Sam Farr: “I want to speak about Colombia in a way that has not been spoken tonight on this floor and it has been a long day but I…”

“I want to speak about Colombia in a way that has not been spoken tonight on this floor and it has been a long day but I am the only Member to rise who has lived in Colombia. I lived there for 2 years. I represented this country as a member of the Peace Corps. Colombia is a beautiful country. It is one of the most diverse countries in the world. It is one of the oldest democracies in Latin America. It is now plagued; it is torn apart. The root causes of its problems right now are drugs and corruption from those drugs. Colombia has over $5 billion inside Colombia that is corrupt money. Think what that would do in your own State if that money was used for corruption. There is an obscene amount of money. This war on drugs, this displacement of people, as the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Sawyer) says, it has displaced a million and a half people, a million and a half people that do not have homes, do not have schools for their kids, do not have health care centers. These people become a problem in themselves because they have to resort to petty crime. So the only way we can begin solving the problem which is drugs in our country is to deal with the root causes of drugs in Colombia.”