Another way the auxiliary was used; Auxiliarists from the 14th District in Hawaii trained 52 employees for the Hawaii Department of Land and Natural Resources, which included members of that state's marine patrol. Training covered the safe operation of motor vessels and maintenance and use of the vessel safety equipment.

Continuing out in the Pacific, the Coast Guard Auxiliary unit in Guam used Auxiliary communications to provide a relay between the Coast Guard Marianas section and a Navy helicopter, which provided search and rescue for an overdue vessel. By using the Auxiliary's land mobile facility, the Coast Guard was able to overcome the dead spots in communications around Guam.

Moving in a little different area up to the Great Lakes, but again another life-saving requirement, Auxiliarists from the 9th District supported the Michigan Department of Natural Resources for providing boating safety instruction to over 2,500 duck hunters. This may seem like a minor case of support, but I'm sure you realize that up in the Great Lakes-with the cold water-this was done to combat the annual occurrence of major tragedies, due to drowning and hypothermia.

Finally, another area the Auxiliary's moved into involves aids to navigation. The Charleston Light, the last lighthouse built in the United States, recently became the responsibility of the first Auxiliarist trained and qualified as a lighthouse technician. This Auxiliarist is now responsible for performing preventive maintenance and repairs on the lighthouse and ensuring that it's operating properly.

I believe these brief narratives give some idea of the diversity of the current Auxiliary support. It is proof that your subcommittee really made a great decision by giving the Auxiliary the authority to pursue these new areas in support of our nation.

Today we're very proud to be part of Team Coast Guard. As I said, we believe the opportunities provided by the Coast Guard Authorization Act of 1996 positions us to perform invaluable service now and in the future. As you know, for 59 years the Auxiliary has provided the dedicated volunteer service to our country and its Coast Guard. As we move forward into the 21st century, we're really confident that we can maintain, and in fact increase our support to our Nation.

Sir, I look forward to your questions.

Mr. GILCHREST. Well done, Commodore.

And we certainly appreciate not only the time and effort you've put into your testimony, but all the many people that you work with, and do such a fine job.

Admiral, I'm going to cover a little bit of diverse ground here. The first area of questions is the most, at least for now, the most vexing, and everybody has their own opinion on things, especially the weather and human behavior. The weather is complex and human behavior is complex.

I have my own opinions, for example, as to why teenage drug use is up; too much television, too many VCR movies, not enough social interaction with people with-moral values is a relative term-with people that want to see young people have a good future, with a sense of love and discipline, and all of those things. Plus, the easy

access that drugs might have to young people, and their sense of curiosity about that particular age.

But I'm going to ask your opinion on why you think drug use among teenagers is rising, especially increasing, or actually doubled I guess, in the United States since 1992.

Admiral KRAMEK. Well, I've just gotten the last of my four kids through college, so it's just been a couple of years that they've been teenagers, not long ago. But I can tell you what my impression was. I think we made good strides in the early 1980s and the late 1980s, all the way up to about 1990 and so, on reminding and educating our children that it was bad. And if one were to look back far enough at the statistics from 1975 to 1998, this morning, I'd think that we'd see a dramatic decline in drug use among the citizens of the United States, from over 20 million drug users to far less than half of that today. And I would also point out that we have a good strategy right now that the President just rolled out 3 weeks ago, to decrease the rate we have today by 50 percent by the year 2007.

Having said all that, there has been an increase, mostly in marijuana use not amongst cocaine use amongst teenagers, but amongst marijuana use. We forgot to tell them it was important. The education programs and the public relation programs were terminated or cut back. In this President's budget you'll see money in there to bring those back. You can hardly turn on your TV right now without seeing an advertisement sponsored by the drug czar's office, that it's bad for you and bad for children. $175 million was provided to do that this last year.

It takes everybody. It takes coalitions, it take schools, it takes parent, it takes churches, it takes the media. Certainly, some of the things you mentioned were detrimental.

