrug media campaign, he’s also given support there and we would

be talking about a much more serious problem, even though it is

a serious problem that we’re talking about today.

I’ve seen the devastation that alcohol and other drugs have

caused to individuals, families, businesses. The one thing that I do

as an executive director is to really try to promote the wonderful

things that are going on in our community, and I will do that in

just a moment.

But first I want to share some statistics with you. I think it’s

very, very important that you hear what’s going on here locally as

far as the methamphetamine issue. Approximately 12 percent of

the clients who are in treatment programs across the State of Iowa

have identified methamphetamine as their No. 1 drug of choice; 20

percent of those inmates have identified meth as the No. 1 drug of

choice.

I have worked for about 8 years with a group who is working on

drug-exposed infants in our community. In the past 3 years we

have had 32 drug-exposed infants. Of those six were exposed to

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methamphetamine, or 19 percent of the positive screens. One of

those wonderful things that have happened once those ladies are

identified and the babies are identified is we have an intervention

team, and that intervention team is—their primary focus is to get

help for that mom and that family. Of our students, 8 to 12 percent

have used meth in the past.

We have taken several surveys over the past couple of years and

that’s what has been identified. Those surveys have identified that

drugs and alcohol are available to most youths in Siouxland. Students are most likely to use alcohol or other drugs at a friend’s

house in the evening. Engaging in high risk behavior is associated

with alcohol and other drug use. And we know that. We thought

we made a dent on kids drinking and driving, using drugs and

driving. Something we’ve got to take a major look at again, because

they are using alcohol and other drugs and they are driving. About

two-thirds felt that it would be difficult for them to get methamphetamine. That tells us that one-third think it’s pretty easy to

get meth. That’s an extremely high number if a kid can go out and

get meth on the street. I think there are a lot of adults who have

no idea where they can get it; 92 percent of those kids thought that

meth was harmful, yet 9 percent of the seniors had used meth. We

know that increasing awareness efforts will change the attitudes of

kids. If they believe that a drug is harmful, they will be less likely

to use. We know that, it’s research-based.

We do have several wonderful things going on in Siouxland. We

have Siouxland Cares, community anti-drug coalition. We are part

of a national youth anti-drug media campaign. We have a wonderful Website with lots of data available to us. We have a fairly new

organization called the Siouxland Human Investment Partnership,

and it is our local empowerment board.

They also have a group called Community Alliance Treating Substance Abusing Teens, which is an intervention team at the high

school level. We have a Tri-State Drug Task Force which you’ve

heard. We have the meth training center. We also have a women’s

and children’s treatment center run by Gordon Recovery Center.

Women are able to go to a treatment facility that is residential and

bring the children with them. That was one of the barriers we had

identified in getting women treatment, was not being able to take

their children with them.

We have a wonderful new drug court that is both a juvenile and

adult drug court. Community volunteers serve as panel members.

Again, all about rehabilitation. The Air National Guard has in

place a drug demand reduction program. The Iowa Poison Center

provides information and consultation to emergency rooms about

the toxic exposure such as methamphetamine. We have HIDTA.

We have a Healthy Siouxland Initiative. We have identified drug

abuse as the No. 1 concern in our community. And of course we

work quite a bit with the Governor’s alliance on Substance Abuse

in Des Moines.

While we have many, many wonderful services, we need to expand and strengthen our current prevention, intervention and

treatment program. We need to reduce the demand for drugs and

its availability. We need to provide parity for substance abuse and

mental health on both the Federal and State levels. We need to

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provide a full array of treatment service options, especially in the

rural areas. They’re very lacking there. And we need to provide a

continuum of care.

We’ve learned a lot of wonderful lessons from Representative

Latham on what we can do. Getting the Federal Government behind us to assist us locally is absolutely wonderful. We need to continue that. Again alcohol is our No. 1 drug. I would be remiss if

I did not state that. And that we need to take the lessons that we

have learned from what we are doing as far as methamphetamine

and apply those to other drugs as well. Thank you.

[The prepared statement of Ms. Phillips follows:]

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Mr. MICA. Thank you for your testimony.

We will withhold questions until we’ve heard the next witness.

That’s Ms. Carla Van Hofwegen, and she is president of the Hava

Java board of directors. Welcome. You are recognized.

Ms. VAN HOFWEGEN. It is an honor for me to testify today before

members of your subcommittee. I appreciate the opportunity to address both my concerns about and response to the methamphetamine epidemic in the Midwestern States of our country.

As a life-long resident of northwest Iowa, I have observed many

changes in our society. Increased global communication has made

nearly any information almost anywhere in the world accessible

within a few seconds. Families comprised of a husband and wife

and their children are no longer the norm. Close family ties that

once connected three or even four generations have been severed

by a highly mobile society. The combination of this availability of

knowledge, the structural change of the nuclear family and the decrease of intergenerational ties has opened the door to many opportunities to explore and experiment during increased hours of free

time with less individual accountability. Society is ripe for the picking by people who profit from those who purchase, use, and become

addicted to methamphetamine and other illegal drugs.

The problem of illegal drug use inevitably affects the institutions

of our society. School systems deal with those who are using, those

attempting to free themselves of the addiction, recovering users,

and those who choose not to use, but who live, learn, or work in

environments influenced by drug users. During the 12 years from

1987 to 1999 I served on the board of directors of Spencer Community Schools the use of illegal drugs became increasingly evident.

