[Senate Hearing 114-749]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
S. Hrg. 114-749
CARTELS AND THE U.S. HEROIN EPIDEMIC: COMBATING DRUG
VIOLENCE AND PUBLIC HEALTH CRISIS
=======================================================================
HEARING
BEFORE THE
SUBCOMMITTEE ON WESTERN
HEMISPHERE, TRANSNATIONAL CRIME,
DEMOCRACY, CIVILIAN SECURITY, HUMAN
RIGHTS, AND GLOBAL WOMEN'S ISSUES
COMMITTEE ON FOREIGN RELATIONS
UNITED STATES SENATE
ONE HUNDRED FOURTEENTH CONGRESS
SECOND SESSION
__________
MAY 26, 2016
__________
Printed for the use of the Committee on Foreign Relations
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COMMITTEE ON FOREIGN RELATIONS
BOB CORKER, Tennessee, Chairman
JAMES E. RISCH, Idaho BENJAMIN L. CARDIN, Maryland
MARCO RUBIO, Florida BARBARA BOXER, California
RON JOHNSON, Wisconsin ROBERT MENENDEZ, New Jersey
JEFF FLAKE, Arizona JEANNE SHAHEEN, New Hampshire
CORY GARDNER, Colorado CHRISTOPHER A. COONS, Delaware
DAVID PERDUE, Georgia TOM UDALL, New Mexico
JOHNNY ISAKSON, Georgia CHRISTOPHER MURPHY, Connecticut
RAND PAUL, Kentucky TIM KAINE, Virginia
JOHN BARRASSO, Wyoming EDWARD J. MARKEY, Massachusetts
Todd Womack, Staff Director
Jessica Lewis, Democratic Staff Director
John Dutton, Chief Clerk
SUBCOMMITTEE ON WESTERN HEMISPHERE, TRANSNATIONAL
CRIME, CIVILIAN SECURITY, DEMOCRACY,
HUMAN RIGHTS, AND GLOBAL WOMEN'S ISSUES
MARCO RUBIO, Florida, Chairman
JEFF FLAKE, Arizona BARBARA BOXER, California
CORY GARDNER, Colorado TOM UDALL, New Mexico
DAVID PERDUE, Georgia TIM KAINE, Virginia
JOHNNY ISAKSON, Georgia EDWARD J. MARKEY, Massachusetts
(ii)
C O N T E N T S
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Page
Rubio, Hon. Marco, U.S. Senator From Florida..................... 1
Boxer, Hon. Barbara, U.S. Senator From California................ 3
Foote, Daniel L., Deputy Assistant Secretary of State, Bureau of
International Narcotics and Law Enforcement U.S. Department of
State, Washington, DC.......................................... 5
Chester, Kemp, Associate Director for the National Heroin
Coordination Group, Office of National Drug Policy, Washington,
DC............................................................. 6
Jacobs, Hon. Teresa, Mayor of Orange County, Florida............. 23
Dudley, Steven, Co-Director, InSight Crime, Washington, DC....... 25
Additional Material Submitted for the Record
Additional Questions Submitted for the Record by Members of the
Committee
Responses to Questions Submitted to Assistant Secretary Daniel
Foote by Senator Marco Rubio................................... 37
Witnesses Prepared Statements
Prepared Statement of Daniel L. Foote, Deputy Assistant
Secretary, Bureau of International Narcotics and Law
Enforcement Affairs............................................ 40
Prepared Statement of Kemp L. Chester, Associate Director for the
National Heroin Coordination Group, Office of National Drug
Policy......................................................... 41
Prepared Statement of Teresa Jacobs, Mayor of Orange County,
Florida........................................................ 45
Prepared Statement of Steven Dudley, Co-Director, Insight Crime.. 46
Prepared Statement of Jack Riley, Acting Deputy Administrator,
Drug Enforcement Administration................................ 49
(iii)
CARTELS AND THE U.S. HEROIN EPIDEMIC: COMBATING DRUG VIOLENCE AND
PUBLIC HEALTH CRISIS
----------
THURSDAY, MAY 26, 2016
U.S. Senate,
Subcommittee on Western Hemisphere,
Transnational Crime, Civilian
Security, Democracy, Human Rights,
and Global Women's Issues,
Committee on Foreign Relations
The subcommittee met, pursuant to notice, at 9:03 a.m. in
Room SD-419, Dirksen Senate Office Building, Hon. Marco Rubio,
chairman of the subcommittee, presiding.
Present: Senators Rubio, Gardner, Boxer, Kaine, Menendez,
and Markey.
OPENING STATEMENT OF HON. MARCO RUBIO,
U.S. SENATOR FROM FLORIDA
Senator Rubio. Good morning. This hearing on the
Subcommittee of the Western Hemisphere, Transnational Crime,
Civilian Security, Democracy, Human Rights, and Global Women's
Issues will come to order. I thank you for being here today.
The title of this hearing is ``Cartels and the U.S. Heroin
Epidemic: Combating Drug Violence and Public Health Crisis.''
Before we begin the meeting, on a matter of personal
privilege, I wanted to acknowledge the contributions of a loyal
and a dedicated staffer because behind every one of us here in
the Senate, there are loyal and really hardworking people.
Literally they sit behind us at these meetings, and they do all
the hard work behind the scenes to make sure that we are
briefed and prepared to cast votes and advance public policy
that makes a difference.
Since 2011, Maggie Dougherty has been an instrumental part
of our policy team, and she has logged in countless hours
working on all sorts of complex and important issues for our
office. She has also logged in countless hours sitting behind
us here in these committee meetings, but no longer. Today is
Maggie's last Senate Foreign Relations Committee meeting. In a
week's time, she will depart our office to even a bigger and
better opportunity. So I just briefly wanted to thank her for
everything she has done for us. We are very proud of her work.
[Applause.]
Senator Rubio. So the title of this hearing, ``Cartels and
the U.S. Heroin Epidemic''--we have two panels testifying. The
first is an official panel that will feature Mr. Daniel Foote,
the Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for the Bureau of
International Narcotics and Law Enforcement at the U.S.
Department of State, and Mr. Kemp Chester, the Associate
Director for the National Heroin Coordination Group for the
Office of National Drug Control Policy.
The second panel will present the Honorable Teresa Jacobs,
the Mayor of Orange County, Florida, and Mr. Steven Dudley, the
Co-Director of InSight Crime.
Thank you all for being here today. We appreciate your
time. We appreciate your dedication. I would also like to thank
all of those who worked alongside my staff and making this
hearing possible.
Drug cartels operate out of countries in the western
hemisphere, and they do so by using sophisticated distribution
systems that move narcotics into and across the United States.
Heroin supplied by these cartels has created a public health
epidemic and fueled drug violence across this country.
The heroin epidemic, drug war, and fight against drug
violence are, unfortunately, becoming part of everyday events
in our society. It is our duty to find the best possible
avenues and allocate resources to provide the best tools to
equip those on the front lines to fight this public health
crisis. We need to examine what the United States, Mexico, and
other regional partners are doing to cooperatively address the
rise in heroin and in drug trafficking. Promoting the efficacy
and proper execution of U.S. initiatives to stop the spread of
heroin and combat the drug cartels should be one of our top
priorities.
Here are some facts. One of the primary culprits in this
fight is called fentanyl. It is a synthetic opiate that is 25
to 40 times more potent than heroin and it may be used to treat
pain associated with advanced cancer. While fentanyl is legally
prescribed in the United States, the CDC states that most cases
of fentanyl-related overdoses are associated with non-
pharmaceutical fentanyl. It is a type used as a substitute for
heroin or mixed with heroin or other drugs, sometimes without
the user's knowledge.
In 2015, the DEA's National Drug Threat Assessment Summary
reported that Mexico and China have been cited as the primary
source country, though some analogs of fentanyl are
manufactured in China. These supplies are often trafficked into
the United States across the southwest border or delivered
through mail couriers. Transnational criminal organizations
also use Florida as the point of arrival for South American
cocaine and heroin. Much of the illegally diverted and produced
fentanyl is found in the same U.S. markets where white powder
heroin is found.
According to the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services
Administration, the estimated number of individuals who used
heroin was 914,000 people in 2014.
In addition, there are about 586,000 individuals, or
basically .2 percent of the 12 and older population, who had a
heroin disorder in 2014.
While there has been an increase in heroin overdoses and
heroin-related deaths across the United States, the Midwest and
the Northeast regions have been areas of particular concern. To
this day despite the administration's efforts, heroin-related
overdose deaths increased by 244 percent between 2007 and the
year 2013.
The U.S. has responded to such findings by launching the
Heroin Response Strategy, leveraging upon the 15 high intensity
drug trafficking areas across the country.
Mexico, our regional partner, has displayed willingness to
cooperate with U.S. authorities, but despite these operations,
the International Narcotics Control Strategy Report estimates
that less than 2 percent of cocaine that comes through Mexico
is seized by this country's authorities. Under the Merida
Initiative, Congress has provided billions in funds to the
Mexican Government to improve security and the rule of law, and
I applaud the continued efforts of the Mexican Government to
continue its drug crop eradication efforts and to arrest drug
kingpins. However, we are still far from the finish line.
I think the Congress can continue to work in constructive
ways to promote legislation addressing opiate abuse. I am proud
to be the cosponsor of the Comprehensive Addiction and Recovery
Act, a bipartisan bill that overwhelmingly passed the Senate. I
also applaud the House for working to address this issue, and I
hope soon we will be able to send this legislation to the
President's desk.
It is my hope that today's hearing will shed light on the
consequences that this epidemic will have in our society and
future generations if left unaddressed and not given proper
attention. I am optimistic this hearing will serve as the
opportunity to learn about the administration's priorities in
combating the heroin epidemic and drug violence. And I hope you
will address these issues in your testimony as well.
With that, I will now turn it over to our ranking member,
Senator Boxer, for her opening statement.
STATEMENT OF HON. BARBARA BOXER,
U.S. SENATOR FROM CALIFORNIA
Senator Boxer. Mr. Chairman, thank you so much for holding
this important hearing.
The abuse of illegal and legal drugs in America is an
absolute crisis, and to fight it, we need to act on many
fronts.
Take the case of opioids. These are legal prescription
drugs that are killing approximately 125 people every single
day here at home. The CDC says that in 2014, 47,000 people died
from opioid abuse. Just imagine that.
We need to do much more than we have done so far to put
real dollars behind the effort to stop this madness.
Then there is the issue we will focus on today of illegal
drugs being transported into this country.
Recently I visited Costa Rica, and I learned that this
peaceful country is very alarmed about drug cartels
infiltrating their population. We must help them stop this real
threat. And I hope to ask a question about that.
And while we are working cooperatively with the Mexican
Government, specifically an initiative called the Merida
Initiative, and while we have to date seized more than $4
billion in narcotics and illicit currency, let us face it. That
is a drop in the bucket. We simply have to address the demand
in the United States for these lethal products. And I know that
is not your job, and I am not going to even ask you about that.
But I am making a statement as a United States Senator. We have
to address the demand in the United States for these lethal
products.
Supply and demand go hand in hand. A long time ago, I was
an economics major. It is like economics 101. When people
demand a product, we know what happens. The supply will come.
And when even more people demand a product, the price will go
up and it goes around in a circle.
Years ago, too many to even mention--so I do not even know
where my chairman was at that time it was so long ago, very
long--when I first came to Congress, I wrote a bill called
Treatment on Demand because what I found out, Mr. Chairman and
members, is that when there is a person in America with a
terrible addiction, at that time--and it is so true today--they
wake up one day and they say I have done it, I have had it, I
need a new life. They cannot get in anywhere. So people say,
very good, come back in 2 weeks. This is an emergency
circumstance in many ways, but it is not considered that. So
they will go in. Maybe they will get a pat on the back. Come
back in 2 weeks. And by then, maybe they have even overdosed.
Now, I know we are working with Colombia and Guatemala
helping farmers develop alternatives to opium production. But
again, we need to be even more aggressive in our policies
regarding drug production, trafficking, and consumption here at
home.
In California, we have four of those areas that my chairman
spoke about that are designated as high intensity drug
trafficking areas by the Obama administration. I am extremely
grateful to the administration. We had that help under George
Bush as well. When you identify an area, it means you are going
to get some attention, some Federal dollars, some Federal help
because a lot of these local people, our police forces and so
on, really do need that help. So I am very grateful for that.
We have also discovered tunnels from Mexico to San Diego,
which act as conduits for thousands of pounds of cocaine. And
this points to the continuous challenges we face in dealing
with these dangerous cartels. They are really good at what they
do, and they intimidate everyone. And that is why this fight is
so critical. We need even stronger partnerships with Mexico and
other countries in the region.
And I want to say this. Alienating our Latin American
neighbors and our Latinos here at home is the worst possible
thing we can do, first of all, on a human level because in my
view it is prejudice and bigotry. But it does not make sense if
we are really trying to crack down on these cartels. We need
our friends to work with us. We do not need to escalate some
kind of ridiculous debate about walls and all the rest.
I do want to thank our witnesses for being here today.
There is a lot of burden on you, and this is very difficult.
The war on drugs has not been a success. And I think the reason
is we have not done enough on the demand side or on any side.
We need to do much better.
And I want to thank my chairman because I think this is
really well-timed given what we are facing with the opioid
crisis. Thank you.
Senator Rubio. Thank you, Senator Boxer.
Before we begin with the testimony, I did want to recognize
the senior Senator from New Jersey, who has done an extreme
amount of work on western hemisphere issues but also issues
regarding transnational crime, if he wanted to give any opening
comment.
Senator Menendez. No, thank you.
Senator Rubio. With that, please join me in welcoming our
first witness, Mr. Foote. Thank you for your testimony before
us here today.
STATEMENT OF DANIEL L. FOOTE, DEPUTY ASSISTANT SECRETARY OF
STATE, BUREAU OF INTERNATIONAL NARCOTICS AND LAW ENFORCEMENT
U.S. DEPARTMENT OF STATE, WASHINGTON, D.C.
Mr. Foote. Chairman Rubio, Senator Boxer, Senator Menendez,
Senator Gardner, thank you for this opportunity to appear
before you to discuss the work of the State Department's Bureau
of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs to
combat the production and trafficking of heroin particularly by
Mexican-based drug trafficking organizations that are
responsible for the vast majority of the heroin on America's
streets today.
In the United States, we face an epidemic of opioid abuse.
Well over half of the more than 47,000 American deaths from
last year were due to either domestically produced controlled
prescription pain relievers or heroin, which is often combined
with other deadly drugs such as fentanyl.
In Mexico, drug trafficking organizations have killed tens
of thousands of citizens, and these organizations continue to
foment violence, instability, corruption, and addiction.
This scourge is broader than just the United States, and we
will not solve it alone.
The overwhelming majority of the heroin in the U.S. is
produced or distributed by Mexican drug trafficking
organizations. For many years, they have been trafficking not
only heroin but also much of the cocaine, methamphetamine, and
other illicit drugs that enter our country. Most of these drugs
enter through our border with Mexico.
The United States and Mexico developed the Merida
Initiative in 2007 with major focus on combating the production
and trafficking of illicit drugs across our borders. Today the
Pena Nieto and Obama administrations remain committed to
Merida's strategic goals. Our Merida partnership, which brings
together significant investments and capabilities of both
countries, continues to help build Mexico's capacity to fight
narcotics trafficking, organized crime, and violence. Together,
we are aggressively responding to this threat by putting the
leaders of drug trafficking organizations in jail, by seizing
their drugs and money, and by dismantling their organizations.
Today, through Merida, INL is professionalizing and building
the capacity of Mexican law enforcement agencies, supporting
the Mexican Government's efforts to strengthen border
management and security, and helping advance reform across
Mexico's justice sector.
Bilaterally we have agreed that targeting the production
and trafficking of heroin, as well as fentanyl and other
dangerous synthetic substances, is a top shared priority. To
that end, INL and DEA are providing training to law enforcement
officers, investigators, and analysts increasing Mexico's
ability to identify, investigate, and dismantle clandestine
heroin and fentanyl labs.
With our interagency partners, we are also improving
information sharing between our governments on heroin and
fentanyl working together to get better assessments on opium
poppy cultivation and heroin and fentanyl production in Mexico
and continuing to explore other avenues to enhance our
bilateral cooperation and effectiveness.
Building strong, effective Mexican justice sector
institutions, capable of confronting organized criminal
enterprises, is a difficult, long-term challenge. This work
must be sustained, for it is only through a committed,
coordinated effort that sustainable capacity to deter the
cultivation, production, and trafficking of illicit drugs will
be strengthened. The significant investments of both of our
governments are producing results, and with your continued
support, this successful collaboration with Mexico will
continue.
Thank you.
[Mr. Foote's prepared statement is located in the
Additional Material Submitted for the Record section at the end
of this transcript.]
Senator Gardner [presiding]. Thank you, Mr. Foote.
Mr. Kemp Chester, Associate Director for the National
Heroin Coordination Group, please begin your testimony. Thank
you.
STATEMENT OF KEMP CHESTER, ASSOCIATE DIRECTOR FOR THE NATIONAL
HEROIN COORDINATION GROUP, OFFICE OF NATIONAL DRUG POLICY,
WASHINGTON, D.C.
Mr. Chester. Chairman Rubio, Ranking Member Boxer, and
members of the subcommittee, thank you for inviting me here
this morning to discuss the public health and public safety
issues resulting from heroin use, the Government of Mexico's
efforts to reduce the availability of heroin in the United
States, and U.S.-Mexico cooperation to address heroin issues in
both countries.
In 2014, the most current year for which we have data, more
than 47,000 Americans, or approximately 129 people each day,
died from a drug overdose. Of the overdose deaths in 2014, 22
percent involved heroin.
The threat posed by heroin has continued to grow
dramatically over the past several years, and since 2007,
deaths involving heroin have risen 340 percent from 2,402 in
2007 to 10,574 in 2014.
Heroin use has spread into suburban and rural communities
and is growing among most socioeconomic classes, age groups,
and races.
Mexico is currently the primary supplier of heroin to the
United States with Mexican drug traffickers cultivating opium
poppy, producing heroin, and smuggling the finished product
into the United States. Poppy cultivation in Mexico has
increased substantially in recent years, rising from 17,000
hectares in 2014 to 28,000 hectares in 2015, which could yield
potential production of 70 metric tons of pure heroin.
The heroin crisis is being compounded by the reemergence of
illicit fentanyl, a powerful synthetic opioid more potent than
heroin. Illicit fentanyl is sometimes mixed with powder heroin
to increase its effects or mixed with dilutants and sold as
synthetic heroin. Increasingly fentanyl is being pressed into
pill form and sold as counterfeit prescription opioid pills.
