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FIGHTING METH IN AMERICA’S HEARTLAND:

ASSESSING FEDERAL, STATE, AND LOCAL EFFORTS

HEARING

BEFORE THE

SUBCOMMITTEE ON CRIMINAL JUSTICE,

DRUG POLICY, AND HUMAN RESOURCES

OF THE

COMMITTEE ON

GOVERNMENT REFORM

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

ONE HUNDRED NINTH CONGRESS

FIRST SESSION

JUNE 27, 2005

Serial No. 109–97

Printed for the use of the Committee on Government Reform

(

Available via the World Wide Web: http://www.gpoaccess.gov/congress/index.html

http://www.house.gov/reform

(II)

COMMITTEE ON GOVERNMENT REFORM

TOM DAVIS, Virginia, Chairman

CHRISTOPHER SHAYS, Connecticut

DAN BURTON, Indiana

ILEANA ROS-LEHTINEN, Florida

JOHN M. MCHUGH, New York

JOHN L. MICA, Florida

GIL GUTKNECHT, Minnesota

MARK E. SOUDER, Indiana

STEVEN C. LATOURETTE, Ohio

TODD RUSSELL PLATTS, Pennsylvania

CHRIS CANNON, Utah

JOHN J. DUNCAN, JR., Tennessee

CANDICE S. MILLER, Michigan

MICHAEL R. TURNER, Ohio

DARRELL E. ISSA, California

GINNY BROWN-WAITE, Florida

JON C. PORTER, Nevada

KENNY MARCHANT, Texas

LYNN A. WESTMORELAND, Georgia

PATRICK T. MCHENRY, North Carolina

CHARLES W. DENT, Pennsylvania

VIRGINIA FOXX, North Carolina

——— ———

HENRY A. WAXMAN, California

TOM LANTOS, California

MAJOR R. OWENS, New York

EDOLPHUS TOWNS, New York

PAUL E. KANJORSKI, Pennsylvania

CAROLYN B. MALONEY, New York

ELIJAH E. CUMMINGS, Maryland

DENNIS J. KUCINICH, Ohio

DANNY K. DAVIS, Illinois

WM. LACY CLAY, Missouri

DIANE E. WATSON, California

STEPHEN F. LYNCH, Massachusetts

CHRIS VAN HOLLEN, Maryland

LINDA T. SANCHEZ, California

C.A. DUTCH RUPPERSBERGER, Maryland

BRIAN HIGGINS, New York

ELEANOR HOLMES NORTON, District of

Columbia

———

BERNARD SANDERS, Vermont

(Independent)

MELISSA WOJCIAK, Staff Director

DAVID MARIN, Deputy Staff Director/Communications Director

ROB BORDEN, Parliamentarian/Senior Counsel

TERESA AUSTIN, Chief Clerk

PHIL BARNETT, Minority Chief of Staff/Chief Counsel

SUBCOMMITTEE ON CRIMINAL JUSTICE, DRUG POLICY, AND HUMAN RESOURCES

MARK E. SOUDER, Indiana, Chairman

PATRICK T. MCHENRY, North Carolina

DAN BURTON, Indiana

JOHN L. MICA, Florida

GIL GUTKNECHT, Minnesota

STEVEN C. LATOURETTE, Ohio

CHRIS CANNON, Utah

CANDICE S. MILLER, Michigan

GINNY BROWN-WAITE, Florida

VIRGINIA FOXX, North Carolina

ELIJAH E. CUMMINGS, Maryland

BERNARD SANDERS, Vermont

DANNY K. DAVIS, Illinois

DIANE E. WATSON, California

LINDA T. SANCHEZ, California

C.A. DUTCH RUPPERSBERGER, Maryland

MAJOR R. OWENS, New York

ELEANOR HOLMES NORTON, District of

Columbia

EX OFFICIO

TOM DAVIS, Virginia HENRY A. WAXMAN, California

J. MARC WHEAT, Staff Director

NICK COLEMAN, Counsel

MALIA HOLST, Clerk

(III)

C O N T E N T S

Page

Hearing held on June 27, 2005 ............................................................................... 1

Statement of:

Bushman, Bob, special senior agent, Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension, and president, Minnesota State Association of Narcotic

Investigators; and president, Minnesota Police and Peace Officers Association, accompanied by Gail Baez, prosecuting attorney, Minneapolis;

Dennis Miller, drug court coordinator, Hennepin County Department

of Community Corrections; Kirsten Lindbloom, coordinator, Mower

County Chemical Health Coalition; and Buzz Anderson, president, Minnesota Retailers Association ........................................................................ 48

Anderson, Buzz .......................................................................................... 84

Bushman, Bob ........................................................................................... 48

Lindbloom, Kirsten .................................................................................... 65

Miller, Dennis ............................................................................................ 56

Ogden, Timothy J., Associate Special Agent in Charge, Chicago Field

Division, DEA, accompanied by Dennis Wischern, Assistant Special

Agent in Charge, Indiana; and Thomas Kelly, Assistant Special Agent

in Charge, Minnesota and North Dakota; Julie Rosen, Minnesota State

Senator; Terese Amazi, sheriff, Mower County; Brad Gerhardt, sheriff,

Martin County; Lieutenant Todd Hoffman, Wright County Sheriff’s

Office; and Susan Gaertner, attorney, Ramsey County ............................. 10

Amazi, Terese ............................................................................................ 22

Gaertner, Susan ........................................................................................ 30

Gerhardt, Brad .......................................................................................... 23

Hoffman, Lieutenant Todd ....................................................................... 29

Ogden, Timothy J. ..................................................................................... 10

Rosen, Julie ................................................................................................ 19

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

Campion, Michael, Commissioner, Minnesota Department of Public Safety, prepared statement of ............................................................................. 51

Gaertner, Susan, attorney, Ramsey County, prepared statement of ........... 33

Gerhardt, Brad, sheriff, Martin County, prepared statement of .................. 26

Lindbloom, Kirsten, coordinator, Mower County Chemical Health Coalition, prepared statement of .......................................................................... 67

Miller, Dennis, drug court coordinator, Hennepin County Department

of Community Corrections, prepared statement of .................................... 58

Ogden, Timothy J., Associate Special Agent in Charge, Chicago Field

Division, DEA, prepared statement of ........................................................ 13

Souder, Hon. Mark E., a Representative in Congress from the State

of Indiana, prepared statement of ............................................................... 7

(1)

FIGHTING METH IN AMERICA’S HEARTLAND:

ASSESSING FEDERAL, STATE, AND LOCAL

EFFORTS

MONDAY, JUNE 27, 2005

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES,

SUBCOMMITTEE ON CRIMINAL JUSTICE, DRUG POLICY,

AND HUMAN RESOURCES,

COMMITTEE ON GOVERNMENT REFORM,

St. Paul, MN.

The subcommittee met, pursuant to notice, at 8 a.m., in the Moot

Court Room, Hamline University School of Law, 1536 Hewitt Avenue MS D2011, St. Paul, MN, Hon. Mark Souder (chairman of the

subcommittee) presiding.

Present: Representatives Souder, Gutknecht, Kennedy, and

McCollum.

Staff present: Malia Holst, clerk; and Nick Coleman, counsel.

Mr. GUTKNECHT. The subcommittee will come to order. The

chairman is en route, and as some of you found out with this rainstorm, it is harder to get here than you may have thought.

This represents something like the 25th hearing of this subcommittee on the issue of drugs in America, and we are delighted

to be here in St. Paul today. And I’m also delighted to be joined

by two of my colleagues from Minnesota to have this hearing entitled, ‘‘Fighting Meth in America’s Heartland: Assessing State, Federal and Local Efforts,’’ and I think we’ve assembled a very interesting panel, and we will—obviously, this is an official hearing, everything will be transcribed and will part of the official hearing.

I would start with my own opening statement just real briefly,

first of all saying good morning and thank you to all of you for coming today.

Because of its ease of production and the availability of the ingredients, especially in farming communities, meth is a very serious drug here in the Heartland of America.

Today we have some really amazing witnesses, including State

Senator Judy Rosen, Mower County Sheriff Terese Amazi, Martin

County Sheriff Brad Gerhardt, and they’re going to be talking a little bit about the problems that they face every day in dealing with

this drug.

Word travels fast in rural America. People look out for each

other. What has amazed me has been the ease of making and selling this drug, even in very, very small towns, and we’d like to learn

a little more about that because, generally speaking, in small

towns people know their neighbors, they look out for their neighVerDate 11-MAY-2000 08:34 Feb 02, 2006 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00005 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 D:\DOCS\24891.TXT HGOVREF1 PsN: HGOVREF1
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bors and they have a pretty good idea what’s going on in their

towns.

Again, just briefly, I’d like to congratulate the subcommittee and

Chairman Souder for coming. Hopefully, he’ll be here soon, and I

would recognize, first of all, I think in the order of seniority, plus,

I think we’re in her district, the Congresswoman from South St.

Paul or St. Paul, which?

Ms. MCCOLLUM. St. Paul always works, St. Paul, West St. Paul.

Mr. GUTKNECHT. Thank you for hosting us here.

Ms. MCCOLLUM. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and it is good to be

here at Hamline University, which just finished celebrating its

150th anniversary. So this university is committed to giving back

to the community and provide a wonderful place to learn.

I first became aware of methamphetamine first like all of us from

media reports, talking to my local law enforcement both as a city

council person, it was still referred to as crank kind of back then

a little bit, and I didn’t even get the connection as to what all the

different names methamphetamine had taken over the years until

it really hit home when I had a constituent call and she was talking about methamphetamines. She was talking about methamphetamine production in a house she had just purchased where she was

going to do day-care, and so we had to work through to get it

cleaned up, to get her business going, and then I learned that

methamphetamine goes by all the different names it’s always gone

by, but bottom line is it’s a poison on her society.

I’m going to have some testimony submitted for the record, Mr.

Chairman, from Dakota and Washington Counties as well, and

they have, along with other local units of government, focused on

the challenge that we face with meth being produced here at home.

But what I do know is we need to do something about it. In a Government Reform hearing that I attended with Mr. Souder, I was

chairing, when I asked him to come to Minnesota back over a year

ago, we came to learn that even if we do everything we can do to

close local labs, it’s not enough. The meth epidemic that’s poisoning

Minnesota and our country is primarily being produced in Mexican

super labs, trafficked by Mexican gangs crossing our country from

Mexico.

So banning Sudafed and eliminating every lab in Minnesota is a

correct step to take, my constituents fully support that, but they

also know that we need to do something about the gangs that

threaten our national security, and of course, order that if methamphetamine is coming through, who knows what opportunity AlQaida might work behind.

So I look forward to this hearing, Mr. Chair. Thank you.

Mr. GUTKNECHT. Thank you, Betty, and let me just get rid of a

couple of procedural matters before we start.

First of all, I ask unanimous consent that all Members present

may be permitted to participate in this hearing. Without objection,

so ordered.

I also ask unanimous consent that all Members have 5 legislative

days to submit written testimony and statements for the hearing

record and that any answers to written questions provided to the

witnesses would also be put into the record. Without objection, that

is so ordered.

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I also ask unanimous consent that all exhibits, documents and

other materials related to or presented by Members to be included

in the hearing record, and that all Members may be permitted to

revise and extend remarks. Without objection, that is so ordered.

I now recognize the gentleman from the 6th Congressional District, Congressman Kennedy.

Mr. KENNEDY. Thank you, Congressman Gutknecht. I thank

Congresswoman McCollum for having us in her district here today,

and I’m very pleased that the chairman, who we expect to be here

soon, has decided to hold this hearing here.

This is a very, very important issue, and, you know, if you look

at the evolution of meth, it used to be that it was just out in the

western States and the southern States and we figured it wasn’t

an issue up here in the Midwest, and then it was in the Midwest,

but it was in the rural areas and we didn’t think it was an issue

in the metro areas, but it is not just tearing apart our rural communities. It has now really spread throughout the State, and there

is county after county that tell us that 90 percent plus of the people

that they’re holding in their jails are in some way related to meth.

This is coming to us most vividly in meth labs in our States. We

need to shut those down. We’re in the process of doing that. We

need to do more. We need to clean them up once we get them shut

down, but as Congresswoman McCollum says, it’s also an issue

where it’s produced in bulk and traded around the world, and we

need to not just go after that but after the precursors as well and

address them head on.

You know, if you look at some of the things we need to do, it’s

an education in our schools’ effort, it’s an education for patients

that are trying to get off it and get them off of this addiction. Many

of them it started at a very young age, you know, for something

maybe as silly as weight loss, but then they get addicted, too many

of them get hooked into prostitution just to pay for it. There’s just

heart-wrenching stories of those kids that grew up in a meth lab

that we need to reach out and help from a healthcare perspective.

We also need to make sure our law enforcement has the resources

they need.

All these things we’ve been trying to address, a number of efforts

that we focused on in Congress recently, here’s the funding for

Byrne Grants, funding for Meth Hot Spots. We, frankly, although

Chairman Souder and I and others have pushed hard to increase

that funding, we maybe haven’t had the success we wanted. So

having testimony like this so that we can more vividly bring those

stories back and the need back is something that’s very important

and compelling.

I would also say that my CLEAN-UP Act, H.R. 13, also addresses

many of the things we’ve talked about. I think higher penalties

when we find those that are bringing it across the border, when we

find those that are pushing this poison on our children, we need

to make sure that they get a penalty that is reflective of the seriousness of the crime and deters them from doing it in the future.

So there are few things more important for us than to keep this

scourge away from our communities. I thank all the witnesses for

being here, I look forward to your testimony, and I thank the chairVerDate 11-MAY-2000 08:34 Feb 02, 2006 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00007 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 D:\DOCS\24891.TXT HGOVREF1 PsN: HGOVREF1
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man, who has now arrived, to respond to our request to come here

to Minnesota.

Mr. GUTKNECHT. I now recognize the chairman of the subcommittee, a gentleman who I came into Congress with in 1994, as I mentioned, who has probably worked harder than any other single

Member of the U.S. House of Representatives on the issue of the

scourge of drugs, particularly in rural parts of America, Mark

Souder.

Mr. SOUDER. Thank you. I had a flight through Chicago last

night which was a big mistake.

I want to thank you all for coming and thank each of the Members here for having requested this hearing and for all the people

on the front lines of the meth war.

This hearing continues our subcommittee’s work on the growing

problem of methamphetamine trafficking and abuse—a problem

that has ravaged communities across the entire country. I’d like to

thank my three co-hosts, Congressman Gutknecht, Congressman

Kennedy and Congresswoman McCollum for inviting me to the

Twin Cities for this hearing.

They’ve each approached me at different times on the House floor

and asked me to do this. I think the first time was Congresswoman

McCollum even last year and Congressman Kennedy had also

raised it last year, and Congressman Gutknecht and I got elected

together and have been working together on this issue for a number of years. Each of them has been a strong advocate in the House

for an effective, bipartisan anti-meth strategy. I’m looking forward

to working with them on new legislation for this Congress, and I

hope that the information we gather at this hearing will help us

achieve that goal.

Meth is one of the most powerful and dangerous drugs available.

It is also one of the easiest to make. It’s perhaps best described as

a perfect storm, a cheap, easy-to-make and plentiful drug with devastating health and environmental consequences, consuming tremendous law enforcement and other public resources, that is extremely addictive and difficult to treat. If we fail to get control of

it, meth will wreak havoc in our communities for generations to

come.

This is actually the eighth hearing focusing on meth held by this

subcommittee since 2001, and the fifth field hearing. In places as

diverse as Indiana, Arkansas, Hawaii and now Minnesota, I have

heard gripping testimony about how this drug has devastated lives

and families. But I’ve also learned about the many positive ways

the communities have fought back, targeting the meth cooks and

dealers, trying to get addicts into treatment, and working to educate young people about the risks of meth abuse.

At each hearing, then, we try to get a picture of the state of meth

trafficking abuse in the local area. Then we ask three questions.

First, where does the meth in the area come from, and how do we

reduce its supply? Second, how do we get people into treatment,

and how do we keep young people from starting meth use in the

first place? And finally, how can the Federal Government partner

with State and local agencies to deal with this problem?

The meth abuse situation in Minnesota, as elsewhere, is deeply

troubling. According to a study by the Hazelden Foundation last

5

year, meth-related deaths, emergency room episodes, and law enforcement seizures of meth labs, all increased steadily from 2000

to 2003. Emergency rooms in the Twin Cities saw the number of

meth-related incidents more than double between 1995 and 2002.

What used to be almost an exclusively rural problem in the State

has now taken hold in the suburbs and urban areas.

The next question, that of meth supply, divides into two separate

issues, because this drug comes from two major sources. The most

significant source in terms of the amount produced comes from the

so-called ‘‘super labs,’’ which until recently were mainly located in

California, but now are increasingly located in northern Mexico. By

the end of the 1990’s, these super labs produced over 70 percent

of the Nation’s supply of meth, and today it is believed that 90 percent or more comes from Mexican super labs. The super labs are

operated by large Mexican drug trafficking organizations that have

used their established distribution and supply networks to transport meth throughout the country.

The second major source of meth comes from small, local labs

that are generally unaffiliated with major trafficking organizations.

