Drug Trafficking Safe Harbor Elimination Act of 2011

Floor Speech

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Mr. COHEN. I want to thank the gentleman from Virginia (Mr. Scott) for the time. I also want to thank the gentleman from Texas, the chairman of the Judiciary Committee, for the way he runs his committee. He is an outstanding chairman and a gentleman.

And I appreciate the fact that in this bill, on which the gentleman from Virginia has given much of the argument that I, otherwise, would have made about its failings, that Mr. Smith did accept an amendment to take the possession charges out of it. So possession of drugs is not in it, and that was an improvement.

But, nevertheless, one of the amendments that we did discuss in committee that still bothers me is that the activities could have been entirely legal in the country where they took place. Amsterdam or Holland--Holland is the country which I was thinking of--the Netherlands. And we discussed it in committee. Mr. Scott mentioned medical marijuana being legal in Canada as well as in Israel. But a lot of drugs are legal and transactions in Holland. And if two Americans talked on the phone about going to Holland and buying some marijuana and maybe trading it with somebody else in Holland where it would be legal, it would be a violation of the law in the United States based on this particular statute. And that's what's called an overly broad law, when it captures conduct that it really isn't intended to do.

I don't think--and I hope that the people who voted for this didn't intend for it to criminalize speech when the actions in the country where the act took place were legal. I hope they wouldn't have been thinking that. And on the Judiciary Committee, in particular, we should be very, very circumscribed in what we pass because we're taking people's liberty from them. And ``liberty'' is one of the words inscribed up here, I think, in front of the panel. It is one of the things America holds so dear.

This Thursday, we are going to be celebrating the 220th passage of the Bill of Rights. And the Bill of Rights gives people the freedom of speech and quite a few freedoms from government oppression and government activities.
To suggest that this is a loophole, I think, is a mistake. I think it was not intended by this Congress to criminalize behavior, particularly behavior that was legal in the country where it took place.

In the situation that the gentleman from Texas describes, where some people got together in Miami to

discuss drugs from Colombia that were flown from Venezuela to France and purchased in the Netherlands, Italy, and elsewhere, I don't think that they were in Miami because they thought that was a loophole. I think they were in Miami because they liked Miami. And why wouldn't you? Miami is a great place. They weren't there because it was a loophole. They just happened to be there. And I don't think anybody foresaw that as being illegal conduct. They could have discussed that in Paris or in Caracas or anywhere else. They didn't facilitate the crime, per se. What they did was illegal in all those different countries, and they could have been prosecuted there.

I would submit to you, also, that this Nation and this world almost came to its knees because of derivatives and financial instruments created here in the United States, created here--not just talked about on Wall Street. But it had a global effect because those derivatives affected banks in Europe and all around the world. And as we almost came to our knees because of the criminal activities of people making lots of money with greed, Gekko greed, other people around the world suffered as well economically. But we're not rushing here to criminalize talks between people in Washington and Wall Street and people in Paris about derivatives, about subprime loans, about ways to make money at the expense of poor people and possibly bring the world to its knees economically; that, we're not discussing. But we are discussing the possibility of putting people in jail for going to Amsterdam and talking about buying some marijuana.

Something smells foul, and that's why I oppose the bill.

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