Americans everywhere, but particularly those of us in this room today, owe a large debt of gratitude to General Barry McCaffrey. He has been tested many times in his life, beginning on the fields of battle and ending in the corridors of power. And in each instance he served his country beyond measure, and his conscience without compromise.

General McCaffrey's accomplishments in combating narcotics trafficking and drug addiction are remarkable. He took on this multi-headed monster like no other. And he has raised the bar of expectations much higher than any successor would want.

General McCaffrey inherited a malnourished Office of National Drug Control Policy and he transformed it. ONDCP went from virtual invisibility to being a force to be reckoned with. General McCaffrey gave it credibility. He brought muscle to the job. He also brought a fierce intellect, compassion and vision. In short, he brought leadership.

Of course, no one single individual is responsible for all the progress made in recent years. Still, I believe it was no coincidence that as the "McCaffrey approach" took hold, the numbers of Americans using illegal drugs fell significantly. Twenty-five million Americans used illegal drugs in 1979. Today that number is 13 million. Still too high. But what a turn around.

Marijuana -- by far the most popular drug among the young -- is down among teens, according to a study released last month by the Partnership for a Drug Free America.

The reduction among cocaine users is even more compelling than the overall numbers. Among those people who described themselves as occasional cocaine users, the number fell from six million in 1985 to approximately two million now. From six million to two million. That is a tremendous success story by any measure.

And look at the decline in coca cultivation in Bolivia and Peru. In 1995, Peru had 115,000 hectares under cultivation. Four years later the number fell to 38,000. In Bolivia, coca cultivation fell from 48,600 hectares in 1995 to 21,800 last year.

Much of these successes are directly attributable I believe to General McCaffrey's leadership.

We all know the challenges faced by Colombia remain grave. But General McCaffrey has been a prophetic voice in describing the real crisis there; in sounding the alarm; and in urging America and the world to answer the call in big and meaningful ways.

Over the years, General McCaffrey demonstrated that interdiction works. That eradication works. That education works. And that treatment works. And by the way, that HIDTAS work too. Especially when they get the kind of steady attention and support that has been provided by ONDCP.

U.S. Customs has been in the business of counter-smuggling for 210 years, and we have as broad a mandate as any law enforcement agency. So what does HIDTA mean to us? In a word, HIDTA means help. HIDTA has been a crucial force multiplier for the Customs Service, at a time when our resources are being stretched to the limit.

But we're not just interested in how HIDTA can help us. We also want everyone who participates in HIDTA to know what Customs brings to the table, and how we can help you.

HIDTA remains our most important link to the wider law enforcement community, and is responsible for some of our best cases. Many of you are familiar with Operation El Dorado, a HIDTA money laundering initiative led by Customs and the IRS. El Dorado is made up of 190 law enforcement personnel from 24 different federal, state and local agencies. Since its inception in New York in 1992, El Dorado has been responsible for the seizure of approximately 350 million dollars, more than 950 arrests, and the disruption or dismantling of nearly 200 money-laundering organizations.

Along the Arizona-Mexico border we have the Border Anti-Narcotics Network, otherwise known as "BANN". "BANN" is located in the remote areas of the Tohono Indian Nation, in the Organ National Park. Fifty-one full and part-time personnel, including 26 customs agents, staff the network. BANN has disrupted four major drug smuggling networks, seized nearly 75,000 pounds of narcotics, and made hundreds of arrests.

Operation Alliance, a joint task force out of San Ysidro, California, has presented thousands of drug cases to the U.S. Attorney and local District Attorney.

Customs is also a partner in the New Mexico Border Operations Task Force, and in the West Texas HIDTA, with its outstanding track record.

The list goes on. But I'll sum it up by saying HIDTA symbolizes what we all have to gain when we focus on the broader challenge, and not just our own parochial interests.

Beyond increased seizures and arrests, HIDTA has alerted our political leaders to the vital role of interdiction and investigation in the national counter-drug effort. General McCaffrey has advocated an equal emphasis on treatment and prevention. I believe he's right. We'll never seize or arrest our way out of the problem. America must reduce its appetite for drugs.

But until that day comes, a strong and well-funded program of counter-drug enforcement is required to keep our communities out of narcotics' destructive path.

There's a lot of great work going on out there and you deserve the credit. The Customs Service looks forward to continuing its HIDTA partnerships and building on your success. We owe it to America to do that.