These labs, often called ‘‘mom-and-pop’’ or ‘‘clan’’, clandestine labs,

have proliferated throughout the country, often in rural areas. The

total amount of meth actually supplied by these labs is relatively

small; however, the environmental damage and health hazard they

create in the form of toxic chemical pollution and chemical fires

make them a serious problem for local communities, particularly

the State and local law enforcement agencies forced to uncover and

clean them up. Children are often found at meth labs and have frequently suffered from severe health problems as a result of hazardous chemicals used.

Since meth has no single source of supply, no single regulation

will be able to control it effectively. To deal with the local meth lab

problem, many States have passed various forms of retail sales restrictions on pseudoephedrine products, like cold medicines. Some

States limit the number of packages a customer can buy; others

have forced cold medicines behind the counter in pharmacies. Retail sales restrictions could have a major impact on the number of

small labs.

However, retail sales regulations will not deal with the largescale production of meth in Mexico. That problem will either require better control in the amount of pseudoephedrine going into

Mexico—which appears to be on the rise—or better control of drug

smuggling on our Southwest border, or both. The Federal Government, in particular the Departments of Justice, State, and Homeland Security, will have to take the lead if we are to get results.

The next major question is demand reduction: How do we get

meth addicts to stop using, and how do we get young people not

to try meth in the first place? I am encouraged by the work of a

number of programs at the State and local level, with assistance

from the Federal Government, including drug court programs,

which seek to get meth drug offenders into treatment programs in

lieu of prison time; the Drug-Free Communities Support Program,

which helps the work of community anti-drug coalitions to bring

drug use prevention education to young people; and the President’s

Access to recovery treatment initiative, which seeks to broaden the

6

number of treatment providers. But we should not minimize the

task ahead; this is one of the most addictive drugs, and treatment

programs nationwide have not had a very good success rate with

meth.

The final question we need to address is how the Federal Government can best partner with State and local agencies to deal

with meth and its consequences. Currently, the Federal Government does provide a number of grants and other assistance programs to State and local agencies—in addition to the programs I

mentioned earlier, the Byrne Grants and COPS Meth Hot Spots

programs help fund anti-meth enforcement task forces; the DEA

and other agencies assist State and local agencies with meth lab

cleanup costs; and the Safe and Drug-Free Schools program and

the National Youth Anti-Drug Media Campaign helps schools and

other organizations provide anti-meth education.

However, we will never have enough money, at any level of government, to do everything we might want to do with respect to

meth. That means that Congress, and State and local policymakers, need to make some tough choices about which activities

and programs to fund, and at what level. We also need to strike

the appropriate balance between the needs of law enforcement and

consumers, and between supply reduction and demand reduction.

The House and Senate are currently considering a number of different proposed bills concerning meth, and I am hopeful that we

will be able to take strong, effective action before the end of this

year. I recently introduced H.R. 1446, which would authorize new

regulations of precursor chemicals and provide assistance to State,

Federal and local law enforcement. My colleague, Mr. Kennedy, has

also introduced H.R. 13, the CLEAN-UP Meth Act, which among

other things provides funds to help States and localities find and

clean up meth labs, including expanding assistance to the Community Oriented Policing Services, COPS grant program.

We have an excellent group of witnesses today who will help us

make sense of these complicated issues. On our first panel, we are

joined by Mr. Timothy Ogden, Associate Special Agent in Charge

of DEA’s Chicago Field Division; Minnesota State Senator Julie

Rosen, who has been a strong leader in the fight against meth here

in Minnesota; Sheriff Terese Amazi of Mower County and Sheriff

Brad Gerhardt of Martin County; Lieutenant Todd Hoffman of the

Wright County Sheriff’s Office; and Ms. Susan Gaertner, the

Ramsey County attorney.

On our second panel, we are pleased to be joined by Commissioner Michael Campion of the Minnesota Department of Public

Safety; Mr. Bob Bushman, a special senior agent at the Minnesota

Bureau of Criminal Apprehension, and president of both the Minnesota State Association of Narcotic Investigators, and the Minnesota Police and Peace Officers’ Association; Mr. Dennis Miller,

drug court coordinator for the Hennepin County Department of

Community Corrections; Ms. Kirsten Lindbloom, coordinator of the

Mower County Chemical Health Coalition; and Mr. Buzz Anderson,

president of the Minnesota Retailers Association. We thank everyone for taking the time to join us today, and look forward to your

testimony.

[The prepared statement of Hon. Mark E. Souder follows:]

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8

9

10

Mr. SOUDER. The first panel is all here, is that correct, except

Ms. Gaertner? We’ll swear her in separately.

As an oversight committee, it’s our standard practice to swear in

all our witnesses and ask them to testify under oath. You’ll join

Mark McGuire, who did this a few weeks ago in front of our committee, which gave a lot more publicity to what we do in our committee, and so if you’ll each rise, raise your right hands.

[Witnesses sworn.]

Mr. SOUDER. Let the record show that each of the witnesses responded in the affirmative.

Mr. GUTKNECHT. Mr. Chairman, I’m in the process of turning off

my cell phone, and I might recommend that others check theirs as

well.

Ms. MCCOLLUM. Mine is off.

Mr. SOUDER. Mr. Ogden, we’re going to start with you. Welcome.

Mr. OGDEN. Good morning, sir. Thank you.

STATEMENTS OF TIMOTHY J. OGDEN, ASSOCIATE SPECIAL

AGENT IN CHARGE, CHICAGO FIELD DIVISION, DEA, ACCOMPANIED BY DENNIS WISCHERN, ASSISTANT SPECIAL AGENT

IN CHARGE, INDIANA; AND THOMAS KELLY, ASSISTANT SPECIAL AGENT IN CHARGE, MINNESOTA AND NORTH DAKOTA;

JULIE ROSEN, MINNESOTA STATE SENATOR; TERESE AMAZI,

SHERIFF, MOWER COUNTY; BRAD GERHARDT, SHERIFF,

MARTIN COUNTY; LIEUTENANT TODD HOFFMAN, WRIGHT

COUNTY SHERIFF’S OFFICE; AND SUSAN GAERTNER, ATTORNEY, RAMSEY COUNTY

STATEMENT OF TIMOTHY J. OGDEN

Mr. OGDEN. Chairman Souder and distinguished Members of

Congress, my name is Timothy Ogden, and I am the Associate Special Agent in Charge of the Drug Enforcement Administration’s

Chicago Field Division. On behalf of DEA Administrator Karen

Tandy, and Chicago Field Division Special Agent in Charge, Richard Sanders, I appreciate your invitation to testimony today regarding DEA’s efforts to combat methamphetamine in the State of

Minnesota.

The DEA Chicago Field Division’s area of responsibility includes

the northern half of Illinois, as well as the States of Indiana, Minnesota, North Dakota and Wisconsin. Accompanying me today are

Thomas Kelly, who serves as the Assistant Special Agent in charge

of the DEA Minneapolis District Office, and Dennis Wischern, who

serves as the Assistant Special Agent in charge of DEA’s Indianapolis District Office.

Mr. Kelly directs all the DEA operations in the States of Minnesota and North Dakota, and he works hand in hand with our law

enforcement counterparts in those States. Mr. Wischern directs all

enforcement operations in Indiana after serving a number of years

in DEA headquarters, and he’s truly regarded as an expert on

methamphetamine issues. Combined we have over 70 years in drug

law enforcement experience.

Methamphetamine is not a new drug threat to DEA, but until

the late 1980’s methamphetamine was a relatively unknown drug

outside the States along the west coast. However, by the early

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1990’s, methamphetamine was gaining in popularity and began

spreading across the country. Today few places in the United

States have not felt its impact, and Minnesota is no exception.

In Minnesota and across the Nation we have initiated and led

successful enforcement efforts focusing on methamphetamine and

its precursor chemicals and have worked jointly with our Federal,

State and local law enforcement partners to combat this drug. As

a result of DEA’s efforts and those of our law enforcement partners

in the United States and in Canada, we have seen a dramatic decline in methamphetamine super labs operating in the United

States, but with this drop in domestic super lab activity, we have

also seen an increase in super lab activity in Mexico.

No precise breakdown is currently available, but drug lab and

seizure statistics suggests that roughly two-thirds or more of methamphetamine utilized in the United States comes from the larger

super labs, increasingly in Mexico, and that about one-third of the

methamphetamine consumed in this country comes from medium

to small domestic laboratories.

Attacking the methamphetamine threat in Minnesota is a twoprong problem. First, large quantities of methamphetamine are

produced in Mexico by drug trafficking organizations that smuggle

into the United States and then transport it throughout the country and into States like Minnesota. These Mexican traffickers also

control the transportation distribution of bulk sales of cocaine,

marijuana and heroin.

Second, like so many other Midwestern States, law enforcement

agencies in Minnesota are faced with a large number of small toxic

labs. These labs produce relatively small quantities of methamphetamine, but have the major impact on the people of Minnesota. We are well aware that combating this drug requires a concerted effort by law enforcement, and we are working with our

partners in Minnesota and across the country to fight methamphetamine.

Another toll in this fight comes from DEA’s Office of Training,

which shares our expertise by training thousands of State and local

partners from all over the country, as well as our international

counterparts. Since 1998, DEA has trained more than 8,600 State

and local law enforcement officers, as well as 1,900 DEA employees

to conduct methamphetamine investigations and safely dismantle

methamphetamine laboratories that are seized.

In the last 4 years DEA has provided clandestine laboratory

training to more than 150 officers from Minnesota. Of this, 52 have

received training in the past 9 months.

The DEA also provides cleanup assistance to law enforcement

agencies across the country as they battle this drug. DEA’s Hazardous Waste Program, with the assistance of grants to State and

local law enforcement, supports and funds the cleanup of the majority of the laboratories seized in the United States.

In fiscal year 2004, DEA administered 10,061 State and local

clandestine laboratory cleanups, costing $18.6 million. In Minnesota, from fiscal year 2002 through 2005, the DEA administered

947 lab cleanups at a total cost of $1,202,180.00, and over the past

9 months the DEA has administered 144 cleanups in Minnesota at

a cost of $280,000.

12

Demand reduction is an important aspect in law enforcement’s

fight against methamphetamine, and the DEA Minneapolis District

Office is actively engaged in this effort to raise the awareness

about the dangers of methamphetamine.

Since 2003, our demand reduction coordinator has conducted

more than 100 presentations throughout the State, reaching approximately 9,700 people. Many of these presentations began as

general drug-related topics but then invariably evolved into methamphetamine discussions.

More than any other controlled substance, methamphetamine endangers children through the exposure to drug abuse, neglect,

physical and sexual abuse, toxic chemicals, hazardous waste, fire

and explosions. In response to these tragic phenomena, the DEA

has enhanced its Victim/Witness Program to identify, refer and report these incidents to the proper State agencies. This program insures that endangered children are identified and that each child’s

immediate safety is addressed at the scene through coordination

with child welfare and healthcare service providers.

In closing, I want to assure you that the DEA is fully aware that

the fight against methamphetamine must continue, and we’ll do everything we can to stop the spread of this drug. The DEA is fighting methamphetamine on multiple fronts, and the Minneapolis District Office will continue to work closely with our partners to combat this insidious drug.

I want to thank you for holding this hearing and recognizing the

importance of this issue. I also want to thank you for giving me the

opportunity to testify here today. My colleagues and I will be happy

to answer any questions you may have at the appropriate time.

Thank you, sir.

Mr. Souder. Thank you. Senator Rosen.

[The prepared statement of Mr. Ogden follows:]

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STATEMENT OF JULIE ROSEN

Ms. ROSEN. Thank you, Mr. Chair, and fellow Honorable Members.

I just want to thank you very much for being here, and I am

going to tweak my testimony here because, obviously, you’re very

well briefed in understanding methamphetamine issues, so we are

not starting at square one, at a place that I was about a year and

a half ago.

I had fellow Senate members in my caucus that repeatedly say,

well, what’s the big deal about meth? But apparently you all know

what the big deal is about meth, and that’s why you’re here, and

I really appreciate this opportunity to talk about what’s going on

in Minnesota, and I will gear this testimony more toward the legislation and our hopes for Minnesota legislation and our fight

against meth for the future.

Because even though we passed probably one of the most aggressive and comprehensive pieces of legislation this year, in the Nation, actually, it’s probably the best meth bill in the Nation, we still

have a lot of work to do.

If you’re not familiar with the Minnesota meth bill, it deals with

five major parts. The increase, No. 1, the cornerstone of the bill is

the restriction on the pseudoephedrine, and that was a huge deal

and a lot of effort put out by many, many people.

The other part, another two parts were the increase in penalties

for child endangerment and for the attempt to manufacture meth,

a very important part of this bill, too.

The fourth piece of this bill, that I’m very proud of and that

many States are looking at, is the remediation and cleanup issue,

how we handle these contaminated properties and how we disclose

them with the realtors and to private owners. That is, that we

worked on that very, very hard, and I think we’ve got a good piece

of legislation there, and I’m hoping to watch its progress carefully;

and another part of this bill is the treatment. There’s money in this

bill for treatment.

Now, that’s a little more nebulous, I’m not quite sure how we’re

going to do that, but it’s grants to counties that can extend their

treatment program, which is very important. As you know, the 28-

day program for meth does not work, so we need to provide to the

counties more funds, more revenue to be able to provide a longer

treatment program.

There is some education in this bill for schools, but that is an

area that I would like to talk to you about; education, the materials

and funding for this, and for law enforcement, but I will get back

to that later. As you can see, I don’t have a formal—I think that

I’m talking from the heart, and I appreciate this because I haven’t

talked about meth for a couple weeks now, I’m going through withdrawals. So I appreciate this, and they don’t call me Senator Meth

for nothing.

I got involved in this issue about 21⁄2 years ago because the sheriff, Sheriff Gerhardt, brought it to my attention. I live about 8

miles from the Iowa border, and it’s very evident whatever other

States are doing in the surrounding area of Minnesota it directly

affects our State, and that’s exactly what happened, and there was

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many people that were working on the meth issue but bits and

pieces all over.

So we pulled together, and this fine sheriff, too, is a part of Minnesota Meth Lab Task Force, and we developed a very fine bill last

year, and it’s a better bill this year, and we’ve got the support of

the Governor, which was extremely important. You have to have

the support from the Governor, or the attorney general’s office in

some States are dealing with it, and he was completely supportive

and, like I said, we passed one of the best meth bills in the Nation,

and because of that bill many States are asking for help. We

helped Wisconsin out. We’re trying to work on a Midwest comprehensive meth approach, and it doesn’t make sense to continue

to re-create the bill because there is good legislation out there, and

I’m hoping that with the legislation that’s coming down on the Federal side, it’s not going to preempt what we have done on the State

side if we have a stronger bill. So that’s something that I really

wanted to mention that, please, don’t weaken our bill by something

that’s done on the Federal side.

I had the opportunity and pleasure to talk with the Eastern Attorney General’s Association a couple weeks ago on methamphetamine, and it was very interesting. There was some there that gave

me that deer-in-the-headlight look, that they had not a clue what

myself or the gentleman from Iowa was talking about, and then

there was some that were starting to get it, and that’s the issue

with meth. Either you have the people that you understand meth

and have dealt with it or know somebody or have heard of a horrendous story or people are going, like my colleague, what’s the big

deal with meth. That disparity is getting smaller and smaller and

closer together, but we still have a tremendous amount of work to

do, a tremendous amount of education to do.

There are some things that we can work on on the Federal side

is a national Web site for standard cleanup measures, especially for

children. We need to have a national view of how we handle these

contaminated properties, and we need to have more research done

for how it’s affecting the children. I have been involved in a drug

endangered children’s program for several years now, only legislator that ever shows up. I can’t understand that, and methamphetamine and when the children are in the presence of a contaminated

home or where they’re cooking meth, we have no clue what it’s

done to the children, and I’d like to see a national—this is kind of

my wish list. I’d like to see a national clearinghouse for meth education materials and have access to them.

In Minnesota we actually have a very good Web site that’s put

out by the Department of Health, but many States are struggling

with it, and we get a tremendous amount of calls saying please

help us. We need information. We don’t have—this is really about

the only meth literature that’s available right now, and I put this

out through my office, and there is the—what’s it called, the—oh,

it’s the Partnership for Drug-Free America apparently has a wonderful set of meth material that’s been reviewed by some people in

the State, and they are very excited about that. However, it costs

$20,000 a year per State, and we don’t even have $25,000 a year

to get that information.

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Education is key, especially for our schools, and the calls that are

coming in to the Department of Health and to the Bureau of Criminal Apprehension on meth education is tremendous, and that’s

where we can help.

The Government what I would hope, too, can provide a little

stronger and not so nebulous treatment guidelines. They talk about

adequate. Well, what is adequate? And we are even struggling with

that in our State. We can’t seem to get our hands around exactly

what needs to be done. There are many other programs out there

that do work, but we’d like to be able to say this we do know

works. We do know that we need at least 6 months. We do know

we need an after-treatment program. We do know that we need to

direct them with antidepressants and medical health and we

need—we do know that we need to gear our treatment programs

more for the individual. The adolescent program has to be much

different than the mother of a child program, because we’re seeing

meth affect everybody. This is not just the 25 to 45-year old blue

collar worker anymore. This is in our children, our schools, and you

all know that. It’s the only drug right now that 50 percent are females, soccer moms. There are 13, 14-year old girls on our Lower

Sioux Reservation that are not even paying for meth. They are

using it for sex, and that’s how they get their meth, is for sex, and

it’s just hit our Native American population extremely hard. The

African American population, our community, I should say, in

northern Minneapolis just testified in one of our committees this

spring that it is—meth has been found in the African American

community, and that is very unusual. That is starting to happen,

so we’re really concerned about that.

