Remarks at a Bipartisan Leadership Meeting on Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs

We are sorry we are late. Mr. Ingersoll got caught in the traffic. I wonder about traffic around here.

If I could say a word with regard to the nature of this meeting in the beginning, and also an indication as to how we will proceed.

The subject this morning is one that we think is appropriate for a bipartisan meeting.

As I was 'telling Mike Mansfield last night, and I talked to the Speaker on this point, there are some subjects that are completely above partisan consideration, and this is one. The only question is the means. How do we deal with this problem of dangerous drugs in the United States, narcotics and so forth?

We thought, therefore, that the presentation should be made to a bipartisan group, Senators and Congressmen. We also thought that we would follow the practice on a matter of this sort, where one of the major needs is public information, to have the press in the room-the writing press--for the presentation.

Of course, during the presentation, any questions you might have you could ask, but we would like to move on. After the presentation is made, then the press will leave the room, and then we will have discussion among the members on the legislation situation. So that will be an executive session. We can have give-and-take as to where the bills are and what can be done and the like.

I don't know if there is any one of you who is more expert, but you will agree with me, I am sure, that with this particular issue there needs to be information as to what the problem really is so that we can deal with it as it is rather than deal with the headlines and all of our misconceptions as to what is dangerous and what isn't, what the penalties ought to be and why sometimes they have to be less for one or more for another, and so on.

We are going to go into some of those subjects here this morning in some depth. Having heard some of this in advance, I can tell you that it was extremely educational to me. I had the idea that I knew something about it, but I find that this is a subject that we all, frankly, in this country, have too little information on. There is just too much ignorance in the country.

I hope this morning, while this will be old to some of you, it will be very helpful to all of you, and I hope the press will be able to record it, too.

We are going to begin with an expert, Mr. Ingersoll, who will, as Director of the Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs, have the primary responsibility within the administration in this field.

He will begin the briefing and he will be followed by Secretary Finch on other aspects of the problem. After that, Art Linkletter¹ will make a presentation in terms of the public problem, which he discussed with me last night, and which I think you will find extremely interesting.

As I said, feel free to ask any questions during the presentation that you would like to, but remember that we will discuss the legislative situation at the conclusion of this. Mr. Ingersoll.

Mr. JOHN E. INGERSOLL. Thank you very much, Mr. President. Distinguished Members of Congress and members of the news media:

I can't really say it is a pleasure to discuss this topic. However, I am very grateful for the opportunity to discuss this most serious problem with you and to urge your support for the swift passage of the administration's controlled dangerous substances act.

As many of you know, the Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs is the Federal agency charged with the principal responsibility for eliminating the illicit traffic of narcotics and dangerous drugs in the United States and for destroying the major illicit drug conspiracies that exist in the United States to peddle their wares.

In order to meet these law enforcement responsibilities and objectives more efficiently, the administration has proposed legislation that, first of all, would bring together the many divergent Federal laws in this area. The legislation would also unify the jurisdictional base for law enforcement and give the Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs the law enforcement and regulatory tools that are necessary to meet the challenge, not only for today but for the 1970's as well.

Today, the Bureau, along with the other Federal law enforcement agencies, is focusing its major law enforcement efforts on halting the supply of drugs that are coming into the United States, hopefully before they reach the shores, and particularly in respect to narcotics, drugs, and marihuana.

Operation Intercept² was a first step in the administration's plan towards finding ways to effectively spur multilateral cooperation among the family of nations in slowing down international illicit drug traffic.

Operation Intercept was very, very successful. While it was in effect, and even to this day, the flow of narcotics and marihuana from Mexico into this country was substantially curtailed. Marlbuena is still in short supply in the United States, and in most places where it is available, at least the Mexican form, the prices have doubled and in some cases tripled.

Presently, a less economically severe plan called Operation Cooperation has replaced Operation Intercept. While this is also an intensive surveillance effort involving the cooperation of numerous Federal agencies and the Government of Mexico, it is less burdensome economically to those persons who are engaged in lawful commerce between the United States and Mexico.

At the President's direction, we are now working out detailed procedures for interdictating the flow of heroin into the United States from its two principal sources, Turkey and France.

The chart here is a schematic representation of the worldwide flow of heroin, particularly from the Middle East and the various routes of illicit traffic through Europe to the United States, and in some cases using Canada and Mexico as transshipment points.

Additionally, we are currently engaged in discussions with the Government of Mexico in order to stop the flow of heroin as well as other drugs, including marihuana, from that country.

If our efforts are in any way successful in halting the flow of heroin from the primary sources, we will have come a long way toward eliminating the principal supplies of this drug.

While we look to other countries for their support in helping us to solve what is a major American problem, the international community also looks to the United States for assistance in preventing drug abuse on a worldwide basis. There is presently great pressure from the international community to revise penal and regulatory laws in order to more effectively stop the narcotic and dangerous drug traffic within and without our borders.

For example, the 38th General Assembly of the International Organization of Criminal Police, which is known to most non-law-enforcement people as INTERPOL, agreed last Friday to recommend the prohibition of all cultivation of the opium poppy that is a source of heroin, and cantharis which is a source of marihuana in those countries which belong to INTERPOL.

Additionally, it was recommended that member countries exercise greater national control over the hallucinogenic, the depressant, and stimulant drugs.

Specific steps called for include these:

--first, the making of these substances available on prescriptions only;

--secondly, governmental supervision of all transactions from production to retail distribution;

--third, licensing of all producers;

--fourth, limiting trade to authorized persons;

--and, finally, prohibition of nonauthorized possession for distribution. This international body also recommended that member nations clearly designate between mere users of narcotics and dangerous drugs and those persons who are involved in the illicit traffic in these substances. The latter group, under the INTERPOL recommendation, is to be given heavy prison sentences, while mere users should be allowed the benefit of maximum flexibility in sentencing.

This recommendation was made last Friday.

The proposed controlled dangerous substances act specifically provides for a marihuana eradication program within the United States of the type recommended by the INTERPOL conference.

Additionally, this legislation imposes much tougher regulatory controls over the legitimate manufacturers, distributors, and dispensers of hallucinogens, depressants, and stimulants in order to prevent the widespread illicit diversion of these drugs that presently exist.

Tighter controls would also be placed over the importation and exportation of all narcotics and dangerous drugs to protect against both domestic and international diversion of these substances.

The controlled dangerous substances act not only evidences the good faith of the United States in meeting international obligations with respect to control of narcotics and dangerous drugs, but also provides a law enforcement framework within which our very own domestic drug problem can be resolved.

This bill is tough. But it is also fair. It metes out harsh penalties for persons identified as professional traffickers or professional criminals. But it also permits flexible penalties for the lesser trafficker and a great deal of flexibility for those persons who are drug users but do not traffic in the drugs.

There is a tendency in some quarters to label the alternative penalties recommended by the administration as being soft in dealing with the drug problem. I, as the head of the law enforcement agency responsible for this problem, consider that charge a misnomer, unfair, and false of fact.

A sentencing structure, in order to be effective, must be acceptable to the courts, to those who prosecute criminal cases, and, of course, to the public. Today's penalties, in some instances, do not meet these tests; that is, penalties, to be effective, must be tough for the more severe trafficking offenses and offenders while having sufficient flexibility for dealing with persons possessing for their own use.

As to narcotic drugs offenses, there is agreement among the courts and the United States attorneys that the nonaddict who traffics in large amounts of narcotics for his own gain ought to be punished severely. And under our proposal, he will be.

There is also agreement that those persons who sell small amounts for personal gain and not just to support a habit should also be punished, but the courts should have some flexibility in meting out the sentence, especially for the first offender.

So what we have done is to build more flexibility into the sentencing structure and allow the courts to exercise their judicial prerogatives more fully.

This does not mean that the criminal is to go free. The outer penalty limits are more than sufficient for the protection of society, which is all of our first concern.

What it does mean is that we have recognized that heroin and marihuana, for example, are not co-equal in danger and we affix the penalties accordingly.

We believe that we now have a structure which distinguishes more carefully between the different offenders in a realistic way. We feel this approach will increase respect for the law and overcome public apathy to some of the inequities in the present penalty structure.

We also anticipate less reluctance to prosecute and less reluctance to sentence, as the penalties would now more closely fit the offenses committed and the individuals who commit them.

In short, we feel that we will see more and better enforcement of the law under the new approach than at the present.