During the mid and late 1980’s acceptability of underage cigarette

smoking and alcohol consumption led to marijuana usage and eventually to experimenting with other addictive drugs. While pot

smokers of the 1960’s and 1970’s looked on assuming that the reoccurrence of marijuana use wasn’t really a problem, many of the

teenagers of the 1990’s progressed from smoking it to the use of

other illegal drugs, one of them the highly addictive and readily obtainable methamphetamine, also known as meth, crank, crystal or

ice. This experimentation and use by teens and other young adults

has been further complicated by the fact that some users are also

parents whose children’s lives are shaped by their parents’ unsafe

choices. Thus, education systems find themselves dealing with the

problem at the preschool and early childhood levels in addition to

the middle, high school, and post-high levels.

Families whose members become addicted to meth see the most

direct effects of the drug’s stronghold on the users. As they observe

behavior and personality changes, they also have concern for the

user’s safety. Perhaps most often they wonder how they can help.

Committing their loved one to treatment can be very difficult,

while waiting for the use to acknowledge the need for treatment

can be extremely worrisome and dangerous. Research shows that

a drug treatment program is most successful when the addicted

person voluntarily commits him or herself and when the program

helps the user realize his or her need to rely on a higher power for

the strength necessary to overcome the addiction. Even the most

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successful treatment programs are not always 100 percent failsafe

after the initial treatment has been completed.

Considering the negative societal ramifications of illegal drug use

and the tenuous results of drug treatment, the more insightful way

of responding is to attempt to prevent the problem from occurring

at all.

During the past 12 months I have been involved in the organization and opening of a not-for-profit coffeehouse in Spencer, IA,

which welcomes people of all ages, but is especially inviting to teenagers and young adults. The Hava Java mission statement is: We

will provide a comfortable coffeehouse atmosphere with the purpose

of building relationships through Christian fellowship. In a nonthreatening safe haven using beverages, food, music, art, actions

and other means, we will convey the message of Jesus Christ and

his saving grace.

Hava Java is guided by an 11-member board of directors comprised of community members from nine different churches in

Spencer. It is staffed by nine high school students and two adults,

which are part-time, paid employees, and one full-time manager. A

student advisory team made up of high school students is being

formed to give ideas and recommendations to the board of directors. The team will function under the supervision of two adults.

Many individuals, service clubs, churches, businesses and other

groups helped to meet startup expenses and are assisting with ongoing costs as needed. Open for just 7 months, Hava Java is striving to attain its goal to become self-supporting. The only government dollars received have been in the form of a grant from the

city of Spencer. The grant, designated for infrastructure needs, is

made up of a small portion of the moneys collected from a local 1-

cent sales tax made available to local not-for-profit organizations.

Hava Java is becoming known to our community and the Spencer

area as a hangout and a haven, a safe place to meet friends, listen

to good music, enjoy coffee, smoothies, sodas and snacks, read a

book, play a game, or study. It is a place to have conversations

about current issues or events, a place to discuss decisions or

choices that must be made. Patrons may also appreciate live entertainment with a positive message and encourage local budding artists. Future events for Hava Java include improv nights, storytelling, poetry readings and other drama and visual arts presentations.

It is the hope and prayer of the Hava Java board and staff that

its welcoming environment will nurture the development of personal skills and significance through connections made and relationships formed and strengthened within its walls, perhaps the

personal skills, significance, connections, and relationships which

are reason enough to help make the choice to be drug free.

Thank you for your attention to this serious issue and your consideration of how your subcommittee can aid our society.

[The prepared statement of Ms. Van Hofwegen follows:]

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Mr. MICA. Thank you, Carla, for your testimony.

Ms. Phillips, how is your organization funded?

Ms. PHILLIPS. We are a United Way agency.

Mr. MICA. Do you receive Federal funds?

Ms. PHILLIPS. At this time we receive no Federal funds. The only

Federal funds that we have received is through the K-Mart Foundation. That really isn’t Federal funds, it’s just designation.

At this time we do not. We have applied for the Drug Free Communities Support Program.

Mr. MICA. Your organization, Ms. Van Hofwegen, is strictly a private and community-based. We’re certainly spending a tremendous

amount of money and increasing it every year on this effort, and

in a multi-faceted manner. The last several years we have started

a $1 billion drug education and media campaign. $1 billion. The administration wanted to spend public money. We reached a compromise. The compromise was to have $1 billion of Federal funds

and then that matched by local donations. That campaign has been

a little bit over a year underway. Mostly funding television, radio,

some newspaper ads in a national campaign in an effort on education and prevention. I’d like both of you to tell me your candid

assessment of what you have seen so far of that Federal program.

Ms. PHILLIPS. The national youth anti-drug media campaign, is

that what you’re talking about?

Mr. MICA. Yes.

Ms. PHILLIPS. We happen to be the local organization that is listed on the print ads for that. What I have seen, because I work with

three youth groups around the community, probably almost 200

kids. We sat and had a discussion about this, and we said tell us

about the ads, tell us about what you’re seeing. The one thing they

said was the meth ads scare me. Why would I be stupid enough

to use meth. They scare me. They are very, very good. I think

that’s the one message that we need to get out. Again if they believe that it is harmful to them they will not use.