But the No. 1 thing that the Federal Government can do is restrict and enforce the manufacturing or importation of the ephedrine and pseudoephedrine into the United States from Canada, because right now 80 percent that is manufactured is coming in

through Canada in the United States. That’s tremendous. We all

know that’s not for the sniffles and the cold, and they have an open

market, and we need to address that market. We need to send a

clear message. A couple other areas that I——

Mr. SOUDER. You need to kind of summarize. I let you go on past

the 5-minutes.

Ms. ROSEN. Oh, I did? I’m sorry.

We need to have equality. There’s a disparity between the Hot

Spots money between the States. Iowa, Wisconsin get a tremendous

amount of Hot Spots money, and we are not getting our fair share.

So, please, if you can, work on any of the money that’s available

through the Federal Government, I would appreciate that. And I

appreciate this opportunity, and I do want to say that Target Corp.

in Minnesota here was instrumental in providing a corporate agenda for how they handle pseudoephedrine, and a lot of other corporations and their competitors have followed suit, and I wanted

to say on the record thank you to Target for being responsible with

that.

Mr. SOUDER. Thank you.

Ms. ROSEN. Yes, thank you.

Mr. SOUDER. Sheriff Amazi.

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STATEMENT OF SHERIFF TERESE AMAZI

Ms. AMAZI. Thank you, Mr. Chair, and I really want to thank you

for allowing me the opportunity to testify here today.

From a very local perspective, I can tell you what it has done to

our jails. Last year it cost Mower County approximately $200,000,

and that is just in our jail, just with medical costs and housing and

prisoners. Our jail population on any given day is about 50 percent

meth-related crimes, whether they’re high on methamphetamine

when they commit the crimes or they’re doing the crime because

they want more methamphetamine. That is what we see.

In Mower County we’ve really taken a community approach. We

do a lot of education. I go out and I know I speak a lot about methamphetamine. I myself have distributed about 6,000 of the meth

lab, Watch Your Community brochures that we have available, and

those are available to us through the DEA, and I really want to

thank those folks, because they do provide a tremendous asset to

Mower County. Mr. Ogden was saying that they train 52 individuals to do meth lab cleanups. Four of those individuals were from

Mower County in the last 9 months. So we truly do use their resources. We also do depend upon the Byrne Grants, and the Byrne

Grant comes to us through our task force, and we have in southeastern Minnesota a narcotics task force, and we cannot operate

without the Byrne Grant. They supply much of the funding that

goes with the education. They also supply the enforcement, and

without those, without some degree of fear of getting caught, we

have a rampant problem. I know we’ve fought this the same way

for years and years. We don’t seem to gain headway. However, I

can say we do make a difference. We do at least try to make a difference in getting these people.

A lot of our treatment currently consists of incarceration, because

that is the only one that works. I know I had a father that said

the best thing you did for me was arrest my son and keep him in

your jail, the Mower County jail, because that is what he needed.

He is currently in the St. Cloud Penitentiary, however, is turning

his life around, had begun to turn his life around after serving a

year in Mower County Jail, because he needed that drying out

time, he needed to get away from his friends, his drug friends, and

was able to get out of the county and away to a different area. He

was able to turn his life around and, hopefully, when he comes out

of St. Cloud he’ll be able to continue.

So those are just personal testimonies. I know, Congressman

Gutknecht, you were in Mower County last September for the

floods. Previous in that day we had done some rescues of individuals that were landlocked by the water, and floating down the river

was a portable meth lab. So we know we’ve got it.

The rural area truly lends itself to meth labs. They make it in

the trunk of cars, they dump it in the ditches. We see them in

homes, we see it with children. Just about every meth lab that we

have busted we see children, and we see two and three children at

a time, and they are sick. We take them immediately to the emergency room. That is a cost that is, you know, taken upon by the

county. So we’re seeing it at a county level, and those are just costs

that we see currently and will see consistently, because we can’t

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allow those children not to get medical treatment. We have to do

that.

Also, our people that are incarcerated, they need medical treatment as well, and dental, a lot of dental. We don’t provide corrective dental surgeries. We are truly in the aspect of extraction. That

is what we do, summary building, but at a medical facility, we cannot do that. So we see a lot of individuals who have liver problems,

breathing problems. When they come down off the methamphetamine, they’re suicidal. We have a lot of people that are in paper

suits up in our jail, and that is how we detox them, because our

detox facilities are not set up for methamphetamine, unfortunately,

because these individuals are very dangerous and they’re very suicidal. They can go off at a drop of a hat, and they do, and so they

stay in our jail facility, and to detox they’re in paper, unfortunately, to minimize the risk of suicide.

So these are just some of the local level aspects. You’ll also hear

from our Chemical Health Coalition that does a lot of community

education as well. We partner up and we go out as a team and talk

to kids, talk to families, talk to parents, a lot of parent education,

and I don’t just do it in Mower County. I go to Steele County, I

go to Freeborn County, asked to do a lot of presentations.

So I really do appreciate the ability to come here today, give you

just a small, small view of what’s occurring in Mower County, but

I do appreciate that, and thank you for having me here today.

Mr. SOUDER. Thank you. Sheriff Gerhardt.

STATEMENT OF SHERIFF BRAD GERHARDT

Mr. GERHARDT. Chairman Souder, and the distinguished members of the committee, I, too, thank you for allowing me to be here

today, and I can echo what you’ve heard up to this point and, hopefully, I don’t necessarily have to repeat that, but I can speak for

the issues that Sheriff Amazi had, because we’re just two counties

to the west from her, so we have the same or similar issues. We’re

probably about half the size of the population, however.

Our jail issue is the same to the point where we’re in the process

of establishing a justice council and starting to build a new jail. As

my chief deputy and members of my county board right now are

at a jail summit in St. Cloud put on by the Association of Minnesota Counties where approximately a third of the counties in the

State of Minnesota, one-third of the 87 counties are looking at

building new jails, and meth is the tail that’s wagging the dog.

That’s really what’s pushing that issue right there, right now, and

I would say more than half to two-thirds of our inmates in our jail

are meth or meth-related inmates.

I’m going to go a little different route here and, as Senator Rosen

stated earlier, she represents our area, and we sat down and met

with her approximately 2, 21⁄2 years ago and started telling her

about the whole meth issue. But we’re coming up with some new

philosophies, some new thoughts on what we should do with methamphetamine, and we’ve certainly done our share in Martin County to educate and to respond to the meth lab issues, to train people,

and to really hit the area of prevention extremely hard. We’re offering reward money for information for—towards the prosecution of

a methamphetamine lab. We’re extremely excited over the fact that

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we have the legislation now from the State of Minnesota, which

will hopefully reduce our local labs, and we can concentrate more

on the regional effort, and you referred to earlier the Mexican meth

and the super lab methods coming into Minnesota and really start

to make a dent into that and really encourage my agents in our

drug task force, which is different than Sheriff Amazi’s task force,

to work with the DEA and other Federal agencies on that front.

I have a handout that I have laid over there on the table, and

on the third page of that handout I have the Project Surround philosophy that’s being developed in Martin County. And this philosophy is somewhat responsive and somewhat prevention, and it’s a

philosophy created locally after a class of blended leadership students from Fairmont attended the week long Blandon retreat. The

Blandon Foundation is a Minnesota foundation created for rural

Minnesota after tragedy struck the Blandon family in the middle

of the 20th century. They realized that rural areas, specifically

rural Minnesota, need support and leaders need to be trained. I

personally happened to be an attendee at the second session for the

Fairmont area.

Project Surround involves the community working with at-risk

youth. They learned early on the youth involved need a sense of

connectiveness and also they need to contribute to society, as well

as have long-term case management. So with that in mind, the

Services for Challenging Youth Committee was formed in the Martin County area, and the following initiatives were created.

In Martin County we have kinship and Martin County mentoring, and that satisfies the connectiveness that the children need to

a community. We have a brief strategic family therapy and also

weekend consequential camp. The consequential camp helped with

contributions to society and, finally, addressing the issue of longterm case management we are currently working on a model for

after school programming, and we currently have it 70 percent

funded. This program includes a meal, which is very important for

our challenging youth, recreation time and time to complete the

homework, family therapy and individual therapy for chemical dependency issues, as well as vocational skills component involving

a doctoral candidate who is doing the thesis on this program.

We’re also in the process right now to get a doctoral candidate

to look at the economics of this program, this after school program,

and I’ll fill you in on some more of the details in a little bit, from

the University of Chicago to study the potential out-of-home placement savings that this program will, hopefully, address.

The whole idea behind our after school program, which will run

from 3 to 8 p.m. is, quite honestly, to break the cycle. We’re not

going to see huge results early on, within the first couple of years,

but whether it’s meth or whether it’s alcohol or whatever, we need

to break the cycle and the cycle of abuse, and a lot of these children

that are going to be involved in this after school program come

from homes that have the chemical dependency issues and the related abuse issues that go along with that.

So we’re embracing that philosophy in Martin County, and as

you can probably tell, the biggest issue is funding. We’re talking a

$191,000 program for 176 school days out of the year, and we’re

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about $130,000 to that point right now, and this way that we can

have these kids and talk to them.

I also happen to be a counselor for the Weekend Consequential

Camp, and there are several key components that are missing. One

is a positive male role model in the lives of about 75 percent of the

students that attend these camps and the other one is that I like

being here at this camp, even though I’m working really hard and

I’m really tired, I don’t want to go home, and those are the things

that we’re hearing from the kids who come from the meth houses

and the meth homes. So we have to give them the skills to cope

and to deal with those issues that meth is creating.

Impact on out-of-home placement, just Martin and Faribault County last year alone out-home placement costs $1.7 million on a

local level. If we can spend tens of thousands of dollars up front

on prevention and to work with these youth that are at risk, we

could probably save millions of dollars down the road, and that’s

the philosophy that we’re embracing.

Again, I’d like to thank the committee for having me here, and

I’ll be open to any questions you may have.

[The prepared statement of Mr. Gerhardt follows:]

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Mr. SOUDER. Thank you. Lieutenant Hoffman.

STATEMENT OF LIEUTENANT TODD HOFFMAN

Mr. HOFFMAN. Mr. Chairman and committee members, thank

you for inviting me here.

Wright County is a rural county just west of the cities here. In

Wright County we found that you really need the three-prong approach to fight methamphetamine to decrease it. We need the education, we need the treatment, and we need enforcement. If you

take away any of those three, and we’re not going to decrease the

meth in our area.

Education, Wright County started a project called MEDA. It’s

Meth Education and Drug Awareness. It’s a coalition of law enforcement officers, treatment counselors, educators, parent/teacher

organizations, different branches of the Government, to try to get

together and come up with different ways of educating our citizens.

We’re trying to break it up into not only a county organization but

a city, a local organization that are able to get out in the communities in the various cities and educate the citizens there, give

them some ownership in this fight against methamphetamine.

We’re trying to get more people out there, like the sheriff here

going out there, they’re giving presentations, but now we’re getting

citizens going out and giving presentations at the Kiwanis, Lions

Club, to Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts. We’re bringing in presenters

from all over the United States to come in and gave them their stories. So education in Wright County is very important.

Treatment, treatment is also very important. We found, like

some of the other representatives said, 28-day program doesn’t

work, OK. So we talk to the counselors about what does work.

What the counselors in our area are saying, they need the dryingout process, they need to be in jail 6 months, 7 months, a year,

until they’re finally dried out enough so that the treatment can

work. Well, do they get the treatment after they’re in prison or during prison? They need it during their jail time in prison. Right now,

of course, we don’t have funding. The local county jails don’t have

funding to provide treatment while they’re in jail. Even our prison

systems now, the treatment programs in prison is lacking. We need

more funding for the treatment while they’re in prison, while

they’re in the county jails. So treatment is a very important factor.

Enforcement, enforcement, we need funding for enforcement, especially in the rural areas. We have three police departments in

Wright County. Two of the three police departments have either

three officers or five officers. They can’t afford right now, out of

their city budget, to put one person on a task force or have a narcotics unit to fight drugs in our area. It’s just—the finance area

can’t cover that in their budget. We need some type of a funding.

Byrne Grant is great. Byrne Grant provides a lot of money for Minnesota. I forget if it’s $8 million, how much it is, but that’s a good

start, but it’s not enough.

The funding for law enforcement officers due to Byrne funding

has not increased in probably 5, 6 years. The funding that goes directly to the drug task force officers has not increased. It needs to

increase. We need to get that money out to the rural cities that

can’t afford to put an officer on a drug task force. We need assistVerDate 11-MAY-2000 08:34 Feb 02, 2006 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00033 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 D:\DOCS\24891.TXT HGOVREF1 PsN: HGOVREF1
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ance not only on a Federal level but a local level in giving that

money directly to some of these outstate agencies, including Wright

County and Mower and the southern border of Iowa.

The methamphetamine, Minnesota Legislature has helped us out

quite a bit with this pseudoephedrine legislation. It’s going to help

out the mom-and-pop meth labs. It’s going to reduce the number

of meth labs in rural America, rural Minnesota, I should say, substantially. But, again, 80 percent of the meth in Minnesota comes

from outside of Minnesota. So it will help the mom-and-pop labs,

but due to increased amounts of methamphetamine coming from

Mexico and Mexican nationals bringing them up into Minnesota

has a dramatic effect on Wright County.

Right now we have a problem with identifying these drug rings,

the Mexican national drug rings. No documentation, you know, you

arrest somebody, you have no idea who they are. If they’re able to

be deported, we usually see them back within the month, and

there’s really no way to track some of these individuals right now.

We need some type of help from the Federal Government and decreasing the ability from this meth and people that are providing

the meth from coming across our borders, not only the Mexican

border but also from Canada. So any assistance that the Federal

Government can help us on that aspect, it would be greatly appreciated. Other than that, I’ll stop my comments right now.

Mr. SOUDER. Thank you. Ms. Gaertner, we swear in all our witnesses. If you’ll stand and raise your right hand.

[Witness sworn.]

Mr. SOUDER. Let the record show that she responded in the affirmative. Thank you for joining us today.

STATEMENT OF SUSAN GAERTNER

Ms. GAERTNER. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, members of the committee. I am truly honored to be here this morning, and it is a difficult task to talk about this issue in 5 minutes, particularly since

I’m a lawyer, but I’ll do my very best to keep my remarks brief and

highlight what I consider the most important points.

I have been a felony prosecutor in this community for over two

decades, and I have never encountered a crime trend or social issue

that I have found as frightening and as having such an impact on

my community as the methamphetamine epidemic. It used to be a

rural phenomena. It is not anymore. We are beginning to feel the

effects very intensely in Ramsey County, which is a jurisdiction of

over half a million people, including St. Paul, where we are today.

Ramsey County is waking up to its own meth problem.

Methamphetamine drug charges accounted for nearly 29 percent

of all our drug cases last year, 301 cases. That is up from only 20

cases as recently as 1999. In fact, methamphetamine drug charges

now account for 10 percent of all the felonies we prosecute in

Ramsey County. That is just the drug charges themselves, and, obviously, what we’re seeing is violent crime. Obviously, few buy

methamphetamine. I could give you countless examples. I’ll give

you only one.

We are currently prosecuting a man who was in a fit of paranoia.

Fueled by his methamphetamine use, he stabbed his wife multiple

times and beat her with a broom in the presence of their very

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young children. I mentioned that case in particular because of Ms.

McCollum’s commitment to domestic abuse in our community. It’s

having a negative impact on that kind of crime and really across

the board with violent crimes. But what to me is almost the most

frightening aspect of this epidemic is how it’s affecting our children.

In Ramsey County, about 40 percent of our child protection cases

involve drug use. Of those cases, 80 to 90 percent involve methamphetamine use. We’re feeling that problem, the meth problem in

our child protection cases, but we anticipate it will only get worse.

In Carver County, which is the neighboring county, it’s not as populated, 90 percent of the children in foster care in March 2004 were

there because of methamphetamine.

Now, statewide last year methamphetamine accounted for nearly

40 percent of drug charges, and the number of meth offenders in

our State prisons, you’ve probably heard that, you’ll hear that

again, has nearly doubled in 2 years. The cost now in Minnesota

of methamphetamine use has topped $130 million, according to the

Minnesota Department of Corrections, including law enforcement

corrections, prosecution, child welfare treatment and environmental cleanup costs. But what it doesn’t include in that figure is

other costs related to drug use, such as healthcare costs, as I mentioned domestic abuse, identity theft, burglary, assault. I recently

read that in the west coast jurisdictions they’re estimating that 80

to 90 percent of their identity theft cases are connected to methamphetamine use. So we can fully expect that multiple consequence will be occurring in our jurisdictions as well.

As I’m sure you know, the problem can get worse. We expect it

will get worse. According to a study conducted by economists in

Multnomah County, which is Portland, we look to that because it’s

a comparable jurisdiction to Ramsey County, they found that methrelated problems cost each household in that jurisdiction $363 in

2004, and that doesn’t even include law enforcement costs, such as

jails, prosecution costs, things of that nature, just other kinds of

costs not related to criminal justice.