It takes something else too. From my standpoint, it takes the availability of marijuana. We intradicted over 100,000 pounds of marijuana last year. Besides 100,000 pounds of cocaine, there's still marijuana coming into the country. More perplexing is that in some of our states it's the largest cash crop, grown right here in the United States. My estimates as Interdiction Coordinator is that perhaps 25 percent of all the marijuana in the world is grown in the United States of America, and distributed to our kids and to our population.

So we have a lot of work to do on all fronts, but I'm convinced if we follow the Strategy outlined in the President's 1998 National Drug Control Strategy, and continue to meet those goals, we'll drive it down. In the next 10 years less than 3 percent of our population will use drugs, and that will be the lowest its every been since we've recorded these things.

Mr. GILCHREST. Admiral, if we're going to color the white boxes yellow, do we need an increase in funding, and more than what has now been proposed?

Admiral KRAMEK. Over the 10-year period?

Mr. GILCHREST. Yes.

Admiral KRAMEK. Then I think the budget process needs to determine that.

But I have to point out to you, in the Strategy-the budget in the strategy as proposed you'll notice is flatlined. It's the same

amount of money now for the next 10 years. And in fact, when you put inflation and cost of living expenses, all that on it, you have decreased buying power.

Mr. GILCHREST. So, I guess what I'm

Admiral KRAMEK. But that's because the Congress and the Administration signed a balanced budget agreement, and so we're all living with those caps. And when you're flatlined like that, why you can't get there from here.

So the Strategy points this out, and it says that each year in order to meet the targets there's going to have to be budget decisions that will allow us to meet the target. Last year I could meet the target. Can I meet it this year? Not quite.

Mr. GILCHREST. I think we as people, if we're going to take this seriously, have to sit down and set goals for ourselves, and we have to be flexible. We want to balance the budget, and we understand all those ramifications, but out of a 1.7 trillion federal budget annually, I'm sure we can set goals that prioritize the most important things, and we as members can help you achieve what we all collectively want, and that's to reduce drug use by American citizens. Admiral KRAMEK. It doesn't take that much more, Mr. Chairman. As I showed you in some of the charts in the classified briefing, we're not far off the mark, and it doesn't take that much more to do a better job.

Mr. GILCHREST. Then we'll work with you to ensure that small extra amount.

You said something, Admiral, about-moving away from drug interdiction, and we take it seriously. We want to work very aggressively to pursue that goal during the rest of this session, and the sessions to come.

You said something that caught my imagination as far as maritime trade tripling in-how many years?

Admiral KRAMEK. The next 15 to 20 years.

Mr. GILCHREST. The next 15 to 20 years. The source of that. Admiral KRAMEK. There are various commerce reports put together by the Department of Commerce. The United States is still considered an island nation with respect to trade. Ninety-five percent of our imports and exports, quantity-wise, go by sea. This amount of trade is going to triple in the next 15 or 20 years, and so the Coast Guard has developed a plan for a waterways management system-vessel traffic systems that we do and aids to navigation; they're all part of that.

In order for the United States to maintain its global competitiveness in this environment, we have to world class waterways management system, such as they do in other nations; Singapore, the Netherlands.

Mr. GILCHREST. Admiral, based on what you just said
Admiral KRAMEK. Yes?

Mr. GILCHREST. our free capitalistic market economy is based on competition, but that competition extends also from one port to the next, and the ports all have various rules, somewhat different regulations. One port dredges to 40 feet; the next port wants to dredge to 50 feet; somebody else wants to dredge at 60 feet.

Given the complexity of our port system, and given the fact that trade is going to triple on the high seas in the next 15, 20 years, do you see the federal role creating some national standards for our U.S. ports; and if the trade is going to triple, and the number of ships is going to increase, will there have to be an increase in manpower in the Coast Guard in order to stay up with inspecting each one of those ships? And it's my understanding, in some ports-or maybe it's a Coast Guard policy-that you board every ship that comes into the U.S. ports at least once a year.

Admiral KRAMEK. And cruise ships, once a quarter.

Do we need more? Not necessarily. What we need is a coordinated effort. I've put together a waterways management plan. I presented it to the Secretary of Transportation. This is intermodalism in its best sense, because these ports and these cargoes have to be properly linked to railheads, to highway hubs, to airports. This is part of intermodal surface transportation, and when we talk about reauthorization of such things as ISTEA, I'm always struck by how little it says about the water, when 95 percent of our imports and exports are connected to that. It pretty much focuses on our land systems and our aviation systems-but land systems rath

er.