The majority of the illicit fentanyl in the U.S. is
clandestinely produced in Mexico or in China.
Fentanyl is extremely dangerous and deadly. In 2014, there
were more than 5,544 drug overdose deaths involving synthetic
narcotics other than methadone, a category that includes
fentanyl. This number has more than doubled from 2 years
earlier.
U.S.-Mexico engagement regarding heroin has been robust. In
October 2015, ONDCP Director Michael Botticelli participated in
a bilateral security dialogue where the importance of increased
poppy eradication efforts by the Government of Mexico, as well
as drug interdiction, clandestine laboratory destruction, and
the disruption of precursor chemical trafficking were all
highlighted.
In early March, Director Botticelli, Ambassador William
Brownfield, the Assistant Secretary of State for International
Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs, and I met with the
Mexican Attorney General Gomez, and she announced her role as
the synchronizer of Mexico's efforts to disrupt the production
of heroin and illicit fentanyl. Importantly, we agreed then to
jointly develop a focused national plan to concentrate Mexico's
efforts against heroin and fentanyl.
The urgent need to sustain progress toward addressing the
Nation's heroin and fentanyl crisis requires increased
collaboration between Federal agencies and with our partners
working at the State, local, and tribal level where the crisis
is felt most deeply.
In November 2015, the team that I lead, the National Heroin
Coordination Group, was created within the Office of National
Drug Control Policy to form the hub of a network of interagency
partners who will leverage their home agency authorities and
resources and to harmonize interagency activities against the
heroin and fentanyl supply chains to the United States.
The ONDCP-funded high intensity drug trafficking areas, or
HIDTA program, the locally based program that responds to drug
trafficking issues facing specific areas of the country, has
also been instrumental. In August 2015, ONDCP committed $2.5
million in HIDTA funds to develop a heroin response strategy.
This innovative project combines prevention, education,
intelligence, and enforcement resources to address the heroin
threat through seven regional HIDTAs covering 17 States and the
District of Columbia.
So while we have laid a firm foundation to address the
heroin crisis, much remains to be accomplished. For example, we
do have gaps in our capability to detect illicit fentanyl at
our borders, and our Mexican partners could certainly do more
in the areas of opium poppy eradication and clandestine
laboratory identification and neutralization.
And while my remarks have focused on addressing the supply
side of the opioid crisis, we must address opioid use disorders
with a balanced approach that also regards addiction as a
public health matter, using substance abuse prevention and
treatment strategies and recovery support services. In his
fiscal year 2017 budget, President Obama proposed $1 billion in
new mandatory funding to expand the availability of evidence-
based strategies such as medication-assisted treatment and to
extend the availability of substance abuse treatment providers.
ONDCP will continue to work with our international
partners, Federal Government Departments and agencies, and our
partners at the State, local, and tribal levels to reduce
heroin and fentanyl production and trafficking and the profound
effect these dangerous drugs are having in our communities.
Thank you for the opportunity to testify today, and I would
be happy to answer any of your questions.
[Mr. Chester's prepared statement is located in the
Additional Material Submitted for the Record section at the end
of this transcript.]
Senator Rubio [presiding]. Thank you.
And I am going to defer my questions because I know members
need to be in other places, and I will basically be here
throughout the duration. And so I will turn over to the ranking
member for her questions.
Senator Boxer. Thanks. I just have two questions for Mr.
Foote. So, Mr. Chester, breathe. You are off the hook here.
Mr. Foote, in 2008, Mexico's Congress passed a series of
significant reforms to its criminal procedures, new laws to
promote greater access to justice, and strengthened measures to
combat organized crime, measures that would make the Mexican
justice system look a little bit more like our own. These
reforms were intended to be implemented by 2016. Where does the
implementation of these judicial reforms stand, and how has the
United States assisted in this process? And how do you feel
about whether they are really doing what they committed to do?
Mr. Foote. Thank you, Senator.
As you know, Mexico committed and passed legislation to
implement a new criminal justice system which is an
accusatorial justice system, much like ourselves. At this
point, of the 32 Mexican states, 24 have implemented this with
federal level crimes and I believe 9 have implemented it at
state level crimes. Obviously, this is a long-term process, and
some of the states in Mexico will not meet next month's
deadline.
We remain committed and continue to work closely with them
on a number of issues. Thanks to the gracious appropriations of
Congress, we have dedicated approximately $250 million to these
efforts between the Department of State and USAID through
issues such as training judges, prosecutors, courtroom
personnel, law students. Over 4,000 have been trained to date
through Department of Justice's OPTAT prosecutorial training
program. We also have a number of law school and institutional
exchange programs through the American Bar Association and a
number of universities here in the United States.
We are preparing law enforcement for their new roles in the
accusatorial justice sector. For instance, our Department of
Justice partners in ICITAP have trained thousands of law
enforcement in crime scene investigations, provided equipment
for units and forensics, fingerprinting, and other collection
there so that Mexico can comply with international standards.
Senator Boxer. Okay. Thank you. What I am getting from you
is that there is progress being made, although not everyone
will meet the deadline. It is an optimistic report.
And so that leads me to my final question, which I alluded
to in my statement. As we continue to work with the Mexican
Government--and that is just critical. We have to. We have to
work here at home to reduce the demand. We have to work across
the border to reduce the supply. And that is where the rubber
meets the road in both of these areas where we need to work
with Mexico.
I am concerned about the rhetoric in the presidential
campaign describing our relationship with Mexico. I know it is
a tough question for you. I just want you to say what you feel
in your heart because we need to know. Mexican officials have
said on the record that some of the proposals mentioned on the
campaign trail--we know who we are talking about here, a
candidate who is talking about building a wall, having Mexico
do it, insulting Mexican Americans here at home--that some of
the proposals would have a cataclysmic effect on our bilateral
relations.
Has this divisive rhetoric affected diplomatic relations
with Mexico at this point? Has it impacted the United States'
ability to work with the Mexican Government to combat drug
trafficking? And are you concerned that that type of rhetoric
could just completely undermine what we are trying to do here?
Senator Rubio. Just for the record, she is not talking
about me. [Laughter.]
Senator Boxer. I am so not talking about you.
Mr. Foote. Excellent. Well, I will try to strike a balance
between answering your question and not entering too deeply
into our own domestic politics here.
Senator Boxer. I know it is a tough one, but you know what?
When people talk, it has real-life impacts, especially
presumptive nominee.
Mr. Foote. You have all seen some of the reactions from
south of the border from our Mexican brothers and sisters. You
have seen President Vicente Fox's reactions and others.
From the embassy bilateral level to date, we continue to
work very closely together. In my personal opinion, I do not
believe it has gravely affected our ability to do business
together. Mexico in the last several months has reiterated its
commitment to continuing with the Merida Initiative. Where the
populace of Mexico stands on this may be another matter. But we
continue to be able to work closely together bilaterally on
all----
Senator Boxer. So the words have not had an impact on what
is going on at the very top levels in your opinion on the work
that you were doing at this point.
Mr. Foote. Not in their dealings with us.
Senator Boxer. That is excellent.
Now we have to make sure that those policies never come
into effect.
Thank you very much.
Senator Rubio. Thank you, Senator Boxer.
Senator Menendez?
Senator Menendez. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, for calling the
hearing. It is an important one.
And thank you both for your service to our country.
Mr. Foote, how many agencies are involved in interdiction
and eradication efforts with respect to Mexico's border with us
in our efforts to stop interdiction, stop flows, use
intelligence? How many agencies are involved?
Mr. Foote. U.S. agencies I hope is what you are asking?
Senator Menendez. U.S. agencies.
Mr. Foote. Thank you. INL, Department of State. You have
Department of Justice, DEA, FBI to a certain extent. Department
of Homeland Security is heavily involved through Customs and
Border Protection, Immigration and Customs Enforcement,
Homeland Security investigations. Our military supports some of
the border efforts of Mexico's military. And then we have some
ancillary agencies who are based in Mexico City, but while
their chief focus is not the border, they do peripherally work
on it such as ATF and the U.S. Marshals.
Senator Menendez. And if you had to guess how much money
has been spent on interdiction and eradication efforts in
Mexico since the start of the epidemic that we are experiencing
here, would you put it at?
Mr. Foote. My understanding is $2.5 billion has been
appropriated, of which approximately $1.5 billion has been
obligated or committed to specific projects, of which we still
have at this point new initiatives for about $700 million.
Senator Menendez. Now, are you speaking just Merida
specifically?
Mr. Foote. Pardon me?
Senator Menendez. Are you speaking just of Merida
specifically?
Mr. Foote. Largely.
Senator Menendez. There is money spent far beyond Merida.
Mr. Foote. There certainly is, Senator. I am not in a
position to comment on Department of Justice's appropriation. I
just do not have the figures. That is something we could get
for you.
Senator Menendez. I was not looking just at appropriation.
I look at all the agencies you mentioned, your own, INL,
Department of Justice, DEA, FBI, Homeland Security,
Immigration, military, Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms. And I
think to myself it has to be billions collectively. And I was
one of the architects of the Merida Initiative, which I
support.
But $1.5 billion later, billions between all of our
respective agencies, and what we have is an opioid epidemic.
And as a policymaker, one has to take a step back and say to
themselves, what is not working because something is not
working. If billions of dollars later what you see is a spike
versus a trend in the other direction, then something is not
working. So if I were to say to you, what is not working, what
do we need to change, your answer would be?
Mr. Foote. First of all, Senator, I think we have in the
past few years come to the realization that this is a shared
responsibility between the United States and source countries
and trafficking countries. I am heartened by the Senate's
recent passing of the opioid legislation. It is something that
is going to help us. Certainly Mexico-specific, their
capacities are far greater than they were when we started the
Merida Initiative in 2007. Information sharing and
collaboration has led our own U.S. law enforcement agencies to
interdict significantly more on our southern border due to
Mexico cooperation.
We still do have a way to go. I think we also need to get
better here in the United States at demand reduction and
treating the health issues of addicted people. It is a shared
responsibility and it is no longer just a supply-side issue.
Senator Menendez. So as I listened to your response, it is
everything that we are doing except for a more significant
effort on demand reduction, but it is not suggesting that there
is anything that we are not doing. And all I can look at and
say if you are spending billions and instead of the trend going
the opposite direction, it is rising, you have to raise the
question what is it that we are either doing wrong or what is
it that we are not doing that we need to do in order to meet
the challenge because otherwise we can appropriate billions and
billions, but still find ourselves in a trend that is
undesirable.
So the only thing I heard from you in your response to me
was doing more demand reduction, which I certainly believe is
true. But I did not hear about anything else. So you know, you
have to question whether or not the continuation of this type
of expenditure in this manner is the right policy.
Let me ask you this. Do you believe that there is
sufficient coordination, a seamless coordination between at
least on our side of the border as it relates to all the
agencies that you suggested are engaged in this fight?
Mr. Foote. Senator, obviously, we can always get better at
everything we do. Department of State kind of works from the
southern border south. So I do not feel that it is our position
to comment on interagency coordination north of the border.
South of the border, we have robust interagency coordination
through the country team at Embassy Mexico City. We can always
get a little better there.
Senator Menendez. Your Mexican partners--are they doing
everything that they can in order to meet the challenge on
their side of the border?
Mr. Foote. During the beginning part of President Pena
Nieto's administration, there was a pause in Plan Merida as I
think we did a mutual assessment of the security relationship,
particularly on their side, and over the past year and a half,
we have seen much closer collaboration, an unprecedented
openness and frankness in our bilateral dialogue.
To answer your question, is Mexico doing everything that
they can, they could improve. Some of their efforts are not yet
at the optimal level, but we remain optimistic and positive
that they are moving in the right direction.
Senator Menendez. Well, I appreciate the optimism, but I am
seeking to introduce a little dose of realism into it. And so
part of the challenge is that you have lawless states in some
of the northern part of Mexico where I have heard U.S. citizens
from the region who have come to talk to me say that many who
had businesses, longtime relationships on the immediate other
side of the border, that basically cannot operate there because
the federal government's presence--i.e., the federal government
of Mexico's presence--is not there. So if you have lawlessness
and if you have uncontrolled states, then you have the
opportunity for drug traffickers to avail themselves of that.
And it seems to me that while I am an incredibly strong and
have been for 25 years supporter of the U.S.-Mexico
relationship, we need to be honest in this relationship in
order to make sure that we are making the progress that we need
here and for Mexico to be able to regain its sovereignty over
parts of northern Mexico that it presently does not have.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Senator Rubio. Thank you.
Let me use some of my time that I yielded just to
interject, to follow up on that.
Secretary Foote, how would you assess the assertion made by
a group of experts from the Inter-American Commission on Human
Rights that there may have been another bus involved in the
incident in which 43 students disappeared in Guerrero, Mexico
that was packed with heroin bound for the U.S.?
Mr. Foote. Senator, thank you for that question. Given that
we have not seen the results of the final investigation from
Mexico, I am not in a great position to answer that question
right now. We would be happy to answer that for the record in
writing.
[The material referred to above was not available when this
transcript went to press.]
Senator Rubio. Okay.
Senator Kaine?
Senator Kaine. Thank you, Mr. Chair, and thanks to the
witnesses.
First, to get an idea of the scope of this challenge on the
Mexican side in terms of the black tar heroin, is the poppy
production for this heroin still significantly confined to the
state of Nayarit or is it more broadly distributed? Mexico is a
big country. So when we talk about a problem in Mexico, I worry
that we are not being specific enough.
Mr. Chester. Yes, Senator. Our latest crop estimate that
was produced about 2 months ago shows two major growing areas
in Mexico, one in the state of Guerrero and then another in
what is called the tri-border region up in the northern part of
the country. Those are the two major growing areas in Mexico,
with very, very small kind of sporadic spots in other parts of
the country, but they are basically concentrated in those two
areas.
Senator Kaine. And then the fentanyl is made in labs, and I
gather that most of the fentanyl that comes in is either coming
in--it is made in China and may be transited in through Mexico
or also made in labs in Mexico. Are those the two main sources
for fentanyl?
Mr. Chester. That is correct.
And I will tell you that our understanding and our
awareness of fentanyl traffic has evolved dramatically over the
last 6 months as we have seen the crisis rise. So in order of
magnitude, I cannot tell you, but what I can tell you is that
China is a significant supplier of fentanyl to the United
States or it is ordered by individuals on the dark web around
the Internet and then, using parcel post or the Postal Service,
shipped directly to them.
We also know that fentanyl is shipped into Mexico in some
cases mixed with dilutants and smuggled across the Southwest
border and that there are precursor chemicals that are shipped
into Mexico that can be used for the production of clandestine
fentanyl in laboratories in Mexico. So as you look at the
vectors coming into the United States, those are the two main
ones that we see for finished fentanyl coming into the United
States or its manufacture in Mexico.
Senator Kaine. I want to talk, Mr. Chester, about your
written testimony. I am sorry I did not get here for your
entire oral testimony.
But on page 1, there are several principal factors
contributing to the current nationwide heroin crisis: the
increased availability of heroin in the U.S. market, the
availability of pure forms of heroin that allow for non-
intravenous use, its relatively low price, and a relatively
small percentage of non-medical users of opioid prescription
drugs transitioning to heroin.
I am trying to unpack that statement, and I am wondering if
your statement puts enough of a finger on the prescription
opioid problem. I have heard it stated through Michael
Botticelli and others that 80 percent of those who OD on heroin
in this country, not fatal ODs but total ODs, started their
addiction to opioids by being addicted to prescription opioids
and then transition to heroin because they could get it for a
lower price. Is that an accurate statement?
Mr. Chester. No, Senator. And I am glad you asked that
question. Of the numbers of individuals who non-medically use
opioids and then transition into heroin, that number is
actually relatively small. It is about 3.6 percent.
Senator Kaine. For non-medical use.
Mr. Chester. That is correct. So the non-medical use of a
prescription opioid like OxyContin and kind of the traditional
``got it from the medicine cabinet, got it from friends or
family members''--the percentage of those individuals who
transition to heroin use is relatively low. It is about 3.6
percent.
But conversely, of individuals who are non-treatment users
of heroin, 80 percent of them actually abused a prescription
opioid in the past. So while there is not a direct causation
between the two, the non-medical use of opioids is a strong
risk factor for eventual heroin use.
Senator Kaine. And even the medical use of opioids can be a
risk factor for eventual heroin use. Correct?
Mr. Chester. Yes, Senator, that is right. So an opioid in
and of itself and its effect on the body--obviously, it is a
very addictive drug and affects the body in unique ways, as an
opioid. So those individuals who take opioids, whether they get
them from a doctor or whether they get them from a friend or a
family member for non-medical reasons are at risk for eventual
opioid addiction if not used properly. That is correct.
Senator Kaine. And you cite in the testimony the relatively
low price of heroin--and that is relatively low compared to
past trends but also compared to the cost of opioid-based
prescription drugs. Correct?
Mr. Chester. That is correct. So the street price of a gram
of heroin compared to the street price, if you will, of an
opioid pill or an oxy pill or something of that nature, that is
correct. That is what we consider to be one of the contributing
factors. So it is the availability and the general low price
and then the purity that have all been contributing factors to
the current crisis that we are in with heroin. That is correct.
Senator Kaine. Mr. Foote talked about the work that we have
done in this body and we are trying to harmonize with the House
in this recent CARA, Comprehensive Addiction and Recovery Act.
We really believe it here--and I think it is now bipartisan--we
are seeing in all of our States that if we do not get a hold of
the culture of over-prescription of opioid-based prescription
drugs, we are just hollowing out communities, rural, urban,
suburban, rich and poor. And this was a drug addiction that
came out of the medicine cabinet. In many instances it was a
trusted professional in a white coat that was handing somebody
this prescription saying this is going to do you good and it is
not going to do you harm, driven by inadequate science, driven
by frankly marketing scams. And that is inextricably related to
this heroin issue. And so I think it is kind of hard to deal
with the heroin issue in the abstract without talking about
this culture of over-prescription, that hopefully we are
working together to reel in.
Last question I want to ask--and it is probably too early
to know this. But in terms of the growth of the number of
hectares of poppy production in Mexico, do we have any evidence
to suggest whether that is at all connected with marijuana
legalization in the United States? I actually kind of like this
notion of the States as labs and they can experiment and we can
see what happens. But I have heard it said--and I do not know
whether there is any evidence to back it up--that the
legalization of marijuana in some States that has allowed
marijuana to be grown has taken hectares of land that were used
for marijuana cultivation and, well, we do not have a market
for our marijuana anymore because there is competition, so we
will switch to something like poppies to produce black tar
heroin. Is there any evidence of that?
Mr. Chester. We have actually looked closely kind of at the
crop transference to see if there is anything there, and I can
tell you at this time, whether it is too early or whether it
does not exist, we cannot definitively say that farmers have
decided to switch from one crop to another in Mexico. We cannot
say that with any degree of authority at this point.