Specific provisions of the bill would also expand the arrest authority of special agents of the Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs and give the Attorney General some greater flexibility in employing them where needed. In addition, existing search warrant provisions have been retained with regard to nighttime search warrants, except that they have been expanded to include offenses involving all controlled dangerous substances.

Presently, such warrants that are able to be served at night are not available for investigations involving stimulants, depressants, and the other non-narcotic dangerous drugs.

In addition, a "no-knock" provision has been included to permit agents to obtain court warrants which designate that they need not announce their authority before they enter the place where the warrant is to be executed, where they can demonstrate to the court that if they had to knock and announce their authority, the result would either be dangerous to the special agent or it would inevitably involve the rapid destruction of evidence.

Many States already have this "no-knock" authority. It has been tested in the Supreme Court and has been found to be constitutionally sufficient. We feel that this most useful law enforcement tool is vitally necessary also at the Federal level in order to enable us to reach those persons who are trafficking in drugs before they are able to dispose of the evidence.

In addition to these search warrant provisions, the bill would permit administrative or inspection warrants. There is a need for this type of warrant, as has been dictated by recent Supreme Court decisions, which have held that administrative searches are no less subject to the protection of the fourth amendment than are inspections in pursuance of criminal investigations.

This provision is of vital importance to the Bureau, since we are also involved in the regulation of the legitimate drug industry and must have the ability to inspect their records, books, and facilities in the event that we were denied access to them under voluntary circumstances. It is the legitimate end of the drug industry which is the major source of the supply of depressant and stimulant drugs which find their way into the illicit drug channels.

Because recent Supreme Court decisions have attacked the validity of certain sections of the existing narcotic and marihuana laws, the Federal Government is no longer able to make possession cases involving marihuana or cocaine.

In addition, the legality of the very basis of the existing narcotic laws dealing with the sale of heroin is currently pending before the Supreme Court.

As you know, narcotics and marihuana are jurisdictionally based on the taxing power of the Constitution. Should these laws ultimately be found to be constitutionally deficient, the Federal Government, for all practical purposes, would be out of the narcotic and marihuana enforcement business.

It is obvious, therefore, that the need for swift enactment of the pending legislation is imperative.

Registration provisions under the existing Drug Abuse Control Amendments, which deal with the regulation of depressants, stimulants, and hallucinogens, are inadequate for effective regulation of the legitimate industry. There are just too many people dealing with these drugs that are not presently required to register. At the same time, many of the drugs under the Drug Abuse Control Amendments no longer require an inventory so that we can keep track of them or keep account of their supply and their distribution, as the original 3-year inventory in the basic law has expired.

The changes found in the controlled dangerous substances act will remedy this situation and permit better supervision over the principal sources of these dangerous drugs. Prompt action is needed if we are to effectively meet the challenge which faces us today.

The Senate hearings have been concluded on the bill and swift action is urged to report this bill out of the Senate Judiciary Committee and to achieve passage in the Senate. The House of Representatives has yet to start hearings. A bifurcated form of the bill is presently divided between the House Ways and Means Committee and the Interstate and Foreign Commerce Committee.

The regulatory tools, the new penalty structures, and the law enforcement tools found in the controlled dangerous substances act will give us 'the equipment that we have to have in order to effectively combat the traffic in narcotics and dangerous drugs. I would urge you to act swiftly and favorably on this legislation.

REPRESENTATIVE CARL ALBERT. Mr. President, may I ask one question?

In recommending more flexible sentences, you are not recommending that the maximum be taken off, but that the minimums be lowered at the discretion of the enforcement and judicial authorities, is that correct?

MR. INGERSOLL. That is correct.

SENATOR JACOB K. JAVITS. IS the presentation this morning to be confined solely to this question? Will we in any way talk about treatment or how to deal with the offender or the user in the United States?

MR. INGERSOLL. The present law, Senator Javits, the law under consideration, is primarily a law enforcement package, as you well know. There are recognitions placed in the law, and also in the President's message of July 14, of the need for better rehabilitation techniques, and at the present time we are reviewing the Narcotic Addict Rehabilitation Act with the view in mind of perhaps recommending in the near future some amendments.

THE PRESIDENT. Secretary Finch is going to cover some of this, Jack [Javits], in his presentation. This is a very important phase of it.

SENATOR MANSFIELD. Mr. Ingersoll, do you have new agents?

MR. INGERSOLL. We are making requests for additional personnel, Senator.

SENATOR MANSFIELD. Enough?

MR. INGERSOLL. I think that we had to go rather slowly during the 1960's. The predecessor bureaus of the Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs were simply small organizations. In the last year and a half since the Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs has been formed, we have practically doubled our strength, and by the fiscal year 1971, our resources, if our pending budget requests are effected, will have increased about 2½ or 2 3/4 times.

I don't think we are going to have enough right away, but I also feel that we have to build systematically and slowly. We have to train our people adequately. I don't want to have a large organization that is inadequately trained.

THE PRESIDENT. Isn't it true that you found the situation--well, there had to be considerable housecleaning?

MR. INGERSOLL. That is correct.

THE PRESIDENT. Why don't you talk about that a little bit. This is the problem, again, that has to do with the nature of what we are dealing with in this area particularly. You have to be extremely careful to be sure that you don't simply offer an opportunity for those who have the habit or are trying to traffic, of becoming, frankly, agents of the Government. Isn't that the problem you run into?

MR. INGERSOLL. Yes. During the first year that I was Director of the Bureau, I had the unhappy job of separating over 50 people, indicting about 14 or 15 agents and former agents for Federal criminal offenses, some of which involved trafficking in narcotics, some of which involved other forms of corruption, and at least three or four cases which involved perjury.

THE PRESIDENT. Do some of these become users? Is that the problem?

MR. INGERSOLL. We have had some instances of that, Mr. President. That is not too extensive, but there have been a few.

Q. But now you are going on a training program, highly selective, to upgrade the whole Bureau?

MR. INGERSOLL. Yes. The standards for employment were relatively low and lax. We have tightened these up considerably. The last 100 men or so who have been employed have been of very high caliber. They have a wide variety of educational backgrounds, almost all of which--I think 100 percent--have at least a 4-year college degree.

They have language capabilities, for example, to illustrate the diversity, ranging from Thai to Spanish. Some of them have previous investigative backgrounds, law enforcement backgrounds, and others do not.

We are trying to obtain the very best people that we can. This kind of work offers the most fantastic temptations that I have found in some 18 or 19 years of law enforcement work.

THE PRESIDENT. Because of the profit in it?

MR. INGERSOLL. The money is terrific. I have seen traffickers who can make $150,000 to $200,000 a year. These are not the big-time fellows. These are the middle level.

In one of our integrity cases, it was estimated that St million exchanged hands between our man, our former agent who was involved in this, and the trafficker he was working with. So we have to be extremely careful.

THE PRESIDENT. Would you talk a moment about the tie-in of the organized crime with the whole drug problem? Is that part of the problem? Is that where so much money comes in? I think it would be of interest to some discussion of that.

MR. INGERSOLL. This is a very substantial part of the problem. The Mafia, for many, many years, traditionally has offered heroin as one of its vice commodities. It has controlled the trafficking of heroin, at least on the eastern seaboard of the United States, for the last 20 or 30 years. It has direct links with organized criminal elements in France and in the other parts of Europe, principally the Corsicans of France. It controls the importation and the initial distribution of heroin in the eastern part of the United States and then it filters down through a lot of other channels.

But many of the big names, the leaders of the Mafia, never touch the drug. They never see it. Many of them, as in any large corporate enterprise, are probably not aware of daily transactions that their organization is involved in, in specific detail.

This is, in further response to your question, Senator Mansfield, one of the things that we badly need in the Bureau. In addition to manpower, we need to be able to have more money available for investigative funds, because in order to reach these very high levels of the criminal syndicate, we have to, in all frankness, be able to buy our way in. In order to do this, we have to have large resources and investigative funds available to us.

THE PRESIDENT. IS it not true, as I understand it, the organized clime, syndicates and the rest, are funded to a great extent by, and the very heart of their operation is, the drug traffic?

MR. INGERSOLL. This is true in the case of a few Mafia families. Some of the families have gotten out of the narcotics business over the years. I suppose that narcotics is not the major source of organized crime finances at this time, but it does represent a substantial source of income for a few prominent figures in the Mafia.