Mr. MICA. Well, that conflicts a little bit with your testimony, because you said 90 percent of them now believe that it’s harmful,

yet you’re running 8 to 12 percent of the students have tried it in

this locale.

Ms. PHILLIPS. Have tried it, that’s right.

They have tried it in the past. The campaign has only been going

for a couple of years.

Mr. MICA. Just about a year. Has there been any recent data on

the number of students now? Unfortunately I just had the CDC report last week, the Center for Drug Control. The statistics were absolutely alarming. It did follow your pattern about 8 to 12 percent

of the students nationally had tried meth, cocaine. In the Clinton

administration I think it has doubled. Heroin is up dramatically,

and not quite but almost a doubling of marijuana. And we had the

folks in behind closed doors too to give us their assessment after

they released this report. But since 1992–1993 we’ve seen an incredible surge, particularly among young people. Is this an effective

use of your tax dollars?

Ms. PHILLIPS. I’m going to tell you that we now have the second

annual survey that’s being run right now probably to find out what

the results are of that. I think that’s going to tell us more on

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whether the methamphetamine use has gone down or not and the

kids’ perception of harm, I think that’s really going to tell us a lot

in this last year. The kids are seeing the ads.

Mr. MICA. The meth ads are particularly effective. I guess they

have been targeted for those kids because you have such a high incidence here. Maybe you could give me your assessment, Ms. Van

Hofwegen.

Ms. VAN HOFWEGEN. To be honest, I’m not real familiar with

your ads.

Mr. MICA. You haven’t seen the ads. That’s very revealing.

Ms. VAN HOFWEGEN. They may have been on the radio, I may

have heard them on the radio.

Mr. MICA. That’s one of the problems when people have not

heard them. Some of them are targeted toward parents, specifically

going out to parents, even grandparents. Then part of the problem

is the intensity of the ads, have they reached, again you want to

target and you want to have the saturation to have impact. We

don’t mind spending the funds on these programs, but we want

them to be successful, and we have to have some measurement of

their success. Finally if you were going to recommend that we put

Federal dollars into some of these programs, education and prevention, how would you do that? And we have a problem a bit because

your organization particularly is faith-based. We’re trying to loosen

some of the strings. Actually the most effective treatment programs

have been in fact faith-based, and in most cases they run 60 to 70

percent success rates, where the public-funded programs run that

percentage in failure. Are you inclined for us to use taxpayer dollars in that fashion or what fashion to be most effective? Either/

or both?

Ms. VAN HOFWEGEN. I would encourage the use of the tax dollars

to be targeted toward parents. I feel having been on a school board

for 12 years that I see that that’s where the education is successful.

If the parents are aware of what they need to do to prevent their

children from experimenting with drugs, and if you can get that

point across, the dollars won’t have to be spent in the schools and

elsewhere. I feel like there are so many parents that feel like they

are powerless against what their kids are facing. If we can empower parents to remain parents through the high school years, I

think that will be the most effective way to spend it.

Ms. PHILLIPS. I guess I’m one of these people that think real

globally and I think that you have got to focus on the prevention,

the education, the intervention, the treatment, the aftercare. It’s

not just a single focus. When you asked me before about the national youth anti-drug media campaign, that’s one facet of what we

need to be doing. Does it need to be stopped? No. It should be

strengthened. Why? Because it’s one facet of what we need to continue. We need to continue identifying model programs. We here in

Woodbury County are using the comprehensive strategy process

which is through the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency

Planning. It focuses on risk factors. What puts kids at risk?

One of those is substance abuse. What puts kids at those risks?

Let’s identify those and then build a community plan. Make us be

responsible for what we think locally we need to do. So when you

ask where would we put the money, I’d say empower the local comVerDate 11-MAY-2000 09:47 Jun 11, 2001 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00068 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 C:\DOCS\72448.TXT HGOVREF1 PsN: HGOVREF1
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munities to take that funding and build a program that they need,

using research-based, data-driven model programs. We will make

that commitment to you that we will do that with funds that we

receive. Yes, the media campaign is definitely one part of it.

Our community has been a tremendous advocate of public service

announcements, media campaigns. We run two PSA contests now

for youths, one for radio, one for television, and I had a person

from the local Sioux City Journal say why aren’t we doing that in

the newspaper. So we’ve got a lot of support locally for those kinds

of things. We’ve got to continue to focus on that prevention and

education which we have not gotten money for in the past, the prevention programs.

Reducing the demand. The supply will be there as long as the

demand is. We’ve got to reduce the demand. And we need to recognize at the same time, our treatment right now, the amount of dollars in treatment is very inadequate. We’ve got a lot of people, you

know, we’ve got 12 percent admitting that meth is their No. 1 drug

of choice, how many people aren’t getting treatment who could

admit that meth is their No. 1 drug of choice. We need to look at

those issues. There are a lot of people not getting treatment just

because of the cost of it.

I personally, again I’m a real global type person. If we could give

treatment to any kid that needs it, any kid that needs treatment,

we would be saving so many dollars down the road because we

know that treatment works, and prevention works. And as a local

community we are working very, very hard to identify risk factors

to try to reduce those.

