plishments during fiscal year 1979, and Governor Busbee's recommendations to the current session of the general assembly for increased State activity in the fight against drugs.

The GBI has three divisions which provide technical, scientific, and investigative services to our criminal justice system. They are the Georgia Crime Information Center, the State crime laboratory, and the investigative division.

GCIC is a statewide criminal justice information network. Its main objective is to provide a means for the components of the criminal justice system that is, law enforcement, the judiciary, and corrections to receive and disseminate criminal activity information. GCIC provides the communications link between local and State criminal justice units on both an intrastate and interstate basis. GCIC operates the uniform crime reporting program and maintains the identification and criminal history records of all persons arrested for crimes in Georgia.

The main State crime laboratory is in Atlanta with regional laboratories in Augusta, Columbus, Moultrie, and Savannah. The laboratory provides forensic services to all of Georgia's criminal justice agencies. Laboratory workload set a new record in fiscal year 1979, with more than 46,000 cases. Of these, 9.322 were drug identification cases.

The investigative division has 147 special agents and 38 narcotic agents. Since the committee is familiar with our sister agency, the Florida Department of Law Enforcement, you might find it interesting to note a major difference in organizational concept. FDLE utilizes most of its personnel, money, and time in organized crime investigations, primarily in major drug smuggling and drug-trafficking cases. The GBI, in contrast, employs almost two-thirds of its personnel, money, and equipment to provide general investigative support to county-based and municipal law enforcement agencies. Most drug investigations are conducted by our controlled substances section headquartered in Atlanta, using three separate squads.

The local violators squad consists of special agent supervisors and noncareer narcotic agents. They are employed throughout the State in undercover investigations. They target street-level dealers or suspected dealers identified by sheriffs and other law enforcement officials. Recruiting and retaining qualified undercover agents is a never-ending task.

The Major Violators Squad includes our Diversion Investigation Unit and our Major Violators Unit. The DIU has a DEA agent assigned and is primarily responsible for cases involving the diversion of legally-manufactured drugs into illegal channels. The Major Violators Unit concentrates its attention on illegal wholesalers and distributors of marihuana and other drugs. This squad also assists DEA in investigations of clandestine drug manufacturing in Georgia.

The Smuggling Squad has a Marine Unit and an Air Unit. The Marine Unit is headquartered in Savannah. Savannah-based DEA and Customs agents work closely with our Marine Unit, and vice versa. The Air Unit operates from Atlanta. These agents work closely. smoothly, and productively with DEA, Customs, Federal Aviation Administration, and Federal Communications Commission personnel in Georgia and elsewhere and with the enforcement agencies of other States throughout the country.

During fiscal year 1979, GBI agents conducted 798 felony drug investigations. Seventy percent of these involved street-level dealers arrested for sales of marihuana, prescription drugs, hallucinogenic drugs, and cocaine to the undercover GBI narcotic agents.

The 798 drug investigations produced seizures of marihuana and other drugs with a street value of $84 million. These cases also produced 681 felony arrests for drug smuggling and drug trafficking offenses. Agents assigned to the 13 regional offices assisted the Controlled Substances Section by initiating 123 felony drug cases, seizing drugs with a value of $13 million.

The GBI has been invited by the three U.S. attorneys in Georgia to bring cases to the Federal courts when prosecution in Georgia's superior courts is not feasible. During 1979, a number of major drug cases were taken to Federal prosecutors' offices, each time with excellent results.

Even though we consider our record to be a positive one, we have not won the battle against illegal drug traffickers in Georgia. Therefore, Governor Busbee submitted a comprehensive legislative package to the current session of the General Assembly. He placed special emphasis on illegal drug problems. Included in his package was a proposal to include marihuana among the offenses for which law enforcement officers may apply for a wiretap warrant.

Also included was his request for a "racketeer-influenced and corrupt organizations" statute, similar to the Federal statute that has already proven effective against organized crime. Another proposed bill will establish mandatory sentences in connection with serious drug offenses.

In order for the GBI to be more responsive to requests for investigative support from local law enforcement officials in fiscal year 1981, the Governor directed the transfer of 11 special agents now assigned to GCIC to the Investigative Division. He has also directed the transfer of 24 investigative positions from the Revenue Department to the GBI.