SENATOR JAVITS. Mr. President, about the Mafia, we have the testimony of Valachi³ before the Government Operations Committee. Valachi testified that they were getting out of the heroin business, that it was not liked by the Mafia families and there was a new crime structure being established in the United States by non-Mafia operators, strictly for the drug traffic.

The reason I mentioned this is only because we don't want to get diverted by advertising. The Mafia is blamed for everything. It is guilty of plenty, but at the same time this could be a very false impression.

THE PRESIDENT. The point I was trying to bring out is that it is not the Mafia, but it was organized crime--those operators are the ones, from the investigations that I have read.

Senator Hruska, you have been in some of this, I have heard. The whole body of organized crime, they are the ones that have the network that can distribute this stuff and bring it in from abroad and the rest, apart from the Mafia.

SENATOR ROMAN L. HRUSKA. They have the organization and they have the discipline to go with that organization that makes it a highly efficient proposition. It is very difficult to deal with, too.

MR. INGERSOLL. May I add something to that?

I agree with you Senator, that the Mafia was not the only one. I was not referring exclusively to it. The traffic in LSD, for example, was, in one instance, very highly organized. As a matter of fact, we have a case pending in court at this time where it involves a national syndicate, manufacturing, distributing, and finally street sales of LSD, which stretched from San Francisco to Washington, D.C.

There are smaller organizations involved in the trafficking of marihuana, which are not connected with the Mafia. At the present time, our Bureau is identifying all of these structures. This is one thing, again, that has not been done in the past.

At the beginning of next year we intend to attack the drug problem on the basis of the structures of the criminal conspiracies that are operating throughout the United States and linking them with their international overseers.

SPEAKER MCCORMACK. Where does the Customs Service come in?

MR. INGERSOLL. The Customs Service is responsible for guarding the ports of entry. The Bureau of Customs intercepts and interdicts a substantial amount of drugs that are coming into the United States through those ports.

I point out that some of the drugs are manufactured within the United States, and that it is also necessary to cooperate with the foreign law enforcement agencies which represent the source of these substances so that we can prevent them from reaching the ports at all.

SENATOR RALPH W. YARBOROUGH. May I say a word about the Customs Service?

My State alone, bordered with Mexico, is the one that had the greater experience with Operation Intercept than any other. The aims and ideals of that had widespread acceptance in my State, but the border cities were greatly in opposition to it because of the 5 or 6 hour delay.

I talked to many people along the border there. They say they think it is a good thing if there were enough customs agents, so that instead of waiting you have enough to keep examining the cars rapidly. They do examine them rapidly.

So, as Chairman of the Appropriations Subcommittee that has jurisdiction over the appropriations of the Customs Bureau, I would expedite any request of the administration for more customs agents. I believe we added 500 customs agents in the recent appropriations bill, but most of those were to go to the big airports because of this great increase in air traffic from overseas. I think only 100 went to the Canadian and Mexican border.

But that was the big complaint over Intercept. I think the overwhelming majority of the people of my State approved of it, except for the delay in the commerce between the cities.

REPRESENTATIVE ALBERT. Doesn't it come down to this, that the major operators in this field are so well organized, financed, and disciplined that we have got to step up in order to compete with them as a Government enforcing operation?

MR. INGERSOLL. I think that is true to a large extent.

THE PRESIDENT. You can't fight organized crime with the weapons of the 1800's

REPRESENTATIVE WILLIAM H. NATCHER. Mr. Ingersoll, a week ago last Friday, the Speaker of the House of the Mexican Government⁴ called me on the telephone he also happens to be a good friend of Mike Mansfield--with reference to this Intercept. I said: "What is your problem?" He said: "This is all bringing us ill will. Are you working out the problem? There is a problem here between the two countries."

I talked with him one other time on the telephone and I don't get any definitive answer to this.

But are you, at the present time, getting the cooperation of the Mexican Government in this thing?

Mr. INGERSOLL. We will be down in Mexico for talks next week. When we go there, we will bring with us a set of requests and also offer assistance.

I think I would be able to answer your question better following those meetings.

THE PRESIDENT. The problem, Bill [Natcher], I think, on this point, as all of you know--you don't have to be in foreign affairs or foreign relations to know it--is a very difficult one. We need cooperation. Operation Intercept was shock treatment and it was believed necessary and it did accomplish a great deal.

Now, however, the Mexican Government and the President [Gustavo Diaz Ordaz], when I talked to him, gave every assurance of the desire to be cooperative. The Mexican Government has indicated a desire to work out a cooperative venture with the United States.

I should also point out that we have the same problem, a very delicate and sensitive problem, with regard to the Turkish and French problem. It would not be well to discuss that problem here. I can only say that every effort is being made cooperatively with those Governments to work out this problem.

Is that a fair statement?

MR. INGERSOLL. Yes, sir, very much.

THE PRESIDENT. You can be assured we will leave no stone unturned, but we do have to have in mind the fact that we are dealing with sovereign governments in these instances, and the foreign policy consequences can be very significant, as it turns out to be in Operation Intercept.

But that is turning around now, and the Mexican Government, I think, is working with us in a cooperative manner. Would that be correct?

MR. INGERSOLL. Yes, fir. My latest report came in yesterday and indicated that very definitely there is evidence that the Government of Mexico has stepped up its eradication program and is destroying substantial amounts of marihuana and opium poppies.

THE PRESIDENT. Senator Dodd?

SENATOR THOMAS J. DODD. That pretty well answered what I was going to ask about. I was in Turkey a few weeks ago. I was working with Mr. Ingersoll's people in the area. I said it seems to me we are running into a lot of opposition in the operations abroad. We ought to make provision for this.

THE PRESIDENT. Let me ask one question before we go on to Secretary Finch. As I understand from your presentation, the passage of the dangerous substances act, the passage also of the organized crime proposals that have been submitted to the Congress, that these two would give you, your colleagues, and others in this field, very necessary weapons that are needed to wage a more effective fight on this whole drug problem, the dangerous drug problem.

MR. INGERSOLL. Yes, sir.

THE PRESIDENT. At the present time you feel you are inhibited in that you don't have the adequate weapons to deal with this whole infrastructure which has grown up over the years, which is making the drug available to people by the hundreds of thousands in the country. Is that the problem?

MR. INGERSOLL. Yes.

THE PRESIDENT. How many years have you been with this problem?

MR. INGERSOLL. I have been in charge of this Bureau for only a little over a year. However, I have been in law enforcement, as you know, 18 or 19 years. I have had direct contact with these problems over that period of time.

THE PRESIDENT. Let me be a little more blunt. Too often--as a former Member of the House and Senate, I know this is true--too often people say when there is a problem, "Pass a law." Then they think the law is passed and the problem is solved, when really the problem is not the passage of the law. The problem is the administration of the law. The problem is the personnel.

From what you have indicated here, there has been a very serious problem of personnel, putting it more bluntly, the Bureau of Narcotics has been a disgrace, a disgrace in terms of the way that it was allowed to be operated. I am not referring to the top leadership. I am referring to the fact that you referred to just a moment ago.

At the present time, you are not contending that your administration is perfect, right? You have got to step that up. Even with the existing law you can do a better job.

MR. INGERSOLL. Yes.

THE PRESIDENT. But what you are saying is that if you are in it with near perfection, you still need weapons that can come only from the Congress.

MR. INGERSOLL. That is correct.

THE PRESIDENT. Change, for example, with regard to the penalties which will be discussed later, also the organized crime, which is not in your field, but attacked from another direction. All of these changes you think are essential for you to do the job, even if you have all the personnel and best that you can get. Because that is the fundamental problem.

MR. INGERSOLL. I think you have to have both, Mr. President. You have to have both adequate personnel, competent, adequate in numbers and quality. You also have to have the tools to do the job. You can't build a house with a rock. You have got to have modern tools.

One of these tools is modern legislative tools, the modern law. We are dealing with laws which were passed. Today we are trying to administer laws which were passed in a completely other era, as long ago as 1914.

THE PRESIDENT. When you didn't have this great network of organized crime and this enormous profit that was being made, when it was basically an individual problem rather than an organized problem.

That is really the difference, is it not?

MR. INGERSOLL. Yes.

THE PRESIDENT. Senator Hughes.

SENATOR HAROLD E. HUGHES. I don't know, Mr. Ingersoll, whether this is in the field you are concerned about, yourself, or maybe part of it is Secretary Finch's or someone else's.