Mr. MICA. Thank you. The Chair recognizes Mr. Latham.

Mr. LATHAM. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.

I would like to first of all, as far as the drug education program,

as I mentioned earlier, Siouxland was 1 of the 12 pilot areas in the

country when this was first proposed. And we were unique here in

a little program we call incidentally the Latham Project, but to go

out—surprise, I know. We were the only ones who went out and

solicited contributions from the private sector here. I am just so

proud of this community and the region here. Gateway gave us

$100,000. UPS gave us $30,000. And that was matched with the

Federal dollars. Duluth, MN, was our control city, in comparison

with Siouxland after 5 months of the program. And I think what

Linda is talking about is there’s hopefully a long-term effect. What

we found was that there was a greater awareness with the parents,

which is critically important, but the biggest impact that it had

was on the fourth, fifth, sixth graders and lesser through the middle school, and very little effect, while it scared them it was only

temporary in the high school age, in that class or that group.

I think it’s going to be a long-term situation before we actually

find out whether the message sticks with our young people, and

with the impact that it has had. The most important thing we can

do is wake up the parents and tell them to talk to their kids. I

mentioned that earlier too. But statistically and everything else,

the parents still have the greatest influence on that child. After

having done 23 convoy drug meetings here in the district, we always set an hour and a half aside for the meeting. I can set my

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watch. In 45 minutes someone will finally get to the point, is there

a way to get to parents.

And my question would be to you, both of you, how do you do

that? I mean, Linda, you do it with your organization, with your

experience, Carla, on the school board and faith-based. If you had

a meeting today you would have the best parents that talk to their

kids come to the meeting. The people who you need to get to are

staying home or they’re off having their own marijuana, drinking

beer some place. How do you get to them?

Ms. PHILLIPS. I’m a parent of three teenagers, going through all

of these issues.

Mr. LATHAM. You’re way too young.

Ms. PHILLIPS. I know. Way too young, right.

We had this in the late 1980’s, early 1990’s, the parent networking. I don’t know about other parents, but I am told that I’m

the only person out there asking questions. I’m the only person

doing this, and I’ll bet if you would talk to 10 parents they would

tell you that their kid is telling you that they’re the only ones.

I think what we need to do is we need to as parents figure out

that we do have a role in this. I mean we need to be, and we can

change behaviors based on what we do, which is exactly why kids

are drinking a lot more now and we’re seeing that number is because of the parents’ influence. Oh, thank goodness, it’s only alcohol. And that is the attitude that kids get. If we are much more

strict with the kids, if we’re talking to each other and we know

what’s going on, we know that someone’s parent isn’t home, we

know what’s going on, we’re talking to each other and we quote

catch them, it does make an impact. We are able to influence their

behavior. Consequences are so important. Sometimes it’s hard as a

parent to give those consequences when you look around you and

no one else is doing it.

What we need to do is switch what the norm is. Switch the norm

to non-use. Switch the norm back to where it was before. We need

to do that. And as parents we can do that. Takes a lot of energy,

takes a lot of time, but it doesn’t take very much money, and that’s

the one thing that we need to remember. That doesn’t take money.

That’s talking. That’s getting parents together. It takes people just

to be empowered to do that.

Ms. VAN HOFWEGEN. I would agree with everything she said. I’m

also the parent of two teenagers, and it is very important to keep

the lines of communication open with your children. However, I do

think there’s sort of a hopeless feeling when you say that the parents are either at home smoking their own marijuana or in the

bars. I think it’s really important, and I don’t know if there can be

any government dollars that can help you do this, those of us who

really care about kids in our community to become a parent, a father or a mother figure to kids, and become that person that’s really important in their life, to make the communication and connection. I don’t know if there’s any special way to do that.

I think that for these kids, if their parents aren’t going to take

responsibility, then someone else does need to. Whether it be our

churches or community organizations. I know in our town there is

a Big Brother and Big Sister organization that is really doing a

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good job at making an attempt. I think we as community members

better take over.

Mr. LATHAM. I just wanted to say one additional thing about my

pride of this community. When we got the money to run the ads

on top of the PSA announcements, and incidentally our media here

in Siouxland, in the State of Iowa did over half of the PSAs before.

So that’s a tremendous contribution. And what was really fascinating and something I never thought I’d hear a complaint about was

the fact that our media people were somewhat offended that we

would pay them and actually would not take the money. It was incredible. And it says a lot for this community.

Mr. MICA. Thank you. The gentleman from South Dakota, Mr.

Thune.

Mr. THUNE. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I just want to credit both

of you for the things that you’re doing, obviously some great efforts

are underway. To say that it seems to me when you’re talking

about prevention of course the best prevention is a mom and dad

that love their kids enough to spend time with them, to take them

to church and subject them to the kind of influences that will keep

them away from bad choices. You know, we’re always looking for

a government solution to something that’s fundamentally a family

oriented issue.

I guess I’d be curious to know, Carla, you mentioned here in your

statement too that you have served on a school board for 12 years.

What things in your mind could we be doing in the schools? I mean

what activities could we do to help, the kids have their sort of communities, their family, hopefully their church and they spend an

awful lot of time at school. From that aspect of it how do we, what

can be done at the school levels to help deter them from getting

involved in drugs?