We believe that with new legislation, more GBI personnel, and continued close cooperation among local, State and Federal agencies, we are on the right track in Georgia. However, we are now appealing for more help from the Federal agencies concerned with drug trafficking. Georgia is extremely vulnerable as has been previously pointed out here due to its extensive coastline, its 400-500 airfields and landing strips, its nonstop accessibility by ships and planes coming from drug-producing countries, and our many sparsely settled counties patrolled by a relative handful of local law enforcement officers.

Finally, we recommend revision of the Posse Comitatus Act. We feel it is time for our Armed Forces, with their sophisticated equipment and large manpower resources, to become active in this country's efforts to control drug smuggling.

Mr. Chairman, we thank you for the opportunity to testify before this committee.

Mr. EVANS. Thank you, Mr. Ponder. We in our turn appreciate the work you are doing in this field and the kind of cooperation you have had with the other agencies involved.

At this time, I would like to give the panel the opportunity to ask questions that may help us in eliciting other information. Mr. Chairman, do you have any questions at this time?

Mr. WOLFF. First of all, I would like to commend Governor Busbee for his interests in the area of drug abuse. We find that too often, there are problems that are great problems being pushed to one side. They could be called unpopular areas of interest. Therefore, when we do get the cooperation of the local Governor and his staff, it is certainly encouraging to us.

Mr. Ponder, I noted that you recommended the amending of the Posse Comitatus Act which has been a major thrust of this committee. In fact, we are looking at that right now to find out ways and means that we can utilize Posse Comitatus in our favor rather than as a restriction.

For those who are unfamiliar with the Posse Comitatus, it is a restriction that is placed upon the military in furnishing assistance for civilian effort.

Well, as I said before, if there is going to be a war on drugs, then I think we should use what means we have available to us as we would use in any other war. Therefore, we have to furnish local authorities and our Federal authorities with whatever type of equipment we possibly can.

I think it is disgraceful that in a Nation such as ours where we are having such a strong visitation of drugs from overseas into our country, that the smugglers have better equipment than our law enforcement people have.

Mr. PONDER. That is true.

Mr. WOLFF. And yet, there is available to us the most highly sophisticated equipment in the world, but we can't get it because of the restrictions that are forced upon us by something like Posse Comitatus.

I was talking to counsel this morning, talking about the fact that if a terrorist act was committed here, we would be able to bring in even the marines, I guess, in order to handle the problem. But when we have this same type of terrorist act that is committed against our youth, we cannot make available the type of equipment that is necessary.

If we had some alterations, what type of equipment or what type of help would you like to see under a loosening of Posse Comitatus?

Mr. PONDER. At the present time, our hands on the coast are pretty much tied as far as the State agency is concerned. And we have to rely entirely on Customs and DEA. And we feel that if they had access to the military equipment to help patrol the coastline, to help intercept planes that we know now are getting through with very little impediment, it would be of great assistance to the State.

Georgia happens to be located in such a situation that many planes can have their fuel tanks modified so they can make a flight into the United States provided they stop rather quickly in Georgia. And southern Georgia is where we have noted a lot of these planes coming in. And, of course, the ships will come in where we have the shoreline.

We feel just by having available the military capability of monitoring the coastline through surveillance and their capacity to intercept aircraft would be a great assistance in this fight.

Mr. WOLFF. I want you to know, greatly to the work of Congressman Evans, the Coast Guard was made available actively to intercept some of the seaborne traffic.

Mr. PONDER. Right. I failed to mention Coast Guard. We have excellent relations with them on the coast.

Mr. WOLFF. And now, they are very active in making some large hauls. I am interested in another area which some of our investigators have discovered, not alone here in Georgia, but throughout the country. I feel that there is an even larger licit or legal drug market that exists today in this country. It is larger than the illicit market due to overprescription many times by doctors and by trading in what are licit drugs.

I wonder what your experience has been with that here in Georgia. I am not talking necessarily of overprescribing, but we have found, and I must say in my area of New York we have found, that nursing homes are using or abusing substances, tranquilizers and the like. They are making a bunch of zombies out of some of the old people in order to keep them immobilized so they don't have to have sufficient supervisory help.