But I would like to ask, we seem to have an increasing amount of information coming to the hearing that even though a man is processed through the courts and imprisoned, that he has already accessible narcotics in almost every prison in the country also, including Federal, State, and jails in the country, and the fact that the backlog of the courts themselves, you know, have left these people on the streets, even though your men may have processed--I am not talking about the Federal, it is probably local and State more than Federal.

This doesn't deal with the particular law, I believe, but are the prisons under your jurisdiction or are they under the Bureau of Prisons?

MR. INGERSOLL. The Bureau of Prisons is in the Department of Justice, Senator. They are not under our jurisdiction. We do work with the Director of the Bureau of Prisons at the Federal level on this problem. He is aware of the existence of drug trafficking in some of his institutions and has taken appropriate steps or has taken steps to not only counter or react to the problem as he finds it, but also to prevent the problem from continuing.

THE PRESIDENT. And the problem, as you know, Senator, your former experience as Governor, is that most of the prison problems are in the State and local communities. I think what we need here is to get cooperation of State and local communities. But there isn't any question but the Senator's point is well taken. It is not just talk. They go to prison, and they find it right there.

MR. INGERSOLL. We found it right out here at Lorton⁵ just a few months ago, as you may recall, quite a substantial traffic in and out of Lorton.

SENATOR HUGHES. The next question deals again with some of our own problems internally. Again, I just question, but there seems to be some evidence coming through that there is a limited amount of traffic, at least within the Armed Forces of our country. I don't know what we are doing. If this is the place to ask that ques tion, I would like to ask it.

THE PRESIDENT. It is.

SENATOR HUGHES. What we are doing and what we can do.

MR. INGERSOLL. I think the principal problem lies in Vietnam. We have had an agent stationed there since last April, a very high ranking and very experienced man, who is working closely with the military and serves as a bridge between our military and the Government of Vietnam, together with our AID [Agency for International Development] public safety people, who are in that area.

One of the most significant things that this man, our agent, has done is, he has undertaken a location and eradication program. He surveys areas from low-flying helicopters and when he discovers cultivation of cantharis, for example, of marihuana, then they call in troops to destroy it. Through this operation, I think already in the first 4 or 5 months of his time there, something in the neighborhood of four or five times as much as was found in all of last year.

In addition to that, he is working extensively in a prevention program using the Armed Forces broadcast media throughout Vietnam in bringing educational materials to the attention of the troops together with the military.

In addition, he is working with military investigators in Vietnam, assisting them in their individual investigations and is also providing training assistance to the military from his own expertise.

In Europe, our agents, who are stationed there, work closely with the military upon request. As an example of this kind of cooperation, sometime in the next few months the military has asked us to transport an entire training instructors team to Germany for the purpose of providing training to military investigators who are stationed in Germany. We intend to respond to this.

In the United States, domestic posts, again, we receive information and exchange information with the military on a daily, weekly, monthly basis and I think that we work very closely with them.

One of my men is a member of the Department of Defense Drug Control Coordinating Committee, I believe it is called, and I am virtually in daily contact with people of the Department of Defense.

I might add that they are part of an interagency committee that is under the White House chair at the present time. They were also represented on the Operation Intercept Task Force.

SENATOR HUGHES. Mr. President, could I ask just a couple more questions?

THE PRESIDENT. Surely.

SENATOR HUGHES. I would like to ask you, if you know, are there any sort of chemical analysis tests being used in the Armed Forces, for example, analysis for heroin users of detection on the systematic use?

MR. INGERSOLL. I am not aware of it.

SENATOR HUGHES. I was going to wait until Secretary Finch was here to talk about education but you touched on education.

Undoubtedly, as I listened to you before, you have a part of the educational field yourself, do you not?

MR. INGERSOLL. Yes, we feel that we can supplement the program which is primarily the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare's.

As I have mentioned to you in my testimony some time ago, we have a great demand placed upon us for educational materials. In addition to that, I think we have a particular perspective of the problem and a particular expertise which has to be made a part of the total educational process that we are involved in.

SENATOR HRUSKA. Could you touch on the development on the State level with reference to the model plan for penalties? I think that would be of special interest since we are getting into it on a national basis.

What are there, some 14 States now that have adopted those same approaches which you are now advocating?

MR. INGERSOLL. I believe it is I I. I think one of the very important things about this Federal legislation, in addition to the improved law enforcement tools that it will provide, is that it also will provide Federal leadership to the States.

The State laws in many, many cases are in as much a jumble, if not more so, than the Federal laws.

I think already that we are seeing signs, because of the hearings of your committee, that the States and localities are beginning to think and beginning to think along the lines that the Federal Government seems to be moving. We are preparing a proposed model State act which is being sent out at this time for review and comment.

Some 26 States have recently asked us for assistance in preparing and modifying their legislation. We are responding to these requests.

SENATOR MANSFIELD. Mr. President, appropos to what Senator Hruska said and the answer made by Mr. Ingersoll that 11 States have indicated an interest in legislation on the basis of the Federal model, first let me say that I think the sooner we get this legislation out of the committee and onto the floor the better.

Secondly, Mr. President, I would like to make a suggestion because of the emphasis placed on State-Federal relations on this particular subject. It is all-embracing as far as the Nation is concerned.

I would like to suggest that you consider the possibility of having a Governors' conference.

SENATOR DODD. I think our subcommittee⁶ will report the bill out within a week.

SENATOR MANSFIELD. If you get it out, we will get it up in the next day or two.

MR. INGERSOLL. We also have a very active State-Federal relations program within the Bureau which provides assistance.

THE PRESIDENT. You may have that, but I think what the Senator is suggesting is something else; that we have had a Narcotics Bureau for the last 50 years with the tools of 1914 dealing with the nuclear weapons in that field, if I may use an analogy, that are used by organized crime of the 1960's. We have been ridiculously outgunned. That is part of the problem.

So we tend to just blame it all on the kids and the others that are drawn into this field. It has been made available to them. The sale has been made. The Government hasn't done its job.

I think a lot of responsibility rests fight with the Government, Federal, State, and local. We can cooperate with the States when they ask. But, as Governor Hughes knows, it does help to get the States to- gether and it jogs them into action. Isn't that true, Governor?

SENATOR HUGHES. It helps a great deal if you do have a conference and you place the emphasis on it.

THE PRESIDENT. Exchange ideas and then they go back and have a concerted approach rather than just doing it, "If the State asks, we will be glad to cooperate .

If the Governor gets behind it, it is one thing; if it is the fellow down the line, it is something else.

MR. INGERSOLL. You mentioned this in your message of July 14. We have already begun to work on that.

THE PRESIDENT. We will put Secretary Finch on now, if you will stay for questions later.

SECRETARY ROBERT H. FINCH. Mr. President and gentlemen:

I can be very brief and pretty well spell this out.

We were in the preparation of legislation and we support it fully.

As the law is now, there are no controls at all. This legislation is on the basis of flexibility, the tailoring of regulatory and penal controls. We are satisfied that we have sufficient input in the decisions of the Attorney General to exercise the functions designating these dangerous substances as well as securing persons who will be permitted to engage in research in the drugs themselves.

We don't anticipate any problem in the administration of this area. We think we have a really rational means of bringing these drugs under control.

That is simply not true under the legislation where administrative procedures and legal requirements are different for marihuana and narcotics than they are for the depressants, stimulants, and other kinds of drugs. We think that for the first time this is met in this bill.

This is enforcement law, enforcement thrust. It certainly does not pretend to cover, and we are not covering now, the educational aspects and the research aspects and the rehabilitation aspects. I don't think we should kid ourselves that
we are.

Our studies now cover a great aspect of this whole problem, such as the addicts potential of new drugs, basic biochemical and neuro-physiological aspects, the nature and extent of the drugs in the United States, the biological and sociological consequences of drug abuse.

We have over 150 grants out now. We are satisfied that we still don't know what these various drugs do in terms of the nervous system, genetic influence, and consequences. And in many other areas, we are finding out that there is a lot we don't know which we should know.

THE PRESIDENT. You have a limited budget. Is it too limited? Do you have enough to do what you are doing?

SECRETARY FINCH. Certainly not in the field of education, Mr. President, and certainly not in the field of rehabilitation.

THE PRESIDENT. Will you ask for more?

SECRETARY FINCH. We will in the next budget.

