Drug Enforcement Administration
From Drug Rehab Wiki
The U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) is the primary federal drug enforcement agency in the United States. The DEA’s mission is to enforce and uphold the U.S.’s controlled substances laws and bring to justice criminals and members of crime organizations involved in the production, manufacturing, distribution, trafficking, or sale of illicit substances. The DEA also encourages drug education and rehabilitation programs in an effort to reduce the availability of controlled substances throughout the domestic and international markets and to diminish levels of illicit drug abuse among the U.S. population.
The DEA was formed on July 1, 1973 by executive order of President Richard Nixon, combining the multiple existing federal drug agencies and departments into a single administration. These conglomerate agencies included the Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs, the Office of Abuse Law Enforcement, the Office of National Narcotics Intelligence, the Narcotics Advance Research Management Team, and the U.S. Custom’s Drug Investigations department. Its establishment served as the creation of a central agency with the primary goal of eradicating worldwide illicit drug trafficking and drug abuse.
The Nixon administration and Congress were in support of the reorganization plan amidst growing concern over increasing drug abuse and drug availability, and insufficient intelligence in anti-drug management among the existing agencies. The DEA received a budget of approximately $75 million in its initial year and employed 1,470 special agents. It also set up 43 offices in 31 different countries by 1974. Today, the DEA receives a budget of approximately $2.3 billion, employs 5,235 special agents, and has 227 district offices across the country as well as 87 international offices in 63 different countries. The DEA gathers intelligence and investigates criminal information on thousands of suspected and convicted drug traffickers on a global scale.
The DEA formed the Intelligence Division and its programs in 1973, cementing bonds with other national governments. Heroin trafficking was a primary concern during the 1970s, especially brown heroin being imported from Mexico. Rising levels of marijuana, PCP, and cocaine trafficked from Mexico and South American nations also became top priorities for the DEA. The DEA collaborated with Mexico and Columbia (as well as other partner countries) to challenge the dominant drug trafficking market. In 1974, the roof of the DEA’s Miami’s office unexpectedly collapsed on the building, killing 7 agency members. Later that year, the DEA established a new intelligence center in El Paso, Texas, for local border patrol and law enforcement, which later expanded into an important national drug intelligence center focusing on national and international drug distribution. The El Paso Intelligence Center (EPIC) compiles information on drug production, smuggling, and trafficking trends from high-profile traffickers and organizations operating in the U.S. or abroad. In 1976, the Office of Compliance and Regulatory Affairs (eventually renamed the Office of Diversion Control) was established for the purpose of penalizing drug diversion among traffickers and distributors, and proved indispensable to the DEA. The DEA set up coordinated operations with local law enforcement for domestic drug trafficking affairs, such as the successful capture and conviction of heroin drug lord Leroy “Nicky” Barnes in late 1977.
In 1979, drug abuse among American youth skyrocketed, particularly due to a lax attitude toward marijuana and cocaine. The DEA made efforts to domestically eliminate major illicit drug producers and criminal organizations, and were supported by their foreign counterparts when combating international drug chains. Criminal organizations began to reorganize themselves to format more efficient distribution tactics, and implemented the use of more explicit violence. The distribution of crack cocaine became a new epidemic in the U.S. during the 1980s, and demands for crack surpassed those for heroin and cocaine. The DEA achieved record success in completing several covert operations by seizing millions of dollars worth of pure cocaine, marijuana, and methaqualone (Quaaludes), as well as money laundering operations from international crime syndicates.
By 1984, the DEA began emphasizing drug education and prevention programs to the American public. The tragic 1985 kidnapping, torture, and murder of Special Agent Enrique Camarena in Guadalajara was a shocking reminder to the DEA and U.S. population of the violent nature of the drug business. In 1986, the Anti-Drug Abuse Act was enacted, providing federal funding for prevention programming and enforcing stricter penalization of drug-related crimes. The 1988 Anti-Drug Abuse Act expanded upon the 1986 Act by reinforcing harsher penalization for drug trafficking crimes, strengthening international efforts to eradicate drug trafficking efforts, and forming the position of a Drug Czar within the Office of National Drug Control Policy to oversee national drug control policies. By 1989, the DEA moved its headquarters to Arlington, Virginia to help house its continuing growth. In 1990, the DEA captured Manuel Antonio Noriega, a general and political leader for Panama who used his position to export cocaine into the U.S., and prosecuted him in the “drug trial of the century.”
The George H.W. Bush Administration focused national efforts on reducing the supply and demand of prominent illicit substances—including cocaine, heroin, steroids, methamphetamine, marijuana, and LSD—by increasing education, prevention, and treatment programs. Mounting international crime syndicates posed as new threats to U.S. efforts of diminishing trafficking routes into the country. In 1994, the DEA and its foreign counterparts overthrew Shan Warlord Khun Sa and his heroin trafficking organization in Thailand. But on April 19, 1995, Timothy McVeigh committed the most bombed the DEA’s Alfred E. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City, killing 168 people. On June 2, 1997, McVeigh was convicted of 11 counts of conspiracy and first-degree murder, and was given the death penalty. The DEA lost original evidence files which had to be completely rebuilt after the bombing, and they relocated to a new building 10 miles from the initial site. In 1996, the DEA helped preserve the safety of hundreds of spectators during the Atlanta Olympics when another explosion deployed in Centennial Olympic Park.
The rise of synthetic drugs swept through the U.S. adolescent population during the mid-1990s, leading to multiple DEA operations to halt the production and distribution of MDMA, LSD, methamphetamine, ketamine, GHB, and Rohypnol. Since then, levels of abuse of these substances among U.S. young-age groups have gradually declined.
The legalization of marijuana became a prominent debate between advocates who wish to decriminalize marijuana and the DEA. Legalization advocates have largely criticized the DEA for its seizures of marijuana from suppliers throughout California and Arizona. The debate continues today. Internationally, the DEA has been combating drug trafficking from top-level suppliers in Afghanistan, Lebanon, Israel, Turkey, Columbia, and Mexico since the mid-1990s. Opium production from Afghanistan is the largest supplier of morphine and heroin trafficking into the U.S. still. Domestically, illegal distribution and diversion of legal drugs became a serious problem in the U.S. around the turn of the century; legal drug overdose has become the most common cause of accidental death. The DEA is currently administrating operations and cooperative efforts with state and federal law enforcement to tackle the U.S. diversion drug trade.
