The U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) launched a new initiative this week to combat drug-related violent crime and overdose deaths in 34 major cities across 23 states.
Known as Operation Overdrive, this initiative intends to attack the criminal drug supply chain and associated violence as a means of preventing overdose deaths. Many criminal drug networks now in operation, according to the data based on national crime statistics and data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), now rely on fentanyl or methamphetamine for their sales, and with their spread often come violent gun crimes.
“DEA’s objective is clear,” DEA Administrator Anne Milgram said. “DEA will bring all it has to bear to make our communities safer and healthier and to reverse the devastating trends of drug-related violence and overdoses plaguing our Nation. The gravity of these threats requires a data-driven approach to pinpoint the most dangerous networks threatening our communities and leveraging our strongest levers across federal, state, and local partners to bring them down.”
Currently, approximately 275 people die of an overdose in the United States each day. The DEA attempted to draw a connection to criminal violence as well. According to its data, in 2020, homicides increased by a record 30 percent. Of these, 77 percent utilized a firearm – and in 2021, DEA and law enforcement crackdowns on drug trafficking organizations yielded seizures of more than 8,700 firearms.
Beginning this month, Operation Overdrive will target criminal drug networks from Atlanta and Chicago to St. Louis and Washington, D.C. To do so, the DEA will work alongside federal, state, and local law enforcement partners, focusing on areas with the highest rates of violent crime and drug overdoses.