THE PRESIDENT. DO you have people expert enough that you could use them effectively?

SECRETARY FINCH. I am not sure we have people. We are trying through the regional programs to educate the educators so that we get more into the public school system.

THE PRESIDENT. I am not going to raise this point, but I think Senator Javits raised it earlier. From at least a cursory knowledge of this thing, this educational and rehabilitation thing could be even more important than this whole law enforcement side. It is the repeater.

REPRESENTATIVE ALBERT. It destroys their market.

THE PRESIDENT. Is this what you find?

SECRETARY FINCH. Yes, sir.

Last year we finally isolated the active constituents of marihuana. This means that for the first time the scientific community has a standardized substance that they can use in controlled studies of marihuana. Because, otherwise, the quality of marihuana, the natural product, varies so much from area to area that we can't make any definite conclusions.

THE PRESIDENT. On the education side, I was talking to Art Linkletter about this last night. I said: "Don't they start in high school?" He said: "No, in junior high school."

This, apparently, is the problem.

SECRETARY FINCH. We had 28 workshops regionally. That is hard to cover. But these are in the active areas, the Northeast, the Far West, and one in Chicago.

THE PRESIDENT. You have a number? What is the percentage of people or would you like to even propose it? I know I have seen a number of polls and studies and so forth. Are you prepared to say approximately how many in the schools are involved?

SECRETARY FINCH. We have some very spotty data, and it is frightening, given by high school superintendents and districts. But it is another weakness. Another proposal that you have before your desk is a mechanism which will enable us to get data of this kind.

But any guess I would make right now would be purely speculative. I can tell you that from very high income districts, for example in Virginia, affluent districts, we have superintendents come in and say it is better than half their students they think who are using marihuana or other drugs.

THE PRESIDENT. In other words, it gives a lie to the idea that this is something that simply happens to the poor. It is moving to the upper middle class and so forth.

SECRETARY FINCH. This brings us to what I would like to support, the penalty provisions, because I have been both a prosecutor and in the district attorney's office and so forth. Here, again, I believe very firmly that the flexibility that goes into this law is sound. Because here are a few kids and they get hold of some marihuana and under some States laws that is a felony. You might as well write him off fight at that point because he is branded a felon from then on.

The courts have an understanding of the situation, and the school system, in some cases, cannot take him back into the school. So that I would like to argue very strongly for the flexibility that is built into this law in terms of sentencing and in terms of the probation aspect.

I think the rest of the prepared statement I would like to submit and to questions.

SENATOR JAVITS. Mr. President thing I hope you realize is that a pronged attack is absolutely essential. You can't hope to get anywhere, this is my judgment, unless at the same time you attack the sources as well as the customers.

What Bob [Finch] is saying is right. The kids question us sociologically and even politically on this issue of "pot." I hope very much that you will get very best counsel and guidance so that we won't have 1914 ideas of "pot." They think it is no worse than taking a drink or having a martini. We had better take account of that.

You know as a lawyer, it isn't what the facts are, it is what the judge thinks that counts. That is what we think. It gets down to almost the upper public school level.

THE PRESIDENT. Mr. Poff?

REPRESENTATIVE RICHARD H. POFF. Mr. President, not by way of rebuttal, but while it is true that the administration's proposal does not deal with techniques of rehabilitation, the penalty package in the administration's proposal does have two very useful mechanisms to promote new rehabilitation techniques.

The first of those is the flexibility to which you referred, which makes it possible for the court to expunge the record and spare the first offender of the possibility of bearing a stigma which will follow him all of his life.

And the second, equally important, I think, is that with respect to all penalties imposed, it is possible for the court to consider the degradations of the crime as to the gravity of the offense and fit the punishment to suit the crime. Under the present penalty structure, that is simply impossible.

SECRETARY FINCH. Or they will tell them to cop out, take the lesser plea.

REPRESENTATIVE POFF. Exactly.

The second important mechanism to which I refer is that which is called, for the lack of a better phrase, the mandatory parole component. Built into each felony sentence will be a segment which is mandatory in its impact and requires that the convicted felon be subjected to a period of supervised rehabilitation following customarily the conclusion of his service in the institution.

SENATOR YARBOROUGH. Mr. President, the Labor and [Public] Welfare Committee in the Senate, of which our distinguished neighbor is the ranking minority member [Senator Javits], and we work closely on such matters. I have concern over the traditional division of duties between the Justice Department and HEW. HEW has charge of education, medical treatment, doctors, drugs, some of the things the Secretary mentioned, rehabilitation, and research.

I have had the staff analysis of these different bills pending. We have some bills before our committee. The Justice Department bill is before the Judiciary Committee.

We have some concern of the part of the functions of HEW being put over to the Justice Department which is not a department of medical doctors and medical education.

Part of the bill provides for educational research programs. Another provision of it is authority for any educational research program necessary for the enforcement.

We have in the bills pending before our committee specific authorizations of appropriations going up through fiscal '74 for building facilities under the jurisdiction of the Secretary of HEW. He is the administrator.

The House bill, I believe Chairman Staggers ⁷ in the House, is very similar with the bill in the Senate.

So we have two sets of bills, one to deal with the treatment, research, the things that the Secretary talked about.

I would like to raise a question as to the wisdom of creating, as part of the bill before the Judiciary Committee, the necessity, it seems to me, of putting up educational and medical treatment under the Justice Department.

SECRETARY FINCH. To get at the very thing we are talking about, where we have a penal institutions study, people who have been addicts, and when they are brought back in it is necessary for us to have that kind of educational language in there.

It is also my understanding that just as with the classification of the so-called hard drugs, we will require the concurrence of the Secretary of HEW in writing for these programs. That is my understanding.

SENATOR YARBOROUGH. You are satisfied that none of your research

SECRETARY FINCH. We have worked with the Attorney General, our technical people have worked right from the beginning. This has been a matter of months since the day we came into office.

I can tell you no one is more cognizant or jealous of their prerogatives than doctors and psychiatrists or researchers.

THE PRESIDENT. If I may suggest, and I think the Senator has put his finger on a very important jurisdictional point, but I personally think it would be very harmful for the cause we are working for here to have too much isolation.

The difficulty is that too many of our educators and doctors have too little information or too little interest in the necessity for the use of the law and the penal weapons that are necessary. And, also, it isn't a very healthy situation to have people in law enforcement who have very little understanding or interest in education.

We want law enforcement people who understand the educational problems, who have compassion, and, by the same token, we don't want educators that are sitting out here on the side saying: "The problem is solely educational. You don't need to have these penalties and the rest."

I would hope that whatever we work out that you have some cross-fertilization there. I think it is impressive to have the Bureau of Narcotics, being a man who is a law enforcement official but, as you noted, putting great emphasis on the rehabilitation and the necessity for flexible penalties and the rest. It is that kind of attitude that I think is sophisticated and subtle, but perhaps not as spectacular as saying: "Go out and toss them all in jail." But, nevertheless, it will get to the problem.

I think what we really need is a new breed here. We need people who can understand both and who will not emphasize one to the exclusion of the other. That is what I think you are trying to do.

SECRETARY FINCH. Particularly, Mr. President, at the board of education level, high school and even elementary, they have got to face up to this.

I know Senator Hughes feels very strongly about this. We have encountered such resistance because they don't want to face the thing. It is so unpleasant. In terms of shaking up curricula and everything else

THE PRESIDENT. You mean the educators?

SECRETARY FINCH. Yes, local boards and principals. They don't want to admit it is going on.

SENATOR HUGHES. Mr. President, I don't want to make a speech about this, but I talked to the Secretary about it. It is a very tragic situation in this country. There is absolutely, in my opinion, in the way of educational materials and experience and qualifications and technical know-how, almost a total void throughout the United States of any ability to reach the young people of this country in relation to this problem.

Also, in the material we are putting out and the information we are putting out is absolutely baloney as far as the kids are concerned in this country in the way they are getting it.

I talked to the Secretary about it again and asked him if he minded that. I very emphatically stated that we are totally infracted at the national level in approaching this.

In Senator Yarborough's committee, we have had medical library bills up, Indian education bills up, and so forth. And in every one of those you have to distinctly and from a fractured approach get in something in the field of narcotics, drug abuse, and alcoholism. There is no unification of purpose of what we are doing.

