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### **Director's Corner: Supporting the Front Line in the Drug Wars**

 June 2020 | Volume 13 | Issue 6

In the past few months, we have seen COVID-19 ravage  communities throughout our country. While we continue to combat the virus,  another longstanding epidemic continues: illegal drug use, distribution, and  sales. Working the front lines in our nation’s defense against illegal drug  distribution systems and the Mexican cartels continuously places our law  enforcement officers at risk. The impact of illegal drug sales is far-reaching  and includes gun violence, homicide, and extortion; human trafficking; and  placing law enforcement in the deadly path of these ruthless drug operators. 

 According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC),  67,367 individuals died from overdose deaths in the United States in 2018.  Opioids were involved in 46,802 of those deaths.1 In addition, thousands of other deaths are attributed to methamphetamine and  heroin use.

 Law enforcement has been on the front lines of the battle to  combat this scourge, and the COPS Office has been behind them all the way,  providing support through programs such the COPS Anti-Methamphetamine Program  (CAMP) and the COPS Office Anti-Heroin Task Force (AHTF) Program. These  competitive grant solicitations are open to state law enforcement agencies with  multijurisdictional reach and interdisciplinary team (i.e., task force)  structures in states with high levels of drug addiction or enforcement  activity. 

 This year, the COPS Office will award approximately $13 million  in three-year CAMP grants to support states with a large number of seizures of  precursor chemicals, methamphetamine, and laboratories. State law enforcement  agencies will use the funds to locate or investigate illicit activities related  to the manufacture and distribution of methamphetamine (including precursor  diversion, laboratories, or methamphetamine traffickers).

 The AHTF grants will support law enforcement organizations  in states that have high per capita rates of drug treatment admissions by providing  approximately $35 million in grants during 2020. Each grant provides law  enforcement agencies with up to $4 million over a three-year period. The  funding supports the investigation of illicit activities related to the  distribution of heroin, fentanyl, or carfentanil or the unlawful distribution  of prescription opioids.

 As  can be seen in this month’s *Dispatch*, law  enforcement agencies across the nation are having notable success in reducing  the manufacture, distribution, and use of illegal drugs with the support of  CAMP and AHTF funding. The Wisconsin Department of Justice used its grant to  develop a statewide network of task forces that were responsible for 322 drug  seizures in the first quarter of 2019 alone. The North Carolina State Bureau of  Investigation established an opioid “Take Back” initiative that collected more  than 68,000 pounds of prescription and over-the-counter medicines. 

 The  COPS Office is pleased to support law enforcement through CAMP and AHTF, and we  applaud our grant recipients’ efforts.

– Director Keith

References:          1. Holly  Hedegaard, Arialdi M. Miniño, and Margaret Warner, *Drug Overdose Deaths in the United States, 1999–2018*, NCHS Data  Brief No. 356 (Hyattsville, MD: National Center for Health Statistics, 2020), https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/databriefs/db356-h.pdf.

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