Senator Kaine. But that is something that you are going to
continue to monitor.
Mr. Chester. It is something that we do watch, yes.
Senator Kaine. Great.
Thanks, Mr. Chair.
Senator Rubio. To interject on that point, it is my sense--
and you are both experts at this--that very few people wake up
in the morning and say I am going to go shoot heroin just for
the first time. There is a gateway to the heroin use. A lot of
it is being driven by people that were prescribed prescription
opiates. They now become physically dependent. The prescription
opiate is cut off. They are going through severe withdrawal,
and the only thing that addresses that withdrawal, if they are
not in treatment, is access to heroin, and that brings all
sorts of problems.
Absent that, what is the other gateway? How does someone
get dependent on heroin minus the prescription drug gateway,
which we have already discussed?
Mr. Chester. Senator, it is a difficult question just
because you are dealing with a number of variables down at the
individual level as to the reasons why people engage in the
behavior. We do know a couple things. Heroin in general terms
is kind of at the end of a trajectory of long-term drug use and
that a high number of heroin users are actually poly-drug
users. And so they are not an exclusive heroin user. They get
the drugs that are available to them, and because of the high
availability of heroin, a lot of times that is heroin.
The other thing that we look at--and we do a number of
surveys to look at this. But what we realize is that youth
behavior from the ages of about 13 to about 18 is a very strong
factor in terms of risk-taking behavior, in terms of underage
drinking, tobacco, marijuana, things of that nature in shaping
youth attitudes eventually that they carry with them for the
rest of their lives in terms of risk-taking behavior for using
other drugs.
So what we cannot say is that we can put a finger on this
or that particular reason why a person does something, but we
do know that the availability of drugs in society obviously
increases the chances that an individual who is inclined to use
them is going to intersect them at some particular point. And I
think that is one of the--with the discussion we had about the
availability of heroin being the driving factor.
Senator Rubio. So just to understand your testimony, we
understand the pill problem that leads to that. But what you
are basically saying is if someone, especially at some point
earlier in their life, begins to use a substance, alcohol,
whatever it may be, an intoxicant of some sort, there now
starts a potential trend where the next thing is, well, what is
out there that is better, what is out there that is stronger.
Once you have crossed that barrier, it could unleash this cycle
of basically a set of dominoes that ultimately lead you to the
heroin point.
Mr. Chester. Yes, sir. And again, it is not direct
causation, but it certainly is risk-taking behavior and
patterns of behavior.
And that is why the prevention strategies, particularly
through programs like the Drug Free Communities Program that
ONDCP manages are incredibly important because they are locally
based, and they allow trusted individuals to be able to speak
to people at very, very young ages about things just like that
and their attitudes about drugs and foreign substances in the
body and things of that nature. So they, through evidence-based
prevention strategies, are able to talk to people at those
young ages when they are vulnerable in shaping their ideas
about drug use that they carry with them for the rest of their
lives.
Senator Rubio. Senator Markey?
Senator Markey. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and thank you for
this hearing. I think this is the most important hearing we are
going to have on our relations with Mexico and with China this
year in the Congress, and I thank you for it.
This issue of fentanyl is to my way of thinking kind of the
most important threat that we have to families in the United
States at this time. I will just give you some numbers. In
Massachusetts, in 2015, 57 percent of the opioid-related
overdose deaths in Massachusetts had a positive screen for
fentanyl. Specifically of the 1,319 individuals whose deaths
were opioid-related in 2015 where a toxicology screen was
available, 754 of them had a positive screen for fentanyl. So
we can talk about prescription drugs. We can talk about heroin,
but fentanyl is now the issue.
And we--that is, New England--are at the epicenter of it.
It comes up from Mexico to Lawrence, Massachusetts, and then it
goes out into New Hampshire, other States, but Massachusetts as
well.
So the pathway is China into Mexico, then into Lawrence,
Massachusetts, into Ohio, into Virginia, into Florida. And when
it is over half of the deaths now in Massachusetts, it is
clearly a looming threat that is a preview of coming
attractions to every single city and town in our country.
So that is why this hearing is so important because it gets
to the question of what is Mexico doing in partnership with
China. We will start with that, Mr. Foote. What are
specifically Mexico and China at the highest governmental
levels doing in order to interdict this new synthetic formula
that is lacing heroin with a drug 50 times more powerful than
heroin, so powerful that the DEA does not even let its dogs any
longer sniff for fentanyl for fear that the dog will just die
with the first sniff of fentanyl. 3 grams, 3 equivalent of salt
grams, could kill a human being if they gained access to it.
What are Mexico and China doing in cooperation with you in
order to interdict that drug?
Mr. Foote. Senator, first, I will touch on Mexico and
China's bilateral relationship on this. With our support,
Mexico and China are meeting and discussing fentanyl regularly
every year. They are both involved in the multilateral side of
things. Just last month at the U.N. General Assembly special
session on drugs, they were both there. China--their minister
of public security led the conclusion statement. They were
fully on board. And they are a member, both countries, to the
three international drug conventions.
We also sponsor in the United States two annual fentanyl
and precursor chemical conferences with Mexico and China.
Senator Markey. So how successful is this effort so far?
Mr. Foote. That is a good question, Senator. Fentanyl is a
new problem for the Department of State and INL, and it is one
where we are applying lessons we have learned with other
substances in other crime areas over the years, and at this
point we are working as hard as we can to have success but I
cannot quantify it.
Senator Markey. Has it been elevated to the highest level?
In other words, with human rights and copyright infringement,
is this issue now at the highest level of negotiations with the
Chinese Government and with the Mexican Government?
Mr. Foote. It is. Mr. Chester went down in March with our
folks and spoke to a large interagency group headed by the
Attorney General in Mexico on this issue. We regularly engage
with China. Our diplomats are going to China next week at a
very high level diplomatic engagement where they will raise it.
We raise it regularly in the joint liaison group on law
enforcement, which has a counter-narcotics working group that
meets throughout the year. We have actually seen some positive
signs from China.
Senator Markey. What is the evidence? If you were going to
convict them of doing something, what would the evidence be to
convict them?
Mr. Foote. To convict?
Senator Markey. Convict China of actually doing something
to block this from coming into Mexico and then into the United
States. What would the evidence be to convict them of doing
good?
Mr. Foote. Of doing good.
We have seen encouraging progress. There is still plenty to
do. Last year, their ministry of public security officially
controlled 116 new substances, including several analogs of
fentanyl, and they have expressed high receptivity and continue
to send information on new synthetic substances to help us to
efficiently control them. So they are doing something. There is
more that can be done, obviously.
Senator Markey. Clearly we have the evidence in 2015 in
Massachusetts, and it is going to be worse this year in 2016.
There is slim evidence that this thing is being slowed down. In
fact, it is very clear that it is intensifying and it is going
to kill. It is going to kill ultimately tens of thousands of
Americans every year--every year. There is no other threat to
our country that even matches that. Every single year, fentanyl
is going to be able to do that. So if we do not stop it, it
dwarfs every other issue. Every other issue will be a footnote
compared to the magnitude of the impact on American families.
Mr. Chester, can we just go to Mexico? What is the level of
cooperation that you are getting from the Mexican Government in
interdicting fentanyl coming into the United States? We know it
is el Chapo and his gang that is responsible for the traffic
that comes up to Lawrence, Massachusetts, but pretty much for
the whole country. What is your success level with the Mexican
Government getting them to understand the magnitude of the
threat to the American people?
Mr. Chester. Senator, I would tell you that I personally
have been down there twice and then have dealt with the Mexican
Embassy here in the United States. I will tell you that they
understand how seriously we take this issue in the United
States. They understand that this is our top illicit drug
priority, and they also understand that it is not just heroin
but it is heroin and it is fentanyl.
In a meeting down there in February, I put fentanyl on the
table. And I will not say it was a ``first heard'' for them,
but they were not really familiar with how serious the issue
was in the United States. By the time we had gone down later
with Director Botticelli and Ambassador Brownfield, that was
part of the problem set that they agreed to work with us moving
forward on.
So I will tell you that the Mexicans understand the
importance that we place on this issue. They are very engaged
on it, and they are willing to conduct a joint planning with us
on the issues not only of poppy eradication, which addresses
the heroin issue, but also lab identification and
neutralization specifically on issues of either fentanyl
creation or the milling of fentanyl with dilutants and other
inert matter as it is transported across the border.
Senator Markey. Well, and it is a little bit disturbing to
me if, from your testimony, it is a case of first impression
for the principal law enforcement officials in Mexico, that
they are just hearing about fentanyl, and it is just getting on
their radar screen, and it is February of 2016, given the fact
that more than half of all the people who died last year in
Massachusetts, opioid-related, had fentanyl in their system.
That is kind of a little bit disturbing to me. I am going to be
very honest with you, and I do not like it to have just been
introduced at that level.
I would like to have heard that President Obama has raised
this issue with the president of Mexico, that President Obama
has raised this issue with President Xi in China just because
of the incredible level of fatalities all across our country.
And we know specifically what the source of their death is.
So do you mind if I just continue a little bit? Thank you,
Mr. Chairman.
So give me some hope here that there is an aggressive
strategy in place on fentanyl and that it has been elevated to
a level where there is a no-nonsense conversation going on in
terms of what the expectations of our government is.
Mr. Chester. Right, Senator. In response to your concern, I
know that the President did raise this with President Pena
Nieto--the opioid issue with the Government of Mexico.
Senator Markey. He raised the fentanyl issue with----
Mr. Chester. I will check if it was specifically fentanyl,
but I know the heroin issue was raised and the opioid issue----
Senator Markey. Well, I am asking about fentanyl here.
Fentanyl is the epidemic. Fentanyl is the epidemic. It is not
heroin. It is fentanyl. Fentanyl is 50 times more powerful.
Fentanyl is what is showing up in a majority of the deaths. So
you are not sure whether or not he has raised it.
Mr. Chester. And I need to make sure that fentanyl was part
of that conversation between the two of them as well.
Senator Markey. How about you, Mr. Foote? Has the State
Department specifically raised fentanyl at the highest levels
with the Chinese Government and the Mexican Government?
Mr. Foote. We continue to raise it at the highest levels of
dialogue that we have.
Senator Markey. What is the highest level?
Mr. Foote. Next week, our Deputy Secretary will be in
China, and this is high on the agenda, if not top on the
agenda. I cannot promise that President Obama raised it with
President Xi, but certainly Secretary Kerry has raised it with
the Chinese Government.
Senator Markey. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Senator Rubio. Thank you.
Just a couple of points that I wanted to raise. First of
all, why Lawrence, Massachusetts? Why New Hampshire? Why are
these communities specifically targeted? In Florida, for
example, central Florida, how does a community wind up targeted
by these criminal gangs? What are the characteristics that are
making them targets as opposed to some other part of the
country?
Mr. Chester. Senator, there are a number of variables, one
of which is the existing structure, the existing trafficker
structure, that is in place in particular areas. In some cases,
it is transportation networks. In some cases, the traffickers
from Mexico have personal or business relationships with
traffickers in a particular area or that geographically a place
lends itself to further distribution. There are a lot of
reasons why a particular----
Senator Rubio. But the Northeast is far from the U.S.-
Mexico border. I mean, my question is why did they not stop
somewhere along I-95 and target there. Is it because of these
existing structures that were there before?
Mr. Chester. We believe that there is very strong evidence
that there are, that it is the existing structures that were
there before.
When we specifically talk about fentanyl, one of the things
that we have looked at as we have tracked the fentanyl crisis
is why the Northeast, why the Eastern United States, why so
much not the Western United States. And we believe that one of
the strong contributing factors is the fact that fentanyl is
more easily mixed into the white powder heroin which was
preferred in the eastern part of the United States than it is
in the black tar heroin which was preferred in the western part
of the United States, and that has traditionally been the
heroin market in the United States.
And so fentanyl is being mixed into powder heroin, and
therefore it landed in the United States. And increasingly we
are starting to see it be pressed into pill form and sold as
counterfeit oxy or counterfeit opioids, but fentanyl has found
a market in the Eastern United States probably because of those
two reasons.
Senator Rubio. I spent some time in New Hampshire over the
last year and from that experience found myself in a lot of
small townships, not large places, throughout New England that
faced an overwhelming problem, almost as if they were
specifically targeted perhaps because trafficking networks knew
that they had smaller police departments. If you are a small
township, you are not going to have a 1,000-officer department.
Is there evidence that some of that is in play for these
trafficking networks, that in essence, they look to set up in
places where they can overwhelm local law enforcement with
numbers and capabilities?
Mr. Chester. Senator, I do not know. I do not know whether
the size of a population or the size of law enforcement was a
particular reason why.
But to your point, it is a matter of deep concern that you
find increasing numbers of heroin or fentanyl users in rural
areas who are starting to use the product alone, and they are
far from treatment and they tend to be further from first
responders. Those are all things that make this particular
crisis particularly pernicious. It is the fact that it has
moved into a lot of rural areas, which is not something that we
have seen in previous outbreaks of heroin or----
Senator Rubio. And I know what I am asking--and perhaps it
is more appropriate to the second panel--is more of a domestic
issue as opposed to a transnational one. But some of the stuff
we used to hear--because the supply is also driving the demand.
They are interrelated. In essence, the supply meant these
traffickers, who now had the supply on their hands, had to be
more aggressive in finding market share. And one of the things
I kept hearing a lot were that they were specifically targeting
treatment centers, especially outpatient treatment centers
where they knew people were getting treatment because of
addiction, and they were waiting for them outside to tempt them
to buy, that they specifically were targeting recovering
individuals for the sale of this. And this is a pernicious,
disgusting industry that we are dealing with here.
In that realm, I wanted to ask--you know, since the arrest
of el Chapo, Secretary Foote, this is part of Mexico's, I
believe, concerted policy to conduct high profile arrests of
drug lords. And while it is positive that these organizations
are being decapitated, have we seen any evidence that the
arrest of a high profile individual impacts the ability of
these organizations to continue to function specifically since
el Chapo's arrest? Is there any evidence that the operation has
been impacted by it, or is it just one of those things that is
now functioning the way a corporate entity would, irrespective
of who is at the top?
Mr. Foote. Senator, my personal experience is far more
robust with Colombia where I led our programs several years
ago. We have seen where the kingpin being arrested does
certainly affect an organization. The question is how big is
the structure, how organized is it, and how quickly can it
recover. That is a question far better posed to our Drug
Enforcement Administration guys than State.
Senator Rubio. Let me ask you about Colombia. It is not
directly related to the opiate issue, but nonetheless cocaine.
They suspended their aerial eradication program ostensibly for
fear of the impact that the defoliants would have on the
population environmentally. There is a counter-argument out
there that some have made, in which I find some credibility,
that this is also part of the peace process, that in essence,
this deforestation effort and the eradication effort was an
irritant in the peace process with the FARC and other elements.
As a result, we now see numbers where for the first time in
a long time there has been a massive increase in the amount of
cocaine production in parts of Colombia that we had not seen in
a while, and the assumption is that that cocaine is going to
get sold. It is going to go somewhere and that we should expect
at some point within the next couple years to see a spike in
cocaine sales in the United States.
Do you have a view, irrespective of the reason why they are
doing it, of what these new numbers mean for the U.S. in the
years to come?
Mr. Foote. We are concerned about the suspension of aerial
eradication. It is a sovereign decision of President Santos and
the Colombian Government obviously. We believe while
eradication and aerial eradication are not magic pills, they
are valuable tools in any supply-side intervention on
narcotics. It has long been a big part of our strategy in
Colombia. We continue to work closely with the Colombians on
the successor to Plan Colombia, which is Paz Colombia, Peace
Colombia, and are in close contact to see which direction they
decide to go if and when President Santos gets the peace
process resolved.
Senator Rubio. And here is my final question for the panel.
And I thank you both for being here and for your testimony and
for your work. The work you do is important and difficult.
We now have two separate but interrelated problems, as the
Senators just pointed out a moment ago, the production of
synthetic fentanyl, the growth of opiate poppies. My
understanding is that the amount of poppy-based opiates grown
in the western hemisphere is a small percentage of the overall
production in the world. In your view--or do you know this--if
a poppy-based opiate is produced or fentanyl is produced
somewhere in the western hemisphere, Mexico or anywhere else,
what percentage of that is destined for the United States in
particular?
Mr. Chester. Senator, we believe that Mexico is the primary
supplier of heroin to the United States and that the United
States is the primary customer for Mexican heroin. That
relationship in the western hemisphere is fairly solid. We do
not see any widespread evidence of Southwest Asian heroin,
Afghan heroin, Burmese heroin coming to the United States,
although the Government of Canada does believe that Southwest
Asia is its primary supplier of heroin.
So one of the things that we have discovered is a risk and
we have identified as a risk is if we are successful against
the Mexican drug trafficking organizations in bringing down the
supply of Mexican heroin into the United States, do we open up
the door for others.
Senator Rubio. I think it is pretty clear that if you see a
heroin overdose in the U.S., that heroin or that fentanyl came
from Mexico or maybe in the case of fentanyl, China through the
mail. I think that is pretty clear.
Here is my question. Are the opiates being grown or
produced in the case of fentanyl in Mexico being sold anywhere
else in the world or should we basically assume that virtually
all of it that is being grown there--you can see it from the
camera--pictures are being taken--all of that is headed to a
city near you in the United States?
Mr. Chester. That is the assumption we make, Senator. Yes,
that is correct.
Senator Rubio. Well, I want to thank you both for being
here.
Did you have a final question, Senator Markey?
Senator Markey. Thank you so much. Again, for me this is
the top topic. It does not get any bigger than this, and these
are the gentlemen responsible for it in the United States. So
to have them here and to know that they are the principal
people working on the fentanyl issue I think is absolutely
central.
So let me just ask you this, Mr. Chester. Your title is
Associate Director for the National Heroin Coordination Group.
Do you think it is time for us to just change the name to the
National Heroin and Fentanyl Coordination Group? Do you think
we should change the name just so it advertises correctly what
is going on to the American people?
Mr. Chester. Senator, when we began our work this fall as
the Heroin Coordination Group, and after Director Botticelli
stood up this group within ONDCP in order to provide focused
efforts against the heroin and the fentanyl problem. In our
work what we determined was that we were going to handle heroin
and fentanyl as part of the same problem set for a lot of
different reasons. What has evolved over time in our work and
in our planning and our work with the interagency is that we
have discovered the incredible importance of fentanyl more so
than what was identified 6 or 8 or 9 months ago.