As a result of that, we are not even instructing in our medical schools. We are not instructing in our professional disciplines. We have got to begin at the top and the bottom because they have no exposure. In fact, most of the testimony has indicated they receive prejudice in those schools against alcoholics, narcotic users, and drug abusers. As a result, they want nothing to do with them.

Our social workers, in very small part, have a specialized interest. We have not given this type of work any prestige or any dignity or any continuity of funding, so as the researchers will not dedicate their life to it, they will not spend their total talents with it.

In my opinion, in a city of the size of Washington, D.C., in every high school in this city, there ought to be an expert on narcotics and drugs. The drug scene is changing so rapidly, as Mr. Ingersoll and Mr. Finch will tell you, that what is the problem this year may well fade into history next year and we have a totally new one. There is nothing in the library that is current. It is all antiquated. They can't get the information. A school counselor cannot talk to a kid with a drug problem. It has been absolutely, almost universally, my total experience.

They need specialty in the field, completely, which means the development of a completely new line of people in the field of education, treatment in health. Then if you get to rehabilitation, you have got the other side of it.

I found, also, in the community mental health centers, which is another approach we have tried to take on this thing, a total prejudice against it, an unwillingness to even cope with the problem in the process of suffering.

We talk about what we are doing in our prisons. We are running post-graduate schools to train criminals and to train those people to find out where they can get heroin in Chicago, Los Angeles, New Orleans.

Senator Dodd could communicate more eloquently than I on this. He has been examining it very thoroughly.

But we are actually giving those people freedom to move all over the country because they have then made the contacts where they can get it anywhere. They can pick up a fix within 30 minutes after they are out of the prison.

I want to thank the Secretary, and you, sir, for allowing me to let out a little pent-up emotion on this, I guess. This is a very critical stage in this country. It is in the elementary schools. It is in the junior high schools. It is in the great, broad, white middle class as well as the black ghetto. It is a unique problem of the American Indian. It has just absolutely invaded every home in America. And every parent in America is scared to death to talk to them. They are literally scared to death of what is happening. I am, too.

THE PRESIDENT. Senator Griffin?

SENATOR ROBERT P. GRIFFIN. To state the obvious, a big part of the education on this subject, regardless of what you do in the school--and we should do a great deal--is the education that our young people get from the media. I think that they can be very helpful, particularly the television and the newspapers. Whatever we can do to get their cooperation would obviously be very important.

SECRETARY FINCH. We have current films now.

THE PRESIDENT. Leaving out what your doctors and researchers and so forth are trying to find out about the diet drugs and so forth, but speaking specifically to the subject the Senator has referred to of education, in the education material for high schools and students, how much do you have?

SECRETARY FINCH. I think we have raised it from about $1 ½ million to $3 million.

THE PRESIDENT. What are you asking? It seems to me that that is a pitifully inadequate amount. How can you possibly do the job with that?

You will reexamine this. I think it is important to reexamine this, and to the extent that you can find qualified personnel, it seems to me, is just as important to reduce the market.

We have got to get at the demand. It seems to me the job is totally inadequate. Do you need a supplemental now? Mr. Mayo [Director, Bureau of the Budget] isn't here to speak for himself.

SECRETARY FINCH. We will make sure we have it.

THE PRESIDENT. Get the people.

SENATOR HUGHES. Mr. President, also have a great problem in the education which I didn't touch on. Senator Griffin reminded me of it. I find most parents in America don't mind discussing the war in Vietnam or the nuclear bomb, but they absolutely forbid you to bring up the subject of marihuana in front of their children. The children know more about marihuana than they do by far, and whatever the street language is, they know that, too.

I think we need a tremendous adult education program in this country, too, to try and educate the parents to the fact that they are not in communication with the youngsters. They don't understand the problems the youngsters are facing and the culture that these youngsters are living in now with narcotics and drugs.

SENATOR MANSFIELD. I think the Congress could stand a good deal more in the way of education, too.

SENATOR YARBOROUGH. Mr. President, I am hopeful that in our supporting of the desire of the Chief Executive for speedy action on the law, I am hopeful in our speed, we are careful about this language on education and research; that it doesn't impinge on the traditional jurisdiction of the Secretary of HEW, because he has the framework. We have bills here that would give the money to authorize the grants, give the monies for administration and also construction. It seems to me that education basically should remain there in HEW.

SECRETARY FINCH. We will examine that, Senator, but both my Education people and Health people who work with the Department of Justice are not at all apprehensive at this point.

SENATOR YARBOROUGH. You feel you will still have jurisdiction?

SECRETARY FINCH. Yes.

THE PRESIDENT. I would like to see consideration given, Senator, to the strike force. I think we need cross-fertilization between the law enforcement and education group.

The trouble is too many of us live in a vacuum on this thing. We think of only one isolated part of it. I think it is well for the educators to talk to the law enforcement people and not to say: "This is my jurisdiction and this is yours."

To the extent you can work it out that way, it would be very helpful.

Bob, if you will stay there, we will turn to Art Linkletter, who will present this situation from the public standpoint. This is an unusual presentation.

REPRESENTATIVE ANCHER NELSEN. One thing I think we can immediately get at fight here in the District of Columbia-Chief Wilson pointed out the other day⁸ that about 300 to 400 criminals are engaged in armed robbery particularly for the purpose of feeding their habit, and we have no detention or treatment center right here in the Nation's Capital.

He called attention to the fact that if about 300 were taken off the streets, a great percentage of our armed robbery problems would be solved here.

We are aware of it on the District Committee. But I think the Congress will be helpful if we move in this direction and do something about it.

THE PRESIDENT. As you know, in a bipartisan meeting, it seems to me that in the District we could use this as a model, and get the District crime package as well as some of the other items underway. We could perhaps make an enormous contribution here, and also that can be educational to the whole Nation and to the Congress.

SENATOR DODD. Mr. President, I would like to say to Senator Mansfield and to you, sir, last year we asked for $12 million for that Addict Rehabilitation Act and only got $5 million. Even that got out to the States late. I think this is where we certainly need more money. If there had been more money available, I think we could have made a great difference.

THE PRESIDENT. Senator, as you know, this year and despite our budget cutting which was essential for the reasons we are all aware of, the one area that we didn't cut, in fact we increased, was in the field of law enforcement.

I think, however, we are getting into here a broader subject. Let's not put law enforcement over here in one area, more police, more judges, more penalties, and the rest and say: "We are shortchanged in the same field."

That, I think, is the fundamental point you are getting at, Senator Hughes.

SENATOR DODD. I feel very strongly that that is the right way.

SENATOR MANSFIELD. Secretary Finch says he has approximately $3 million to spend on educational aspects of this program. That is the cost of just one hour of the war in Vietnam. It is abominable.

SENATOR HUGHES. I would like to just state, if I might, sir, going back to Mr. Ingersoll and agents, that though I am primarily interested in the health and education end of it, that we have had this subject slip into the hearings held.

In New York, for example, they said in their area alone they needed 100 additional agents. This is a lot of manpower. If you divided that in half and talked to Mr. Ingersoll about it, I am sure it would be reduced greatly. But the need for agents I want to emphasize also. Because though my interest is on the other side of it primarily in committee work, I do agree that all of it is essential.

THE PRESIDENT. This is, as I was indicating earlier, an unusual procedure; but from time to time, we are trying to bring to meetings of this type people from outside of government who have an understanding of the problem, particularly when the problem involves massively one of education.

In this field, Art Linkletter, who is an old personal friend and, of course, known to everyone around this table, can speak, I think, with great knowledge and great eloquence.

Art, if you want to talk and you will be glad to answer questions I understand, too, but if you would tell us what you think of what you have heard here, or anything you want.

MR. LINKLETTER. Let me begin on purely a personal note of course. Two weeks ago, my beautiful 20-year-old daughter leaped to her death from her apartment while she was in a depressed, suicidal frame of mind and of panic believing that she was losing her mind from recurring bad trips from an LSD experiment some 6 months before.

That this was a shock to the family and to the Nation goes without saying. I made the decision that this tragic death would not be hushed up, it would not be covered over as is the case with so many prominent children and people, but that I would seek out to shock the Nation into the realization that this is not happening to other people's children in some part of the town, but that it can happen to a well-educated, intelligent girl from a family that has traditionally been a Christian family and has been straight.

I must say that Hollywood is pretty generally tarred with a brush of excesses of all kinds. Our family has been an outstanding example, I think you would agree, in the opposite. So, that my daughter would have this happen to her has certainly been a salutary experience to the Nation.