So what do I think we need to do? I very much believe in a threeprong approach. First of all, interdiction. The Minnesota State Legislature has made very significant strides. I commend Senator

Rosen and her colleagues for getting at the availability of

pseudoephedrine in our community so that can have an impact on

the meth labs, which are so dangerous, but that is just a first step.

When you consider, as has been said many times, 80 to some percent of this drug comes from super labs, we need to be looking at,

first of all, and this has been mentioned, massive quantities of

pseudoephedrine that are unlawfully imported into this country

that far exceed the needs of allergy suffers, such as myself. It’s

coming in here and it’s getting turned into methamphetamine; and,

second of all, even if it’s not being lawfully imported into this country, we’re seeing the final product, the methamphetamine coming

from Mexico. We have to interdict this very dangerous drug.

Second of all—I see my red light is on, so I’m going to do it fast.

Treatment, I can go on and on and on. We cannot imprison our way

out of this situation, even though I’m a prosecutor and I do put

people in prison for a living, and I’m proud of it, we can’t imprison

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our way out of this problem. We need more treatment. It’s been

mentioned $750,000 in treatment in the last legislative session. To

treat 1,000 addicts, which would just be a tip of the iceberg, would

be $61⁄2 million, and that would be a very significant investment. If you put those same 1,000 people in prison, it would be $22 million, over three times as much.

We need treatment money, and we need to support education efforts. We’ve heard a lot about this. There are individuals at this

table that are working hard on education. We need to support that.

A week doesn’t go by that I’m not speaking to some group about

methamphetamine and what I’ve seen as a prosecutor. My favorite

groups are high schools. They need to know what can happen when

you dabble in this drug, but the individuals at this table and other

people who are working out there in this area can’t do it alone. We

need support for education.

[The prepared statement of Ms. Gaertner follows:]

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Mr. SOUDER. Well, I thank you all for your testimony. Let me

share a couple things first.

The timing of this hearing is timely and very efficacious. So let

me first say that we appreciate 5 minutes is impossible, even with

all the questions to summarize, but we need as much printed material as you can get us so that the staff can pour through this. We

are in the process of putting together a major meth package. We,

at the request of a couple of the committee chairman are scrambling rapidly. Last week we had 15 Members, including a number

of the chairman, together to try to figure out how many Judiciary

appropriations we can line up to move the number of bills possibly

starting before the August break and certainly moving early this

fall would make some bills move through here in the next week or

two. We’re trying to pool all the bills that exist in Congress, look

at the ones where we can get quick agreement. Then where we go

past that—for example, there’s one environmental cleanup bill

that’s already cleared committee. We’re trying to get that to the

floor, trying to decide if we will do it in a week or have a week and

then move bills individually.

So any information you could get, it would be helpful to have

that Minnesota bill in the record in the next couple of days. I’d appreciate it, Mr. Ogden, if you can ask Director Tandy—clearly, part

of our problem here is all the different—there is no national meth

strategy. Different subagencies have meth strategies that have

been created. I mentioned about the COPS Grant. Well, the reason

there are COPS Grants that are designated as certain people in the

Appropriations Committee because they were frustrated that there

wasn’t a nationally organized strategy started to designate and earmark money in appropriations bills. Senator Rosen knows that’s

probably a common matter at State laws, too. Senator Grassly has

been one of the first people out of the box with meth, and so we

have a Meth Hot Spots Program with designated earmark funding

within COPS. You can all apply for COPS Grants, but some people

had it earmarked and with this going topsy-turvy, not necessarily

where the greatest problems are but where somebody who was on

the right committee or somebody came to them, that it’s not organized, and, of course, administration, they put it back in, and the

committee actually increased it.

But if you could ask Director Tandy within—certainly by the second week in July, we will try to have—and I know at a hearing

in Washington a week ago your international—he is supposed to be

pulling together all the DEA task force information from around

the country and was supposed to have the preliminary last week

to us. Have we heard back? So we need that information as soon

as possible.

Mr. OGDEN. Yes, sir.

Mr. SOUDER. But particularly some suggestions for how we would

do a clearinghouse. The HIDTA bill is moving through this week.

We’ll ask the HIDTA people to do the same thing, and we need the

push that would be through the drugs arm. We also need the justice department through the COPS Program, we need to figure out

on the clearinghouse where you best place the clearinghouse.

The problem is that these are all different appropriations bills,

so trying to figure out how to get a clearinghouse under one, each

37

agency would like to be everything, but, in fact, the DEA doesn’t

do treatment. They do a little prevention but they’re not the main

prevention agencies, and we’ve got to figure out from the clearinghouse where our clearinghouse should be. That ought to be part of

our meth house because you’re right, everybody is reinventing the

trail to kind of intermittently slopping—Portland, in this case the

reporter Steve Suo is doing the best research job in the country,

and you want to learn about meth, look on their home page and

get their information. He’s going to win a Pulitzer Prize or something for his research, and we cycle into him, other guys have cycled information, so he’s become kind of a repository, but it’s backward when a newspaper is the primary source of information right

now on information on meth, that also each Partnership for a

Drug-Free America has told each Congressman, told me that they’ll

provide each Congressman with any ads they want for their district

for free, that they have the best ad agency in the country that cuts

these ads. They don’t necessarily appeal to me. I asked some of my

staff that’s younger, what’s the point of this ad? They said, well,

that was gross. It just looked stupid to me, but the goal is to try

to reach the target market and younger people, not me, at least at

this point I haven’t been too tempted. Sometimes politics makes

you look for avenues, but not meth. So we get those, because we

can get those up on the air. We’re trying to figure out how to get

our National Ad Campaign to move a little bit more toward meth.

So we’ll certainly address the clearinghouse question. We need the

meth bill in, and you can be assured that no national bill will preempt State and local tougher laws. We’ll guarantee that.

I want to give you a warning. Our committee held a hearing in

Arkansas, had Oklahoma people over. Oklahoma has been—it’s

been misleading about the success in Oklahoma. They’re touting it

a lot, but it merely finds other routes, and, for example, the momand-pop person uses—I know Congressman Newton has been a

leader in this. Again, the pharmacy is going to go to the Internet,

and that’s going to be tougher to find, because you can get the

amount of dosages over the Internet, just like a grocery store, and

that what we have to do is get it out at the wholesale level and

the border level because we can watch it there, who is buying

what, where is it moving, if it’s not the Canadian border it’s coming

from the south border, but you can get the Internet over Canada

and Mexico, and what we’re doing is we’re making it harder to find

to some degree and find it less short term.

In Arkansas—I want to make sure I get this question in. All the

law enforcement people, Sheriff Amazi, Sheriff Gerhardt, Lieutenant Hoffman, do you report your lab figures to EPIC?

Ms. AMAZI. Yes.

Mr. GERHARDT. Yes.

Mr. HOFFMAN. Yes.

Mr. SOUDER. Because part of that—do you know, Mr. Ogden,

does anybody keep data like what Ms. Gaertner was saying in the

child enforcement and—I’m trying to match how—because this is

certainly the worst big city that we’ve heard yet, a little in Detroit,

a little in New Orleans, Portland is getting it some in the city but

mostly outside the city, but I’m trying to match why their lab total

is so low if three of the rural counties are, in fact, reporting EPIC.

38

It’s not even—in one area of Louisiana alone that—well, in Arkansas they’re reporting 700, but they’re over 2,000.

Mr. OGDEN. Right.

Mr. SOUDER. What’s the disparity?

Mr. OGDEN. As I understand it, there is a disparity in the numbers and DEA personally tracks the amount of times we respond

for toxic cleanup, so that’s one group of numbers, and those numbers are maintained by DEA. We have to keep track of the amount

of money that we spend. So every time we contact the contractor

to respond to a scene and cleanup, we have firm numbers with regard to that issue. But, then, sometimes there are labs that are

identified and DEA is not involved in the cleanup. Maybe it’s glassware or precursor chemicals that are seized, and those occurrences

are reported directly by the local law enforcement agencies to EPIC

without DEA being in the middle necessarily. That’s why there’s a

difference in the numbers.

Mr. SOUDER. But this is an EPIC number, the total was 192 in

2004?

Mr. OGDEN. For.

Mr. SOUDER. On page 3, you have chemical, glass, equipment,

dumpsites, labs, 192. Is that an EPIC number for Minnesota?

Yeah, it looks like it is.

Mr. OGDEN. Let me ask Dennis.

Mr. Wischern. I believe it is, sir. As Mr. Ogden stated the EPIC

system, that you’re aware, is a voluntary system, and that’s one of

the challenges we face.

Mr. SOUDER. Could you do a double check for me?

Because we’re having a terrible time matching up numbers in reporting, but each of these three counties said they report through.

Could you check for our records because it would just be a matter

of calling EPIC. If you need us to call EPIC, we will. Could you report back through and see what figures they have for their counties

and try to match that up and also see what you’re seeing for

Ramsey County?

Ms. Gaertner, in Ramsey County do you sense that most of those

are mom-and-pop labs or are you getting—when we say it’s 70/30

or 80/20, the stuff that comes through the Mexican groups is more

potent and cheaper and more addictive even than mom-and-pop, is

that what you’re seeing mostly in Ramsey? Because that wouldn’t

show up in the lab reports.

Ms. GAERTNER. Mr. Chair, the last year that I have figures for

is 2003, and we had 17 meth labs busted, half of which were in St.

Paul and the other half in the suburbs. When you consider only 17

meth labs were busted and we had 300 drug charges that same

year, obviously, it’s not all coming from the mom-and-pop labs. My

sense is that it is very much dominated by the super labs.

Mr. SOUDER. Because that’s part of what we’re trying to figure

out is we have a rural problem and a suburban/urban problem, but

even in the rural areas we’re starting to see the super lab type

things. It’s a fascinating challenge because my district reported,

just in my congressional district it’s over 400 mini labs. I have

some counties that have reported more into EPIC than you have

statewide, and that’s what I was trying to figure out how to match

39

up. Like I say we have towns—in one town in Arkansas 90 percent

are addicted, in the town.

Ms. ROSEN. Thank you, Mr. Chair. I just wanted to say that perhaps you have three counties here that are doing the proper thing,

but there are so many counties in Minnesota that the EPIC regulations paperwork is too much. You only have maybe a sheriff, maybe

an assistant sheriff, and they’re tired when 80 percent of their resources are going to busting labs. They know of labs out there they

can’t even get to it, and, then, on top of filling out these forms for

EPIC, it’s just a little bit too much. So I’m not even sure if the reporting, that information from EPIC is accurate on that.

Mr. SOUDER. I’m sure it isn’t. The question is is it disproportionately inaccurate. In other words, we heard of the same thing in Arkansas where they’re reporting 700, but we’ve identified just in a

couple of districts 2,100, and in our State we’re reporting, I think,

1,100, but we’ve identified 3,000 that the police have taken down,

and the question is is one State disproportionate? We know there’s

under reporting, but if some of you are reporting then we need proportionality, and we’re also trying to figure out what’s the difference in the intensity of mom-and-pop labs versus the bigger systems.

I want to make sure that—let’s see if there was another—this—

we first started to deal with child endangerment in California

about 6 years ago when they passed the laws. Did you put a child

endangerment provision in your State law that you could be—if you

had a mom-and-pop lab and there were children present there

would be penalties for child endangerment?

Ms. ROSEN. Mr. Chair, yes, sir. It’s a very extensive child

endangerment—any methamphetamine paraphernalia is in the vicinity, is in an apartment building, it’s quite extensive, and Minnesota Meth Lab developed this bill, which includes Department of

Health, the BCA, the Department of Human Services, the Attorney

General’s Office, the county attorneys, the retailers, the sheriffs,

the chiefs. It’s probably everybody that is dealing with meth is at

a table, at one table at a time. So those provisions in the bill were

developed by the Attorney General’s Office.

Mr. SOUDER. Thank you. Mr. Gutknecht.

Mr. GUTKNECHT. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Let me, first of all,

thank Senator Rosen because in many respects you have been a

mentor to me on this issue, and I felt kind of foolish when I went

to some of the small towns in my district and really got my eyes

opened in terms of the problems that were out there, and that was

several years ago.

I want to ask you, though, not just as a State senator, but as a

mother, and your sheriffs here talking about an after school program, tell me more about that and how it’s working and how we

can perhaps—see, I believe success leads to success, and if you

have some programs you’re working, one of the functions we can

have in Federal Government is to encourage more people to follow

that model.

Can you tell us a little more about the after school program and

what’s going on in Fairmont, MN?

Ms. ROSEN. Thank you, Mr. Chair and Congressman Gutknecht.

I can probably defer to the sheriff, but I can say as a mother and

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as somebody that’s been working on meth, that this education portion of this insidious problem is very key, especially in the schools,

because this drug is not hitting the children that perhaps did—

were smoking a little cigarette, did some drinking and then pot and

then meth. It’s hitting our kids that are the straight A students or

the athletes and they happen to go to a party and make a couple

mistakes and they try meth, and pretty soon they always want that

same high.

So I am gearing up—in fact, we are having a Minnesota Meth

Task Force meeting this afternoon to look at the issues that we

need to deal with next year, and this will be one of the top ones,

is how are we going to get to our children. Because of this Mexican

meth that’s coming in, they’re the most vulnerable, and we absolutely have do get education programs into them and tell them they

can’t make that one—they can’t just try pot—or meth just once,

like they tried pot. There is no room for error or experimentation

in this drug. So the after school program is one more tool that we

have to make sure that we can reach these kids and give them an

alternative, and if I can defer to the fine sheriff.

Mr. GERHARDT. Yes. In all fairness Senator Rosen, while she’s

been up here in the legislature, our wheels have still been turning

back in Martin County, and one of my goals in coming up here is

to invite her to the next meeting on July 28th with regard to this

program, so—this program is unusual. We don’t think there’s anyone—any program like it, certainly in the State of Minnesota. I

don’t know about across the country. It basically covers 3 to 8 p.m.

A lot of these students don’t get their homework done. A lot of

these students don’t get fed. A lot of these students don’t have

recreation time and, quite frankly, the majority of these students

need vocational skills, and that’s why the doctoral candidate portion that’s involved in this program, we think, is highly critical.

If you could think of it in terms of students from ages 10 to 18,

which is what this program that we’re looking at hopefully starting

this fall, targeting that group, it takes them off the street during

those critical hours. We feel there’s going to be a reduction in teen

pregnancy. Obviously, less chance for them to get involved. Hopefully, a lower call for service rate for local law enforcement, all of

these things because this program will be coming into play, and,

like I said, two-thirds—we’re two-thirds of the way there, and we

want to drive this thing home and be ready to operate yet this fall.

So we’re working on the funding piece right now, and then, of

course, we got family therapy, we got individual therapy, and my

experience has been not only working through kinship and mentoring, which I happen to be a mentor myself, but also working on

funding grants.

These kids are hungry, constantly. They just don’t get fed, and

it’s very hard to learn. You know, we’ve got our Federal programs

for breakfast and for the hot meals at lunch and all those other

things, and they’re just starved, they really, really are starving.

Mr. GUTKNECHT. Sheriff Amazi, I want to congratulate you and

thank you as well, because you have sort of been a mentor to me

as well, in fact, on a couple of things.

First of all, I think you were the first one to alert me of the problem of Mexican drugs coming into this country, and it strikes me—

41

I think it was like 2 weeks after you had communicated with us

about this problem that there were, I think, four individuals that

were arrested traveling north on Interstate 35 with a trunk load

of meth. I mean, the irony could not have been more stark.

Could you also—and I just have a limited amount of time left,

could you relate to the rest of the members of the committee what

happened where one of the pharmacies in Austin actually tipped off

some people, whether it was you or I’m not sure how that—you tell

the story of what happened where literally a retailer let you know

that the people were out there trying to buy an awful lot of this

particular drug.

Ms. AMAZI. And that actually happens frequently, Congressman

Gutknecht. It was Target Stores. They’ve got an excellent security

system, and they did alert law enforcement, and they were able to

zoom in on license plates, vehicle description, suspect information

and did relate that to law enforcement that, hey, these folks bought

hundreds of pills of pseudoephedrine and some of the photo batteries, and this is the vehicle that they’re driving in. I mean, it was

absolutely excellent information. We couldn’t have gotten better

from law enforcement, much less a retailer, but we were able to

stop that meth lab before it produced.

So I think that’s almost always key, stopping these things before

they’re being made, which is why we sought the legislation to control pseudoephedrine products. So, I mean, this continues and it

is—it does go on every day, that we do get calls from retailers saying, hey, heads up, and now we’ve got one more tool in our basket

that allows us to do that.

Mr. GUTKNECHT. I think the message there, and my time has expired, is that everybody can be part of the solution.

Ms. AMAZI. Yes.

Mr. GUTKNECHT. This is not—it’s not the Federal Government

has to do this or nothing is going to happen. I think it’s got to be

local, it’s got to be schools, it’s got to be parents, it’s got to be people in the churches and communities, and it’s got to be retailers,

but I think you have—there’s some great examples of things that

are happening. Unfortunately, we don’t have enough time to tell all

the stories, but I think the story of the Target Store, the after

school programs and some of the other things that are happening

in southern Minnesota are things that I think we need to see replicated and talked about around the rest of the country.

Mr. SOUDER. Thanks, and let me reiterate that to the degree you

can get printed materials to us so we can assemble them and look

at them in the next 7 days will be very helpful, any of these examples. Ms. McCollum.