The other important thing about fentanyl that I would like
to bring up is the fact that the emergence and the visibility
of fentanyl is driven almost entirely by the postmortem testing
that is done on individuals in overdose deaths around the
country. And in those areas where the testing is done and
fentanyl is tested as part of the toxicology panel, you begin
to see more. So it leads us to believe that in looking at both
the heroin and fentanyl problem, we have a significant fentanyl
problem, as you identified, that we believe was being masked by
this increased availability in heroin. So we handled both of
them as part of the same problem set simply because it allows
us to be able to deal with the trafficking and the supply chain
and the effects on communities in the exact same way.
Senator Markey. No, I appreciate that. So that is what I am
asking. Should we add fentanyl to your title in your opinion?
Does that make sense given what you now know and given how
little Mexico, it turns out, knows when you had the
conversation in February of 2016 about fentanyl? They did not
have it on their radar. Did we raise it so that they
understand? The same thing is true for the Chinese. What do you
think?
Mr. Chester. The issue being raised to the Chinese----
Senator Markey. No, no. I am talking about Mexico. I am
talking specifically here about Mexico right now. They did not
know in February.
And by the way, even when I say 57 percent, a lot of
experts think that is an understated number because of the poor
reporting that goes on in terms of the total number of deaths.
And by the way, it is no secret why they do it. It is like
a 300 percent markup--300 percent markup--in terms of their
ability to make money off this as opposed to heroin or other
drugs.
So again, from my perspective, this is the issue. This
dwarfs any terrorist threat to the United States. This is what
is going to kill people, tens of thousands, ultimately hundreds
of thousands of Americans. It is going to be this fentanyl that
comes into our country. You are the front line on this. Mexico
just heard about it. I am not sure the Chinese understand the
priority that we expect them to deal with this issue.
Mr. Chester, earlier today in your testimony, you said that
there are gaps in the interdiction of fentanyl from Mexico
coming into the United States. Could you explain in more detail
what those gaps are?
Mr. Chester. We are speaking primarily about gaps in our
ability to be able to detect fentanyl at borders, and what was
brought up earlier is the ability of canines, canines being
trained in order to be able to detect fentanyl because it is so
deadly.
And we work very closely with CBP both in terms of
intelligence and in terms of policy to address those gaps to
better detect fentanyl not only at the Southwest border but in
our air freight locations in the United States whether it is
U.S. Postal Service or whether it is a commercial company. That
has been an area of ongoing discussion for us so that we can
better determine how much fentanyl is getting into the country
and to be able to detect it when it does arrive, and whether
that is detecting the chemical, the fentanyl itself, or the
dilutant with which it is mixed.
Senator Rubio. Gentlemen, I apologize. We have got to move
to the next panel because in about 45 minutes, I have to
preside over the floor and I turn into a pumpkin here. Not
literally. [Laughter.]
Senator Markey. If I may just conclude. I would just
strongly recommend to the administration that when the
President meets with the president of Canada and Mexico, that
he raises fentanyl to the highest level with them and lets them
know that that is a threat to our country. And the same thing
is true in any communications with the Chinese Government that
it has to be at the highest level.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Senator Rubio. Thank you, Senator Markey. This is an
important issue in the Northeast and for the country.
And I thank you both.
We are going to welcome our next panel.
As we will say at the end of the hearing, we keep the
record open for a few days. If you receive any questions in
writing, if you would respond as quickly as possible so we can
close the record. We thank you both for being here.
So as they are getting seated and situated, I am going to,
once again, reintroduce the members of our second panel. The
Honorable Teresa Jacobs is the Mayor of Orange County, Florida,
which we hope, if it has not yet been finalized, will be the
site of the Pro Bowl in 2017. Right?
Ms. Jacobs. Yes, it is.
Senator Rubio. Maybe you can give us an update on that too.
We are excited about it.
And, of course, Mr. Steven Dudley, who is the Co-Director
of InSight Crime.
Mayor, if you are ready--your testimony has been submitted
in writing, and we look forward to hearing you as well. Thank
you for being here.
STATEMENT OF HON. TERESA JACOBS,
MAYOR OF ORANGE COUNTY, FLORIDA
Ms. Jacobs. Thank you, Chairman Rubio. And thank you for
calling this very important hearing and allowing me to share a
local perspective. The conversation this morning has certainly
been informative for me, as I am sure it has been for everyone
here.
First, a little background on Orange County, nothing that
you do not know, but for the record. Orange County is home to
the City of Orlando and 12 other municipalities. We have a
strong economy and an exceptional quality of life. We have a
population of 1.2 million people that call Orlando home, but we
also have 66 million visitors on an annual basis and we
continue to shatter national records for tourism. That is the
good news.
The bad news and the very sad news is that we, like too
many other communities across this country, have seen an
alarming increase in the number of heroin overdoses and related
deaths. I say heroin. When I say heroin, I mean opioids,
opiates, I mean fentanyl, all of them combined. Last year, we
lost 85 lives to heroin. We lost 62 lives to fentanyl.
We have heard this morning testimony about the increase in
deaths related to opioids and opiates of anywhere from 200 to
400 percent since 2007. In Orange County, we have had a
staggering 600 percent increase since 2011 alone, and already
this year we have had 90 reported opioid overdoses, about 1 in
10 resulting in death.
Florida's fight against this current wave of opioid
addiction began about 5 years ago. You may recall that in 2010,
Florida was known as the ``pill mill capital'' of the country.
Florida practitioners were prescribing oxycodone at levels that
exceeded all the other States in our Nation combined. At a
State and local level, we responded by outlawing unauthorized
pain clinics. Yet, today the battlefront has moved. Today we
fight heroin. Today we fight fentanyl.
Given the dramatic rise in the flow of heroin and fentanyl
into our community, one can only surmise that drug cartels
perceived us as a ripe marketplace. Unfortunately, it is nearly
impossible to accurately assess the size of the heroin threat
in Florida and across States in our Nation. But there are a few
things that we do know.
In Orange County, we know that last year approximately
2,000 heroin users moved through our county jail alone, and on
any given day, we treat roughly 200 heroin addicts in our jail.
We know that in 2015 our county jail housed 100 expectant
mothers who were addicted, whose babies will most certainly be
born tragically addicted to heroin. We know that over 60
percent of overdose patients are uninsured, and yet we have
only one inpatient facility with 26 detox beds available to the
uninsured for all four counties in our region, with a combined
population of 2.5 million people. Simply put, we know that our
county jail has become the treatment center of last resort for
far too many people who find themselves addicted to heroin,
fentanyl, and other opiates and opioids.
For the good of our citizens, we are fighting back, and
here is how. Last summer, we convened the Orange County Heroin
Task Force, chaired by myself and our sheriff. Our joint work
is having a positive impact, including the passage of the 2016
Florida legislature, which passed a measure allowing naloxone
sales without an individual prescription. And while there is no
single cure or solution, we know there are some universally
effective approaches, many of which have been discussed here
today. But I think at the heart of it is that we have to
recognize that we must address the demand side while we attack
the supply side, and an either/or policy simply will not work.
On the demand side, through our task force, we have joined
forces with our K through 12 public education system, our
universities, our faith-based communities, our medical
communities. Together we are launching a social media campaign
to educate the public on the risks of this highly addictive and
deadly drug. We are trying to convince our citizens and warn
them in advance that this is something that they want to avoid
at all costs.
We are also not only treating heroin addicts in our jail,
we are implementing a new medically assisted treatment program
using Vivitrol. And this is an option for all of our addicts
that are leaving our jail.
But we need the Federal Government's help to treat more
addicts. As I mentioned a few minutes ago, we are woefully
short on beds and other resources.
On the supply side, we are also doing our best to arrest
traffickers on our streets. But our local efforts, no matter
how highly leveraged and coordinated, are simply no match for
the drug cartels and organized traffickers coming across our
country's borders. And that is why we need your help to help
stop the influx of drugs across our borders.
To end the crisis, to save lives, to save communities, we
each have a role to play. Local governments have a crucial role
to play. The State government does and the Federal Government
does. But the efforts need to expand beyond government. We need
every citizen that is a mother or a father or a friend of an
addict--we need our entire communities engaged. We need
doctors. We need the clergy. We need counselors. We need
teachers. We need all of them to be informed. And that is why I
think that we also need a nationwide awareness campaign.
And we have talked briefly about fentanyl. It needs to
include the high risk of fentanyl and the low cost. Quite
frankly, today it is less expensive for many of our addicts to
get high on opioids than it is for them to go and get a Happy
Meal. That is a sad state of reality that has to be addressed.
Thank you again so much for this opportunity, Mr. Chairman.
Thank you for your and your committee's continued service and
leadership on this issue.
[Ms. Jacobs's prepared statement is located in the
Additional Material Submitted for the Record section at the end
of this transcript.]
Senator Rubio. Thank you, Mayor, and thank you for your
work on this. You have been involved in this for a while now
trying to deal with it back when the pill mill problem was
going on, and we will talk about that in the questioning
section.
Mr. Dudley, thank you for being here. We look forward to
your testimony.
STATEMENT OF STEVEN DUDLEY, CO-DIRECTOR,
INSIGHT CRIME, WASHINGTON, D.C.
Mr. Dudley. Thank you very much, Chairman Rubio.
As we know, as U.S. consumption of heroin has increased
significantly in the last few years, the U.S. portion of the
world heroin market is quite small by comparison in terms of
users but really outsized in terms of potential earnings. The
RAND Corporation estimated in 2014 that U.S. consumers spent as
much as $27 billion on heroin each year, an increase from $20
billion in the year 2000.
Mexican, Guatemalan, and Colombian criminal organizations
have reacted to these changes by producing more heroin.
As noted already in the earlier panel, Mexico accounts for
the bulk of the poppy production in the region.
Seizure data of heroin along the southwest border also
indicate that Mexican criminal groups are moving increasing
amounts of heroin into the U.S. market. Mexican criminal
organizations are also the key transporters of Colombian heroin
to the United States, and they manage and purchase the heroin
produced in Guatemala or buy the opium gum wholesale to process
it into heroin themselves in Mexico.
Inside the U.S., the trend appears to be the same. The DEA
says that Mexican groups are seeking an increasing amount of
the market share in the distribution business itself,
displacing other wholesalers.
In sum, the picture we have is one of an increasingly
lucrative, vertically integrated market with large Mexican
criminal organizations managing the product from the point of
production to the point of sale and seeking a greater market
share of these sales.
The reality of the supply chain, however, is much more
complex. While it helps us to use well-worn monikers when
talking about these organizations, the truth is that they are
not nearly as strong or monolithic as they once were. Names
such as the Tijuana Cartel, the Juarez Cartel, the Zetas, or La
Familia Michoacana may still evoke fear and sometimes awe, but
they are not organizations as much as brand names. In many
cases, the individual parts of the organization have as much
contact with the bosses as a local Coca-Cola bottling plant
manager might have with corporate headquarters.
Even the vaunted Sinaloa Cartel is more horizontally than
vertically integrated. Take the recent case of the Flores
brothers in Chicago. Before they were arrested, Pedro and
Margarito Flores were said to be Sinaloa Cartel distributors in
Chicago, one of the areas of greatest interest to this
subcommittee. And they were. But as Federal intercepts of their
conversations with cartel leaders show, the two brothers
negotiated independently with each of the top two members of
the Sinaloa criminal organization, obtaining different prices
for the product that they were selling. Even after a war
started between the Sinaloa Cartel and a rival group called the
Beltran Leyva Organization, the Flores brothers continued to
purchase drugs from portions of the Beltran Leyva organization
and the Sinaloa Cartel.
The Flores case cuts at two different myths about the
Sinaloa Cartel: number one, that this is one single
organization; and number two, that it is tightly controlled by
a single leader or a single group of leaders. The point is that
as shipments get further and further from Mexico's wholesale
points, the loyalties become more disperse and in some cases
completely disappear. This is especially true in the U.S.
market where violence is not a viable long-term option to
ensure loyalty, win market share, or become a monopoly.
The effectiveness of U.S. law enforcement has made violence
terrible for business and made the distribution chain a more
democratic, capitalist affair. This is evident in other ways as
well. While the amount of seizures indicates that there is more
heroin available in the United States, it is still moved in
very small quantities. The median seizure for the Los Angeles
Field Division of the DEA in 2014, for example, was a single
kilogram. In Denver, a 10- to 12-pound shipment is considered
large.
The case of the Laredo brothers, recently indicted in the
Eastern District of Pennsylvania, is indicative of these
trends. The Laredo brothers are charged with moving 1 ton of
heroin over a 6-year period. This is about 14 kilos per month.
The organization was so subtle and, as one Mexican analyst put
it, ``mom-and-pop,'' the Mexican authorities were not even
aware of the group.
This brings us to Mexico. The horizontal nature of the
distribution chain makes it a difficult law enforcement problem
in Mexico as well. As noted, the once monolithic criminal
organizations are shells of what they once were. This is in
part due to infighting of the type mentioned earlier but also
Mexican law enforcement efforts. Many of the fragmented pieces
have formed their own criminal organizations and brand names.
The upshot is that the chain of production in Mexico is
broken into numerous pieces, including small and large
producers of opium poppy plants, the opium gum producers, and
processors, the wholesale purchasers, and the transporters.
Production, transport, and distribution may all be different
organizations. The Laredo brothers, for example, were
purchasing opium gum from an independent broker, then
processing it themselves, and distributing it in those small
quantities in the U.S. for years without running into trouble
with the large, supposedly all-controlling Sinaloa Cartel.
To be sure, violence is still a viable option in Mexico, so
the pendulum may swing back towards more monolithic criminal
organizations. But for the moment, the reality is that there
are literally dozens of small criminal organizations involved
in this trade from the point of production to the point of
sale.
In sum, while the level of control that the Mexican
production and transport groups exert over the supply chain is
clear, we are not talking about one or two criminal groups, but
dozens of interlocking organizations whose alliances are
constantly shifting. The heroin supply chain appears to be a
largely horizontal, diversified operation with multiple actors,
and one that is obedient to market forces rather than one or
two single vertically integrated distributors.
The result is that law enforcement efforts are largely
muted. Whether you debilitate the Sinaloa Cartel or the Laredo
brothers, you are hindering a small part of the overall
production and distribution chain. Even if you did slow the
heroin from Mexico, you would face an insurmountable task:
stopping the flow from other countries, which would undoubtedly
fill the void and account for the bulk of worldwide production
anyway. Canada already gets up to 90 percent of its heroin from
Afghanistan. And the United States once got all of its heroin
from the Asian markets that supply the rest of the world.
Thank you for your time and attention. I look forward to
your questions.
[Mr. Dudley's prepared statement is located in the
Additional Material Submitted for the Record section at the end
of this transcript.]
Senator Rubio. Thank you both for being here.
I want to begin with one of the questions I alluded during
the testimony, and that is--I cannot prove it. I guess it is
anecdotal. We do not have a number behind this. But the notion
that these criminal groups are specifically targeting people
recovering. In essence, they basically station themselves
outside of a rehabilitation outpatient center, even an
inpatient center, knowing that these people are vulnerable and
enticing them to fall back into addiction.
Mayor, have you seen evidence of this? Mr. Dudley, have you
heard about this as a recurring issue, a specific practice at
the local level of targeting people in recovery for sales?
Ms. Jacobs. Senator, I have not seen evidence of targeting
our treatment facilities.
I will say that it certainly appears on the surface that
there has been a targeting effort towards which communities to
infiltrate with heroin, and certainly I look to the increase in
heroin coming into our communities, the increase of fentanyl at
the same time that we were restricting access to prescription
drugs as suspecting that there is a strong correlation between
those two and a causation between those as well. But I do not
have direct evidence of it. It just seems hard to imagine that
there would not be a direct relationship between them.
Mr. Dudley. Thank you, Senator.
I also do not have direct evidence of this activity on a
local level.
I will say in Mexico that criminal groups have targeted
recovery facilities, but more as recruitment centers, not
necessarily----
Senator Rubio. Recruitment centers for?
Mr. Dudley. Recruitment centers for them, to basically
build out their own criminal operations.
Senator Rubio. You mean for like dealers?
Mr. Dudley. Not for dealers. Just for membership. So people
who would participate in the criminal organization. So that has
certainly happened especially with regard to La Familia
Michoacana, a very famous group there.
The upshot of this is to say whether or not they are
targeting to pushing drugs in certain areas I am not sure is as
relevant as this sort of whole picture, which is what the Mayor
alluded to, which is this idea that this is largely driven from
people who use pharmaceutical drugs, and those people you can
find all over. And that accounts also for the sort of dispersed
nature of this epidemic as opposed to sort of the 1970s where
you had it very concentrated in urban areas. Now we have it
spread out throughout many different parts of the United
States.
Senator Rubio. So I want to share with you an anecdote.
This weekend, I have a personal friend who is a police officer
in Miami Dade County, and he recounted a story that he pulled
up to a car that was kind of pulled over on the side of the
road. And there was a woman in the driver's seat. She was kind
of slumped over, and it caught his curiosity. So he pulled over
and knocked on the window. This was a nice car, by the way.
Obviously, this is a person of financial means. Knocks on the
window and the person immediately pops to attention. And he can
see that in her arm there was a needle. She was basically
shooting up on the side of the road in a luxury vehicle. Knocks
on the window. She rolls down the window. They begin to
interact. Obviously, he had a decision to make about how to
treat her. This is someone who said 10 years ago he would have
arrested her and taken her in as a criminal using drugs in the
street.
Today his perception has changed because he has had several
interactions, including this interaction with a person who, by
the way, is a member of the Florida Bar, is a successful,
functional attorney whose husband apparently also has a
problem. The fundamental challenge he faces: he does not want
to take her to jail. He does not view her as a criminal. He
views her as someone who has a disease and is in need of
treatment to overcome it.
And by the way, her gateway into heroin was the use of a
pharmaceutical pain killer for a surgical procedure 6 or 7
years ago, which she lost access to the medicine, and this is
what has happened.
And so the concern that I have is twofold, and perhaps you
can both opine on this.
Number one, if today you are dependent upon an opiate
substance, irrespective of how you got there, but let us say in
the case of this person because of the use of a pharmaceutical
that led to this point, there is still an extraordinary stigma
associated with it as if you are a bad person who is doing a
really bad thing and needs to be punished for it.
And second, even if that stigma were to change so that we
can get more people into treatment and accepting the fact that
I am physically dependent on this substance, in many
communities there is nowhere to take them. The only place you
can take them potentially is to a jail where you hope their
withdrawals are managed but may not be. And in essence, there
is nowhere for them to go. We have many places. We just do not
have the capacity to meet that reality.
Which leads to the third problem, and that is the number of
people who end up in a jail cell for 15 days, go through
withdrawal, do not realize they have lost their tolerance, even
in that short period of time, and when they fall off the
proverbial wagon, they go back to using the levels they were
using before they went through withdrawal and it kills them
because they lost their tolerance for an opiate.
