Asa Hutchinson: “I rise today with Senators Grassley, Hatch, Craig, Thomas, and Frist to submit a resolution which states that it is the…”

“I rise today with Senators Grassley, Hatch, Craig, Thomas, and Frist to submit a resolution which states that it is the Sense of the Senate that $10 million should be immediately reprogrammed within the United States Department of Justice's (DOJ) budget to allow the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) to support the cleanup of State and local methamphetamine laboratories in Fiscal Year 2000. I do so with a sense of urgency as my home State of Arkansas has suffered a terrible and great increase in the production, distribution, and use of methamphetamine and is desperately in need of federal assistance to bear the financial burden inherent in the cleanup of methamphetamine laboratories. In March, Governor Huckabee informed me that the DEA had exhausted all of the funding available to cleanup State and local methamphetamine labs and that the State of Arkansas was paying over $7,500 a day despite the much-appreciated efforts undertaken by ENSCO, an El Dorado, Arkansas company, to dispose of methamphetamine labs at no cost to the State. As the costs associated with the cleanup of a single lab range anywhere from $3,000 to $100,000 and average about $5,000 and, with over 200 labs seized to date, Arkansas will seize over 800 labs this year, it is imperative that funding be provided to the DEA so that it may continue to assist in State and local methamphetamine lab cleanups.”