Letters, statements, supplemental material, etc.-Continued Article by Felix Belair, Jr., from the New York Times, dated Document from Inspector Holtzman of the New York Narcotics States - Report from the Associated Press, re conditions in Marseilles Lowenstein, Hon. Allard K., a Representative in Congress from the Page 220 20 41 41 36 New York County Lawyers Association, excerpts from a report entitled, 71 33 Rossides, Hon. Eugene T., Assistant Secretary, Department of the 125 Chart delineating channels of heroin distribution_. 48 57 Wolff, Hon. Lester L., a Representative in Congress from the State of New York, statement- CRIME IN AMERICA-HEROIN IMPORTATION, DISTRIBUTION, PACKAGING AND PARAPHERNALIA THURSDAY, JUNE 25, 1970 HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, New York, N.Y. The committee met, pursuant to notice, at 10:10 a.m., in the ceremonial courtroom, U.S. Customs Court, Hon. Claude Pepper (chairman) presiding. Present: Representatives Pepper and Wiggins. Also present: Paul L. Perito, chief counsel; James F. Southerland, executive director; Larry Reida, associate chief counsel; Stuart Allen, chief investigator; Elsworth Dory, staff investigator; Elkan Abramowitz, special counsel; Paul B. Galvani, special counsel; Peter Emmet Fleming, Jr., special counsel; Paul K. Rooney, special counsel; Weston Adams, associate counsel; and Leroy Bedell, hearings officer. Mr. PEPPER. Before the committee goes into formal session, if any of you wish to take photographs of the committee, we would be pleased to have you do so. Under the Rules of the House of Representatives, we cannot have any kind of picture-taking, TV, movie, or stills, during a formal session of the committee. The House Rules Committee of which I am a member has recently proposed to the House of Representatives legislation that will permit television by the media, but we have not adopted that proposal yet, so we will have to advise all of the people of the media that you are not permitted to have any kind of recording devices in the hearing room while the committee is in session nor are you allowed to take pictures or tapes of any kind, TV or radio. The press is welcome at our public hearings but we have to abide by the Rules of the House in that respect. The hearing of the House Select Committee on Crime will come to order, please. My name is Claude Pepper, I am chairman of the committee and a U.S. Representative from Florida. My distinguished associate is the Honorable Charles Wiggins of California, Republican member of the committee. On my right is our able chief counsel, Mr. Paul Perito, who was an assistant U.S. attorney in the U.S. Attorney's Office here in New York. Before coming to Washington, Mr. Perito served under former U.S. Attorney Robert M. Morgenthau and also served under the present U.S. Attorney Whitney North Seymour. Our associate chief counsel is Mr. Larry Reida from Nebraska, formerly associated with one of our distinguished members, Mr. Robert V. Denney, a valuable member of this committee. First, I want to express the committee's appreciation and gratitude to the distinguished chief judge of the U.S. Customs Court, Judge Paul P. Rao, for making it possible for our committee to use the beautiful ceremonial courtroom in this building. It is a very lovely structure and most desirable for such a hearing as this and we are grateful to Judge Rao for his gracious hospitality. We are gratified to have the opportunity to be here in New York City to attempt to gain new insights into the problem of hard drug abuse which ravages life in New York City, as it does life in every major metropolitan area in the United States. We are not here for headlines to be made at the expense of individuals whose lives are destroyed by drug addiction. We are here to listen to the people of New York City, both public and private, who have had substantial and relevant experience with the heroin traffic, either in the field of enforcement or in the actual merchandising and use of this deadly drug. In short, we are here today because there is a crisis in America. Our subject at the New York hearings will be heroin traffic and its tragic ramifications. Despite the efforts of law enforcement officials at all levels, the heroin traffic in America is growing in geometric progression. The hundreds of thousands of Americans addicted to this drug live a pathetic, tortured life that all too often ends in a drug-overdose death. In order to support an expensive habit, addicts are forced to turn to crime. The hand of organized crime clearly monopolizes heroin trafficking from the poppy field in Turkey to the laboratories in Marseilles and then on to the critical points of distribution, and especially into the port of the great city of New York. We have chosen New York City as the site for our