Ms. MCCOLLUM. Thank you, Mr. Chair. I appreciate what you’re

saying about trying to get the numbers so that when you’re making

the case for us on the floor, which you will do eloquently, that we

don’t have confusion not only in the press about what’s going on

but confusion among legislators about how serious this problem is,

so I think you’re trying to get to the bottom of the numbers, as

what you’re trying to do is critical.

I also think we need to start pulling the costs together. Just—

I lost track of it just sitting here, just the number of meth cleanups, the number of months to years that people have to be in treatVerDate 11-MAY-2000 08:34 Feb 02, 2006 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00045 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 D:\DOCS\24891.TXT HGOVREF1 PsN: HGOVREF1
42

ment. All these costs aren’t realized in totality because they’re all

in different segments, different units of Government, local, State,

county and Federal, and so we need to figure out, I think, also a

way to really get our arms around how much this is costing us, because I think it will make others in Congress more aware of what

is happening, other people as State legislators around this country

more aware of what’s going on, because this is porous, this is a balloon, you just move it around, whether it’s mom-and-pop to super

lab or whatever, and I think you did such a wonderful job of laying

that out, but I think the point that the sheriffs made that there

are—the amount of paperwork that they’re seeing with the cutbacks that they’re seeing at local, State and Federal levels, Gang

Task Force Funding being cut here in Ramsey County. You can

see, Mr. Chair, we’re in great need of looking to see what’s moving

forward.

So I think I would like to offer—I serve on the education and

work force committee, along with Congressman Kline, to do what

we can to talk to after school people and find out what’s happening

with their cuts. I know Boys and Girls Clubs here in the Twin Cities are struggling, and they run the 3 to 8 p.m. programs that the

sheriff here is talking about. I don’t think we have a good sense

of what is going on in our communities as some of these priority

paradigm shifts have taken place and how they’ve really affected

our children because our children aren’t vocally coming up to us

saying this is affecting me, and we know that there are parents

who are either working too many hours to do that or, unfortunately, they have a parent who just doesn’t care, maybe because

they have a drug problem.

So I’d like to offer my support on that, but I would like, if I

could, to take just a second.

I serve on the International Relations Committee, and we’ve had

hearings on drug trafficking in Afghanistan and what’s going on in

Columbia, but we really haven’t talked about meth in the International Relations Committee, and hearing what I am about these

Mexican National drug people, people coming in that are legal

aliens, I’m assuming, as well as some that are illegal that are being

deported, do you know—and I ask this question to my county attorney and to the DEA, are you folks talking to each other about

what’s going on in the impact of the cuts to the Gang—COPS program, as well as what’s the cuts to the Gang Force Task Programs?

Mr. OGDEN. Yes, ma’am. We in DEA have a very long history of

working collaboratively with local and State law enforcement agencies and one of the things the DEA does best is operate task force

operations throughout the country, and in this particular State we

have about a dozen task force officers who are local and State officers assigned to our office in Minneapolis, and we conduct almost

all of our investigations with our local counterparts here, and we

work hand in hand, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week with the people

who know their backyard the best, and so DEA is not operating in

a vacuum, and then we also, because we have offices in 60 countries throughout the world, we work with our counterparts in all

the countries where we’re represented to try to prevent drugs from

entering the United States and to extradite criminals in foreign

countries who are bringing drugs into the country.

43

Ms. MCCOLLUM. Mr. Chair, I don’t mean to be rude, but my time

is running out and my question is, are we giving you the tools that

you need, and maybe you don’t want to bite the hand that feeds

you because we’re sitting up here in the Federal Government, but

there are decisions and priorities being made. We have collectively

an opportunity to change or redirect that. It sounds to me like

we’re putting drops of water into trying to fill up a bucket as large

as an ocean.

Mr. OGDEN. Right. Certainly any law enforcement official could

tell you that the more people we had the more money that we had

available we could do more with it. We at DEA certainly welcome

the opportunity to have more agents and greater funding so that

we could do more, and we could share those additional resources

with our partners in this struggle, you know, but we do the best

we can with what the money that’s made available to us.

I would certainly welcome—you know, in a division that’s as

large as the Chicago Field Division where we cover five States, we

only have about 300 agents and task force officers to cover the size

of northern Midwestern States. It’s really—when you think about

the amount of territory that we cover, we can only do so much. Obviously, we would love to have more agents and more intelligence

analysts and, you know, greater funding to conduct the investigations to pay for undercover operations and international wire taps

and so forth. So, obviously, we welcome any additional resources.

Ms. MCCOLLUM. If you have time, Mr. Chair.

Ms. GAERTNER. Mr. Chair, Congresswoman McCollum, my impression, to be frank, from the front lines, if you will, as a local law

enforcement person is that there hasn’t been the emphasis on

methamphetamine trafficking commensurate with its threat to our

communities, and I guess that’s all I can say, is that it has been

a fairly recent phenomenon that we’ve opened up to just how serious meth is. The initial efforts were at the legislative level, the

State legislative level to get out the pseudoephedrine sales and

that kind of thing, but it is not my sense that this has been dealt

with on a national or international level, as I said, commensurate

with this front.

Mr. SOUDER. Thank you. Congressman Kennedy.

Mr. KENNEDY. Well, thank all the panelists here for your great

testimony. This is a very important issue. I’d like to ask a couple

questions.

First of all, we have been fighting for getting more Byrne Grants,

more Hot Spots, more COPS funding, but what would be very helpful is to have you give us testimony as to how those programs have

been successful. What is the success case that by having the drug

task force in your counties, how has that really helped, and if any

of the law enforcement folks could just say, here’s my best sort of

success case with a drug enforcement task force in your county,

that would be greatly appreciated.

Ms. AMAZI. I’ve got a fairly recent one, thank you. It was a gang

that came up from California. They were trafficking in glass methamphetamine that was being brought in from Mexico. They were

directly bringing it up from California to Lyle, MN, into Austin,

MN, and with the help of DEA and the U.S. Attorneys Office, we

were able to send those two individuals to Federal prison for 40

44

years. They successfully probably recruited about 30 to 40 ages 13

to 25-year-olds into methamphetamine use, and once they got them

hooked, they, in turn, had them go out and sell the product for

them. So being able to shut that group down, many of those children were good kids that were able to be turned around and are

now in college and doing very, very well. I have contact with their

families repeatedly, and they’re all doing very, very well, and that

would not have happened had we not had the task force initially

and the cooperation of the DEA with the Byrne Grant funding and

then the DEA’s assistance as well.

Mr. KENNEDY. And exactly how did the task force work in that?

Who sort of first identified the people, who apprehended them, how

did it all work in coordination?

Ms. AMAZI. Mower County initially identified these subjects, then

we recruited Rochester and their gang strike force, and as well as

the Byrne Grant money to continue the purchase and the investigation into this drug ring. So we were able to shut them down with

all of that working together.

Mr. KENNEDY. Now, Lieutenant Hoffman, you spoke of the fact

that if we apprehended someone that was going to be deported that

they were back again. Is that because we didn’t deport them or is

that because once we deported them we had trouble coordinating

with the Mexican government to make sure that they lock them up

if we can’t lock them up.

Mr. HOFFMAN. I believe it’s both. Right now it’s fairly hard to get

somebody deported, at least if we arrest somebody, an illegal immigrant for methamphetamine possession, if they’re deported, we see

them back in a month to 2 months. That’s the problem that we’re

seeing with immigration.

Mr. KENNEDY. If they are deported.

Mr. HOFFMAN. If they are deported.

Mr. KENNEDY. So we don’t have maybe the proper handoff with

the Mexican Government, that we’re just not sending them there,

but we’re sending someone that we believe they should be apprehending as we would be if we had apprehended an American in

America doing that.

Mr. HOFFMAN. Yes.

Mr. KENNEDY. Also, you know, and I congratulate Senator Rosen

for your great work here in the legislature. You know, one of the

things we were working on is these Hot Spots funding to make

sure that—we never like to lose to Wisconsin or Iowa in football

or anything else, or Hot Spots funding, and we’re leading that effort with the delegation. Tell us how exactly that’s going to really

be beneficial here in Minnesota, the success that we had in terms

of getting Hot Spots dollars here and how they’ll be used.

Ms. ROSEN. Thank you, Mr. Chair, and, Representative Kennedy,

and I would like to say that this piece of legislation was bipartisan

work. It could not have passed at the level it did without bipartisan

work.

The Hot Spots money has been a thorn in my side because I do see what Iowa gets, $4 million. I do see what Wisconsin gets. For

a couple counties they get over a million, and for—actually, it’s

probably $2 million, and I probably should get you those figures.

I could do that, and we received, I think, $200,000 last year.

45

About a year and a half ago Senator Coleman and I had a field

hearing in Fergus Falls and one in St. Paul, and one of the DEA

special drug agents came in and testified that they are sharing

equipment, face masks when they go out.

Now, I’m not sure what’s happening this year, but I don’t think

the funding is there for equipment, for training, and I’m very, very

concerned that we aren’t getting the level of funding or the needs

that we need. Of course, with this legislation it’s going to take a

bite out of the homegrown labs, but we still need to address the

importation, and there is some funding in this legislation for 10

meth agents, BCA agents that will be working specifically for meth.

But, still, we have a long ways to go, and I’m very concerned about

what it’s doing to our employers. They’re asking for help. As you

can tell, their productivity and their healthcare costs and their retention, it’s going down greatly, and they are asking for help so

they can train their employees to stop and stay away from meth.

Mr. KENNEDY. Thank you. Well, my time has expired. Thanks all

again for your testimony.

Mr. SOUDER. I want to ask a couple quick questions for record.

How many of you here, we’ve heard some references, could you

hold up your hand and I’ll identify if you’ve had a Byrne Grant

funding related to any narcotics that worked in your area?

Mr. HOFFMAN. Have or had?

Mr. SOUDER. Have currently, let’s start that, so both Sheriffs,

and, Lieutenant Hoffman, you’ve had but you don’t currently I take

it?

Mr. HOFFMAN. Correct.

Mr. SOUDER. What about, has there been any meth Hot Spot money in Minnesota? You said there was $200,000, Senator Rosen?

Ms. ROSEN. Mr. Chair, yes, there is, but it’s in isolated places.

I believe it was Brainerd that received some. So it’s very, very little

that’s been going on.

Mr. SOUDER. Any activity with OCDETF, Organized—well, I’ll

stick with OCDETF.

Mr. OGDEN. Organized Crime Drug Enforcement Task Force

Funding.

Mr. SOUDER. Now, that’s under FBI?

Mr. OGDEN. That’s under the Department of Justice, and we

spend a large amount of money on OCDETF investigations in DEA,

and we are starting to have our methamphetamine, major methamphetamine investigations become OCDETF approved so that we

can tap into OCDETF money.

So to answer your question is DEA’s meth investigations are

starting to use OCDETF funding.

Mr. SOUDER. Have you done any of those in Minnesota?

Mr. OGDEN. Not that I’m aware of. I don’t know for sure. Yes.

Tom is in charge of Minnesota, and he’s said, yes, we’ve used

OCDETF money here.

The other thing that we’re doing is we’re using this Mobile Enforcement Team, the MET team that you may have heard about is

going to start focusing on conducting methamphetamine investigations.

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thing about that and try to have the MET team start working in

Minnesota out of Chicago and have them start working the more

significant methamphetamine investigations.

Mr. SOUDER. And, for the record, I know all three of your agents

behind you held up their hands when we did the oath, but the gentleman on my right, would you state your name for the record, because you were actually quoted, and the stenographer got a couple

comments from you earlier.

Mr. WISCHERN. Yes, sir. My name is Dennis Wischern, ma’am.

Mr. OGDEN. Dennis Wischern is the Assistant Special Agent in

Charge in Indiana, and the other gentleman is Thomas Kelly, and

he’s the Assistant Special Agent in Charge of Minneapolis, and he

handles Minnesota and North Dakota.

Mr. SOUDER. Senator Rosen, were you going to say something?

Ms. ROSEN. Mr. Chair, I was just going to mention that I could

also provide to you the costs that Commissioner Campion has, costs

to pass this bill as far as what it’s costing the State of Minnesota

for incarceration. We do have those figures.

Mr. SOUDER. Can you provide us for how much OCDETF money

has actually been spent in Minnesota?

Mr. OGDEN. Yes, sir. I don’t have that immediately available, but

I’ll get it for you.

Mr. SOUDER. Has anybody—maybe if we can have—if anybody

has a more general question. On the precursor chemicals, we’ve

heard a lot about pseudoephedrine. Where are the bulk of the precursor chemicals coming from in Minnesota, anhydrous ammonia,

picking them up, try to address that or what do you feel?

Ms. ROSEN. Mr. Chair, of course, the pseudoephedrine is coming

from mainly the stores, and we’ve taken care of that. Of course, we

have the Canadian issue that we’re dealing with. But as far as the

other ingredients that is anhydrous ammonia, and there is no legislation in—or no ruling on this legislation to handle that. There is

a penalty for anhydrous ammonia tampering and theft, but nothing

as far as restrictions, blocks.

Mr. SOUDER. Any fencing around big units?

Ms. ROSEN. Mr. Chair, no, there is not, and we have not seen red

phosphorous coming in yet. I do know that in Iowa they are starting to see some because they have been dealing with anhydrous

ammonia, so you handle one issue and they just come in with the

other, red phosphorous, and of course, there’s some other types of

cooks that are being developed right now. But the bill does handle

any ingredient for the attempt to manufacture. There’s a penalty

on that.

Mr. SOUDER. This off the topic, but I want to take this opportunity to ask Mr. Ogden a similar question.

Mr. OGDEN. Yes.

Mr. SOUDER. Last Sunday Congressman Kirk made the statement that Afghan heroin has suddenly hit Chicago. Do you think

that’s an anomaly, is it standard, or do you see other areas in the

Midwest where we’re seeing Afghan heroin for the first time?

Mr. OGDEN. Congressman Kirk is very concerned, as you know,

about the large harvest of opium in Afghanistan.

Mr. SOUDER. Four times the world.

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Mr. OGDEN. We have not seen a large increase in the amount of

heroin that’s coming from southwest Asia, but that doesn’t mean

that it won’t occur in the near future, and most of the heroin that’s

coming into the Chicago area is coming through Mexico from South

America.

Mr. SOUDER. I want to finish with this if anybody else has a

question. I know we have a second panel and I’m trying to get out

to vote, that the DEA has a major plus up in this appropriations

bill, and one of the things we are dealing with in the legislation

is try to address some of the international—there’s only five—there

is, I think, it’s nine manufacturers of pseudoephedrine in the

world, five of them in India, two in China, one in Europe and one

in Mexico, and we have to go after those major manufacturers. We

can take down every little grocery store in the world, but the bottom line is that we have all these nine companies in the entire

world, and we need to get a handle on this and we need to figure

out—we also have a separate border task force trying to generate

the unbelievable complexity of the immigration work force border

control type question, but we are trying to address those type of

things. Some of this has to have an international component because once it gets past the nine and starts to fan out and go into

every little town and big city and apartment complex, it is overwhelming.

I know one other question I wanted to ask particularly in Minnesota, have you seen this hit any of the Native American populations, and, also, we mostly are south and center here, I assume

you mentioned Brainerd earlier, it’s similar in northern Minnesota?

Ms. ROSEN. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Yes, it has just hammered our

Native American population, and it’s of great concern, and I mentioned the 13, 14-year old girls in Lower Sioux, that’s an Indian

reservation over on the west side here, and meth is becoming the

new date rape drug, and the people that are working with meth

there, there is so much quest to come in and educate the Native

Americans. We don’t have the resources. People want the information, but they seem to be completely susceptible to this drug, and

they are following—they are just—it’s devastating in that community. And, like I said, before it is reaching into the African American community, which is truly an anomaly, and that’s of great concern.

Mr. SOUDER. Well, thanks. I really appreciate it. Does anybody

else have any questions?

Ms. MCCOLLUM. Mr. Chair, I’d like to mention before the second

panel comes up, Minnesota Public Radio did a wonderful in-depth

story on the mom-and-pop manufacturing, which answers some of

your questions, and I’ll contact them and get that entered into the

record.

Mr. SOUDER. Thank you. The testimony on St. Paul is really

scary. Congressman Terry is saying similar things in Omaha, but

we have not seen this hit the major urban areas, and, quite frankly, that may be what it takes to really get attention.

Ms. GAERTNER. Can I just briefly respond?

Mr. SOUDER. The Child Protection Agency is just phenomenal.

Ms. GAERTNER. Mr. Chair, members of the committee, I’m very

involved in the National District Attorneys Association, and I have

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never felt like my urban experience is unusual. It is in my anecdotal way a concern of every county attorney and district attorney

in every major jurisdiction across this country. So the fact that

we’ve put together the data perhaps is maybe why you’re hearing

this, I don’t know what other large jurisdictions have, but I’m absolutely convinced that Ramsey is not unique in this respect.

Mr. SOUDER. Thank you. Thank you all for coming, and we appreciate any repertoires you’d get to us as fast as possible.

Will the second panel come forward? The second panel includes

Commissioner Michael Campion, Minnesota Department of Public

Safety; Mr. Bob Bushman, senior special agent, Minnesota Bureau

of Criminal Apprehension, president of Minnesota State Association of Narcotics Investigators, and president of the Minnesota Police and Peace Officers’ Association; Mr. Dennis Miller, drug court

coordinator, Hennepin County; Ms. Kirsten Lindbloom, social program specialist, Parenting Resource Center, coordinator Mower

County Chemical Health Coalition; Mr. Buzz Anderson, president

of the Minnesota Retailers Association.

