Cuba's link to drug trafficking: making treatment work: hearing before the Subcommittee on Criminal Justice, Drug Policy, and Human Resources of the ... Hundred Sixth Congress, first session, Novem

OCLC Number: (OCoLC)46378850 Subject: Drug traffic -- Cuba. Excerpt: ...Cuban narcotics and criminal connections. Last year, more than 15,700 Americans, most of them young, died from drug-induced deaths. Few wars have so devastated our population as the toll we now see taken by illegal narcotics. Any country and its officials involved either directly or indirectly in dealing with this poison must be and will be held accountable. Both our Federal law and simple justice require no less of an action on our part. I have personally flown above the Caribbean waters in United States surveillance aircraft and witnessed how drug traffickers use Cuban waters as a refuge in a deadly cat and mouse game. I will be interested to learn today from this hearing if Cuban officials support these criminal ventures. We have a number of questions that must be answered. Does Castro and his regime turn their backs or partner with drug traffickers as huge quantities of deadly drugs transit to our shores? As heroin and cocaine pour out of Colombia we know traffickers use island nations such as Cuba, Haiti, Jamaica and others as steppingstones to reach the streets of our American communities. Several months ago, Fidel Castro called for American assistance and cooperation to stem the Caribbean drug trade. Today's hearing should help us determine whether Cuba and its leaders are a friend or foe in a battlefield that stretches across the Western hemisphere. Finally, in addition to Cuba, I am very deeply troubled by reports of drug transiting and official corruption in Haiti and among Haitian officials who may be dealing with illegal narcotics trafficking. This is particularly troubling after the United States has spent billions of taxpayer dollars in a nation building and judicial institution reform effort in that country. It is bad enough to have our adversaries demean us, let alone have those who we have taken under our wings now bet...