The following is conservative Dan Burton speaking at the House Government
Reform Committee hearing in Congress on on "America's Heroin Crisis,
Colombian Heroin and How We Can Improve Plan Colombia." December 12, 2002

Dan Burton:   I want to tell you something. I have been in probably a
hundred or a hundred and fifty hearings like this at various times in my
political career,. And the story is always the same. This goes back to the
sixties. You know, thirty or thirty five years ago. And every time I have
a hearing, I hear that people who get hooked on heroin and cocaine become
addicted and they very rarely get off of it. And the scourge expands and
expands and expands. And we have very fine law enforcement officers like
you go out and fight the fight. And you see it growing and growing, and you
see these horrible tragedies occur. But there is no end to it.

And I see young guys driving around in tough areas of Indianapolis in cars
that I know they can't afford and I know where they are getting their money.
I mean that there is no question. A kid can't be driving a brand-new
Corvette when he lives in the inner city of Indianapolis in a ghetto. You
know that he has gotta be making that money in someway that is probably not
legal and probably involves drugs.

Over seventy percent of all crime is drug-related. And you alluded to that
today. We saw on television recently Pablo Escobar gunned down and
everybody applauded and said "that's the end of the Medellín cartel. But
it wasn't the end. There is still a cartel down there. They are still all
over the place. When you kill one, there's ten or twenty or fifty waiting
to take his place. You know why? Its because of what you just said a minute
ago, Mr. Carr, Mr. Marcocci (sp). And that is that there is so much money
to be made in it there is always going to be another person in line to
make that money.

And we go into drug eradication and we go into rehabilitation and we go into
education, and we do all of these things... And the drug problem continues
to increase. And it continues to cost us not billions, but trillions of
dollars. Trillions! And we continue to build more and more prisons, and we
put more and more people in jail, and we know that the crimes most of the
time are related to drugs.

So I have one question I would like to ask all of you, and I think this is a
question that needs to be asked.   I hate drugs. I hate people who succumb
to drug addiction, and I hate what it does to our society. It has hit every
one of us in our families or friends of ours. But I have one question that
nobody ever asks, and that is this question: What would happen if there was
no profit in drugs? If there was no profit in drugs, what would happen. If
they couldn't make any money out of selling drugs, what would happen?

Carr: I would like to comment. If we made illegal... what you are arguing
then is complete legalization?

Dan Burton: No I am not arguing anything. I am asking the question.
Because we have been fighting this fight for thirty to forty years and the
problem never goes way...

....Well I don't think that the people in Colombia would be planting coca if
they couldn't make any money, and I don't think they would be refining coca
and heroin in Colombia if they couldn't make any money. And I don't think
that Al Capone would have been the menace to society that he was if he
couldn't sell alcohol on the black market and he did and we had a
horrible, horrible crime problem. Now the people who are producing drugs in
Southeast Asia and Southwest Asia and Colombia and everyplace else. They
don't do it because they like to do it. They don't fill those rooms full of
money because they like to fill them full of money. They do it because they
are making money. At some point we to have to look at the overall picture
and the overall picture and I am not saying that there are not going to be
people who are addicted they are going to have to be education and
rehabilitation and all of those things that you are talking about - but one
of the parts of the equation that has never been talked about because
politicians are afraid to talk about it this is my last committee hearing
as Chairman. Last time!   And I thought about this and thought about this,
and thought about this. And one of the things that ought to be asked is
"what part of the equation are we leaving out?" And "is it an important
part of the equation?" And that is the profit in drugs. Don't just talk
about education. Don't just talk about eradication. Don't just talk about
killing people like Escobar, who is going to be replaced by somebody else.
Let's talk about what would happen if we started addressing how to get the
profit out of drugs.