So given that perspective, I am sure there are hundreds, if
not thousand of cases like that. What are the impediments to
getting someone who faces this now who--I do not think so, but
could be watching C-SPAN at this very moment. Not many people
watch C-SPAN--but are watching this or are hearing us talk
about this. What is out there today or what is missing for
someone who needs this treatment and just does not know what to
do about it next? Because especially for the uninsured, there
are not very many options from my understanding.
Ms. Jacobs. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I think that is a key
part of addressing the demand side. Part of it is to educate
people and help them make the right choices to avoid overuse of
prescription drugs, but the other part is how do we provide the
resources to treat people that are addicted. And the treatment
options are very limited. For the uninsured, as I pointed out,
26 beds for 2.4 million people. Our jail alone, one out of four
jails in the region, we have on average 200 people that we are
treating for withdrawal symptoms and offering them a treatment
program when they leave. We need more treatment facilities.
When you ask me the question are traffickers, are dealers
preying on people coming out of treatment centers, the reality
is we do not have enough treatment centers to prey on.
Senator Rubio. You said in your testimony--and I do not
want to interrupt, but you said in your testimony you believe
that Florida was specifically targeted because they knew we had
the pill mill problem, and once that was cut off, these folks
were going to need----
Ms. Jacobs. Exactly. That is what I believe. I do not have
empirical evidence. What I have is the evidence of the increase
in the flow of heroin and the increases in deaths related to
heroin in correlation to our cutting off the pill mills.
Let me also say that while we were dispensing more
oxycodone than the rest of the country combined out of Florida,
most of that was leaving our State. And most of these pill
mills--you could drive up and you could look in the parking
lots. The parking lot would be full and only a small percentage
of those were local license plates. So the cartels may have
misjudged the appetite, but they, no question, have flooded us
with very, very cheap drugs.
And the number of youth that I have seen that are
struggling with addiction and have turned the corner and have
had the good fortune and the money to find treatment, the
insured portion of that population, to see that there actually
is life after heroin addiction is very encouraging. But what is
very discouraging is that most people that are addicts have no
idea there is life, and most people that are addicts have no
opportunity to get to those treatment centers.
Senator Rubio. Just to fill in the gaps for those who may
not be fully aware of the Florida pill mill problem, we had
these facilities. You just basically pulled up and said my neck
hurts or my back hurts, and by routine, they would give you a
package of prescriptions. It was not just, by the way, oxy.
They also put some other stuff in there. And people knew this,
and you would have busloads of people actually come in
sometimes. It was a huge problem. The Florida legislature
closed that loophole that was allowing this to happen. So just
to be fair, we are not talking about the oxy prescriptions
being driven by a doctor at his or her office. It was these
specific facilities that drove it.
Did you want to add something on the treatment part of it?
Because I had one more question. I know that Senator Kaine----
Mr. Dudley. Just very quickly. I mean, this is obviously
framed as a law enforcement debate. And certainly I was asked
to talk about the criminal organizations.
But as you rightly pointed out, this is a public health
issue. At the heart of it, this is a pharmaceutically driven
epidemic, and it is a public health issue. And that is really
the difficulty in facing up to this is that it is not
necessarily strictly law enforcement. We are not talking about
throwing people into jails. We need to be talking about how to
get them better treatment.
Senator Rubio. And my sense on the human side of it is I do
not believe anyone wakes up in the morning and says today is
the day I become a heroin addict or an opiate addict. It is not
something somebody wants to happen. You just see growing
evidence. People do not realize the power of this. There is no
responsible way to use this, and its impact on everybody is a
little different. We know some people are more sensitive or
susceptible to addiction than others, but it basically
restructures the brain's chemistry in a way a disease would and
it has to be treated as that.
I look at these statistics, for example, in Florida as just
an example. Orlando had 83 heroin deaths in 2014. Other
communities have large numbers with West Palm Beach at 51,
Miami at 60, Sarasota at 55. But that number pops out at you as
a place that has been specifically targeted.
And then you see the rise in deaths and kind of the spike
we have seen across the country in heroin and opiate deaths
where the takeoff point is the introduction of fentanyl which,
as we have already seen from testimony today, is an incredibly
powerful and lethal substance, which in fact from my
understanding is not prescribed outside of a hospital setting
to begin with on the pharmaceutical side and is now being laced
into----
I want to go to Senator Kaine. So I wanted to leave with
this thought. I read the other day a report where someone who
was a former--he is now a recovering addict--was asked about
this and said, you know, when you hear that someone has died
from an overdose that was sold by a particular dealer, it makes
you want to buy from that particular dealer because you know
what they are selling is the strong stuff. Now, maybe that is
just one interview, one line somebody said. But it just kind of
tells you the point we have reached here where it is a very
difficult and debilitating condition that we have to try to
understand here. And I think one of the keys is to remove the
stigma associated with it.
And I think many of us would be very surprised at the
number of people we interact with on a daily basis that at some
level have a dependence problem, maybe not through street
heroin, but of some sort as a result of what we have seen
happen in this country. And hopefully we can make advances in
pharmaceuticals so that we can draw the line and we will be
able to treat pain effectively in this country without putting
people at risk.
Senator Kaine?
Senator Kaine. Thank you, Mr. Chair.
And thanks to each of you. I am sorry I missed your opening
testimony, although I read your written testimony.
And, Mayor, I will start with you. I was a mayor too in
Richmond. And it was only when I was mayor that I really fully
grasped the depths of the demand side of this challenge. You
know, you can arrest a dealer and arrest another dealer and
arrest another dealer, but if the demand for drugs is so
potent, if it has its hooks in people so deeply, the next
dealer will appear tomorrow.
We had a really tough problem in Richmond, and a lot of
drug-related homicides were taking place in this little
neighborhood near where the church that I go to is. And the
number of stories that would appear on the front page of the
paper about somebody from the suburbs coming in to buy drugs
and getting shot at the corner of 2nd and Maryland or wherever,
and you would think about five of those stories, people would
quit driving in to buy drugs there. But, no, they would keep
driving in to buy drugs.
And that just was evidence of how powerful addiction is,
that you would have all this objective evidence that, wow, this
is really going to be dangerous for me to go, but much less
that the drugs could be dangerous, I could get shot, but the
need is so intense that I am still going to go. And it sounds
like you have seen that in your community. I was a mayor 20
years ago. The drugs were different. But it is the same thing
of this addiction. And that is why the treatment issues are so
important.
And the other thing we used to hear anecdotally--I am not
an expert in this field, but when somebody who is under the
grip of an addiction says I want treatment, that is a window
that opens where the treatment, if it is not there, the window
can close. And in a month from now when the bed opens up, the
individual may be past the point of wanting treatment, may have
ODed or may have lapsed back into behaviors not desiring
treatment. So I do appreciate what the chair was saying and you
were saying too about the need for treatment.
I am curious if you can talk about as a mayor the way to
solve some of these challenges is definitely through how the
partnership, State, Federal--talk a little bit about what you
have done in your county on the partnership side. Do you have
the right stakeholders around the table? Are there things we
can do from a Federal level to ensure that if we are issuing
funds, that we do it in a way that requires regional
cooperation or multi-level stakeholder cooperation?
Ms. Jacobs. Thank you, Senator. In Orlando, one of the
things that I think we have done very effectively is regional
cooperation and collaboration. I think that that is crucial on
tackling any large issue such as this. And so one of the
reasons that we pulled together the task force that we did is
we brought in so many different disciplines to make sure that
we could attack this problem from all angles.
It is so important. We have limited resources at all
government levels, and it always seems like the demand for
resources outpaces supply. So it is important that programs are
structured in a way that the funding is put to its best use.
And I do think that collaborative effort is important. We
have a Metropolitan Bureau of Investigation that pulls together
our FDLE, FDA, our local law enforcement, our police officers,
our sheriff, our State attorney's office. That has been very
effective for us on the enforcement side of this.
In terms of your comments about that window of opportunity
for addicts, I cannot understand it either because I have never
experienced a feeling of needing something so badly that I am
willing to risk my life to have it. But I do understand that is
the reality. I know enough people. Once we formed the task
force, enough people came forward, literally walked up to me on
the street. You know what it is like being a local mayor.
People recognize you. They come up and they pour their heart
and soul out to you. And it is a blessing to be at that level
where you can really heard firsthand. And I have seen young
people that you would never in your wildest imagination have
thought were heroin addicts tell me their stories.
And what I also saw--I think I mentioned before you walked
in here--was I also saw the other side. I saw that they came
out the other side of heroin addiction, and they are living
full lives and they are getting college degrees and they are
going to be productive members of society.
And I think that most heroin addicts do not believe that is
a possibility, and if they have that moment, if it is 15
minutes, if it is 2 hours, if it is 2 days, where they say,
gosh, I want to kick this, reality is they are not going to be
waiting for 2 weeks or a month. They are going to be waiting a
lot longer in most of our communities to get into a treatment
facility unless they have got a substantial amount of money.
And that is a huge problem.
And as I said in my testimony, the best option is our
county jail right now, and that is a lousy option. Not to say
we have a bad jail. We do our best. But having a record does
not help the situation.
So we really need to have options available. We need to
have education. We need to have hope. We need to have whole
communities that are engaged. And as you point out, it is
destroying more than lives. It is destroying entire
communities.
Thank you, sir.
Senator Kaine. We had, Mr. Chair, a chart recently placed
before us at another hearing about opioid-based ODs per capita,
the 50 States arrayed. It was unlike any chart I have ever seen
ever. If you look at a chart that is usually about some kind of
problem or crime or social breakdown, high income States will
be at one part of the chart and low income States will be at
the other part of the chart. If you looked at the top 10 most
affected States, they included some of the poorest States in
the country and some of the richest States in the country. And
if you looked at the bottom 10 affected States, they included
some of the poorest States in the country and some of the
richest States in the country. This is really unlike any sort
of similar epidemic or law enforcement problem I have ever seen
in the traditional demographic data, not at all a predictor. It
is rural over the suburban. It is all regions.
I went to a drug court graduation. Kind of the founding
drug court in Virginia is in the Roanoke area, and the judge
who founded it, who was this super, farsighted thinker about
the need for drug courts, had a child who many years later was
killed in a drug-related incident. And after I spoke at the
graduation, one of the probation officers who helps the court
run and has done so as a spectacular advocate for many years
came up to me and said this is my second drug court graduation
this week. I said, did you have another class? He said no. I
went to my son's graduation in a community about 2 hours from
here.
This affects every level, and that is why we are now
spending the time that we are. But we have not spent time in
this committee on it, and it is really important that we do so
because this is not--just like it does not have demographic
borders, this is not a problem that even has national borders.
And we have got to grab a hold of some of the dimensions,
Mexico, China, the other nations that are experiencing this,
and build those partnerships not even in a metropolitan region,
but we have got to build law enforcement and other partnerships
internationally.
Thank you for being here, for your testimony.
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Senator Rubio. Thank you, Senator.
And I just wanted to ask you, Mr. Dudley, about these
transnational groups that are targeting us. I think in your
testimony you talked about this. So I just want to reiterate
it. Whether it is fentanyl being produced synthetically or
poppy-based opiates being grown in the Western Hemisphere, in
particular in Mexico, they are coming here. This is the almost
exclusive market for these trafficking networks. Is that
correct?
Mr. Dudley. That is correct, absolutely. There is a small
market, local market that they can satisfy, but it is minimal.
Senator Rubio. Because you would think--so logically they
are crossing the border, you would think the easiest from a
logistical point of view is for them to flood it into Texas or
flood it into California or into a border State. But you are
hearing where the outbreaks are. And this is a national
problem. There is no community in the country that does face it
to some level, but you see these outbreaks in the Northeast in
New Hampshire and Massachusetts and in places like central
Florida. So it is not even I-10 alone where you would think
they would come across.
What is your view of how is it winding up in these pockets?
What are the distinguishing characteristics? You heard the
previous testimony of the government witnesses. What in your
view are the distinguishing characteristics that turn a
community into a high-propensity, high-risk area?
Mr. Dudley. You know, it is such a new phenomenon because
it is so disperse. But the fact that it is so disperse is
really what leads to the criminal organizations being so
disperse. And the notion that we have one single, all-
encompassing enemy that is called the Sinaloa Cartel and once
we incarcerate Chapo Guzman, then everything will be resolved
is just simply not correct just because of the disperse nature
of the market and the way in which these criminal organizations
will satisfy that market.
It is an odd thing because in a way there are certain
elements of this epidemic that we are victims of our own
success. The fact that you would create ways so you cannot
tamper with OxyContin, for example, you cannot store it
anymore, the way in which it is distributed, well, then that
makes it less available to people so then they start to search
out other things.
The way in which the Mexican Government, in conjunction
with the United States Government, has captured or killed
several of the larger leaders of the larger criminal
organizations has led to a fragmentation of these groups. So
you have groups like you referred to Guerrero earlier. There is
a Guerrero Unidos group, which was the group responsible for
the massacre or supposed massacre of those 43 students that
disappeared, 43 students currently still. You know, this is a
group that was an offshoot of a larger group, the Beltran Leyva
organization, and there are several like them.
So in order to wrap your hands around this as a law
enforcement issue, it is incredibly difficult because the
terrain is so much more horizontal than vertical. And even when
you take out the larger leaders, what you are left with is a
fragmented criminal landscape, and a landscape that does not
necessarily--as in the cocaine market, they might depend on
getting product from another country. In fact, they do from the
Andes region. They need to get their product from other
criminal organizations. But they do not have that dependency
when it comes to the poppy production which is local and the
heroin production which is local. So they can produce all of
this themselves, which makes it much more difficult to wrap
your hands around as well.
Senator Rubio. Well, do you have anything further Senator?
I want to thank both of you for being here, for sitting
through the previous testimony. I hope that was insightful as
you go back and continue your work. And I want to thank you for
coming here today and being a part of this hearing as well.
This is an important issue. There has been a lot of debate
about what is being done domestically on this issue. I am glad
we touched on it.
I think this has to be dealt with. There is not like one
law we can pass that deals with this. It has to be dealt with
comprehensively whether it is on the treatment side for people
to recover, on the prevention side, but also by targeting these
organizations who are in the business of murder basically,
which is what this ultimately is, and not just murdering each
other for territory, but the direct murder of Americans by
targeting us with the distribution of these products in our
country.
So I want to thank all of you for being here.
I also want to ask consent to enter a statement for the
record of Jack Riley, who is the Acting Deputy Administrator of
the Drug Enforcement Administration. And without objection, I
show that ordered.
[Mr. Riley's statement is located in the Additional
Material Submitted for the Record section at the end of this
transcript.]
Senator Rubio. The record for this hearing is going to
remain open until the close of business on Tuesday, May 31st.
You might receive some questions in writing. If possible, I
would ask you to respond just so we can close the record on
this.
And with that I thank you both for being here, and this
meeting is adjourned.
[Whereupon, at 10:55 a.m., the hearing was adjourned.]
----------
Additional Material Submitted for the Record
Additional Questions Submitted for the
Record by Members of the Committee
responses to questions submitted to assistant
secretary daniel foote by senator marco rubio
Question 1. Mexico has been a very good partner but systemic
corruption and other issues, including issues of trust, persist. What
is the U.S. government's assessment of Mexico's commitment to truly
stopping the Sinaloa cartel, in particular, and the flow of illicit
narcotics to the U.S.?
Answer. Our partnership with the Government of Mexico on
counternarcotics has led to enhanced collaboration on this important
issue. The State Department's Bureau of International Narcotics and Law
Enforcement Affairs (INL), under the Merida Initiative, is working with
the Government of Mexico to help build the capacity of Mexico's law
enforcement and rule of law institutions to disrupt drug trafficking
organizations (DTOs) and to stop the flow of drugs from Mexico to the
United States, including augmenting their ability to coordinate with
U.S. law enforcement agencies. Through Merida, we have provided the
Mexican government with the communications equipment and technical
assistance to enable the Department of Homeland Security's Customs and
Border Protection (CBP) and the Mexican Federal Police to conduct
coordinated patrols of our shared border. Merida-supported
implementation of the Cross Border Secure Communications Network and
Cross Border Coordination Initiative provides direct communication
between CBP Sector Offices and Mexico's Federal Police and State
Command and Control Centers at ten locations along our shared border.
INL also is working in partnership with CBP to provide training to
Mexican Federal Police officers assigned to the northern border region.
The United States and Mexico are working to increase communication
and information sharing on combating the production and trafficking of
heroin and methamphetamine. In addition to discussions at the high
level Security Cooperation Group meetings, in the last year INL
supported U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration-led bimonthly
counternarcotics meetings, which bring together experts from both
countries to share information and strategies. These efforts to
increase cooperation are paying off. Federal and state police in one of
Mexico's northern border states recently arrested two suspects and
seized 630 kilograms of methamphetamine, 80 kilograms of heroin, 48
kilograms of cocaine, one semi-automatic weapon, and two AK-47 assault
rifles after acting on real-time intelligence provided by U.S. law
enforcement. The federal police unit involved in the operation
participates in the bimonthly counternarcotics meetings.
In recent years, the Government of Mexico has taken active steps to
reduce corruption and other illegal activities in police forces and
government institutions by vetting public officials through its Control
de Confianza system. INL seeks to strengthen and accredit Mexican
vetting institutions by establishing and deploying uniform standards
for polygraph administration, background (socio-economic)
investigations, and psychological assessments.
Question 2. Mexico has adopted a policy of high profile arrest of
drug lords. While it is positive that these organizations are being
decapitated, has the drug trade run by the cartels been impacted by
these arrests in the way envisioned?
Answer. Capturing and successfully prosecuting high profile
traffickers who have committed serious crimes and have operated with
relative impunity is essential to maintaining the rule of law. High
profile drug lords are responsible for the deaths of tens of thousands,
and their sophisticated organizations create violence, generate illegal
earnings and influence, and ultimately harm U.S. citizens and interests
through cross-border flows of illicit drugs, goods, and people. We
refer you to the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration for additional
details on the potential impact on the drug trade resulting from
Mexico's high profile arrests.
Recognizing, however, that targeting high profile traffickers alone
will not solve Mexico's security dilemma, the State Department's Bureau
of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs (INL) supports
Mexico's security and law enforcement efforts more broadly. Combating
transnational criminal organizations requires a comprehensive approach
that disrupts illicit financial and trafficking networks, combats
government corruption, strengthens the rule of law, bolsters judicial
systems, and enhances transparency. Under the Merida Initiative, INL
focuses not only on disrupting organized criminal groups, but on
institutionalizing rule of law, strengthening border security, and
building strong and resilient communities in Mexico. INL's efforts to
enhance state-level law enforcement professionalization, support
Mexico's efforts along its northern and southern borders, and assist
Mexico's transition to an accusatory justice system all augment the
capacity of Mexico to effectively provide security, disrupt organized
crime, and manage its borders.