Ms. VAN HOFWEGEN. I think a shift in the attitude of the schools

toward parents. I was a teacher before I was a school board member. I remember in the late 1970’s seeing signs on the doors of the

middle school, please report to the office, visitors are welcome but

please report to the office. It’s sort of a stay out type of statement.

I think schools are really trying to let parents know they want

to work with them. They know if they open up the lines of communication, especially in those homes where there are difficulties, that

the students will see the families and the schools trying to work

together. I also think that we discouraged groups like PTAs for

sometime and now they’re trying to resurrect interest in them

again. At least in our community, they’re trying to get a parent

group in each of our schools in the community. And I think that

will help. There again, you often get the parents who already, sort

of have it all together that come to those meetings. But we need

to encourage other parents to do that as well.

I do know the public school in Spencer is also getting involved

more on the preschool level, which is the area that truly you’re

going to prevent problems. If you can get involved with the families

at that point, that will help. The school doesn’t have all the answers. I do see a big change from when I was a teacher until now.

The teachers have a much bigger responsibility toward those kids.

It’s very important to include the families in the educational procVerDate 11-MAY-2000 09:47 Jun 11, 2001 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00071 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 C:\DOCS\72448.TXT HGOVREF1 PsN: HGOVREF1
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ess, and to encourage them to give their input, to let them know

that you’re working together to help the students.

Ms. PHILLIPS. Could I respond?

Mr. THUNE. Sure.

Ms. PHILLIPS. One of the things that we have here, it’s just been

started for a few years, so we don’t know the long-term impact on

it, but we do have what we call social health groups at our schools,

and that is run through the Action programs and the SHIP, but

what it is is where a team of parents—excuse me, a team of educators are meeting with Juvenile Court Services and meeting with

the other various agencies, the Department of Human Services in

our community and they are identifying at a very young age some

of the problems, behaviors within these kids in the schools, and

they are then basically forming a case management plan, bringing

the family in and discussing what’s going on. I think we’re going

to see a great impact in the future from really surrounding the resources and our whole thing with the comprehensive strategy is the

right resource for the right youth at the right time.

That’s what we’re really trying to do, is to surround that kid and

provide a safety net for them as they move up in the years. Because one of the things we’ve identified is academic failure beginning in early elementary school—in late elementary school, excuse

me. If those kids are not going to get what they need at an early

age they’re going to fail. They’re going to be a statistic to us and

they’re going to be in the community and we’re going to have problems with them. Our school board and local agencies are really

working hard for that.

Another thing I just have to say is I am an advocate of DARE.

I know there are a lot of people who have knocked DARE down and

drug it through the coals. I am an advocate. In that year that they

are in DARE, whether it’s 11 weeks or 16 weeks, talk to those kids,

those kids are going to tell that you they’re not going to use drugs

and they’re going to identify people who are using drugs and

they’re going to realize all those things. But then don’t teach the

kid anything else about it and expect them to remember it.

When we were in another hearing at one point they were talking

about teach your kid math in the fifth grade and expect them to

remember it when they get to high school? It’s not going to happen.

We need structured curriculum in our schools from kindergarten,

preschool actually, kindergarten all the way through, curriculums

that talk about it, that talks about methamphetamines. You can’t

expect the teachers to go out and research all of these things and

bring them back to their classroom. Some do that. But it’s going

to be very inconsistent.

We need structured curriculum. We need to be telling these kids

the same message, and it needs to be very clear and it needs to

be very consistent. If we’re not going to do that, there’s not going

to be the big hope at the end that they’re all going to remember

what’s going on, because they’re not going to remember it if we’re

not constantly telling them, which is one of the reasons that these

ads are good. They’re giving the same clear consistent message.

And they’re there all the time telling us that. We need to always

be reminded, whether we’re young people or adults.

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Mr. THUNE. I appreciate that. Now there is going to be a followup question to my original question on what schools can do as to

whether there ought to be a structured part of the curriculum that

addresses that. In visiting with law enforcement people and even

with kids themselves, these problems are cropping up at a much

earlier age. A lot of times we used to think it was high school before you were subjected to all these temptations and pressures. But

anymore they’re saying they start to identify these trends not just

in middle school but prior to that, and I do think there has to be

an after DARE or something that reinforces that message as they

move on into the higher grades too. And I’m a big fan of the faithbased approach and the things that are going on out there, it’s a

wonderful program and I want to credit both of you for the things

that are happening. I think it’s all part of the solution. But we definitely have our work cut out for us. It’s a challenge, and I guess

we’re all obviously looking for anything that we can do to enhance

the successful things that are already underway and to find out if

there are things that we aren’t doing that we ought to be doing.

Thanks for your testimony.

Mr. MICA. Thank you, gentlemen. And I also want to thank both

of these witnesses for coming forward today and providing our subcommittee with their insight and recommendations. And particularly thank you for the contribution that you’re making in your

communities and localities, in again what is one of the most serious

challenges I think any one of us face as parents, Members of Congress or involved citizens. We thank you so much, and we’ll excuse

you at this time.

And I’ll call our third panel. Our third panel consists of two witnesses this morning. The first panelist is Leroy Schoon. The second, and I’m sorry, he is with Schoon Construction. The second

panelist is Jamey Miller, and he is with Rudy Salem Staffing Services. Both of these individuals I want to welcome also.