The result of it is that in the last 10 days I have had over 25,000 letters, hundreds and hundreds of telegrams, as well as phone calls which I couldn't accept, asking me to appear at a variety of aroused citizens' meetings, ranging from Honolulu to Boston, from Governors to sheriffs to PTA's; but also an alarming number of letters from parents saying that they know that this is happening in their own family and what should they do.

I was horrified, gentlemen, to find out on the examination of my own experience and my own mind that I don't know what to tell them. I had been aware that my daughter, along with all the kids of her age, had done a little experimenting.

But she had--I want to make it very clear--told me this months ago. She had said that it was ridiculous, that the bum trips and the bad experiences of her colleagues had frightened her, and that she certainly was never going to do it again.

My son [Robert Linkletter], who was very close to Diane, my 24-year-old boy, told me that she had not taken any more and not experimented any more, but that for months these trips kept recurring against her own wishes, no way for her to stop it, which led her to believe that she might be losing her mind.

It was a terrible, lonesome experience. She couldn't tell anybody about it. It was a shock to me that she couldn't tell us about it, because we are a very close family.

But instead of that, she went the other way and talked against it, and told us how her friends were such fools and she was trying to talk herself into believing that she was leaving it and it was all right.

The reason I bring this up is because it is not a theory, it is not a supposition of what can happen. It is a vital personal experience in our own family.

Diane was not a hippie. She was not a drag addict. She was not a nutty girl. She had everything to live for. She had no deep depressions. She had no problems in her life that were not the normal growing up problems of all children, of being frustrated and disappointed and anxious about life which we all go through.

The point is that the kids of America today are reacting to the drug society in which they have grown up, where from the time they are born, on the television tube everybody popping things into their mouths, whether they want to get thin, fat, or happy or go to sleep or wake up or erase tension or take away headaches or whatever. So, they are used to putting chemicals and seeing everybody putting chemicals into their body.

Then when you add to that the normal teenage and the upper teenage desire to do something risqué and daring--in our case, some of our older folks remember stealing an apple or taking a joy ride in the car, something a little bit against the law or against rules. The kids now have available to them every kind of amphetamine, barbiturate; they take "downers," "uppers," and the language has become a completely different culture. They talk about "bummers" and "smack"; and while most of the kids in my opinion in this country are afraid of heroin, and are becoming frightened of LSD and are becoming frightened of `, they still want the kicks that come from chemicals.

In certain regions, they are so crazy and insane as to inject into their bloodstream peanut butter, because somebody said that peanut butter gives you a high, and they die from that. Mayonnaise they are inserting into their bodies.

So what we have is the syndrome of the growing-up child with anxieties, frustrations, turning to drugs of any kind.

So I am using this platform of my personal tragedy, number one, to alert every parent in America that it not only can happen to their child, but it probably will happen to their child; that he will be exposed to some kind of an offer to take some kind of a stimulant. Where we used to think that it might happen, now we know it is going to happen.

What can we do about it? I believe in education first, and I believe in education starting in the fourth grade, long before the children get to the level where they are playing "chicken" with their teenage contemporaries to show how reckless and bold they are.

I am talking about teaching children at the fourth and fifth and sixth grades that you no more put anything into your mouth or bloodstream than you walk out in front of a car on the highway, set fire to your dress, or drink iodine out of the medicine chest. It is just a plain, simple statement of fact, rather than a "no-no" or a moralism.

Number two, I think parents have got to learn that they must keep open every avenue of communication; and they must know all the telltale signs; and they must be understanding and not treat their children like juvenile delinquents when they try something, but merely like experimentalists who are doing something dangerous like walking on a pipe across a culvert or anything else that kids do.

I am in favor of the new law, projected law, on treatment of marihuana cases, because I have grown up in southern California. In San Diego, the story of marihuana is an old story. We have been down there next to Tijuana for all of my life. Marihuana has been a curse; and I have been arguing against it for many years, not that it is a dangerous drug, which it isn't, but when they say it is no worse than alcohol, I say to the kids: "In other words, tuberculosis is no worse than hepatitis. They are both bad. That is no argument for taking it."

Alcohol has probably done more harm than any drug in the history of the United States. So it is not to be equated that while it is used, it is harmless.

I think too often mothers and fathers who know their children are smoking marihuana have not reported it because it is a felony. They have been unable to get treatment for fear the child will have a mark against him for the rest of his life.

I know personally of families whose children have tried marihuana, have been arrested and have had felony charges processed against them; and in one case, the daughter of a very prominent Hollywood woman, her son is today somewhere in India, Nepal--God knows under what influence--because he has a felony charge against him and he left the country rather than go to prison. His life is ruined; whereas, if he had been treated, as the proposed law indicates, he would have been saved.

I speak at 15 colleges a year, and have for 5 years, all across the country. I talk to the kids at lunch and breakfast and also in my main speech. If you think the kids of today think that marihuana is the same as heroin, you have got another think coming. They have the same attitude toward marihuana and the legal prosecution of marihuana smokers as we did in 1929 against alcohol and the prohibition law.

They think it is unfair, so they are laughing at it. When the judges don't follow the law, they said: "See, they don't believe it either. So the whole thing is wrong."

I think that having marihuana be a felony is as bad as marihuana being legal. I think both are extremes. I think we can't legalize it. I think by over-punishing it, we overemphasize and over stress it.

As with amphetamines and all of these things, I have a very single attitude about it. The kids reflect to me the fact that our own American manufacturers have many, many different ways of selling and flooding the market with these available drugs. We know they come across from Mexico. They know they are bought in large multimillion quantities from American manufacturers.

That is why I noticed in this bill the wonderful provision that from the manufacturer through the distribution, these kinds of drugs should be supervised by Federal law and by Federal supervision of some kind, because it does no good to be "holier than thou" and have millions of these things going right out and coming right back in where the kids can get them.

Most of the kids are too smart, as I say, to take heroin. But it leads to it when they can't get some of these other things. I feel very, very keenly about this. I intend to make public appearances. I am not an ex- pert. I do not profess to be an authority on drugs, but I know something about human beings; and I have spent my life talking to kids. My special field is going to be the parents and the young children.

I think we should make the next generation understand what they are putting into their blood is not an answer to life's problems. It only exaggerates and accentuates them.

I am delighted that the President anti his wife feel as keenly as I know they do about it, because from the top of this country down, we need to be aware of the problem, and fight it. Thank you.

SENATOR JAVITS. Art, would you say a word about why you think that we should not legalize it in the light of prohibition? I am arguing the kids' case.

You talk the same language I do. If medical research shows that it is no more harmful than alcohol, what is the case against not having the prohibition? As we found, prohibition law made criminals of everybody. So we might just as well forget it and deal with other means of control, regulation, et cetera.

MR. LINKLETTER. As a practical politician, you probably realize that the country would probably not accept that kind of a lengthy step.

You know we are in danger even talking about this liberalization of the law of causing vast numbers of people to rise up and say: "You are being soft."

Marihuana has been painted for so long as a terrible drug, equating it with drug addiction of the worst type. We know now that it is not physically addictive; and it is not a narcotic in the sense it is not a painkiller, but certainly it is psychologically, in some cases, addictive. It certainly does hurt anybody by the virtue of the fact that it takes away motivation; it makes things seem what they are not.

I don't think it would be possible to take that far a step. Some day it might happen. But I just think you have got to do the best you can with alleviating the worst of a situation.

SECRETARY FINCH. If I may respond to that point.

The research we are doing now for the first time tells us that, in the case of one out of 20, you get a very marked differential depending on body chemistry and a lot of other factors.

MR. LINKLETTER. Then, Bob, you have marihuana of two kinds. Then you get into hashish. They say: "If you can smoke marihuana, why can't you smoke hashish?" Except it is six times as strong.

SENATOR JAVITS. Let's take Bob's position; we still don't know. And if we don't know, we must say no.

We are not making any moral judgments. We don't know. Therefore, we say no.

THE PRESIDENT. In our view that can be made, Jack and you have probably discussed it, too. When you look at some of the societies of Asia, committees and others--marihuana of course is all-related in the family--you see what has happened to them when they accept this and move in that direction. You don't want it to happen here.

I think Art has made a very sophisticated political judgment there. We were just checking some recent polls on this. A very substantial majority of the people disagree with the assumption that marihuana is not dangerous because they don't know what it is, and they think it is dangerous.