Now that you’re all seated, if you can stand and raise your right

hands.

[Witnesses sworn.]

Mr. SOUDER. Let the record show that each of the witnesses responded in the affirmative.

My understanding was Mr. Campion had a problem, but I want

to make sure I called his name and make sure he wasn’t here. So

we’ll start with Mr. Bushman.

STATEMENTS OF BOB BUSHMAN, SPECIAL SENIOR AGENT,

MINNESOTA BUREAU OF CRIMINAL APPREHENSION, AND

PRESIDENT, MINNESOTA STATE ASSOCIATION OF NARCOTIC

INVESTIGATORS; AND PRESIDENT, MINNESOTA POLICE AND

PEACE OFFICERS ASSOCIATION, ACCOMPANIED BY GAIL

BAEZ, PROSECUTING ATTORNEY, MINNEAPOLIS; DENNIS

MILLER, DRUG COURT COORDINATOR, HENNEPIN COUNTY

DEPARTMENT OF COMMUNITY CORRECTIONS; KIRSTEN

LINDBLOOM, COORDINATOR, MOWER COUNTY CHEMICAL

HEALTH COALITION; AND BUZZ ANDERSON, PRESIDENT,

MINNESOTA RETAILERS ASSOCIATION

STATEMENT OF BOB BUSHMAN

Mr. BUSHMAN. Thank you, Chairman Souder, and distinguished

panel.

I work for Mr. Campion, and I’ll just let you know that his flight

was delayed coming back from Louisville this morning and won’t

be back until this afternoon. He does send his regrets and apologies, wishes that he could be here.

I worked narcotics for 23 years, been a State agent, I’ve also

spent many years assigned to the DEA task force, and in that time

I’ve traveled extensively throughout Minnesota doing investigations

and also around the United States, and I can tell you during that

23 years I’ve seen a lot of changes in drug trafficking. I remember

back in the late 1980’s and early 1990’s when the crack epidemic

hit. We thought we’d seen the worst of the worst, and I can tell

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you now in 2005, that with the way meth has taken off, we haven’t,

and I’m wondering how much worse this is going to get.

The rural areas have for many years been protected from a lot

of the drug problems we’ve had, and that’s not true with meth, and

I don’t want to go back and plow old ground we’ve heard testimony

about, but having grown up in rural area of Minnesota, having

family there, having seen what’s happened, it’s been just devastating.

The metropolitan areas always have had and always will have

narcotics investigators. They’ll have people assigned to work drugs.

That’s hasn’t been true and won’t always hold true in the rural

areas. When the resources get cut, they’re the first people to feel

the brunt of it.

Congressman Kennedy was asking what a difference the Byrne

Grants have made. Before we started getting Byrne Grant money

back in the 1980’s, we didn’t have any drug task forces in any of

the rural areas of Minnesota. All of the drug investigators came

from the large metropolitan areas, the large counties, DEA and the

State.

With the event of the Byrne Grant money, today I believe we

have 22 or 23 funded task forces throughout the State, and that

really gives the local jurisdictions, the local areas, the rural areas

some control and some response to the drug effort.

With the danger of losing Federal funds, the Byrne Grant, the

HIDTA money, the COPS grants throughout the country, the rural

areas are going to be the ones that are going to take the biggest

brunt of that, and I know that you’ve heard testimony about that,

but I can’t underscore really, you know, how valuable that Federal

funding is when it comes to rural America and their response to

be able to handle the problems that they see, particularly with

methamphetamine.

Talking about treatment programs, I think, too, we all realize

that we can’t arrest our way out of the meth problem or any drug

problem. As Lieutenant Hoffman said before, it really is a multifaceted response. You need education, you need treatment, you

need law enforcement, and they need to work together.

Treatment for meth is again, a different animal. There are very

few programs that successfully treat people with meth addictions.

As you’ve heard, detoxification of a person that’s been using meth

for a long time takes more than 28 days. It takes several months.

Similarly, sometimes I think people tend to go overboard on

treatment. I know one particular person I ran into a while back

has been through treatment 16 times, and that cost has been borne

not by that person, it’s been borne by funds coming from different

agencies and different programs that are funded with tax dollars.

So we have to strike a balance between the need to treat and the

need to incarcerate.

I believe when it comes to methamphetamine there are people

out there that are not treatable. They have been doing so much

meth for so long, they have done so much damage to themselves,

they’ve done so much damage to their family, they’re not treatable.

They don’t have the physical or the mental capabilities to follow

through, and they’ve ruined their support system, and I think

when you talk to people in treatment they’ll tell you that having

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a support system is a very, very important part of being successful

with your treatment. If they’ve turned away, they’ve stolen, they’ve

harmed people close to them, the ones that they’re going to turn

to, they’re going to need, aren’t there for them, and I don’t know

how you replace that. You can treat them, teach them what’s right

and what’s wrong, but you can’t replace relationships, you can’t replace the things that they really need to follow through with the

treatment.

You’ve heard about the Mexican meth problem. In the last 3

years of my career, over half the people that I have arrested have

been non-English speaking right here in Minnesota, most of them

illegal immigrants.

In many cases we’ve prosecuted or deported those people. Sometimes between the time they’re arrested and they’re prosecuted

they get deported and they come back with another set of identification using a different name, and that happens all the time, not

just in the large cities, it’s in the rural areas. We have a very, very

large transient population of illegal immigrants living in greater

Minnesota and, unfortunately, because of the poor economic conditions in Mexico, drug dealing is easy money, and that’s what they

use to support their families.

I’ve heard that one of the second largest parts of the Mexican

economy is the amount of American money that comes down there,

and a lot of it from Minnesota is coming from drug dealing, and

it’s another thing that we struggle with. It puts a strain on the

courts, it puts a strain on all the resources.

The positives, in Minnesota we have a great working relationship

with the U.S. Attorneys Office, with the DEA, a great working relationship among the local sheriffs and local police departments. We

work together. We’re teaming up to do what we can about methamphetamine. Child Services, the courts, everybody is getting involved, and they’re all going to sit here and tell you that we realize

what the problem is. What we need from the Federal Government,

what we need from you is continued support with the Byrne Grant,

with HIDTA, with COPS, with the money coming so we can make

our good ideas and success stories work so it works for everybody.

Thank you.

[The prepared statement of Mr. Campion follows:]

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Mr. SOUDER. Thank you. Mr. Miller.

STATEMENT OF DENNIS MILLER

Mr. MILLER. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, other members of the

committee.

I appreciate being here today on behalf of the Hennepin County

Drug Court, and I’d like to think I’m here on behalf the other 12

drug courts that exist here in the State of Minnesota. There is a

drug court in each one of the districts of the Congress people represented here on the committee. So I think it’s really a wonderful

accomplishment that we should be represented in each one of those

districts with at least one drug court.

We are the largest drug court in the Nation. Hennepin County

Drug Court targets all felony drug offenders. As you all know, most

drug courts target nonviolent addicts. In Minneapolis, all felony

drug offenders find their way into the Hennepin County Drug

Court, 1,517 people or cases were charged in our drug court last

year, in 2004.

I just want to call your attention to some statistics regarding

methamphetamine as it relates to this population. For the first

time in 2004, the number of felony prosecutions for methamphetamine cases outnumbered marijuana prosecutions. In 2004, I mentioned there were 1,517 felony drug cases in Hennepin County; 909

were for cocaine, 212 for methamphetamine, 178 for marijuana, 66

for illegal use of prescription drugs, 40 for heroin, and 112 other,

and so for the first time in 2004, just know that methamphetamine

is exceeding the number of felony marijuana charges.

Methamphetamine was involved in 13.97 percent of all Hennepin

County felony drug cases in 2004. In 2003, methamphetamine was

involved in 11 percent, and I remember in 2000 it was less than

3 percent. So recognize this steady and growing increase of the incidence of methamphetamine as it relates to felony drug cases in

Minneapolis and in Hennepin County.

It’s estimated that methamphetamine is the primary drug of

choice, underlying 20 percent of our referrals to treatment. We

have a fine system for helping to pay for treatment services in Minnesota known as the Consolidated Fund, and we have chemical

health assessors available in our court who help tease out whether

or not there’s a problem with addiction and chemical dependency.

In 20 percent of all those assessments, methamphetamine is the

underlying drug of choice.

For women in drug court, however, 50 percent of them have as

their primary drug of choice and, hence, the underlying reason for

the treatment referral their relationship with methamphetamine,

their involvement with the use of this particular drug.

The utilization of inpatient treatment, extended care treatment

and residential treatment is sharply increasing in response to this

particular addiction. We have long had a propensity, primarily fiscal-driven propensity to use intensive outpatient programs in response to addiction, but with this particular drug more and more

and more of the initial assessments are resulting in a residential

or inpatient or extended care referral.

It’s also interesting that we’re using detention to the point that

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ness strategy. Like others at the table, I was involved when crack

cocaine hit the Twin Cities and hit Minnesota, and I do recall how

we panicked. But I never—we never thought that we needed necessarily to use detention as a way to set the stage for intervening

in the lives of cocaine addicts. With this drug, I cannot tell you how

often I hear that recommendation coming from a chemical health

expert that the patient needs to be set with a protracted period of

incarceration. In the past it was to get their attention, and that

could mean a variety of things, but with this particular drug it’s

just to restore that cognitive functioning, because treatment is all

about learning and education, and in order for us to effectively

treat methamphetamine addiction, we need to help restore some of

the lost cognitive abilities, and this drug is, as you know, famous

for that.

It’s also the only illegal drug that we deal with in the Hennepin

County Court that causes mental illness, and so to that end we’re

dealing with co-occurring disorders with greater regularity. Many

of our partners are now sharpening their ability to deal with mental illness and we’re adding partners who know their way around

that issue and can help us not only resolve the underlying addiction but the accompanying mental health problems.

Just let me point out to you that we did some drug testing research in the Hennepin Drug Court in 1999. We do extensive urine

testing, as does every drug court across the country. We took a

month and during that period we determined that less than a half

of a percent, 0.30, were positive for methamphetamine. This is

every urine sample that comes in the lab. We did that again in

2004, and it was 3.67 percent, and increase of 1,500 percent. So we

know that the incidence, the likelihood that criminal justice participants, drug court participants are involved in this drug is growing

exponentially.

In drug court, methamphetamine continues to be a drug that’s

used primarily by Asian, Hispanic and Caucasian clients. To the

point that was made earlier today, young African Americans are

using this drug. We’re finding that to be more and more a common

part of their drug history.

We’re here, I’m here today to say that I think as we think about

addressing the problem of methamphetamine I think drug courts

can and are helping. All of the 13 drug courts in Minnesota are

dealing with methamphetamine addiction, with methamphetamine

involved clients. I’m aware that there was a county here in Minnesota recently considering, strongly considering building a new

jail. The consultant said as a frontline response you need to build

a drug court. You need a drug court to deal with that growing drug

problem in that jurisdiction.

I know that there is lots of empirical research that supports that

methamphetamine addiction and drug courts are good partners,

that, in fact, it is a strategy that can be extremely helpful to this

Nation and to our local communities in helping address the problems you related to methamphetamine.

With that, I’d like to thank you, Mr. Chair, and other members

of the committee. I appreciate the invitation to be here.

[The prepared statement of Mr. Miller follows:]

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Mr. SOUDER. Thank you. Ms. Lindbloom.

STATEMENT OF KIRSTEN LINDBLOOM

Ms. LINDBLOOM. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and members of the

committee.

My name if Kirsten Lindbloom, and I am Social Program Specialist with Parenting Resource Center in Austin, MN, and as part of

my work I coordinate the Mower County Chemical Health Coalition. We are a Drug-Free Community support program grantee and

have been since 1998.

After a fatal meth-related explosion in 2001, the Mower County

Chemical Health Coalition added in its mission to respond quickly

to community issues related to alcohol, tobacco and other drugs

started what has been become a 5-year effort to fight Mower County’s meth problem using multiple strategies and multiple sectors.

In August 2001, the coalition formed a task force to respond to

the issue, and that task force has developed a strategic plan, which

includes community education, community media campaign and

policy change. Over the years this task force has evolved and

changed and is currently the Austin Area Meth Task Force, which

is chaired by the city of Austin Mayor Bonnie Reitz.

As a community, we’ve made a commitment to fight our meth

problem by creating solutions. Our community education efforts

have included community action meetings, our local experts including Terese Amazi, Sheriff Amazi, have spoken to groups, including

our youth areas—youth groups, areas schools, as well as for those

that are in people’s homes, so our utility workers, our social workers to do education about the dangers of meth labs specifically.

As a result, parent support groups have been formed, and we’ve

recently launched a new anonymous tip line called—uniquely

called Meth Busters, actually. We’ve also been aggressive with our

media campaign, a community-based media campaign, including

newspaper columns, print media, television, documentaries have

been created, and we just launched our Extreme Meth Makeover

Campaign, which has been taken from—likens to an ad that I saw

coming out of Wyoming, and we’ve taken it and have expanded on

that.

In the area of meth-related policy, Austin and Mower County led

the way. In 2002, Representative Jeff Anderson attended this task

force meeting and as a result responded with Minnesota’s first precursor legislation, which happened in 2003. In 2004, Mower County

followed the suit of many counties doing their official cleanup ordinance. In September 2004, the city of Austin took that bold step

and became the first city to regulate the sale of pseudoephedrine

products. Mower County followed shortly after and, of course, the

State has followed.

The key to these efforts has been collaboration. No one entity can

achieve these outcomes alone. Aggressive law enforcement, treatment prevention efforts through community partners, and commitment of elected officials have and will continue to impact the efforts to battle meth, as well as other drugs impacting our communities.

I’ve been asked to share about the impact of Drug-Free Community dollars on our communities. As I said, we’re in the 7th year

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of funding with that. The funding received from Drug-Free Communities has been the financial backbone of the Mower County

Chemical Health Coalition. Drug-free dollars primarily support the

coordination of the coalition and its efforts. As a result, this hundred thousand dollar investment in our community leverages an

additional $250,000 annually in support for coalition activities and

initiatives. Drug-free funding provides consistent and stable coalition coordination and leadership, and as a result, access to additional funding to enhance and expand our coalition activities.

As a result, ONDCP has identified four core measures, and it’s

asked us as a Drug-Free Community support program grantee to

be able to track things like 30-day use of alcohol, tobacco, marijuana, which we have done and had great success in those areas,

and I think as far as relating to our meth issues, we have seen

some decreases in our youth use, as indicated by the Minnesota

Survey, as that’s what we have to use. So there’s been a decrease

in youth use of meth from 2001 to 2004, which tells me we’re turning—I feel like we’re turning the tide a little bit here, which now

is not the time to stop but to move forward, and so I would say

that we have greatly appreciated the support of our law enforcement. They are key in the efforts that are happening in Mower

County, as well as our city and county officials. Our treatment

folks have been very supportive, and I just want to thank you for

an opportunity to come and talk about the prevention angle and to

be able to talk a little bit about the program that I believe is key

in this fight to curb the meth problem. So thank you very much.

[The prepared statement of Ms. Lindbloom follows:]

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Mr. SOUDER. Thank you. Mr. Anderson.

STATEMENT OF BUZZ ANDERSON

Mr. ANDERSON. Thank you, Mr. Chair, and Members. My name

is Buzz Anderson. I serve as president of the Minnesota Retailers

Association. Thanks for the opportunity to speak to the Subcommittee on Criminal Justice, Drug Policy, and Human Resources.

Thank you as well for seeking input from Minnesotans. It’s a real

honor to speak before this distinguished panel and before your very

hard-working counsel and other staff.

Minnesota legislators, law enforcement and local governments,

social service agencies, nonprofits and retailers have all been trying

to find a way to deal with this scourge. Pseudoephedrine-based cold

products, some of which have been used to manufacture meth, have

been offered in many venues in this State, and the reason for that

is unlike—or not unlike other States, it’s a very diverse State.

You’ll find pseudoephedrine-based products in convenience stores,

grocery stores, pharmacies and other types of retail.

Again, as I just pointed out, there’s just a wide range of communities in this State. Some citizens have many choices when they attempt to purchase a cold product or an allergy product, while other

communities have little retail activity, including very limited pharmacy or no pharmacy at all. In some cases the only place consumers can buy a cough or a cold product is in the one remaining store

in a small community, and that tends to be a convenience store.

As you mentioned, Mr. Chair, I took it upon myself when dealing

with this legislation to go to the Internet, and I just Googled how

do I buy Sudafed, and I got many, many hits, and I found out there

were numerous sites which would allow me to buy up to 1,200

boxes at a time, and, of course, as long as I paid for them I could

buy another 1,200 and another 1,200 and another 1,200, and I

think that’s a source that people tend to ignore in terms of where

people are probably also getting the pseudoephedrine-based products.

Consumers are really trying to buy this product everywhere, and

they do that because it’s inexpensive and it’s very effective for

treating cough, colds and allergies. You know, I happen to be one

of those people that’s allergic to everything, so I took Claritin-D,

and my wife takes one product and my two boys take other products because each product fits individual needs, and that’s why you

see a vast array of them on the shelves.