Again, this is an investigations and oversight subcommittee of

Congress. If you have lengthy statements we’ll make them a part

of the material on request to the Chair. With that I’m also going

to swear you in. If you will please stand, Raise right hands.

[Witnesses sworn.]

Mr. MICA. The witnesses answered in the affirmative. Let the

record reflect that. I’d like to welcome both of you this morning.

At this particular time recognize Mr. LeRoy Schoon for his testimony and comments. I understand you have a drug testing program as part of your employment, and we’re anxious to hear about

your experience. Thank you, sir. You’re recognized.

STATEMENTS OF LEROY SCHOON, PRESIDENT, SCHOON CONSTRUCTION; AND JAMEY MILLER, RUDY SALEM STAFFING

SERVICES

Mr. SCHOON. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Schoon Construction,

Cherokee, IA. We specialize in fiber optics and general excavation

construction. We work with municipalities and communication companies. We employ approximately 130 employees in our organization.

In 1999 our company implemented a 100 percent pre-employment drug screening. We were having trouble finding good employVerDate 11-MAY-2000 09:47 Jun 11, 2001 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00073 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 C:\DOCS\72448.TXT HGOVREF1 PsN: HGOVREF1
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ees, so we decided we have to do that. And we went first to a random drug screening of 50 percent throughout our entire company,

and we were not getting results we needed. We went to 100 percent, and it has done tremendously well. We will spend approximately $10,000 in the year 2000 for drug screening new applicants

and random drug testing.

Drug screening has helped eliminate the illegal drug use in our

workplace. But we feel it does not cure the drug problem in the

work place and in the community. The reason for that is we have

people that we have to come up, they come up with drugs, we have

to terminate them or suspend them to get evaluated and get rehabilitated. They don’t go to rehabilitation. They go down the street

and go to another employment and find employment that they

don’t have to be drug screened. Our opinion is that we’re just

transferring our problems and confining it into one area.

I’d like to list below some of the problems the employers have

with illegal drug users in the workplace. We’ve experienced these.

Employees are injured or killed. Equipment gets damaged because

of not being alert. Property damage claims rose tremendously high

to people that you’re working with. The quality of work goes down.

Poor productivity is a big result. As a result of this, insurance costs

skyrocket for all employers because the insurance costs are shared

through everyone. So if one company does a good job and three

companies don’t, we still help pay for that. We feel the solution is

that we need to have 100 percent drug screening for all employees.

Our company has already seen an improvement in applicants.

We’ve had better applicants come in the door because the other

ones aren’t going to come in because they aren’t going to get

through anyway. Reduction of property damage and workmen’s

compensation claims since we have run this program has been reduced. We have a better experience model for our insurance carrier.

If we can solve our problems, we need all sectors of business and

government to work toward the same goal. Thank you.

Mr. MICA. Thank you for your testimony.

[The prepared statement of Mr. Schoon follows:]

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Mr. MICA. We’ll now hear from Jamey Miller. He’s from Rudy

Salem Staffing Services. Mr. Miller, you’re recognized.

Mr. MILLER. My name is Jamey Miller. I work with Rudy Salem

Staffing Services. I also run a safety division out of that. Back in

about March 1998 I was approached by Senator Steve King and

asked if I would be interested in conducting onsite drug testing. I

thought, hey, that’s an opportunity for me to be, just getting out

of the Navy and stuff, moving back to my home town, I felt it was

a good opportunity for me to grow and stay in the community. That

ended up branching out into stuff like what LeRoy’s doing here.

The Drug Free Workplace Act was passed in April 1998, and I’ve

been going on since then. I’ve seen firsthand what drugs can do to

a person, their family, their bank account, their life and their future. I also know the extremes that people will go through in order

to pass a drug screen. They try to adulterate their urine. They will

put anything from bleach in there to dirt, whatever. If you can

think of it they have tried it. There’s all sorts of remedies out

there. Some of them work, some of them don’t. If you’re trying to

get a job and a good paying job, you have a 50–50 chance of passing or getting caught, it’s really not worth the hassle.

If you already have a good job and you’re doing drugs and they

implement the random drug screen at your workplace you’re going

to get caught, so it’s not worth losing your job.

I think the firsthand experience I’ve had has made me very

knowledgeable in this field of onsite drug testing. In the past 26

months I’ve personally administered 1,396 onsite drug tests. I’ve

had 1,107 negatives, and I’ve had 289 people walk out on me, or

I could assume those would be positive. Basically that means to me

that 289 people refused to take the test and deny themselves employment. I guess their bad habits are more important than feeding

their kids and paying their bills.

I think that the new Drug Free Workplace Act has done some

good, but I think right now the employers around here, I only have

maybe two or three accounts or clients that are participating in

this. I think they’re afraid. Right now the unemployment rate in

Sioux City, the last I heard was like 3 percent, so most of those

people are either housewives or disabled people or they’re retired

or whatever. So the rest of the people around here are working. Basically I think about 74 percent of the population in Sioux City

uses drugs, this is from my point of view. It’s hard when you’re trying to run a staffing service. Our business is helping people find

a job, but how are you supposed to employ these people when they

can’t even walk through the door and pass a drug test. There’s a

definite problem here, and it’s right here, right here in Sioux City.