Question 3. Since the arrest of Joaquin ``El Chapo'' Guzman, has
there been a noticeable drop in narcotics trafficked by his
organization? Specifically heroin?
Answer. At this time, the effect of El Chapo's arrest on the amount
of narcotics trafficked by the Sinaloa Cartel is unclear. We refer you
to the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration for additional information
on shifts in the trafficking of narcotics, including heroin.
The United States is fully committed to working with Mexico to
combat the production and trafficking of illicit drugs. Over the past
year, our bilateral dialogue, specifically on heroin, has reached an
unprecedented level of openness and coordination and we are continuing
to work closely with Mexico to increase these efforts.
Question 4. What successes can the U.S. government point to in
cooperation with the Mexican government that have yielded concrete
results?
Answer. For the past eight years under the Merida Initiative, the
U.S. government has worked closely with the Government of Mexico to
advance our shared security objectives and these efforts are
demonstrating results, including:
Criminal Intelligence and Analysis Program: To support the
Government of Mexico in improving criminal investigations to hold drug
traffickers and other criminals accountable and boost public confidence
in the rule of law, INL is supporting the professionalization of
criminal intelligence analysts throughout Mexico. Initial programming
has focused on equipping and training analytic units along the Mexico-
U.S. border to serve as the primary state-level liaison with U.S. law
enforcement entities to develop intelligence related to drug
cultivation and trafficking, extortions, kidnappings, and homicides.
INL has trained and equipped five analytic units that have
contributed to 1,900 investigations/citizen complaints resulting in
more than 200 arrests as of the end of 2015. The units in the cities of
Chihuahua and Ciudad Juarez provided intelligence that led to the
arrest of a principal leader of the Sinaloa cartel. The Chihuahua unit
also assisted in the identification and apprehension of two suspects
responsible for an attack on a Ciudad Juarez television station, in
addition to six kidnappings and five homicides. This unit also aided
the apprehension of suspects responsible for the murder of the sons of
two prominent Mexican journalists. The Sonora unit developed tactical
intelligence, which led to the arrest of four suspects, identified as
former Mexican military and enforcers for the Sinaloa Cartel. It also
worked with ICE/HSI on an investigation that resulted in the seizure of
five weapons, one grenade, three vehicles, and 450 kilograms of
marijuana in Nogales, Sonora in 2015.
Anti-Money Laundering: To assist Mexico in disrupting transnational
criminal organizations (TCOs), INL provided over $16 million in
hardware, software, servers, and technical assistance to Mexico's
Financial Intelligence Unit (UIF), a division of Mexico's Secretariat
of Public Finance and Credit responsible for receiving, analyzing, and
disseminating information on suspicious financial transactions. This
assistance enhanced the Government of Mexico's ability to combat
financial crimes and money laundering activity, resulting in the
following successes:
In 2014 alone, the UIF froze 761 suspicious accounts.
Between March 2014 and May 2015, the UIF froze approximately $41
million in suspicious assets.
The UIF reports it collected as much data in 2015 as in the
previous six years combined due to new IT platforms and
additional data storage capacity principally provided by INL.
Corrections: Since 2008, the Department of State's Bureau of
International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs (INL) and the
Government of Mexico have partnered to create a more effective,
transparent, and humane prison system, including through accreditation
by the American Correctional Association (ACA), which has helped to
reduce escapism and mitigate the ability of imprisoned cartel members
to fuel organized crime from behind bars. As of May 2016, a total of 30
Mexican correctional facilities have achieved ACA accreditation: six
federal prisons, 22 state prisons, one state central office, and the
federal training academy. INL plans to work toward having all federal
prisons and one quarter of state prisons ACA-accredited by 2021. In a
recent National Human Rights Commission (CNDH) evaluation of more than
150 federal and state prisons, ACA-accredited prisons received
significantly higher average scores than non-ACA-accredited facilities.
Of the top ten facilities, eight are either accredited or seeking
accreditation, and none of the ten lowest scoring facilities in the
CNDH evaluation are ACA-affiliated.
The state prison system in Chihuahua is an example of the program's
success. In 2010, 216 prisoners in Chihuahua died as a result
of prison violence, and the state reported more than 17
escapes. After achieving INL-sponsored ACA accreditation in
2013, there have been only three violent prison deaths, and no
escapes from any accredited facility.
Question 5. I believe we should continue to expand military to
military cooperation with the Mexican government as long as the
Mexicans welcome our contributions. Maritime cooperation between our
navies and coast guards seems like an underdeveloped area. Perhaps U.S.
Northern Command should look at a role for Mexico to play in NORAD. The
U.S. should also work to bring Canadian law enforcement into closer
cooperation with Mexican law enforcement to stem illicit trafficking.
What other opportunities exist where cooperation between the U.S. and
Mexican governments can be improved?
Answer. We have an excellent relationship with the Mexican
government and together we are continuously assessing our security
relationship and working on ways to improve and enhance our
cooperation.
The biannual ``Security Cooperation Group'' meeting, co-chaired by
the National Security Council and Mexico's Center for Investigation and
National Security (CISEN), serves as the primary forum for our senior
policy makers to work with their Mexican counterparts to devise
strategies to combat our shared security threats and identify and
reassess strategic priorities, such as continuing the fight against
organized crime, enhancing counternarcotics efforts, and jointly
managing our 2,000 mile shared border. There are also multiple venues
and working groups that facilitate operational and tactical security
cooperation, including through the 21st Century Border Management
Initiative, bilateral border violence prevention protocols, and other
coordination mechanisms.
Specific to our military relationship, U.S. Northern Command works
with Mexico on initiatives that not only assist in mitigating the
current Transnational Criminal Organization (TCO) threat, but also
focus on capacity building. They work with the Mexican Navy (SEMAR) and
Army (SEDENA) to build specific capabilities, enhance our bilateral and
regional engagement, and prioritize joint activities through programs
in aviation, communications, and civil-military operations. SEMAR's
participation in exercises, combined and multilateral, is increasing
and planning is underway for joint U.S.-Mexican exercises next year
that will increase interoperability with U.S. Naval Forces and bolster
regional security.
The North American Leaders' Summit, to be attended by President
Obama, Mexican President Pena Nieto, and Canadian Prime Minister
Trudeau, will take place in Ottawa on June 29. The discussion of the
effective exchange of information and coordination among law
enforcement authorities will remain essential. We will also discuss
continued coordination to pursue areas of cooperation to counter drug
trafficking, trafficking in persons, and other illicit trade.
Question 6. Please summarize any progress that has been made as a
result of the bilateral talks that have been occurring over the past
year on how the U.S. and Mexican government can address heroin
cultivation and production in Mexico.
Answer. Over the past year, our bilateral dialogue with the
Government of Mexico on heroin has reached an unprecedented level of
openness. This has led to enhanced U.S.-Mexico collaboration on this
critically important issue, including increased communication and
information sharing on heroin. In March 2016, Office of National Drug
Control Policy Director Michael Botticelli and the State Department's
Bureau of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs (INL)
Assistant Secretary William R. Brownfield participated in meetings
hosted by the Mexican Attorney General's Office with high-level
officials from each of the Mexican federal government agencies involved
in drug enforcement to discuss U.S.-Mexican collaboration on heroin and
potential new areas of assistance. INL continues to increase the
capacity of law enforcement and justice sector institutions to detect
heroin distribution networks and prosecute those involved. INL has
hosted seminars with several Mexican agencies to increase information
sharing on heroin, and has facilitated a study trip with Mexican
officials to Guatemala and Peru to examine poppy eradication best
practices. The United States has provided more than $130 million in
non-intrusive inspection equipment, maintenance, technical assistance,
and capacity building to enhance the capabilities of Mexican officials
at internal checkpoints and points of entry along Mexico's northern and
southern border. INL is also working with the U.S. Drug Enforcement
Administration (DEA) to provide training to augment Mexico's ability to
identify, investigate, and interdict clandestine heroin labs, and
better prepare Mexican officials to dismantle them.
This year, the Government of Mexico is expected to finalize its
National Drug Control Policy Plan, and to lay out protocols for poppy
eradication. Mexico is also working with the United Nations Office on
Drugs and Crime (UNODC) on a yield study that will enable more accurate
estimates of potential heroin production. Initial reports outlining
baseline poppy cultivation estimates will be completed this year. These
reports will provide a greater understanding of how Mexican eradication
and interdiction responsibilities will be organized going forward, and
will help shape the best areas for U.S. assistance. INL will continue
to work closely with Mexico to increase efforts to combat heroin.
Question 7. How would you assess the assertion made by a group of
experts from the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, that there
may have been another bus involved in the incident in which 43 students
disappeared in Guerrero, Mexico, that was packed with heroin bound for
the U.S.?
Answer. We strongly support the work of the Interdisciplinary Group
of Independent Experts affiliated with the Inter-American Commission on
Human Rights and commend the assistance they have provided to the
Government of Mexico with respect to the investigation of the September
2014 disappearance of 43 students in Iguala, Mexico. We have encouraged
Mexican authorities to incorporate the experts' findings into the
ongoing official investigation.
In the reports released in September 2015 and April 2016, the
experts noted the organized crime group alleged to be involved in the
attack on the students and their disappearance is connected to drug
trafficking to the United States and, specifically, to a case before a
federal court in Chicago. The experts hypothesized that the extreme
violence against the students and the alleged ``missing'' fifth bus
might be related to this drug trafficking--i.e., that unknown to the
students who seized several buses, one of those buses could have
contained drugs or drug money, which in turn led to the violent attacks
of September 26, 2014. The Department of State is not in a position to
evaluate the merits of that hypothesis.
__________
Witnesses Prepared Statements
prepared statement of daniel l. foote, deputy assistant secretary,
bureau of international narcotics and law enforcement affairs
Chairman Rubio, Senator Boxer, and distinguished Members of the
Subcommittee: thank you for the opportunity to appear before you to
discuss U.S. government efforts to combat the production and
trafficking of heroin and the violence and instability it brings to our
communities, our citizens, and the world in which we live.
The flow of illicit narcotics across our shared border with Mexico
threatens citizen security in both countries. Recognizing that we have
a shared responsibility to address common challenges, in 2007, the
United States forged a comprehensive security partnership with Mexico.
Through the Merida Initiative, we work in partnership with Mexico to
build the capacity of Mexican institutions to counter organized crime,
uphold the rule of law, and protect our shared border from the movement
of illicit drugs, money, and goods.
The need for effective collaboration is now more important than
ever. Heroin and fentanyl-laced heroin is a public health crisis in the
United States, and Mexican drug trafficking organizations are the
primary suppliers of heroin to the United States. We must aggressively
respond to this growing threat in concert with our broader work through
the Merida Initiative to counter all illicit drugs and to end the
impunity with which trafficking organizations are able to operate,
putting their leaders in jail, seizing their weapons, drugs, and money,
and dismantling their illicit businesses.
To date through the Merida Initiative, the United States government
has provided nearly $1.5 billion worth of capacity building assistance
to our Mexican partners. This includes training and equipment which
complements the significant resources the Government of Mexico has
dedicated to our shared security goals. Today there are more than $700
million in bilaterally agreed upon projects with the Pena Nieto
administration, which fully support the Merida Initiative's strategic
framework that underpins the basis of our security cooperation. Most of
these projects fall into three priority areas: professionalizing and
building the capacity of Mexican law enforcement agencies; supporting
the Government of Mexico's efforts to strengthen border management and
security; and helping advance reforms across Mexico's justice sector.
In partnership with the Department of Justice, INL is building the
skills of prosecutors, investigators, and forensic experts in Mexico
and preparing them for their responsibilities under the oral accusatory
system, the transition to which is well underway throughout Mexico.
This includes helping enhance the technical capacity of courtrooms
throughout the country to host oral trials. We are also assisting in
the training of the next generation of Mexican attorneys as they learn
crucial oral trial skills in Mexican law schools.
Through Merida, INL is enhancing federal, state, and municipal
policing capacity throughout Mexico. These programs provide a full
range of professionalization activities including: the development of
enforceable police standards; basic training and academy accreditation;
continuing and leadership education programs; law enforcement vetting
programs; and the development of effective internal affairs units. The
continued professionalization of Mexican law enforcement will result in
a greater observance of and accountability for civil and human rights,
increasing trust in these institutions by the people of Mexico, and
making them better partners for other law enforcement organizations
both within Mexico and with the United States. This is vital to any
effort to stem drug trafficking and reduce the capabilities and
influence of drug trafficking organizations.
Strengthening border security capacity on Mexico's borders is a
priority for both our nations. Our governments have committed to
further enhancing Mexico's ability to interdict illicit narcotics,
arms, and money. INL has provided more than $125 million in inspection
equipment and more than 340 canine teams deployed at ports of entry,
border crossings, and internal checkpoints throughout Mexico. In
Mexico's northern border region, INL has provided equipment and
technical assistance to improve communications between the Mexican
Federal Police and U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP). We are
working in conjunction with CBP to provide training to Mexico's Federal
Police who will be deployed to the northern border region, advancing
cooperation between our countries along our shared border.
Through Merida, we continue to make progress with Mexico in
targeting heroin production and trafficking. We work with the U.S. Drug
Enforcement Administration to provide training to augment Mexico's
ability to identify, investigate, and interdict clandestine heroin
labs, and better prepare Mexican authorities to dismantle them. We are
improving information sharing between our governments on heroin and
fentanyl, working together to better assess poppy cultivation and
heroin production in Mexico, and with our interagency partners,
continuing our high-level focus on exploring other avenues to enhance
our bilateral cooperation when it comes to heroin.
At the last high level Security Cooperation Group held in Mexico
City in October 2015, heroin was the group's highest priority. We
agreed to continue working in partnership on a bilateral approach for
combating the cultivation, production, and trafficking of heroin and to
determine how U.S. assistance can best support Mexico's efforts in this
area.
Building strong, effective justice sector institutions in Mexico
capable of confronting organized crime and the violence and corruption
for which it is responsible is a difficult, long-term challenge. Our
work across numerous institutions and sectors must be sustained, for it
is only with a concerted, committed effort that the capacity to deter
the cultivation, production, and trafficking of heroin and other
illicit drugs in Mexico will be strengthened. Past investments by the
American people in this partnership have produced results, and with
your continued support, our collaboration with Mexico on this important
work will continue.
__________
Prepared Statement of Kemp L. Chester, Associate Director for the
National Heroin Coordination Group, Office of National Drug Policy
Chairman Rubio, Ranking Member Boxer, and members of the
subcommittee, thank you for inviting me to discuss the public health
and public safety issues resulting from heroin use; the Government of
Mexico's efforts to reduce the availability of heroin in the United
States; and the U.S.-Mexico cooperation to address heroin issues in
both countries.
background
In 2014, more than 47,000 Americans, or approximately 129 people
each day, died from a drug overdose. Opioids--a category of drugs that
includes heroin and prescription pain medicines like oxycodone,
oxymorphone, hydrocodone, and fentanyl--are having a considerable
impact on public health and safety in communities across the United
States. Of the overdose deaths in 2014, 61 percent (28,647) involved an
opioid, 44 percent (20,808) involved prescription pain medicines, and
22 percent (10,574) involved heroin.\1\ The threat posed by heroin has
continued to grow dramatically over the past several years. Since 2007,
deaths involving heroin have risen 340 percent, from 2,402 in 2007 to
10,574 in 2014.\2\
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\1\ An opioid-related death may involve more than one type of
opioid.
\2\ Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, National Center for
Health Statistics. Multiple Cause of Death, 1999-2014 on CDC WONDER
Online Database, released 2015.
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There are several principal factors contributing to the current
nationwide heroin crisis: the increased availability of heroin in the
U.S. market,\3\ the availability of purer forms of heroin that allow
for non-intravenous use,\4\ its relatively low price, \5\ and a
relatively small percentage of non-medical users of opioid prescription
drugs transitioning to heroin.\6\ The purity of retail-level heroin has
increased since the 1990s while prices have remained low.\7\ Further
increases in purity since 2010 have enabled heroin use by a variety of
means including snorting or smoking which broadens the drug's appeal to
a large population that is disinclined to inject the drug
intravenously. Heroin's relatively low price makes it a viable
alternative to many prescription opioids which command higher prices on
the street.\8\ Heroin use has spread into suburban and rural
communities and is growing among most socioeconomic classes, age
groups, and races.\9\
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\3\ Drug Enforcement Administration, El Paso Intelligence Center,
National Seizure System, 2008-2014.
\4\ Drug Enforcement Administration. Strategic Intelligence
Section. 2015 National Heroin Threat Assessment. DEA-DCT-DIR-039-15.
\5\ Drug Enforcement Administration. System to Retrieve Information
from Drug Evidence (STRIDE), Price and Purity Data, 2015.
\6\ Muhuri PK, Gfroerer, JC and Davies, MC. (2013). Associations of
nonmedical pain reliever use and initiation of heroin use in the United
States. Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration.
\7\ Drug Enforcement Administration. System to Retrieve Information
from Drug Evidence (STRIDE), Price and Purity Data, 2015
\8\ Drug Enforcement Administration. Strategic Intelligence
Section. 2015 National Heroin Threat Assessment. DEA-DCT-DIR-039-15.
\9\ Cicero, T., Ellis, MS, Surratt, HL, Kurtz, SP. (2014). The
changing face of heroin in the United States: A retrospective analysis
of the past 50 years. JAMA Psychiatry, 71(1): 821-826.
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The Administration recognizes that the heroin threat is a global
issue; however, Mexico is currently the primary supplier of heroin to
the United States, with Mexican drug traffickers cultivating opium
poppy and producing heroin in Mexico, and smuggling the finished
product into the United States.\10\ Opium poppy cultivation in Mexico
has increased substantially in recent years, rising from 17,000
hectares in 2014, with an estimated potential pure heroin production of
42 metric tons, to 28,000 hectares in 2015 with a potential production
of 70 metric tons of pure heroin.\11\
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\10\ Drug Enforcement Administration. Strategic Intelligence
Section. 2015 National Heroin Threat Assessment. DEA-DCT-DIR-039-15.
\11\ U.S. Department of State, Bureau of International Narcotics
and Law Enforcement Affairs. International Narcotics Control Strategy
Report--2015 [INCSR] (March 2015) for data from 2013-2014 and
unpublished U.S. Government Estimates.