Anyway, because of the awareness that retailers have about the

abuse of meth, many retailers have taken voluntary steps to stem

this type of abuse. Many have put single active ingredient products

behind the counter and in locked display cases. Some have put all

products containing pseudoephedrine behind the pharmacy counter.

Many participate in the Meth Watch Program, which comes about

as a result of a grant through our Minnesota Grocers Association

and Minnesota Pharmacists Association, and that Meth Watch Program, which comes out of the Consumer Health Products Association, allows for training of employees, signage at point of sale and

so on and so forth. It’s a very, very good program.

In many cases, as was pointed out by one of the law enforcement

officers, suspicious activity is reported by our retailers, and it has

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resulted in a whole number of law enforcement busts because the

employees are trained now to look for what appears to be suspicious behavior. Many employees are told, however, not to intervene in the sale because you don’t want to get a clerk between the

sale and a methamphetamine potential purchaser and end user because they’re paranoid and they’re violent. The idea is to help employees understand what appears to be suspicious behavior and report it to law enforcement because they have the training to deal

with it.

The Minnesota Retailers Association, along with the Minnesota

Pharmacists Association, the Minnesota Grocers Association and

Lisa Cranet is here today from the Grocers, and the Minnesota Petroleum Marketers Association worked hard expressing its view

during the past legislative sessions when the Minnesota Legislature adopted a meth bill. Our process is a very open process here,

and we are pleased to have been brought into this discussion from

the very, very beginning, and we certainly thank Senator Rosen

and other legislators for that.

The legislation that ultimately passed turned out to be very

workable for consumers and retailers, and what we hear from law

enforcement is they believe this will be very effective in stemming

the tide of methamphetamine use and production. It has several

features which I would hope the committee would look at seriously

as you look about adopting Federal legislation.

First of all, the Minnesota law has preemption to prevent a

patchwork of laws throughout the State, and having said that, I

would hope that your bill would have preemption so that companies like Target and Walgreens and Snyders and others who have

stores all over the Nation don’t have to try to abide by a different

set of laws from county to county, State to State.

The Minnesota law also has flexibility at the point of sale. Our

legislature realizes how important pharmacists are and the role

that they play in providing healthcare. Therefore, pseudoephedrinebased products that are restricted behind a pharmacy counter can

be logged and sold by a pharmacist, a pharmacist tech or a pharmacist clerk. Pharmacists should not be thought of as pill counters.

They play an integral role in health care delivery and support and

not monopolize their time on solely dispensing what has traditionally been an over-the-counter drug. Their expertise is very, very effective and important in healthcare, and it’s also very expensive.

Minnesota law also has product flexibility as well and makes accommodations to make certain that only caplet and tablet forms of

pseudoephedrine are placed behind the pharmacy counter. Products

that are in gel caps, liquid form, single-active ingredient in pediatric form and powders are exempt, and we heard a lot of testimony from law enforcement as this bill was being drafted in Minnesota that caplet and tablet forms are the real source of problem.

To ensure that they haven’t missed anything, however, Minnesota

took another key step, and that is they said that if law enforcement

feels that one of the other products that is exempt is causing a

problem, that they can contact the Board of Pharmacy, and the

Board of Pharmacy then has the right to make this a restricted

product in Minnesota.

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Consider, if you will, just one other option when you consider

drafting this, and, that is, there are a lot of stores that have pharmacies that just don’t have room to put all the pseudoephedrinebased cough and cold products behind the pharmacy counter. So

they like the option of putting them in a locked display case where

only a pharmacist, pharmacist tech and pharmacist clerk would

have the ability to get those for a consumer.

Finally, let me point out that we have a tremendous law enforcement community in this State. They’re doing an unbelievable job,

but I know they’re overwhelmed and they’re underfunded. I know

it would be greatly appreciated if Congress would provide more

funding for local communities, which, again, are really overwhelmed by this.

Thank you for the opportunity to speak to this committee. I’d be

glad to answer any questions.

Mr. SOUDER. Thank you. I don’t think anything has been more

frustrating than trying to deal with this behind-the-counter question, because when we first had the Oklahoma people testify, I was

fascinated with the law. It looked like a simple solution, and because it looks like a simple solution, it gets a political head of

steam in front of it as it’s moving through.

Interestingly, while Oklahoma initially saw a drop, so did Kansas that didn’t have the law, had a greater drop, partly because

when the community responds and the community organizations

get together and the local law enforcement get together and the

pharmacist get together, any action pushes a—this is an easy drug

to sell as evil, unlike marijuana, which is much more of a battle

in a community.

Therefore, any community action makes the difference. It isn’t

whether it’s with blister packs, Meth Watch is notifying particularly in small communities. It’s not like the pharmacist where a

girl working in the morning or a boy working in the evening can’t

figure out who is coming in to buy pseudoephedrine. Furthermore,

larger retailers can track, you can see where it goes, you can see

which pharmacy is selling or having stolen twice or three times the

amount. This isn’t hard, and why we went after these small-town

grocery stores and pharmacies, I do not know. I grew up in a small

town. They’re closing down left and right anyway, and what we’re

going to do is wind up accelerating that rate of close down with,

namely, trying to address meth, which may not work. With that

said, we’re past the point of being able to preempt. Too many

States have done this. Hopefully, if we pass a Federal law, States

can then start emulating, back up a sense. But politically this has

got such a head of steam, maybe we can get future States to do

some compromises and types of things you did here behind. But I’m

as aggressive law enforcement, anti-drug guy as there is in Congress, and I’ve just never seen anything not based on fact move

this quickly, because it seems like a simple solution, and, in fact,

we see in the mom-and-pops that you can get more control of the

mom-and-pops. The question is then what happens. That it doesn’t

mean it’s not at too high a level, but where groups get active, like

Ms. Lindbloom, you can see effects, and it’s great to hear that it’s

dropping, and what happens is that we’re seeing some of those

drops in rural areas that are aggressive. What we aren’t seeing is

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the national drop overall, and we’re seeing it move into more heavily populated areas and come into different types of groups.

Mr. Miller in the drug courts, that was really interesting testimony. Also, because you’re moving people through, we get to see

the hard data with it.

Given the fact that cocaine is largely coming in through Hispanic

groups, do you think it’s the distribution networks that have led to

the differences in the African American community from the other

communities as to why crack and cocaine still seems to be in the

urban areas the choice of drugs for African Americans, although

you see some meth, as opposed to the others where it switched so

fast?

Mr. MILLER. I do know that just in terms of affordability, you can

buy a gram of methamphetamine for $70 over on Lake Street and

so——

Mr. SOUDER. Compared to crack what is it?

Mr. MILLER. I’d have to call on my colleague, Gail Baez. Gail is

a prosecuting attorney in Minneapolis.

Gail, do you know what the street value is going for a gram of

cocaine?

Ms. BAEZ. Well, we’ve heard it’s about $20 for a hit, and, actually, what law enforcement has told me is that methamphetamine

and cocaine are comparable prices, but the same amount of meth

gives a longer high. Perhaps Mr. Bushman could speak on that.

Mr. SOUDER. Rather than try to repeat that for the record, will

you stand and raise your hand and be sworn?

[Witness sworn.]

Mr. SOUDER. And would you spell your last name?

Ms. BAEZ. B-a-e-z.

Mr. SOUDER. Mr. Bushman, did you want to add anything to

that?

Mr. BUSHMAN. I’d just say that Ms. Baez is right about that. The

price for cocaine and methamphetamine is pretty much similar. Cocaine, of course, is sold by the rock, and they repeat that activity

hour after hour, day after day, and I think part of the difference

is that there’s the competition. You know, the people that are supplying the drugs to those groups, you know, they’re in competition

with each other and they want to keep their drugs flowing so they

get their share of the money. So I think that’s had a lot to do with

seeing how different groups stick with different drugs.

Mr. SOUDER. Although they both may come in Hispanic networks, when they hit the streets of Minneapolis and St. Paul, the

local distribution networks are African American in one case and

more likely to be Mexican or Asian in the other.

Mr. BUSHMAN. Yes, and they have their turf and they have their

customers, and they’re very protective of that, so that’s their——

Mr. SOUDER. The retail association, but it works very similar. I

mean, it’s very interesting. Mr. Gutknecht.

Mr. GUTKNECHT. Well, thank you, Mr. Chairman. I just wanted

to point out that—not that I shop for cold medicines that much, but

I happened to be in a store the other day and already appearing,

the market is responding with pseudo-free cold medications. As a

matter of fact, we’ve had testimony from folks here on this committee and on others that the pseudoephedrine really is not even necVerDate 11-MAY-2000 08:34 Feb 02, 2006 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00091 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 D:\DOCS\24891.TXT HGOVREF1 PsN: HGOVREF1
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essary anymore. The truth of the matter is we can provide—we can

produce cold medicines that are every bit as effective without using

it at all, and I think that’s something else we can do at a Federal

level, is encourage and pressure some of the pharmaceutical companies to begin to just write it right out of the script.

Let me also thank you, Buzz, in what the retailers are doing, because I think there are an awful lot of good examples of doing the

right thing and helping and working together to try and get more

of this product off.

Now, the other problem you talk about is the ability to literally

go on line and buy large quantities of that. Do you have any recommendations on how we stop that?

Mr. ANDERSON. Mr. Chair, Congressman Gutknecht, I actually

do not. It’s one of those illusive things that evades us in many,

many issues, whether it’s sales tax issues or drug issues. You

know, the Internet is something that didn’t exist even just a few

years ago, and now it’s very widely used by many, many people,

and I do not know how you get a handle on that.

Mr. Chair, Congress Gutknecht, if I could make one more comment with your permission?

One of my members was in town on Friday and they provided

service to retailers so that by just swiping a driver license on a return they can check very effectively for fraud and abuse. They’re

actually now working on technology which might help to also use

that same system to track sales of purchases of pseudoephedrine

product. Minnesota law requires logging if you buy a caplet or a

tablet form. But, again, it’s something that is probably not effective

in terms of stemming the tide because people can buy two boxes

in a large city at Snyders and go across the street to Target and

buy two boxes and to another neighborhood and buy two boxes,

and, yes, they log every place, but every previous retail store has

no idea that they just bought two boxes somewhere else.

And, so, if you really want to get a handle on that, and I know

this gets into privacy issues and all of that, you have to have something which shows instantaneously that somebody just bought in

these specific locations, otherwise the logging is very limited in

terms of its use, unless you’re using it to find information about

prosecuting people for having purchased too much.

Mr. GUTKNECHT. Well, let me just say that in the end I think

trying to limit the ability of people to get drugs, whether it’s heroin

or cocaine or pseudoephedrine or whatever, is of limited success.

Ultimately I think it’s programs like Ms. Lindbloom’s that really is

going to start to make a difference, we hope, and what we’re really

looking for, I think, at Federal levels are examples of success, and

if we can encourage kids and other folks not to get started, it saves

us a whole lot of problems on the other end.

So I don’t have any further questions, but I want to thank all of

you for coming to testify. I think this has been a very, very good

hearing. Thank you.

Mr. SOUDER. Congresswoman McCollum.

Ms. MCCOLLUM. Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Mr. Chair, before we conclude and wrap up the testimony, I want

to offer to try and let the members of this committee to ask Chairman Hyde for a hearing, in either full committee or subcommittee,

89

to deal with the super lab problem with the Mexican traffickers. I

know you’ve heard this before, because I always check and see

what’s out on your Web site, what the committee has been working

on, and one of your committees a drug enforcement person from the

DEA, and I quote him, says perhaps the greatest emerging drug

threat from Mexico is the production of methamphetamine sale and

trafficking here in the United States.

So we need to look at this internationally at the same time as

we’re looking at what we’re doing internally here.

We heard of many costs, Mr. Bushman, and we’re going to maybe

try to put them together, from after school to drug court to locking

people up. But you and I had a conversation in my office, and I

mentioned it at the hearing that Mr. Souder had back in Washington that I was able to participate in, talking about what we don’t

know about methamphetamine. We don’t know its long-term effects

on children who have been exposed to it. We don’t really know how

to treat this addiction because it’s unlike any other, and the CBC

is working on it. But you and I talked about law enforcement officers, social service people coming in later on and dealing with either cleanup for social service or their arrest that your offices are

facing.

Could you tell me, are we any further along in identifying this

as a hazardous substance for law enforcement, if there’s been any

progress made in the past years to either have this flagged out on

a health record so that we take care of people in the future or if

you’re seeing increased exposure and starting to see the long-term

risks?

Mr. BUSHMAN. I can answer that question in a couple of ways,

Congressman McCollum. We know that the substances and the

chemicals that they’re using to make methamphetamine are hazardous, and we know just based on the training what will happen

to ether, what can happen with paint thinner, how dangerous anhydrous ammonia is, and I suppose the greatest stride that we’ve

made with this is we’ve put a lot of effort, a lot of time and a lot

of money into training the First Responders about the dangers and

how to protect themselves from the pathogens, from the chemicals,

from the residuals.

Years ago when I started my career, when we had a meth lab,

we walked in dressed as we were and we took it apart, and it

smelled bad. You know, we knew that. Now we understand what

the dangers are. Unfortunately, I still think we’re at the point

where it’s new enough where we don’t know what the long-term effects can be to a person who day in and day out responds to meth

labs.

I am familiar with cases there our DEA agents, that our police

officers around the country that have had problems that they attribute to exposure to hazardous chemicals, lung problems, liver

problems, blood diseases. Now that we use the protective gear, now

that we’re more careful, it’s going to be a few years before we really

know if we’re doing the right thing or what the long-term effects

of this are.

When you go back and look at the people that we arrest or the

children that we take out of these houses, I mean, the damage and

the problems caused by meth labs to those people, they’re evident.

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Talk to the people in child protection, talk to the doctors, talk to

the nurses that treat these people and see the problems these kids

are having from crawling around on carpets or on floors that are

full of residuals from producing methamphetamine, the acids,

things like that.

I do a lot of training for First Responders, for law enforcement,

for medical personnel, and I show this tape that shows how methamphetamine is made, and the comment I always get is I can’t believe that people would actually snort that stuff or shoot it up their

veins when it’s made with acid, it’s made with all the chemicals.

So the immediate effects from the abuse and the use, we know

what they are. The long-term effects from being exposed to it in a

more controlled situation with the protective gear over the lifetime

or a career of an agent or First Responder, I don’t think we’ve had

enough time to really look at that, but that’s something that we are

checking. When our people do respond, they fill out a form notifying their department through workers’ comp that I’ve been exposed

so should something happen later that they can attribute to it, the

information is there as to when they were exposed, what they were

exposed to and what kind of chemicals they were.

Mr. SOUDER. Thank you. I take it that one of the things that

happens if you’re exposed you grow a mustache?

Mr. BUSHMAN. It used to be a beard, but I haven’t done it for a

while, so——

Mr. SOUDER. Mr. Kennedy.

Mr. KENNEDY. Well, I thank the panel for all your work, for your

testimony here. It takes a unified effort of all parties and Minnesota has had some great collaboration. So I congratulate you all.

I also want to mention, Mr. Bushman, you were mentioning the

U.S. Attorney and the great work that you do with him, and I just

want to recognize that we have with us U.S. Attorney Heffelfinger

with us here today and thank him for—and all of you for your

great service.

My first question to you, Mr. Bushman, enforcement, we get

these guys, do we get the penalties, is there too much friction between once we’ve found somebody who has done harm getting this

poison into our communities and what we can do, and are the penalties stiff enough to be deterring, and we’ve already identified if

we’re sending them to Mexico, they’re coming right back, so we’ve

got to work with Mexico to make sure they keep them locked up.

But from a penalty perspective here in America, what advice or

thoughts do you have?

Mr. BUSHMAN. Well, in Minnesota, particularly, we’re talking

about, really, two systems. You know, we have the State laws

where the majority of our drug offenders are prosecuted, charged

and incarcerated, and then we also have the Federal system. But

I think that we’ve had enough time working together between the

systems where we really try to find the best place for the offender.

U.S. Attorneys office, the Federal courts have been very good

about helping us with the worst of the worst, and the other thing

that I really credit them with is over the past few years, especially

with the methamphetamine problem, we’ve seen a lot more Federal

prosecutions in the rural areas where they’re not as well equipped

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to deal with the investigation and the prosecution as some of the

urban and suburban areas are.

Federal penalties are stiffer, Federal penalties are longer, more

consistent. When you get into the State courts, there’s a lot more

latitude for each district, for each judge to do more of what they

believe is appropriate, and you’ll find that there is probably a big

disparity in how sentencing or how charging occurs in the State

court system, but I really think that with all the task forces we

have, with as much time as we spend with the prosecutors, we

really have—given the systems that we have, we’ve been able to

strike a balance to make them work in the most effective manner

that we can right now. You’ll talk to some cops that would like to

see a lot stiffer penalties, but like I said, we also realize that treatment and education are big parts of trying to win this meth battle.

As I’ve said and as the sheriffs and other people have said here,

we’re never going to arrest our way out of the drug problem. It’s

a multifaceted and comprehensive approach, and that’s how we

need to look at this. Let’s look at what’s working, not only here in

Minnesota, what’s working around the country, and let’s try to

build that into a model that works best for us and, hopefully, for

everybody.

Mr. KENNEDY. Thank you.

Mr. Miller, could you talk, how does the drug court—you know,

we’re using it differently here in Minnesota. Why is that better and

how does it relate to what Mr. Bushman just talked about in terms

of the Federal and the State, you know, different forms of applying

penalties?