I wonder if you have looked into the situation at all, Mr. Ponder. Mr. PONDER. Yes, sir, we do have a diversion unit. And since Mr. McGreevy had to testify in court yesterday on the arrest of one doctor who was prescribing drugs illicitly, I might let him address this whole subject.

Mr. EVANS. Mr. McGreevy, you were not sworn before.

[Mr. McGreevy was sworn by Mr. Evans.]

Mr. EVANS. OK. Thank you. You may proceed.

Mr. MCGREEVY. I am Thomas McGreevy. I am the director of the GBI's Investigative Division, as Mr. Ponder indicated. With the assistance of DEA and the participation initially of agencies associated with the Composite Board of Medical Examiners and the State Board of Pharmacy, the GBI became involved in DIU-Diversion Investigation Unit-activities in late 1976. We have been working since. We have had excellent relationships with DEA in this effort during this entire period.

We were shocked by the number of health services professionals that we found were involved in prescribing schedule II, schedule III, and schedule IV drugs for nonmedical purposes. When we began, we thought in our naivete that if there were a couple of dozen people, professional type people, in the State who were involved in this sort of thing, then that would be about the size of it.

I think all of us were surprised, all the enforcement people together, when we found that there were not just a few or a handful, but a rather considerable number of people involved with drugs in their daily business-physicians, nurses, wholesalers, pharmacists-who don't take the same view of the seriousness of the problem as some of us do in the law enforcement area.

Now, I am not implying and would not want anyone to think that I am indicting a whole profession. Not at all.

Mr. WOLFF. Certainly not. And we don't want anyone to believe that the committee is doing that either. But there are just a few bad people within the profession that are causing a stigma upon the entire profession.

Mr. MCGREEVY. What we see now is a much greater awareness on the part of the professional boards made up of members of the regulated professions, much greater concern on their part, and much swifter action to see to it that members of the governed and regulated professions know about the criminal charges being laid against members of the profession. And they are taking much more severe action now, providing graphic demonstrations of their own dissatisfaction with this type of behavior, than we have ever seen before in this State. And I would like to congratulate the members of the regulating boards and the professionals themselves for this. When the matter was brought graphically to their attention, they responded with, I think, a real stiff back and have bitten some bullets to do some of the things that perhaps were not terribly popular with other members of the professions, but needed to be done.

Mr. WOLFF. Mr. Chairman, I have one final question. I am just wondering if Mr. Ponder can tell us if they are getting the type of intelligence from the agencies, the Federal agencies, that they think is necessary for them to pursue their local activity!

Mr. PONDER. Gentlemen, the GBI is the EPIC representative in Georgia. EPIC is the intelligence center in El Paso. We serve the entire State. EPIC has proven to be a tremendous asset in smuggling and drug trafficking investigations. EPIC has not been of much value in cases involving local violators, but in the major cases, EPIC has been most helpful. And we have access to EPIC 24 hours a day. Local law enforcement agencies in Georgia can call us toll-free for information on airplanes, smuggling activities, boats, and so forth.

Mr. WOLFF. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. EVANS. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. Coughlin?

Mr. COUGHLIN. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.

Do I understand you were talking about diversion of drugs, you had a diversion investigation unit?

Mr. PONDER. Yes; we do.

Mr. COUGHLIN. That was jointly funded with LEAA; is that correct?

Mr. PONDER. In the beginning, we had a LEAA discretionary grant and DEA contributed an agent to this unit.

Mr. COUGHLIN. That is being disbanded now?

Mr. PONDER. No, sir, it is still in operation.
Mr. COUGHLIN. It is still in operation?

Mr. PONDER. Yes, sir.

Mr. COUGHLIN. There was an indication that it was going to be disbanded. But as far as you know, it is not going to be disbanded at this time?

Mr. PONDER. No, sir.

Mr. COUGHLIN. In terms of your State medical board, have there been instances where they have lifted a doctor's license or registration for the illegal issuance of drugs?

Mr. PONDER. There have been recently some instances where the licenses were either restricted or lifted completely.

Mr. COUGHLIN. Do you know how many, just for our information?