Then we also have an office up in Spencer, IA. And as they were

mentioning before, when I was hired by Salem Management to be

the safety director they had a mod rate that was so high because

of injuries due to accidents on the job and people not paying attention to what they’re doing, it cost $200,000 or $300,000 a year for

a small business to have work comp insurance. I also do OSHA

compliance, EPA compliance and stuff like that. Since I’ve implemented my policies and stuff, we have dropped our mod rate down,

just the corporate office, down to point 65 which is pretty good for

a staffing industry.

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However, the problem we’re having now is that we opened up an

office in Spencer about 5 years ago, Spencer, IA, and Sioux City’s

got quite a large, a lot more population here compared to Spencer,

and now Spencer, their mod rate or their work comp claims are

doubling what I have down here in Sioux City, and a lot of that

has to do, I believe, with the drug abuse.

So I’d like to wrap it up by saying that’s all I have to say.

Mr. MICA. Thank you for your testimony.

I compliment you both for the initiatives you’ve taken to try to

ensure a drug free work place and work force. I think it’s a model

for other companies. If we had more private sector participation in

this regard, we’d have a lot less drug abuse. One of the problems

that we have is we do have people who use drugs, and we have the

problem of trying to get them into some effective treatment. Have

any of you had experiences, do you have any part of your program,

Mr. Schoon, which puts these folks into treatment or gives them

some opportunity to be treated if they’re found with a positive result?

Mr. SCHOON. What we’ve tried to do, if we have a person come

up we call hot, we will pay for the evaluation.

Mr. MICA. So you do give them an opportunity to clean up their

act?

Mr. SCHOON. Yes. If it takes rehabilitation, if it’s a real serious

case, we’ll try to find them some temporary work or if they succeed

we’ll offer them their job back.

Mr. MICA. What kind of success have you found with that treatment or rehabilitation?

Mr. SCHOON. What we have found is our success hasn’t been

good. They will go for rehabilitation maybe for 3 or 4 days, they

leave and go find other employment, they say I have to make a living. We cannot pay them the salary while they’re getting rehabilitated. In Iowa here just what happens, they will go down the street

and find a job, and they will continue their habit.

Mr. MICA. So the lasting of effective treatment is a problem and

then also getting individuals to stick to treatment or follow it

through is part of the problem?

Mr. SCHOON. That’s correct. We’ve had one case where a young

man, he left employment, we suspended him, he was supposed to

take 3 weeks of rehab.

He didn’t continue that. He quit. He went to Des Moines to get

a job. He said he had to make a living. He come back and about

9 months later, he said he had been cured, he straightened out.

OK. You have got to take a new drug screen, we’ll give you another

chance to hire. I took him up, paid the fee at the hospital for drug

screen, this is $47 for us. Come up hot. The applicants will come

in and they’re first informed that we do drug screening. It’s no

problem, I’m not on it. We take them in, it will come back, they’re

hot. Or they will call back the next day and say I can’t work for

you, I’m going to come up hot. So we’ve already spent the money.

Mr. MICA. One of the problems we have, contrary to the perception out there, is actually Congress has more than doubled the

amount of money for treatment if we take in all of the different

programs since 1993, and the last 5 years under the Republican

control, the Congress has increased the treatment some 26 percent.

74

I don’t think any of us have a problem with increasing the money

for treatment. The problem is getting effective treatment programs,

one, and then also getting people to even go to the treatment. We

held a hearing in Baltimore where people who have been sentenced

for offenses met most of the requirements, and part of their sentencing is to go to treatment. Less than 50 percent show up even

under court order.

Of course you’re dealing with a situation where you have absolutely no control over these individuals, only the possibility of their

being employed, and with a tight job market here and throughout

the country, they just go somewhere else is basically what you’re

both testifying. Are you seeing the same thing? Mr. Miller.

Mr. MILLER. Yes, sir. In our line of work we deal with people,

top executives all the way down to general laborers daily. I deal

with the whole spectrum of the population. What we’re finding out

is—I opened up a day labor here in Sioux City about 2 months ago,

and our building is located right next to the Federal building. In

any given day, there are 10 people that come into my office and I

can’t put any of them to work because they’re hot.

Mr. MICA. They have a drug problem.

Mr. MILLER. They’re either drunk or—— Mr. MICA. Drugs or alcohol.

Mr. MILLER. Yeah, there’s something wrong with them. We can’t

put them to work. They can’t speak right, they stutter. Too much

of a risk. But they have to eat. They have to live. So most of these

guys sleep under bridges. They live at the Gospel Mission, things

like that.

Mr. MICA. Is there anything that we’re doing that we could do

a better job at from the Federal standpoint or through, we’re now

block granting or sending money to the States, send money to local

programs, is there something you see a greater need for that we

aren’t doing or that we can do in cooperation with local agencies

to address this problem?

Mr. MILLER. I think part of the way to kind of fix this would be

to let employers know that they have the option, the way the Drug

Free Workplace Act, the way the law is written, you don’t have to

send a person to treatment. I mean just depends on what you want

to do with that person. Right now the employment rate is so low

that you’re afraid, if we do this random thing, we’re going to lose

all these people. I think the biggest thing we need to do is educate

employers as far as implementing drug testing. It’s OK to do a random test. You’re not going to lose your whole work force, I don’t

think. That’s your choice.