I've made a proposal to the secretary, and he has accepted it; that the Department of Transportation take the lead in coordinating a number of Federal agencies. The Corps of Engineers for example, receives funds through the Harbor Maintenance Trust Fund in order to do the dredging. NOAA does all the charting. The Coast Guard does all the aids to navigation and inspecting. And then we work together with all the municipalities.

So there's about a dozen different groups involved. The Coast Guard now chairs the Interagency Working Group on Waterways Management. Next month we will provide an implementation plan to the Secretary, where the Secretary of Transportation will take the lead in developing a world class waterways management system to prepare us for the 21st century, Mr. Chairman. That's on track. It's something we need to coordinate and provide leadership for before we throw money at it. In my view, right now we have to manage a little bit differently

In the case of ship inspection, I asked for more funds to receive more inspectors. I didn't get them, so I've taken a different tact. We've adopted a Port State Control regime here in the United States, which means we've put together a matrix on who the least safe ships, least safe operators, least safe countries are. We target our inspections on those.

There are 14 foreign flag vessels for every U.S. flag vessel that sails in U.S. ports. I'm only inspecting the foreign flag vessels and only those that have poor safety records or poor ownership records. It had been our norm to detain about 50 to 70 vessels a year that were unsafe. This last year, we detained over 550 vessels but the safety in our ports has increased as a result of that.

On July 1st the International Maritime Organization and 153 nations decided to adopt an International Safety Management Code. And on July 1st, foreign flag vessels not adhering to the International Safety Management Code or not having adopted that

code will not be allowed into U.S. ports. We will enforce this with Port State Control inspections.

So a great deal has been done. I want to compliment the shipping industry, because we couldn't have done it without them. For U.S. flag vessels, I've delegated responsibility to the American Bureau of Shipping to inspect these ships for us through their Alternate Compliance Program, authorized by legislation that this committee passed a couple of years ago. And last year you gave me authorization to extend that inspection power to other classification societies, and now I have just delegated authority to help us in inspections to Norske Veritas, and we're talking to the Germans as well.

We're going to international standards. Our goal is that our ports, our waterways, our ships, our safety, all meet international standards. We represent the United States at the International Maritime Organization, and I feel that international standards will be better for our shippers, better for our shipyards, better for our safety, better for our mariners.

Those international standards are very high indeed. Where we have a difference within international standards now, it is because our standards are higher. We're trying to work internationally through the IMO to convince them it to raise their standards to meet ours.

Mr. GILCHREST. Thank you, Admiral. I'm going to move along. I had a number of other questions, one of which, since you raised the safety of shipping and international cooperation, was ship scrapping. But we'll hold that for another time.

Mr. Clement.

Mr. CLEMENT. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Admiral Kramek, after the many Supreme Court cases on the differences between a fee and a tax, do your attorneys believe that the Coast Guard has the legal authority to prescribe indirect user fees for aid to navigation services, and if so, then why did the Coast Guard seek legislative authority for these fees during the Reagan Administration?

Admiral KRAMEK. It's the way one would describe user fees that's controversial. We've been tasked with coming up with a user fee for people that would directly use the services that we provide. If we're successful in describing the service that way, we believe that the existing user fee authority that the Federal government has and that the Coast Guard has, will be sufficient to collect those fees in the same way that we've withstood court cases for user fees for documentation of vessels, inspection of vessels, mariners licenses, and such.

We have just started this month to study and investigate who would pay the fees. Would it just be for cargo vessels? And I can tell you that, we believe it'll just be for cargo vessels. It exempts fishermen, it exempts recreational boaters. It would probably exempt public vessels, Department of Defense, et cetera, police vessels. We're just in the process of describing this.

My budget for the construction of the new ships that I referenced in my opening statement said that we needed, to do the job we have to do today and for the 21st century, is dependent on those fees. The way the budget is presented, I need $35 million in this