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The reemergence of illicit fentanyl, a powerful Schedule II
synthetic opioid more potent than morphine or heroin, exacerbates the
heroin crisis.\12\ Illicit fentanyl is sometimes mixed with powder
heroin to increase its effects or with diluents and sold as ``synthetic
heroin,'' with or without the buyers' knowledge.\13\ Increasingly,
illicit fentanyl is pressed into pill form and sold as counterfeit
prescription opioid pills. Illicit fentanyl comes from several sources.
The majority of the illicit fentanyl in the U.S. market is smuggled
into the country after being clandestinely produced in Mexico or
China.\14\
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\12\ Zuurmond WW, Meert TF, and Noorduin H. (2002). Partial versus
full agonists for opioid-mediated analgesia--focus on fentanyl and
buprenorphine. Acta Anaesthesiol Belg, 53(3):193-201.
\13\ Drug Enforcement Administration. Strategic Intelligence
Section. 2015 National Heroin Threat Assessment. DEA-DCT-DIR-039-15.
\14\ Drug Enforcement Administration. Strategic Intelligence
Section. 2015 National Heroin Threat Assessment. DEA-DCT-DIR-039-15.
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Illicit fentanyl is extremely dangerous and deadly. In 2014, there
were more than 5,544 drug overdose deaths involving synthetic narcotics
other than methadone, a category that includes fentanyl. This number
has more than doubled from two years earlier (2,628 in 2012).\15\
Moreover, overdose deaths involving opioids like illicit fentanyl are
likely undercounted. Of deaths where drug overdose is cited as the
underlying cause of death, approximately one-fifth of the death
certificates do not list the specific drug(s) involved in the fatal
overdose.\16\
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\15\ Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, National Center
for Health Statistics. Multiple Cause of Death 1999-2014 on CDC WONDER
Online Database, released 2015. Data are from the Multiple Cause of
Death Files, 1999-2014, as compiled from data provided by the 57 vital
statistics jurisdictions through the Vital Statistics Cooperative
Program.
\16\ Rudd, RA, Aleshire, N, Zibbell, JE, and Gladden, RM. Increases
in Drug and Opioid Overdose Deaths--2000-2014. Centers for Disease
Control and Prevention: Mortality and Morbidity Weekly Report. Jan. 1,
2016. 64(50);1378-82.
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There are several reasons why it is important that we address
concerns regarding heroin and illicit fentanyl in a single problem set.
First, traffickers who add illicit fentanyl as an adulterant to boost
the effect of their heroin, or mix it with diluents to sell as
synthetic heroin, likely utilize the same supply chains and
distribution mechanisms for both drugs. Moreover, both heroin and
fentanyl belong to the same class of opioid drugs that have similar
effects making their illicit user populations one and the same. Second,
both heroin and clandestinely-produced fentanyl can be manufactured by
the same drug trafficking organizations that can bring both drugs into
the country using the same trafficking routes. And finally, addressing
both illicit drugs together allows us to address the heroin crisis
while avoiding unintended uptick in illicit fentanyl use. If we move
too quickly in reducing the availability of heroin without
simultaneously addressing illicit fentanyl availability, it could
increase the price of heroin, and risk driving more people to use
illicit fentanyl-thereby creating the prospect of an additional and
potentially more deadly opioid drug threat.\17\ \18\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\17\ National Institute for Health Development, Infectious Diseases
and Drug Monitoring Centre. 2014 National Report to the EMCDDA by the
REITOX National Focal Point. Tallinn, Estonia.
\18\ European Monitoring Centre for Drugs and Drug Addiction.
Fentanyl in Europe EMCDDA Trendspotter Study: Report from an EMCDDA
expert meeting 9 to 10 October 2012. Lisbon, Portugal.
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The dramatic increase in the availability and use of heroin and
illicit fentanyl is a national security, law enforcement, and public
health issue, and it has become the highest priority illicit drug
threat to the Nation.\19\ Addressing this complex problem demands
significant effort, creativity, and interagency collaboration.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\19\ The White House, Strategy to Combat Transnational Organized
Crime, 25 July 2011.
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the federal response
The National Heroin Coordination Group. In November of 2015, the
National Security Council (NSC) Transborder Security and Western
Hemisphere Directorates Interagency Policy Committee (IPC) on Mexico
Security Priorities directed the formation of the National Heroin
Coordination Group (NHCG) within the Office of National Drug Control
Policy (ONDCP). The NHCG is the hub of a network of interagency
partners who leverage their home agency authorities and resources to
synchronize interagency activities against the heroin and illicit
fentanyl supply chains to the United States. I serve as the Director of
the NHCG, which ensures that Federal counterdrug efforts focused on the
heroin problem complement the NSC's ongoing work related to Mexico
security priorities, and that the NHCG connects the actions taken on
the front end of the supply chain with the effects on the domestic
market and user population.
Bi-lateral Engagement. U.S.-Mexico engagement regarding heroin has
been robust. In October 2015, ONDCP Director Michael Botticelli
participated in a U.S.-Mexico Security Cooperation Group dialogue that
included heroin as the first security cooperation agenda topic. The
importance of increased poppy eradication efforts by the Government of
Mexico, as well as drug interdiction, clandestine laboratory
destruction, and disruption of precursor chemical trafficking were all
highlighted as crucial issues to be addressed.
Director Botticelli and I traveled to Mexico in early March 2016
with Ambassador William Brownfield, Assistant Secretary of State for
International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs (INL), to engage on
heroin and illicit fentanyl issues specifically and to impress upon our
Mexican partners the urgency with which the United States is addressing
the heroin problem. We met with Mexican Attorney General Gomez and
senior members of her staff, as well as with senior officers from the
Mexican Army, the Mexican Navy, and the Secretariat of the Government.
Attorney General Gomez announced her role as the synchronizer of
Mexico's efforts to disrupt the production of heroin and illicit
fentanyl including poppy eradication and the identification and
neutralization of production laboratories.
Importantly, we agreed to conduct joint planning and to develop a
simple and focused national strategy to direct and concentrate Mexico's
efforts against heroin and illicit fentanyl. We expect this plan to
delineate responsibilities, identify gaps, and help synchronize heroin
and illicit fentanyl efforts across the Mexican government. This plan
will be beneficial for both countries and we look forward to
collaborating on its development. The country team at the U.S. Embassy
in Mexico City has led efforts to foster partnerships within the
Government of Mexico, and increased information sharing continues to
enhance this relationship. The United States continues to work with the
Government of Mexico on important efforts under the Merida Initiative,
a joint effort to fight transnational criminal organizations and reduce
associated violence. Building upon the Mexican Government's own
investment in equipment and border security infrastructure, the Merida
Initiative will continue to strengthen border security that facilitates
the flow of legitimate commerce and travel, while reducing the movement
of illicit narcotics, currency, weapons, explosives, black market
goods, and undocumented migrants.
U.S. Federal law enforcement agencies are aggressively addressing
the heroin and illicit fentanyl issue both here and abroad. The Drug
Enforcement Administration and other agencies have co-located Special
Agents with international partners in Mexico and throughout Latin
America to assist in criminal investigations targeting drug trafficking
organizations, and to help their international counterparts develop
their capacity to conduct the full range of narcotics interdiction
activities within their countries to target both heroin and illicit
fentanyl. Our Federal law enforcement agencies, in conjunction with the
Department of State, are working with the countries who supply illicit
fentanyl and the precursor chemicals used in its manufacture to stem
the flow of these dangerous chemicals to the Western Hemisphere.
Interagency Partnerships. Our ability to bring together,
contextualize, and synchronize the strategies and partnerships
currently taking place at the Federal, state, local, and tribal levels
to reduce the availability of heroin in the United States is critical
to our overall efforts. The urgent need to sustain progress toward
addressing the heroin crisis, combined with the expanding and dynamic
nature of the problem itself, requires increased collaboration among
Federal agencies, and with our partners working at the state, local and
tribal level where the crisis is felt most deeply and where there is an
enormous amount of energy and innovation. This cooperation will allow
for greater situational awareness to provide more comprehensive
understanding of expected changes in the domestic environment related
to interagency heroin/illicit fentanyl supply reduction efforts.
The ONDCP funded High Intensity Drug Trafficking Areas (HIDTA)
Program is a locally-based program that responds to the drug
trafficking issues facing specific areas of the country. Law
enforcement agencies at all levels of government share information and
implement coordinated enforcement activities; enhance intelligence
sharing among Federal, state, local, and tribal law enforcement
agencies; provide reliable intelligence to law enforcement agencies to
develop effective enforcement strategies and operations; and support
coordinated law enforcement strategies to maximize available resources
and reduce the supply of illegal drugs in designated areas. In August
2015, ONDCP committed $2.5 million in HIDTA funds to develop a strategy
to respond to the heroin crisis in the United States. This
unprecedented project combines prevention, education, intelligence, and
enforcement resources to address the heroin threat across 17 states and
the District of Columbia. The effort is carried out through a unique
partnership of seven regional HIDTAs--Appalachia, Michigan, New
England, New York/New Jersey, Ohio, Philadelphia/Camden, and
Washington/Baltimore. The HIDTA heroin response strategy will foster a
collaborative network of public health-public safety partnerships,
sharing best practices, innovative pilots, and identifying new
opportunities to leverage resources.
Along our Southwest border, U.S. Customs and Border Protection
(CBP) continues to detect and interdict illicit narcotics entering the
United States. CBP reports seizing 1,121,411 kilograms of illegal drugs
in 2015. Of that amount, CBP seized 2,745 kilograms of heroin, 25
percent more than CBP seized in 2014.
The Department of Justice's Organized Crime Drug Enforcement Task
Forces (OCDETF) partnered with the Federal Bureau of Investigation,
Homeland Security Investigations, and the Drug Enforcement
Administration target, disrupt, and dismantle international drug
trafficking organizations that manufacture, transport, and distribute
heroin and illicit fentanyl destined for and distributed across the
United States. In addition, OCDETF's National Heroin Initiative,
launched in December 2014, seeks to coordinate innovative regional
approaches that improve information sharing and data collection to
support multi-agency, multi-jurisdictional enforcement actions.
challenges
While we have worked tirelessly to address the heroin crisis and
have laid a firm foundation for future efforts, much remains to be
done. We have gaps in our capability to detect illicit fentanyl at our
borders and in our air freight package locations, and our Mexican
partners could certainly do more to strategically dismantle criminal
organizations and conduct opium poppy eradication and clandestine
laboratory identification and neutralization.
We are working to close information gaps. Although it is abundantly
clear that the number of overdose deaths involving illicit fentanyl
nationwide has increased dramatically, it is likely that the overdose
numbers underreport the actual number of deaths due to heroin and
illicit fentanyl. The ability to detect illicit fentanyl in overdose
victims, and the standard inclusion of illicit fentanyl in overdose
death toxicology screening, varies widely among localities. This likely
results in the undercounting of heroin and illicit fentanyl-related
deaths and actual numbers of heroin-related overdoses are probably much
higher. In localities where detailed toxicology screening is performed,
information suggests higher numbers of illicit fentanyl-related
overdose.
We look forward to working with our Federal and state government
partners, as well as our international counterparts, to address these
problem areas.
conclusion
We cannot forget that the epidemic of opioid use and overdose
deaths is fundamentally a public health problem that is exploited by
criminal organizations, and addressing it adequately requires substance
use prevention and treatment strategies and recovery support services.
Law enforcement officials are increasingly becoming public health
partners, linking individuals with opioid use disorder to treatment.
For this reason, in the FY 2017 budget President Obama proposed $1
billion in new mandatory funding over two years to expand the
availability of opioid use disorder services, target areas of highest
need, and allow states to implement evidence-based strategies that best
meet local needs, such as medication-assisted treatment and expansion
of the availability of substance abuse treatment providers (through
enhanced loan repayment for healthcare providers that offer medication-
assisted treatment). Such efforts will help individuals seek treatment,
successfully complete treatment, and sustain recovery.
ONDCP will continue to work with our Federal government departments
and agencies, partners at the state, local and tribal levels, and
international counterparts to reduce heroin and illicit fentanyl
production and trafficking and to combat the profound effect these
dangerous drugs are having in our communities.
Thank you for affording me the opportunity to testify today and for
your commitment to this important issue.
__________
Prepared Statement of Teresa Jacobs, Mayor of Orange County, Florida
Chairman Rubio, Ranking Member Boxer, members of the committee,
thank you for calling this important hearing, and for allowing me to
share a local perspective on the terrible threat that heroin poses for
cities and counties throughout our country.
First a bit about Orange County: We're home to the City of Orlando
and 12 other municipalities, with a population of 1.2 million people, a
strong economy and an exceptional quality of life. In 2015, we
shattered national tourism records, hosting more than 66 million
visitors.
No doubt you know us as the vacation capital of the world, but
tragically, like too many other states and communities, Orange County
has seen an alarming increase in the number of heroin overdoses and
related deaths. Last year, we lost 85 lives to heroin--a staggering
600% increase since 2011. Already this year we've had more than 90
heroin overdoses in the county, with about one-in-ten resulting in
death.
Florida's fight against this current wave of opioid addiction began
about five years ago, in the midst of our battle against the pill
mills.
You may remember the shocking statistics from 2010, when it was
discovered that Florida practitioners purchased more than 41 million
oxycodone pills in the first six months of that year--more than the
other 49 states of the union combined.
Like countless cities, towns and counties across the U.S., we
worked to outlaw unauthorized pain clinics and provide resources for
breaking opioid addiction.
In Florida, the pill mill ``legacy'' has impacted us beyond
measure. I can't prove it, but I think it's very likely that cartels
took notice of what they perceived to be a ripe ``marketplace.'' Today,
predatory drug dealers are targeting us with heroin, as well as cheap
and deadly strains of fentanyl. Unfortunately, it's nearly impossible
to accurately assess the threat in Florida, since no statewide
databases exist. Instead, numbers are captured by individual agencies
and municipalities--there is simply no mechanism for synergy or
sharing.
What we do know? We know that last year, approximately 2,000 heroin
users moved through our Orange County jail. Many of those were arrested
not for heroin possession, but for other offenses related to heroin
addiction.
We know that in 2015, we housed 100 expectant mothers tragically
addicted to opiates or heroin, as our Jail has become the treatment
center of last resort for so many people.
For the good of our citizens and our community, we are fighting
back.
Last summer I convened the Orange County Heroin Task Force, and
asked our sheriff to Co-Chair the effort. Our joint work is having a
positive impact, including passage in the 2016 Florida Legislature of a
measure allowing Naloxone sales without an individual prescription.
We know there is no single solution, but there are some universally
effective approaches:
Enforcement is critical. In a world of increasingly sophisticated
technology, our local efforts--no matter how highly leveraged
and coordinated--are simply no match against organized
traffickers.
Equally important, and in keeping with what we learned with pill
mills, we must be tireless in educating people that addiction
is an illness. An illness that requires treatment and support
not only for the addict, but also for the families who are
ravaged by addiction.
In closing, I respectfully ask for your help:
Help to stop the influx of drugs across the border. We've got our
hands full at the local level, and are simply not equipped to
fight the cartels. This is where we really need your help--to
stop these deadly drugs before they cross our borders.
Help to treat more addicts. With a regional population of 2.5
million, we have one Addictions Receiving Facility with 26
detox beds serving four counties for the uninsured.
Help to raise awareness so more people will choose not to try this
deadly drug in the first place.
To end this crisis and save lives, we all need to be engaged. Thank
you for your attention to this critical issue and thank you for your
leadership and your service.
__________
Prepared Statement of Steven Dudley, Co-Director, InSight Crime
Chairman Rubio, Ranking Member Boxer, and members of the
subcommittee: I am grateful for the opportunity to appear before you on
behalf of InSight Crime and the Center for Latin American and Latino
Studies at American University to discuss the criminal dynamics
connected to the illegal opiate market, specifically the heroin market
in the United States related to poppy production in Mexico.
mexico's increased market share
U.S. consumption of heroin has increased significantly in the last
few years. The reasons for this are complex but have to do with the
increase of prescription drugs in the United States, a rise in prices
of these prescription drugs and their black market counterparts, and
the subsequent safeguards on this prescription medicine market,
specifically OxyContin.
The U.S. portion of the world heroin market is small by comparison
in terms of users, but outsized in terms of potential earnings. The
Rand Corporation estimated in 2014, that U.S. consumers spend as much
as $27 billion on heroin each year, an increase from $20 billion per
year in 2000.\1\ Only the marijuana market is worth more in the U.S.\2\
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\1\ Beau Kilmer, et al., ``How Big is the U.S. Market for Illegal
Drugs,'' Rand Corporation (2014).
\2\ Ibid.
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Mexican, Guatemalan and Colombian criminal organizations have
reacted to these changes by producing more heroin. Only a small
percentage of the world's opium poppy is cultivated in this hemisphere,
but after it is processed into heroin, almost all of it is sold in the
United States where the number of consumers for the drug has more than
doubled since the early 2000s.
Mexico accounts for the bulk of poppy production in the region.
According to estimates by the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA),
the production of poppy, the raw ingredient for the production of
heroin, increased from 10,500 hectares in 2012 to 17,000 hectares in
2014, giving the groups the potential to produce 42 metric tons, up
from 26 metric tons in 2012.\3\ By comparison, the DEA says Colombia
produces only two metric tons per year.\4\
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\3\ Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), ``National Drug Threat
Assessment 2015,'' p. 34.
\4\ The United Nations' most recent estimate for global heroin
production is 526 tons. See: UNODC, ``World Drug Report 2015,'' p. 41.
Av.
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Seizure data of heroin along the southwest border also indicate
that Mexican criminal groups are moving increasing amounts of heroin
into the U.S. market. Mexican criminal organizations are also the key
transporters of Colombian heroin to the United States, and they manage
and purchase the heroin produced in Guatemala or buy the opium gum
wholesale to process it into heroin themselves in Mexico.
Inside the U.S., the trend appears to be the same. The DEA says
that Mexican groups are seeking an increasing amount of the market
share in the distribution business itself, displacing other
wholesalers. In sum, the picture is one of an increasingly lucrative,
vertically integrated market, with large Mexican criminal organizations
managing the product from the point of production to the point of sale
and seeking a greater market share of these sales.
the reality of the heroin supply chain
The reality of the supply chain is much more complex. While it
helps us to use well-worn monikers when talking about these
organizations, the truth is that they are not nearly as strong or
monolithic as they once were. Names such as the Tijuana Cartel, the
Juarez Cartel, the Zetas, or La Familia Michoacana may still evoke fear
and sometimes awe, but they are not organizations as much as brand
names. In many cases, the individual parts of the organization have as
much contact with the bosses as a local Coca-Cola bottling plant
manager might have with corporate headquarters.