Mr. MICA. Anything, Mr. Schoon?

Mr. SCHOON. I’d like to comment on that. We have found since

we implemented the 100 percent drug screen and the pre-employment, we’re finding a better rate of applicant coming in. I think it’s

scaring some of the other ones that are on drugs away. I went to

different contractors, fellow contractors and said, hey, you know,

you need to get on a drug screening program, you need to do a drug

screening program. We’re kicking them out of our place, they’re

coming down to you and going to work, and I said pretty soon

you’re going to have everybody hot. What’s it going to do to your

workmen’s comp and your general liability. It’s going to make your

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risk higher. He said, well, what are we going to do, we need help.

That’s one of the problems they’re faced with. They think, you

know, money’s not the issue I don’t think. It’s just an incentive for

the employers to be able to go in and do this. Maybe the insurance

companies need to offer more incentive for employers who are

doing a good job with drug screening and that would help encourage the ones that aren’t doing it, realizing there are a lot of smaller

companies out than we are, but the resources are there. If there

are only ten employees they can still get this done.

Mr. MICA. Thank you. Let me yield to the gentleman from Iowa,

Mr. Latham.

Mr. LATHAM. I want to be very brief. We have both to be tonight

in Washington, we cannot miss a flight here today. There’s much

debate and has been for years in Congress about the Federal role

on funded mandates on States and small business. Are either of

you suggesting from the Federal level that we should mandate

drug screening in the workplace?

Mr. SCHOON. I think, Mr. Latham, it needs to come from our

Iowa Legislature.

Mr. MILLER. I agree.

Mr. LATHAM. I would agree with you. I don’t think—it is a State

situation and based at that level and also at least allowing individual businesses to drug screen so there’s no prohibition as some people would like to have. That was a debate that went on for several

years. I know about the State legislature not even allowing you to

screen in the workplace. I appreciate that. Thank you both very

much for being here.

Mr. MICA. Thank you very much, Mr. Latham.

The gentleman from South Dakota, Mr. Thune.

Mr. THUNE. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I’m glad to hear that in

Iowa you are State’s rights advocates as we are in South Dakota.

I just have one observation or question. You mentioned the cost of

drug testing. Have either of you done an analysis of what the lost

productivity cost is? Can you quantify that as a percentage of your

bottom line or dollar figures in any way?

Mr. SCHOON. I have not been able to do that. I do know we’re

tracking for costs and time spent in interviewing employees and

taking them up for drug screening, but a factor of percentage of

sales I don’t have that at this time.

Mr. MILLER. Neither do I.

Mr. THUNE. I know it’s probably rather difficult to come up with,

to put a quantitative, attach that to it, but I think it’s obviously

a concern in the workplace, and it’s got to be not just the cost of

drug screening and all that, but I would think too just the loss of

productivity as a result of the effects the drugs have on people who

are using.

So anyway I again appreciate very much your testimony. I will

yield back to the chairman as well in the interest of time, but appreciate you taking the time to do what you did.

Mr. MICA. I also want to thank each of you for coming forward

and sharing with us your experience and the contribution you have

made in the workplace, work force setting an example which you

have done. That’s to be commended. If every employer stepped in

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and followed your lead, we would have a lot fewer problems, and

we appreciate your insight.

I particularly appreciate the insight of all the panelists today,

the law enforcement, the local community, both private and public,

that have testified before our subcommittee. Each of these field

hearings gives us better insight as to what’s going on throughout

the country, so we can do a better job in Washington trying to address some of the serious problems that we’re facing.

Again, Iowa, South Dakota, this whole region is not alone being

victimized by illegal narcotics. This is an incredible national challenge. I get to see it chairing the subcommittee, and it again is one

of the greatest challenges I think we have ever faced in Congress,

as parents, as community leaders or employers. So I thank you for

the invitation.

Mr. LATHAM. I thank you, Mr. Thune, for joining us today. Both

of you represent incredible geographic areas. Mr. Thune has a

huge, huge, huge district. I can’t even imagine representing an

area that large.

I saw on the map this morning the size of Mr. Latham’s district.

You do an incredibly responsive job again in representing the people of this area, they’re great people. As I said earlier, I had a

chance to live among, work among and be part of the business community and have the greatest respect for you. So I thank each of

you for allowing me to come here and hopefully learn and work

with you as we move forward to meet this challenge.

Mr. Latham.

Mr. LATHAM. Yes. I just want to again thank you for making the

extraordinary effort to be here.

Mr. MICA. It was.

Mr. LATHAM. And again I hope the folks here recognize the tremendous responsibility the chairman has, and the leadership in

Congress that you have shown has been incredible on this issue,

and it’s been an honor and a real privilege for me to learn from

you and to work with you, and I appreciate it, as well as my great

friend and colleague here and my neighbor, John Thune. I just

want to thank each of you.

Mr. MICA. Thank you again so much. There being no further

business to come before the Subcommittee on Criminal Justice,

Drug Policy, and Human Resources, this hearing is adjourned.

[Whereupon, at 11:40 a.m., the subcommittee was adjourned.]

[Additional information submitted for the hearing record follows:]

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