Interdiction of Illegal Drugs

Floor Speech

Mr. CUMMINGS. Madam Speaker, as chairman of the Subcommittee on the Coast Guard and Maritime Transportation and co-founder and chairman of the Congressional Caucus on Drug Policy, I rise today to commend the United States Coast Guard and the United States Navy for their ongoing efforts to combat the flow of illegal drugs into the United States.

On Monday of this week a Coast Guard C-130 aircraft using long-range surveillance technology identified a self-propelled semi-submersible in the Eastern Pacific suspected of carrying illegal drugs.

The U.S. frigate McInerney, which has been on a counternarcotics patrol effort since April and whose personnel include a Coast Guard law enforcement detachment--attempted to intercept the submersible.

Unfortunately, before U.S. authorities could arrive at the submersible, its crew had sunk it. However, the Coast Guard reports that all four individuals who had been on board the submersible were rescued from the water, and one of them subsequently confessed that he and the other individuals were using the submersible in an effort to smuggle between five and seven tons of cocaine.

In 2007, the Coast Guard removed 355,000 pounds of cocaine with an estimated street value of more than $4.7 billion from circulation. This, Madam Speaker, was a stunning new record of drug seizures by the Coast Guard in a single year, and it included the seizure in August of last year of a semi-submersible vessel loaded with cocaine estimated to be worth some $350 million.

I commemorated these achievements in December of 2007 with an event in my district in Baltimore, a city that knows all too well the scourge that illegal drug abuse creates in a community. Put simply, every ounce of cocaine seized at sea is an ounce that cannot reach our Nation's streets and that cannot destroy a life.

It is estimated that in my own hometown of Baltimore, 60,000 of city's 650,000 residents are currently drug dependent, mostly abusing heroin and cocaine. In 1996, Baltimore had the highest rate of drug-related ER visits in the Nation, and AIDS became the leading cause of death among African-American men and the second leading cause of death among African-American women.

However, in 2006 The Washington Post reported that the number of drug overdose deaths in Baltimore had fallen to the lowest level in some 10 years. These drops have been made possible by ongoing efforts at the Federal level, and all levels of government, to interdict drugs and to provide treatment to enable drug users to overcome their addictions.

Unfortunately, the use of submersible vehicles to smuggle drugs is increasing and represents the ongoing efforts of drug runners to develop new smuggling techniques that can enable them to evade detection.

On April 24, 2008, the House adopted the Coast Guard Authorization Act, H.R. 2830, by a vote of 395-7. This act includes a provision adopted as an amendment during floor consideration that would make it a crime to operate a submersible vehicle for the purposes of trafficking drugs.

This act awaits consideration by the Senate which I hope will move quickly to pass this legislation to strengthen the Coast Guard and to respond to the emerging threats we face, including new methods of drug smuggling.

I again commend the United States Coast Guard and the United States Navy, and especially the crew of the McInerney, for their tireless efforts to stem the flow of illegal drugs into our Nation.

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