Even the vaunted Sinaloa Cartel is more horizontally than
vertically integrated. Take the recent case of the Flores brothers in
Chicago. Before they were arrested, Pedro and Margarito Flores were
said to be Sinaloa Cartel distributors in Chicago, one of the areas of
greatest interest to this subcommittee. And they were. But as federal
intercepts of their conversations with cartel leaders show, the two
brothers negotiated independently with each of the top two members of
the Sinaloa criminal organization, obtaining different prices with
different leaders and managing shipments separately.\5\ Even after a
war started between the Sinaloa Cartel and the Beltran Leyva
Organization, the Flores brothers continued to purchase drugs from
portions of the Beltran Leyva Organization and the Sinaloa Cartel.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\5\ Michelle Garcia, ``Court Docs Raise Questions about Mexico
Sinaloa Cartel Narrative,'' 12 November 2013.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
The Flores case cuts at two different myths about the Sinaloa
Cartel: 1) that this is one single organization; 2) that it is tightly
controlled by a single leader or a single group of leaders. The point
is that as shipments get further and further from Mexico's wholesale
points, the loyalties become more disperse, and in some cases
completely disappear. This is especially true in the U.S. market where
violence is not a viable long-term option to ensure loyalty, win market
share or become a monopoly.
The effectiveness of U.S. law enforcement has made violence
terrible for business and made the distribution chain a more
democratic, capitalist affair. This is evident in other ways as well.
While the amount of seizures indicates that there is more heroin
available in the United States, it is still moved in very small
quantities. The median seizure for the Los Angeles Field Division of
the DEA in 2014, for example, was a kilogram.\6\ In Denver, a 10 to 12
pound shipment is considered large.\7\
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\6\ DEA, op. cit., p. 37.
\7\ Ibid.
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The amount of profits reaped by these Mexican criminal
organizations also raises questions about how much control they exert
in the United States. The Rand Corporation estimated in 2010 that
Mexican criminal groups earn in the range of $400 million per year from
their heroin exports and possibly another $700 million for transporting
Colombian heroin to the U.S. market.\8\ While this has undoubtedly
increased, there is still the question of where the rest of the over
$20 billion spent on heroin in the U.S. annually goes.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\8\ Kilmer, et. al., ``Reducing Drug Trafficking Revenues and
Violence in Mexico: Would Legalizing Marijuana in California Help?,''
Rand Corporation (2010), p. 30.
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The case of the Laredo brothers, recently indicted in the Eastern
District of Pennsylvania, is indicative of these trends. The Laredo
brothers are charged with moving one ton of heroin over a six-year
period. This is about 14 kilos per month. The organization was so
subtle and, as one Mexican analyst put it, ``mom-and-pop,'' the Mexican
authorities did not even know it existed.\9\
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\9\ Alejandro Hope, ``The Laredo DTO and what it says about the
heroin trade,'' 19 April 2016.
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This brings us to Mexico. First, it is important to note that,
unlike the cocaine market, Mexico is not dependent on other countries
for its product. It is home grown. Second, the horizontal nature of the
distribution chain makes it a difficult law enforcement problem in that
country as well. As noted, the once monolithic criminal organizations
are shells of what they once were. This is in part due to in-fighting
of the type mentioned earlier but also Mexican law enforcement efforts.
Many of the fragmented pieces have formed their own criminal operations
and brand names.
The most well-known is arguably the Guerreros Unidos, the criminal
group held responsible for the disappearance of the 43 students in
Mexico in 2014. The Guerreros Unidos used to be under the umbrella of
the Beltran Leyva Organization. When the Beltran Leyva Organization
fell to pieces during their war with the Sinaloa Cartel, the Guerreros
Unidos became independent, as did several other criminal groups in the
embattled state of Guerrero, which is one of the centers of opium
cultivation, heroin production, wholesale and transport. Indeed, the
mystery of what happened to those students, may hinge on whether the
Guerreros Unidos were using commercial buses to move heroin to
Chicago.\10\
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\10\ Elyssa Pachico, ``Four Questions about the '5th Bus' in Case
of Mexico's Missing 43,'' 27 April 2016.
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The upshot is that the chain of production in Mexico is broken into
numerous pieces, including small and large producers of opium poppy
plants, the opium gum producers, the processors, the wholesale
purchasers, and the transporters. Production, transport and
distribution may all be different organizations. The Laredo brothers,
for example, were purchasing opium gum from an independent broker then
processing it themselves and distributing it in those small quantities
in the U.S. for years without running into trouble with the large,
supposedly all-controlling Sinaloa Cartel.
To be sure, violence is still a viable option in Mexico, so the
pendulum may swing back towards more monolithic criminal organizations.
But for the moment, the reality is that there are literally dozens of
small criminal organizations involved in this trade from the point of
production to the point of sale.
impact on law enforcement efforts
In sum, while the level of control that the Mexican production and
transport groups exert over the supply chain is clear, we are not
talking about one or two criminal groups, but dozens of interlocking
organizations whose alliances are constantly shifting. The heroin
supply chain appears to be a largely horizontal, diversified operation
with multiple actors, and one that is obedient to market forces rather
than one or two single vertically integrated distributors.
The result is that law enforcement efforts are largely muted.
Whether you debilitate the Sinaloa Cartel or the Laredo brothers, you
are hindering a small part of the overall production and distribution
chain. Even if you did slow the heroin from Mexico, you would face an
insurmountable task: stopping the flow from other countries, which
would undoubtedly fill the void and account for the bulk of world-wide
production. Canada already gets up to 90 percent of its heroin from
Afghanistan.\11\ And the United States once got all of its heroin from
the Asian markets that supply the rest of the world.
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\11\ UNODC, op. cit., p. 46.
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Thank you for your time and attention. I look forward to your
questions.
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Statement for the Record Submitted by Jack Riley, Acting Deputy
Administrator, Drug Enforcement Administration
introduction
Chairman Rubio, Ranking Member Boxer, and members of the
subcommittee, on behalf of the approximately 9,000 employees of the
Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), thank you for the opportunity to
discuss the issue of Cartels, the U.S. heroin epidemic, and DEA's
response to combating the drug violence and public health crisis.
Today, Mexican Transnational Criminal Organizations (TCOs) remain
the greatest criminal drug threat to the United States; no other group
can challenge them in the near term. These Mexican poly-drug
organizations traffic heroin, illicit fentanyl, methamphetamine,
cocaine, and marijuana throughout the United States, using established
transportation routes and distribution networks. They control drug
trafficking across the Southwest border (SWB) and are moving to expand
their share of U.S. illicit drug markets, particularly heroin markets.
National-level gangs and neighborhood gangs continue to form and
expand relationships with Mexican TCOs. Many gangs rely on Mexican TCOs
as their primary drug supply source, and Mexican TCOs depend on street-
level gangs, many of which already have a customer base, for drug
distribution. Additionally, gangs profit through drug transportation
activities, enforcement of drug payments, and by securing drug
transportation corridors from use by rival gangs.
Mexican TCOs exploit a user population struggling with the disease
of addiction. Drug overdoses are the leading cause of injury-related
death in the United States, eclipsing deaths from motor vehicle crashes
or firearms.\1\ There were over 47,000 overdose deaths in 2014, or
approximately 129 per day, over half (61 percent) of which involved
either a prescription opioid or heroin.\2\ These are our family
members, friends, neighbors, and colleagues.
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\1\ Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Web-based Injury
Statistics Query and Reporting System (WISQARS) [online], (2014).
\2\ Rose A. Rudd, Noah Aleshire, Jon E. Zibbell, R. Matthew
Gladden. Increases in Drug and Opioid Overdose Deaths--United States,
2000-2014 Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, 2016;64:1378-1382.
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The DEA's focus is targeting the most significant, sophisticated,
and violent trafficking organizations that profit from exploiting
persons with substance use disorders. DEA's strategic priorities
include targeting Mexican Consolidated Priority Organization Targets
(CPOTs) and Priority Target Organizations (PTOs), which are the most
significant international and domestic drug trafficking and money
laundering organizations.
current assessment of the threat
Based on active law enforcement cases, the following Mexican TCOs
are operating in the United States: the Sinaloa Cartel, Beltran-Leyva
Organization (BLO), New Generation Jalisco Cartel (Cartel de Jalisco
Nueva Generacion or CJNG), Los Cuinis, Gulf Cartel (Cartel del Golfo or
CDG), Juarez Cartel Michoacan Family (La Familia Michoacana or LFM),
Knights Templar (Los Caballeros Templarios or LCT), and Los Zetas.
While all of these Mexican TCOs transport wholesale quantities of
illicit drugs into the United States, the Sinaloa Cartel remains the
most active supplier. The Sinaloa Cartel leverages its expansive
resources and organizational structure in Mexico to facilitate the
smuggling and transportation of drugs throughout the United States.
Mexican TCO operations in the United States typically take the form
of a supply chain system that relies on compartmentalized operators who
are only aware of their own specific function, and remain largely
unaware of other operational aspects. In most instances, transporters
for the drug shipments are independent third parties who work for more
than one Mexican TCO. Since operators in the supply chain are insulated
from one another, if a transporter is arrested the transporter is
easily replaced and unable to reveal the rest of the network to law
enforcement.
Mexican TCOs in the United States utilize a network of extended
family and friends to conduct their operations. Families affiliated
with various Mexican TCOs in Mexico vouch for U.S.-based relatives or
friends that are deemed trustworthy to run various aspects of the drug
trafficking operations in the United States. Actual members of Mexican
TCOs are usually sent to important U.S. hub cities to manage stash
houses containing drug shipments and bulk cash drug proceeds. While
operating in the United States, Mexican TCOs actively seek to maintain
low profiles and avoid violent confrontations between rival TCOs or
U.S. law enforcement.
Mexican TCOs transport illicit drugs over the SWB through ports of
entry using passenger vehicles or tractor trailers. Illicit drugs are
typically secreted in hidden compartments when transported in passenger
vehicles or comingled with legitimate goods when transported in tractor
trailers. Once across the SWB, Mexican TCOs will initially utilize
stash houses in a number of hub cities to include Dallas, Houston, Los
Angeles, Atlanta, and Phoenix. The illicit products will then be
transported via these same conveyances to distribution groups in the
Midwest and on the East Coast. Mexican TCOs also smuggle illicit drugs
across the SWB using other methods including tunnels, maritime
conveyances, and aircraft.
heroin availability to the u.s. market
There are four major heroin-producing areas in the world, but
heroin bound for the U.S. market originates predominantly from Mexico
and, to a lesser extent, Colombia. The heroin market in the United
States has been historically divided along the Mississippi River, with
western markets using Mexican black tar and brown powder heroin, and
eastern markets using white powder, which over the last two decades has
been sourced primarily from Colombia. The largest, most lucrative
heroin markets in the United States are the white powder markets in
major East Coast cities: New York City and the surrounding metropolitan
areas, Philadelphia, Boston and its surrounding cities, Washington,
D.C., Baltimore, as well as Chicago. Given the growing number of
individuals with an opioid use disorder in the United States, Mexican
TCOs have seized upon a business opportunity to increase their profits.
Mexican TCOs are now competing for the East Coast and Mid-Atlantic
markets by introducing Mexican brown/black tar heroin, as well as by
developing new techniques to produce highly refined white powder
heroin.
Poppy cultivation in Mexico increased 160 percent between 2013 and
2015, resulting in an estimated 70 metric tons of potential heroin.
Cultivation in Mexico is located primarily in the state of Guerrero and
the Mexican ``Golden Triangle'' which includes the states of Chihuahua,
Sinaloa, and Durango. The increased cultivation and trafficking from
Mexico to the United States impacts both of our nations by supporting
the escalation of heroin use in the United States, as well as the
instability and violence associated with drug trafficking in Mexico.
The majority of Mexican and Colombian heroin bound for the United
States is smuggled into the United States via the SWB, and heroin
seizures at the border have more than doubled, from 1,016 kilograms in
2010 to 2,524 kilograms in 2015.\3\ During this time, the average
seizure at the Border also increased from 2.0 kilograms to 3.5
kilograms. Most heroin smuggled across the border is transported in
privately-owned vehicles, usually through California, as well as
through south Texas. In 2014, more than half of U.S. Customs and Border
Protection (CBP) heroin seizures at the SWB were in the southern
California corridors of San Diego and El Centro. The distribution
cells, and the Mexican and South American traffickers who supply them,
are the main sources of heroin in the United States today. In Mexico,
the threat of these organizations is magnified by the high level of
violence associated with their attempts to control and expand drug
distribution operations.
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\3\ Drug Enforcement Administration, Unclassified Summary, 2015
National Drug Threat Assessment, Pg. 35.
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DEA has become increasingly alarmed over the addition of fentanyl
into heroin sold on the streets as well as the use of fentanyl
analogues such as acetyl fentanyl. The more potent opioids like
fentanyl\4\ present a serious risk of overdose death for a user. In
addition, this drug can be absorbed by the skin or inhaled, which makes
it particularly dangerous for law enforcement, public safety, or health
care personnel who encounter the substance during the course of their
daily operations. On March 18, 2015, DEA issued a nationwide alert to
all U.S. law enforcement officials about the dangers of illicit
fentanyl and fentanyl analogues and related compounds. In addition, due
to a recent spike in overdose deaths related to the use of acetyl
fentanyl, on July 17, 2015, DEA used its emergency scheduling authority
to place acetyl fentanyl in Schedule I of the CSA.
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\4\ Centers for Disease Control, Emergency Response Safety and
Health Database, FENTANYL: Incapacitating Agent, accessed March 19,
2015; U.S. Department of Justice, Drug Enforcement Administration,
Office of Diversion Control, Drug & Chemical Evaluation Section,
Fentanyl, March 2015.
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dea response to the heroin threat
DEA'S 360 Strategy
DEA is rolling out the 360 Strategy to address the opioid, heroin,
and violent crime crisis. The strategy leverages existing federal,
state, and local partnerships to address the problem on three different
fronts: law enforcement, diversion control, and community relations.
The strategy is founded upon our continued enforcement activities
directed at the violent street gangs responsible for feeding the heroin
and prescription drug abuse epidemic in our communities.
While law enforcement plays a central role in the 360 Strategy,
enforcement actions alone are not enough to make lasting changes in our
communities. The 360 Strategy, therefore, also focuses on preventing
diversion by providing education and training within the pharmaceutical
community and to pursue those practitioners who are operating outside
of the law. The final component of the strategy is a community effort
designed to maximize all available resources to help communities turn
around the recurring problems that have historically allowed the drug
and violent crime problems to resurface after enforcement operations.
Additional Resources in Fiscal Year 2017
DEA plays an important part in the U.S. government's drug control
strategy that includes enforcement, treatment, and prevention. While
there are complex issues affecting spikes in heroin use and overdoses,
including prescription drug abuse, the same significant poly-drug
trafficking organizations responsible for other illicit drug threats
are also responsible for the vast majority of the heroin supply.
Additionally, drug trafficking has a proven linkage to gangs and other
violent criminal organizations. The FY 2017 President's Budget request
provides $12.5 million and 42 positions, including 32 special agents,
to create new enforcement groups in DEA domestic field divisions.
Heroin Task Force
As directed by Congress, the Department of Justice joined with the
Office of National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP) to develop strategies to
confront the heroin problem and curtail the escalating overdose
epidemic and death rates. DEA and more than 28 Federal agencies and
their components participated in this initiative. The task force
provided its Report to Congress on December 31, 2015.
International Enforcement: Sensitive Investigative Units
DEA's Sensitive Investigative Units (SIU) program, nine of which
are in the Western Hemisphere, helps build effective and vetted host
nation units capable of conducting complex investigations targeting
major TCOs. DEA, with funding support from the Department of State,
currently mentors and supports 13 SIUs, which are staffed by over 900
foreign counterparts. The success of this program has enhanced DEA's
ability to fight drug trafficking on a global scale.
International Enforcement: Bilateral Investigations Units
Bilateral Investigations Units (BIUs) are one of DEA's most
important tools for targeting, disrupting, and dismantling significant
TCOs. The BIUs have used extraterritorial authorities to infiltrate,
indict, arrest, and convict previously ``untouchable'' TCO leaders
involved in drug trafficking.
Special Operations Division
Established in 1994, the Special Operations Division (SOD) is a
DEA-led multi-agency operations coordination center with participation
from Federal law enforcement agencies, the Department of Defense, the
Intelligence Community, and international law enforcement partners.
SOD's mission is to establish strategies and operations to dismantle
national and international trafficking organizations by attacking their
command and control communications. Special emphasis is placed on those
major drug trafficking and narco-terrorism organizations that operate
across jurisdictional boundaries on a regional, national, and
international level.
El Paso Intelligence Center
The El Paso Intelligence Center (EPIC) is a national intelligence
center focused on supporting law enforcement efforts in the Western
Hemisphere with a significant emphasis on the SWB. Through its 24-hour
watch function, EPIC provides law enforcement officers, investigators,
and analysts immediate access to participating agencies' databases.
This function is critical in the dissemination of relevant information
in support of tactical and investigative agencies, deconfliction, and
officer safety. EPIC also provides significant tactical, operational,
and strategic intelligence support to state and local law enforcement
agencies, especially in the areas of clandestine laboratory
investigations and highway interdiction.
Cooperation with Mexico
The DEA's presence in Mexico represents our largest international
footprint. The ability to have DEA Special Agents assigned to 11
different offices throughout Mexico is a reflection of the level of
cooperation that we continue to enjoy with our Mexican counterparts.
DEA supports bi-lateral investigations with the Government of Mexico by
providing information and intelligence to develop investigations that
target leaders of TCOs throughout Mexico.
We view our working relationship with the Mexican Authorities as
strong, and getting stronger. In 2014, Mexican law enforcement
officials arrested cartel leaders Hector Beltran-Leyva, Servando Gomez-
Martinez, and Omar Trevino Morales. These actions represent significant
successes for both the United States and Mexico in our shared struggle
against TCOs. The arrests struck at the heart of the leadership
structure of the Knights Templar Cartel, the Beltran-Leyva
Organization, and the Los Zetas Cartel; and highlight the continuing
cooperation between Mexican and U.S. law enforcement. The United States
and Mexico have established a strong and successful security
partnership in the last decade and, to that end, the U.S. government
stands ready to work with our Mexican partners to provide any
assistance, as requested, to build upon these successes.
conclusion
Mexican TCOs remain the greatest criminal drug threat to the United
States. These Mexican poly-drug organizations traffic heroin,
methamphetamine, cocaine, and marijuana throughout the United States,
using established transportation routes and distribution networks. They
control drug trafficking across the SWB and are moving to expand their
share of U.S. illicit drug markets. Their influence up and down the
supply chain, their ability to enter into new markets, and associations
with domestic gangs are of particular concern for the DEA. DEA will
continue to address this threat domestically and abroad by attacking
the crime and violence perpetrated by the Mexican-based TCOs which
inflict tremendous harm to our communities.
__________
[all]