So, I think you are exactly right. Moving in that direction, apart from that, on the merits, I don"t think we are certainly in a position to say now, and I think it would be very bad to come out of this meeting with the idea that marihuana is perhaps not something to be too concerned about.

It is just the fact that we have an antiquated law and people who are too unsophisticated to understand it; because there are real dangers, as Art has already indicated, apart from the physical addiction, that psychological breakthrough that occurs may then take the individual on into the other drugs.

MR. LINKLETTER. Yes, habituation more than addiction. But it is still just as serious.

I think my own judgment on it is that it is worse than alcohol because it has worse effects on some people. God knows, alcohol has been bad enough. We could go back and do it all over again and probably make a different set of laws for that, too.

SENATOR JAVITS. The main point in marihuana is you can't take one drink. Once you have it, you have had it.

SENATOR MANSFIELD. Isn't it true, Mr. President, that within the past several weeks there been a high-level governmental commission created for the purpose of determining the points which Senator Javits has brought out and which Mr. Linkletter and Senator Hughes and others have emphasized just to find out what marihuana is, if it is really addictive in other than a physical sense and if it is dangerous?

SENATOR DODD. That is in the bill before US.

SENATOR HUGHES. Mr. President, I would like to ask Mr. Linkletter another question. He has very emphatically pointed to alcohol two or three times. All of you know I am a recovered alcoholic. You know that I came through this route.

I would like to inquire, wouldn't it be also helpful in the field of marihuana usage--and I want everyone to know I thoroughly agree we don't need alcohol, marihuana, or anything else; we are an intoxicated society, depending on where we begin, with a cup of coffee and a cigarette and on down that route all during the day--if a real, honest look at alcohol, without any intentions of trying to go back to prohibition, but at least telling the truth about alcohol in this country, wouldn't help in alleviating a lot of the pressure on marihuana?

It is not a beautiful drug as everyone has been led to think it is.

MR. LINKLETTER. At least it would answer the charges of all the kids who were hypercritical, a great cry of all the young college kids today that we are hypocritical. We say it is okay to drink alcohol but not the other. This would at least equate that and say we do recognize they are all troublesome.

I was amazed, when speaking up at Yale University a few months ago, to find a high level of intelligent, top students arguing very seriously for the legalization of marihuana.

But I had to argue with them that they were just asking for the impossible and that it was not a good idea to spread further a thing which we already agree is not good.

Of course, the kids are pretty clever. Up there they had a rule, for instance, no girl could be in a room with a boy unless there is a book between the door and jam. So they put in a book of matches. These kids know within thousandths of an inch how far to go. They will go all the way.

I want to say one word, too, about the media, since I am identified with the media.

You gentlemen may not realize it but almost every time a "top 40" record is played on the radio, it is an ad for "acid," marihuana, and trips. The lyrics of the popular songs and the jackets on the albums of the popular songs are all a complete, total campaign for the fun and thrills of trips. If you don't believe it, you ought to take a good, long look at some of the lyrics and some of the albums with the hidden symbols, with the language that the kids know that you don't even realize they are talking about.

They have words for trips and marihuana and "speed" that you have never even heard of. When those lyrics are sung, the kids are all rapping, as they call it, talking, rapping with each other, on this subject.

I personally am going to do what I can out in Hollywood to see if we can't get creative rock and roll people to do songs in the same idiom, the same vernacular and in the same acceptable language of the kids that is away from that.

But every major record company and every rock and roll radio station is sending out, 18 hours a day, messages to the kids that are right over the heads of our generation.

THE PRESIDENT. Art, let me ask you one question about the media in another field. Among the most popular programs, of course, on television, apart from soap operas and all the other things and sports, are programs like the FBI story, in other words, investigative programs; people like mystery.

Has television done, is it doing, an adequate job, from the standpoint of public service? We all understand that the public service aspects of television are somewhat exaggerated despite what they may claim because they have to be in it for the money, for the ads and so forth.

MR. LINKLETTER. It is an advertising medium.

THE PRESIDENT. I am speaking now in terms of sometimes making a virtue out of necessity here. Would it not be possible for television not to put on a dull educational program about the evils of marihuana, heroin, "speed," LSD, and so forth? It would seem to me that some exciting programs on this could have an enormous educational impact on the country.

Is it adequately being done and is anything being planned?

MR. LINKLETTER. I don't think it is adequately being done. But I think it is being planned.

I know of several programs, one of which I am intimately connected with, which has that as one of its principal goals. The only reason that I would not care to go any further with the details of it is that there are 4,000 of my colleagues waiting to steal it if I mention it. I prefer to get it on and then tell you about it. But I couldn't agree more.

THE PRESIDENT. You think there are possibilities?

MR. LINKLETTER. Yes, especially since the networks have in recent months been very painfully and sensitively aware of violence, and so they are going to have to get into the more intriguing aspects of crime.

One of them certainly is this field rather than the shoot-'em-up cops and robbers which we all know is just a dramatic smoke and flame, and the real crime occurs in many other areas where it is deep and insinuated into our fabric of our civilization. But I think there will be more of that done.

SENATOR YARBOROUGH. Mr. President, in support of what Mr. Linkletter said, in the days of hearings that I have held this year on the problem, we learned that the average narcotic addict today is under 21 years of age, where 20 years ago he was over 30.

Furthermore, these young people who become heroin addicts, generally, most of them started with marihuana or some of these goofballs or pep pills and went to LSD and from LSD into the heroin.

I agree with everything you have said about how dangerous marihuana is. I was district judge in Austin, Texas, and in the cases before that court I saw what people did under the influence of marihuana.

Senator Javits said it isn't taking one drink. They smoke these and they do incredible things, try to fight six armed policemen. A 16-year-old boy, with his bare fists, says, "I can whip all of you." They wrestle them to the ground to keep from beating them up. He is not as brutal as a lot of these people.

THE PRESIDENT. We would like to go on with this, but Senator Mansfield and the Speaker reminded me that we do want a little time left for discussion.

SENATOR MANSFIELD. May I say, Mr. President, that I leave with deep regret. I want to thank Mr. Ingersoll and Secretary Finch for their effectual summation of a difficult problem; and Mr. Linkletter for, in effect, opening up a new world to me, as far as some of these problems connected with drugs which we have been discussing today.

I would like to say, I am an hour late now, which is the best compliment I can give to all of you.

But I do want to promise, Mr. President, that if the committee gets out this legislation--I hope they do shortly--that we will handle it expeditiously on the floor and we will get it passed. Thank you very much.

SPEAKER MCCORMACK. We will do the same thing.

REPRESENTATIVE STAGGERS. If I might say this, Mr. President, in speaking for the Interstate and Foreign Commerce Committee, we will do all we can. I want to assure you of our concern to bring this to a successful ending; and I have just yesterday made a release on drug abuse, the evils of it in the country.

Here is an article I wrote some time ago for one of our magazines in the country on drug abuse.

I want to also compliment Secretary Finch. I think he did an excellent job.

I especially want to thank Mr. Ingersoll because I think you have two men who understand sort of the problem, and we can work together in a bipartisan way. As you say, it is certainly something that has to be approached by everyone. I think the whole country will be appreciative of the fact that you are attacking this, and they are tackling it and we can all work on it together.

THE PRESIDENT. I want to thank all the Members of the Congress who have been here.

As they say, this is one subject let's deride right today, and I think the Speaker and Mike Mansfield will agree, and all of you, one subject we are going to keep completely above the partisan level.

It is just as important as the defense of the country abroad. I think we all feel that way. I know these jurisdictional problems.

Wilbur, would you like to say anything? Ways and Means always acts expeditiously.

REPRESENTATIVE WILBUR D. MILLS. We try to. No, thank you, Mr. President.

THE PRESIDENT. On these jurisdictional problems, we want to work with the Congress. We do need the action. If we can have that kind of spirit, I think we will move in this field, and then the administration will have the responsibility for executing with the proper personnel.

SENATOR YARBOROUGH. It is my pleasure, as chairman of my committee, to be entirely nonpartisan.

REPRESENTATIVE STAGGERS. Again, I would like not to forget Mr. Art Linkletter, because he has been the idol of most of the people of this country. The fact that he has come here to give his contribution, I think, is terrific.

SPEAKER MCCORMACK. I think we should all convey to Mr. Linkletter and his loved ones our deep sympathy.