Mr. MILLER. Thank you, Congressman Kennedy.

I think that when you just take away all the rhetoric, drug

courts exist to get people into treatment sooner and keep them

there longer. They are alternative sentencing programs, by design

intended to serve as an alternative to an incarcerative response.

That is no secret. They exist for that very purpose.

I think that leveraging treatment with criminal justice involvement is promising. I personally think that we’re on the right track.

It is especially promising when you can cherry pick the people for

your drug court. If you can find the right and perfect people to be

in your drug court with the right and perfect treatment and right

and perfect criminal justice leverage, you’re going to get fantastic

outcomes.

We haven’t had that good fortune in Minneapolis. We designed

a drug court that was intended to have community impact, and so

we have a broad target population, broader than any other target

population of any other drug court across the globe, and so progress

is incremental with this group.

Are penalties stiff enough? I think that they are, and I think we

would be wise to use those stiff penalties for the people who need

them, and sometimes we miss the mark. Sometimes we end up not

using the coercive power of the law to its fullest benefit. But for

most of the people I see tangled up in this methamphetamine stuff,

treatment is an effective response. We are—you know, I think

we’ve come to believe, as we did when the crack cocaine epidemic

hit, that we didn’t have treatment that would work, we didn’t have

treatment that worked. The problem is we have treatment that’s

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very short term, and so the lesson we’re learning, once again, is the

need to elongate treatment, that we need treatment. The majority

of people, for example, indicate a minimum of 90 days, and then

after that your outcomes get better. I like to think that it’s 6

months minimum, and so our struggle is to find long-term treatment.

It’s no secret as well that we have cutoff treatment funding for

the working poor. In Hennepin County we helped pay for treatment

services for the poor for decades, but now those funds have dried

up, and so our struggle is to get effective treatment available to

people and long-term effective treatment.

Mr. KENNEDY. Thank you.

Mr. SOUDER. Is your drug court, then, involuntary as well as voluntary?

Mr. MILLER. It is involuntary. All felony drug offenders are included in our drug court. The way you get out of the Hennepin

County Drug Court is you go to prison.

Mr. SOUDER. I want to encourage you, I know the temptation

across the country is to kind of cook statistics, and because everybody wants a great success rate, and when you look at the drug

courts, their success rates don’t, in many cases, don’t even approach 50 over the long term or less, but when you hear about

treatment programs where people go through 16 times, I personally

have never heard on the street or anywhere when a drug dealer

who has been through 6 or 7, all of a sudden 30 percent looks really good. By keeping straight statistics, people shouldn’t expect miracles when we deal with people who have been addicts in many

cases for many years.

In drug court certainly, in real numbers to real numbers, I believe it has had the most success because it combines threat of enforcement but also gives alternatives to people, and that kind of

combination, I think, is why it has been successful.

Mr. Bushman, have you worked with any of the OCDETF task

forces here in Minnesota?

Mr. BUSHMAN. Many times. Myself as a DEA task force agent,

I have conducted many OCDETF investigations throughout probably the 15 years that I’ve been assigned over there. It’s a tool that

we use quite readily here. I believe it has been real successful. As

with any other program, you always like to see more money when

you’re doing a big investigation. But it is something that we do use.

The U.S. Attorney’s Office has a number of OCDETF attorneys who

are in charge of that program whom we’ve worked with very closely, they’re all very good prosecutors. So it’s a program that we use

quite regularly here.

Mr. SOUDER. Mr. Miller, you said that 50 percent of your meth

cases were women, is that correct, or 50 percent of the people coming in the drug court going to treatment were meth with women,

but only 20 percent with men. Why do you think that is true?

Mr. MILLER. What I intended to say was that of all the chemical

health assessments we do, put them all together, the underlying

drug of choice for all of them is 20 percent methamphetamine. For

women, however, the underlying drug of choice, the underlying

factor——

Mr. SOUDER. Primary.

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Mr. MILLER. Primary is methamphetamine.

Mr. SOUDER. Why do you think that is?

Mr. MILLER. Well, I think it was touched on earlier. I think so

many women find their way into the use of this substance as a

weight reduction strategy. As sad as it may sound, a lot of the

young women I’m talking to were first introduced to the use of

methamphetamine as a way to depress hunger.

It’s also really readily available in bars. I mean, it’s no secret

that this drug is a drug that can be had in local pubs and bars.

To buy crack cocaine or to buy cocaine, it’s a little riskier proposition, but this particular drug is accessible through less risky avenues.

It’s also a drug that I think just has appeal to women because

it’s just not such a nasty drug. You smoke it, for the most part.

Overwhelmingly, in our drug court most of the people who use it

smoke it. So the route of ingestion is considered to be a little less

nasty. I mean, you don’t have to necessarily have a crack pipe to

smoke this stuff, so—and beyond that I’m not sure.

Mr. SOUDER. Ms. Lindbloom, do you see this as a smaller—in a

place like Austin itself, disproportionate use?

Ms. LINDBLOOM. I think we’re seeing an increase in some of the

girls, and some of the more alarming cases are—an example, we

had a superstar, captain of the swim team, an A student, from a

middle to upper middle class family, connected—and got connected

with it, and, of course, within 6 months was 90 pounds and on her

death bed.

Certainly, it’s become more and more popular with the girls, and

we’re seeing it. The reason they’re giving is the weight loss thing.

Our students are saying it’s a great way to—because it’s exam

time, it’s a great way to keep ahead of the pace of pressures from

school, college students as well. So I think the weight piece is big

with our young women.

Mr. SOUDER. Mr. Bushman, could you relate what we just heard

to what kind of sales networks are different than if you’re selling

to kids for tests, girls, women at bars, that kind of the traditional

vision of how drug networks would work, you wouldn’t necessarily

think that you’d see the same dealers?

Mr. BUSHMAN. You won’t, but when you look at how pervasive

the meth problem has gotten to be, like I told you before, it used

to be if you were in a rural area, you were pretty well insulated

from large volumes of drug sales and large numbers. It’s not true

anymore with meth. There are a lot of people in the rural areas

that have turned to it, also. Case in point, we had one a couple of

years ago where a guy in a rural area had a custom combining

business, and you got to make those machines work at harvest

time, and he turned to meth to start using it as a way to stay

awake longer and make those machines run more. Well, pretty

soon he developed a habit, and pretty soon he was selling and giving to his friends, to people that worked for him. Eventually he

couldn’t get the supply he needed. He turned to Mexican suppliers,

and all of a sudden he’s looking at going to Federal prison along

with a whole bunch of other people involved in this methamphetamine deal. Very, very atypical of people that for years we’ve seen

starting using drugs early in their life and just continuing on with

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it, and several stories like that. The women with the weight loss,

you know, I’ve seen many, many of them come through the system.

That’s how they started. Before they knew it, they were hooked up.

They were trying to lose a few pounds, and by the time it was

done, they’d lost their family, they lost their house, lost their selfrespect and everything else just because of the lure of this drug.

And I said these aren’t all people in the cities, these are people

from rural America, from some of the smallest, poorest counties

and cities that we have that have been bitten by this plague, and

their distribution network ends up being the friends that they hang

around with at the bowling alley, people they rub shoulders with

in the businesses downtown, that they have drinks with at the Legion club. I mean, it’s just gotten into parts of society that up until

this scourge were pretty much safe from the crack cocaine, the heroin and the other drugs that we’ve typically dealt with over the

years.

Mr. SOUDER. Years ago we had one case in a rural part of my

district where it looks like the motorcycle gangs, basically, got a

person through pharmacy school and bought a local pharmacy.

Have you seen any of that here?

Mr. BUSHMAN. Well——

Mr. SOUDER. Because that would be a logical thing to do, would

be to penetrate a different type of network.

Mr. BUSHMAN. It’s no secret that for years the motorcycle gangs

ran the meth trade in the United States. We just finished an

OCDETF investigation with Mr. Heffelfinger’s office and the Hells

Angels and their source were Mexican traffickers who were supplying the Hells Angels and bikers with methamphetamine, and we

just finished an OCDETF case and sent a lot of people away on

that case, and that’s just one of the trends. It went from them controlling to now being consumers and middlemen.

Mr. SOUDER. You haven’t seen anybody taking over a pharmacy?

Mr. BUSHMAN. No.

Mr. SOUDER. Any other questions? Well, I thank you each for

coming, and I encourage you, like I did on the first panel, if you

have anything written for the record—and, Attorney Heffelfinger,

if you have anything you’d like to submit or submit a statement,

we’d love to have that and your experiences in the U.S. Attorney’s

Office, also any help or additional help—the U.S. Marshals often

get lost in this, but without marshals to help, do that process, we

lose the Federal cases, and, clearly, as we go to bigger networks we

need to know how you’re handling that out of the U.S. Attorney’s

Office.

Mr. HEFFELFINGER. Chairman Souder, could I inquire?

Has the committee inquired of the Department of Justice and the

U.S. Attorney General to give testimony either here in Minnesota

or elsewhere on this issue? Our lead U.S. attorney is a gentleman

named Greg Scott out of Sacramento who represents a largely rural

district and can comment effectively. I’m more than happy to provide comment on Native American issues or Minnesota-specific

issues, if the committee wants.

Mr. SOUDER. Let me quickly swear you in so we have that.

[Witness sworn.]

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Mr. SOUDER. The answer is yes, the U.S. Attorneys have testified

a number of times. Our first hearing—actually, we’ve done two at

the very—this was probably 6 years ago in Sacramento, and we’ve

since been back up there once because the super labs in California

started—in fact, one hearing we had in southern California not

that long ago, it was interesting because we had so many California undercover people that some of the drug groups came in and

were taking pictures, and they, basically, ran them down outside

of our hearing and nailed a couple other guys who were trying to

get all the other undercover officers at one place.

But we’ll continue to work with U.S. Attorneys. We’ve met with

them in the office several times, but we’re very interested in the

Native American groups, who historically have been hammered by

different variations of drug and alcohol. Also, if there’s any interrelationships up on the north border. It’s more of a problem over

in New York State, but looking at how organizations may move because we didn’t necessarily think of their border there and their

historic relationships. So if there’s any information on that, too.

Mr. HEFFELFINGER. Mr. Chairman, if I could, the procedure I

have to follow is if you wish written comment from me, somebody

from your staff will have to contact the executive office.

Mr. SOUDER. We’ll ask you. Do you have any good questions you

want us to ask you if you could give it verbal?

Mr. HEFFELFINGER. But being here, if I could get 1 minute just

to supplement the record on several points that the members of the

committee asked.

First of all, we do not—this is not a HIDTA State, so we do not

have the benefit of that institutionalized communication. However,

Minnesota has a legacy of law enforcement cooperation that covers

all levels of law enforcement, and narcotics is probably the first

and foremost on that.

One of the things that’s marvelous about the new legislation that

was passed by the legislature this last session was creating a steering committee, like a board of directors for the group. One of the

organizations on that steering committee is the U.S. Attorneys Office. So the coordination between State and Federal has been and

will continue to be tremendous.

One of the areas that you inquired about is where the Federal

Government could be of support. In the HIDTA program one of the

things that Congress has funded is aggressive intelligence gathering and information sharing amongst the HIDTA members. Where

there is no HIDTA in States like Minnesota, we are left to juryrig those systems. The legislation that the legislature passed will

provide us with the framework for enhanced intelligence gathering

and information sharing, and this is an area where, frankly, Congress could be of great assistance. It is not effective in any kind of

drug interdiction and, in particular, in meth where you have the

combination of local impact labs and national impact major labs, if

you will, the Mexican organizations to operate these in a reactive

mode. Rather, we need to be doing our narcotics interdiction on a

proactive mode.

I share, being a district—Minnesota is a Federal district that

covers all four corners of the State. Therefore, about half of the

constituents that I represent are rural and half are urban. We are

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seeing not only the very, very significant impact on local communities about which you heard today, but we are seeing a rapidly increasing impact of methamphetamine in the urban areas.

One thing that has not been mentioned today that I think is worthy of your consideration, and I know that other committees within

Congress have focused upon this, actually, maybe this committee,

is the impact of gang activity and street gang activity on the distribution of narcotics generally and on the distribution of methamphetamine specifically. We have found, for example, in Minneapolis one of the reasons that the African American community

is still largely utilizing crack cocaine and marijuana is that the African American gangs are largely distributing crack cocaine.

Now, as that changes, as we see methamphetamine increasingly

being distributed by street gangs, be they Mexican street gangs or

African American or Asian or Native American, we are seeing in

the urban area an increase in this type of activity. Therefore, I

would urge Congress to look at these as related challenges, not

independent challenges.

Finally, I happen to chair the Native American Issue Subcommittee amongst the U.S. Attorneys. In other words, I’m the lead Federal prosecutor for Indian country. We held a 3-day summit approximately 2 years ago in Rapid City to focus on the incidence of

drugs, guns and gangs in Indian country.

Native American communities are no different from rural America. In fact, the methamphetamine problem as we have identified

it is largely a western phenomenon moving east, with the exception, obviously, of the influence of motorcycle gangs nationally, and

historically more and more, one of the reasons this doesn’t seem to

have gotten the attention in Washington, in my opinion, than other

drug phenomena is this has been largely a western phenomenon

moving east.

Most of the Native American communities in the Nation are in

the western part of the country. They share all of rural America’s

challenges in being rural, and because of the incidence of confusion

over who has law enforcement responsibility within Indian country

and the scarcity of law enforcement resources for most Native

American communities, the challenges of methamphetamine or any

kind of drug, which marijuana, for example, is in—hides in cultivation within Native American communities. These challenges are all

the more pressing when applied in Indian country.

We found in our South Dakota hearing, for example, as we focused on the meth problem and the drug problem primarily in the

Pine Ridge Rosebud Reservation, that the meth was coming across

Interstate 90 from Seattle and was being dropped off in the reservations across the country.

Therefore, I urge the committee as it focuses on this as a national problem, as it focuses on this as a rural problem, to consider

the Native American communities are fully involved in this problem and the challenges that they face in dealing with drug interdiction are a significant challenge because of the issues I cited; and

if the committee would like me to put any of these comments to

writing, I would be happy to.

Mr. SOUDER. Have you used RICO on any of the gangs?

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Mr. HEFFELFINGER. We have not used RICO in this district. We

have found that RICO is a marvelous statute in the appropriate

case, but it has some challenges when it comes to proving it, that

we found that conspiracy in other more standard rules have been

appropriate.

We do have a significant OCDETF presence here in Minnesota.

The U.S. Attorneys Office history over the past 5 years has been

that methamphetamine is our largest quantity of drug. But the

drug we prosecute most frequently, I should say, that increase in

methamphetamine as the No. 1 drug is only growing, and our

OCDETF work which is so voluminous that we just got another position of Assistant U.S. Attorney to do this work, mirrors that drug

of choice problem, increasingly methamphetamine, and it is statewide.

Mr. SOUDER. Thank you very much for that information. It was

fascinating, and one of the interesting things and you just raised

it again, that these drug groups work like big trucking companies.

I have a business background. In fact, it’s great to be back in

Minnesota. I started here after graduate school as marketing manager for Gabberts Furniture in Edina, and Yakima and the Tri-Cities area in Washington State is like this huge hub. They bring this

stuff all the way up from Mexico. BC bud marijuana comes down

in tons from British Columbia. They do all these swaps of guns, cocaine, heroin, methamphetamines coming up in the super meth,

and then we’re seeing it like you described it going all across the

upper Midwest.

In multiple counties in my district in Indiana, we have it coming

from Yakima and the Tri-Cities area, you would think that they

could find a better way to Indiana than going up to Washington

State and then back down. Congressman Deal, who at one point

was vice chairman from Gainvesville, GA to Atlanta, also there

they are coming from Washington State, and it is this phenomena

of certain families in distribution networks, certain communities,

and like various different trucking patterns and distribution networks, and in effect that’s why OCDETF and organized crime areas

have to get to the underneath of this because we’re just going to

drown trying to tackle individuals going to court, trying to address

our kids. We’ve got to get at the larger networks involved and how

the information is getting in as this kind of experiment.

The one thing that I would add just slightly is that I think that

it’s correct to say that it’s certainly moving west to east, but it was

also moving out to in from rural to suburban to urban, which

meant that even in States like Colorado, Denver wasn’t engaged,

even Des Moines, IA was not as engaged, Omaha is only becoming

engaged in Nebraska, New Orleans is not engaged in Louisiana,

Nashville, Memphis and Knoxville weren’t in Tennessee, Indianapolis, Ft. Wayne, IN, it was in the small areas. So even in a given

State you would only have a few Congressmen who were just—like

in my district it’s the TV news lead story every single night. There

isn’t a day that we don’t have major meth takedowns, and so what

we’re starting to see as this moves east and starts to move into the

suburbs and the city, there’s much more of a reaction in Congress

that we’ve built to a threshold much like what you’re seeing in

some of the State legislature.

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So thank you for being part of this. I want to thank the members

in Minnesota who have been very aggressive in trying to get our

attention, and it’s been great testimony at a very critical time, and

anything else you’d like to submit for the record, and we’ll get some

additional written questions out as our supplement and followup.

The subcommittee stands adjourned.

[Whereupon, the subcommittee was adjourned.]

[Additional information submitted for the hearing record follows:]

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