Max Baucus: “I rise in support of the Dodd-McCain amendment. For the past 11 years, we have experimented with the policy of…”

“I rise in support of the Dodd-McCain amendment. For the past 11 years, we have experimented with the policy of ``certifying'' foreign countries as cooperating or failing to cooperate with our efforts against the international narcotics trafficking. That is a fair test for any policy. And it appears to me that the certification policy simply isn't working. Many countries we have decertified--Burma, for example, or Afghanistan--now produce significantly more narcotics than they did before. Cocaine, heroin, and marijuana are at least as easy to find on our streets today as they were in 1986. It is clear that, at best, our decertification of these countries did nothing to stop them and their mafia organizations from producing narcotics. So certification has been an ineffective policy. And the Dodd-McCain amendment takes a sensible approach--it does not abolish certification, but suspends it while we try to work out a more effective approach. If there is nothing better out there, certification will go back into effect. Finally, in my view, annual debates over whether to certify various foreign countries has distracted us from the more fundamental problems we face here at home. That is, enforcing the laws. Putting drug dealers in jail. Rehabilitating drug users when possible. And stopping kids from trying drugs in the first place. If we can do those things, the actions of foreign countries will still be important, but they will be secondary issues.”