As Barry McCaffrey leaves office, he can depart secure in the knowledge that America is a safer and better place because of his leadership. He brought all of us to a new plateau. He gave us the high ground. Our responsibility now is to hold the high ground, and surrender it to no one.

Although, ironically, the calls for surrender are mounting. Especially in the so-called "harm reduction movement." This movement is populated by apologists for ecstasy and other dangerous club drugs. While we have seen teen use of marijuana decline, unfortunately, their use of ecstasy has doubled in recent years -- no thanks to adults who insist that designer drugs are virtually harmless.

The advocates, many in academia, argue that the laws against drugs cause more harm than drug addiction and trafficking. That, of course, is the big lie. The Customs Service encountered it as we mounted a special effort against ecstasy. Together with the DEA and local law enforcement, we have had good results in seizing ecstasy and arresting its traffickers. But it would be naïve to think that our coordinated efforts alone explain why we have been able to confiscate so much of the drug.

Obviously trafficking and demand are way up. What was once ad- hoc smuggling by small time dealers and users has mushroomed into organized trafficking by sophisticated groups. They have the money and organization to make ecstasy part and parcel of the club scene across America.

In effect, the traffickers helped to create the demand for their own product. The motive of the club owners and rave organizers who help traffickers push ecstasy is transparent. They are in it for the money. And there is lots of money to be made off of a product that costs pennies to manufacture and retails for $25 to $30 a tablet. So it is not surprising that we have seen clubs and raves come under the spell of Israeli organized crime and other trafficking rings.

But the traffickers are also abetted from strange quarters. These are the apologists for ecstasy use. They argue, erroneously, that ecstasy is harmless. Their glowing tributes to ecstasy are reminiscent of Timothy Leary and the early, equally ignorant veneration of LSD. These include social scientists and others in the "harm reduction movement" who claim that the real harm associated with drug use and trafficking is caused, not by the drugs and their pushers, but by the laws designed to curtail them.

Besides turning logic its head, this kind of propaganda has given rise to a myth that American law enforcement is out to criminalize the "harmless," experimental behavior of a whole generation of young Americans. The fact is we are trying protect youth, our teens in particular; protect them from criminals who without a qualm would risk the health and safety of our children for an easy dollar.

We are not out to jail teenagers who make the mistake of experimenting with drugs. We our out to jail the traffickers and their partners in crime. These are the people who could care less if the person they sell ecstasy to incurs brain damage. Or a heart attack. Or gives birth to a deformed baby.

The dealers don't care whether somebody experimenting with ecstasy lives or dies. It is those dealers, as well as the traffickers and manufacturers behind them who we want to put behind bars.

This is the message that American law enforcement has to get out in the face of gross distortions about ecstasy by the so-called "harm reduction movement." It is the message that I ask each of you to carry back to you communities.

One social scientist who testified before Congress suggested that law enforcement wants sanctions against ecstasy simply to justify a demand for more resources. Anyone familiar with the battle against the flood of illegal narcotics entering the united states, knows how ludicrous it is on suggest that we need to invent additional contraband to worry about.

You know that our plates are full enough without demanding new penalties for harmless substances. To suggest otherwise is dishonest, at best.

Yet, repeated often enough, these distortions take on a reality all their own. The same social scientist told Congress that if ecstasy had a less provocative street name, there would have been less interest in making it illegal. He even blamed the exorbitant price that rave organizers charge for bottled water on ecstasy's illegality. If people weren't worried about being arrested for ecstasy -- this odd logic goes -- then raves would be licensed affairs, and organizers would be compelled to supply running tap water instead of the exorbitantly priced bottled variety.

That this banality passes for informed opinion is amazing, yet typical of much of what this movement has to say -- heavy on theory, but light on reality.

In this environment, we cannot be content with enforcing the law alone. We really have a two-part mission. The first part of the mission is to disrupt the flow of ecstasy and other illegal drugs and to bring the traffickers to justice. The second is to convey an important message to the public: that ecstasy, along with the older more conventional illegal drugs, is dangerous, and dangerous people are trying to convince our children to use them. They are trying to convince them it is harmless.

We also have to remind some people of what could not be more obvious: that is, that we are the good guys in this fight; and the traffickers are the bad guys. No amount of posturing, in academia or anywhere else, can change that. The reason we are in this fight is to protect America from very dangerous drugs. We are in it to protect our young from the predators. The predators are organized. They are dangerous. And they are determined.

We should take a page out of General McCaffrey's playbook. We need to go back home and demonstrate to the public that we are just as determined. And that from the traffickers' point of view, we are just as dangerous.