hearings because it unfortunately has the distinction of having the Nation's largest concentration of heroin addicts. However, addiction is not confined to one city or one area of American life. Heroin use today may be found in all areas of American lifeamong the rich and the poor, the black and the white, the cities and the suburbs. Our hearings in the mid-American cities of Omaha and Lincoln, Nebr., for example, equally disclose a desperate interest in the problem of hard drug addiction, similar to the problem that we find in the streets of New York, and, I may add, we found the same situation in the old southern city of Columbia, S.C., where we had a hearing, that you find in other great metropolitan areas of the country. We are here to listen carefully and we hope that what we hear will generate legislation which can have a significant impact in the fight against this shocking crime. Our findings at this hearing will be included in our final report to the Congress and will hopefully serve as guidelines, not only for additional remedial legislation, but also as directives for new and imaginative approaches to this seemingly insoluble crisis in our inner cities. As we all know, a substantial change has taken place in heroin use. Heroin traffic in the United States has spread in epidemic fashion during the past decade, and particularly the past 4 years. In New York State alone, public estimates of addicts are up from 50,000 in 1966 to 100,000 in 1970, and informed sources say the true figures on addiction are substantially higher. For some time people have urged that an all-out war be directed to combat heroin addiction in New York City and in the United States. This analogy; that is, the war analogy is particularly appropriate when we recognize that more New York City residents die every year at the hands of heroin than are dying in the war in Vietnam. Casualty figures for the entire State of New York show that from January 1, 1961, through March of this year, there were 3,565 deaths as a result of our involvement in Vietnam. During the period 1960 through 1969, there were 4,254 narcotic-related deaths in New York City alone. I believe this is the first time this disclosure has been made. Our hearings will present the details of the heroin traffic from its beginning in the poppy fields in Turkey to its end in the arm of an addict. We hope a presentation of the facts of the heroin traffic from start to finish will generate new insights into the problem of law enforcement in this area. We will hear from men knowledgeable about the problems of enforcement in Turkey, where 80 percent of the basic opium is produced, and southern France, where most of the heroin reaching this country is refined, and about the problems of enforcement at our borders and in the streets of our cities. We will take testimony from men who themselves trafficked in heroin, either for profit or to support their own addiction. We will hear from former heroin addicts, who will tell us about the causes of their addiction, about the way in which that costly addiction was maintained, and about the programs which gave them a second chance at life. As we had hoped, our decision to look at the heroin traffic from start to finish has produced new insights. Thus, we will hear testimony about the unrestrained marketing of substances used to dilute; that is, to cut, heroin for sale to the addict. In this respect, for example, our investigation has disclosed that a small drugstore in Harlem over a 3-year period profited greatly from the sale of cutting and packaging paraphernalia. This drugstore, a small drugstore, during a 3-year period sold 4 tons of mannite, 40,000 ounces of quinine, 47 million glassine envelopes, and 25 million empty capsules. The committee will take substantial testimony on this issue. We believe these hearings also will demonstrate the burdens which the heroin traffic places on an already overburdened system of criminal justice in America. Our police must allocate their resources unequally in an attempt to stem the drug traffic. Our prosecutors must devote an inordinate amount of time and staff to the investigation and prosecution of criminal cases which are heroin-connected. In most of our major cities, administration of criminal justice has been brought to a virtual standstill because of the volume of heroin-connected cases. For the same reason, our prisons also are overloaded and the proper function of imprisonment, which is to rehabilitate, is hindered and indeed may be rendered impossible. As a result, recidivism, especially in the narcotics traffic, flourishes. As a Member of Congress, I understand that a community ravaged by hard drug addiction is bitter about government at all levels, feeling perhaps justifiably, that, for too long government's function |