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chap135-subchapVsec13661.pdf. « « « « « « NATIONAL DRUG CONTROL STRATEGY 75 « « « « « « 76 NATIONAL DRUG CONTROL STRATEGY Reduce the Supply of Illicit Substances through Domestic Collaboration Law enforcement agencies at all levels—federal, state, local, Tribal, and territorial—work to combat domestic cultivated and synthetic drug production and trafficking with the goal of protecting Americans from a lethal drug supply contributing to record levels of fatal drug overdoses. However, traffickers continue to refine their methods and adopt new techniques distributing drugs throughout our communities. Responding effectively to the illicit production, trafficking, and distribution methods of domestic criminal organizations and Transnational Criminal Organizations (TCOs) is a significant challenge and remains a Biden-Harris Administration priority. Substantial improvement in collaboration and cooperation between agencies at the federal level and among federal, state, local, Tribal, and territorial agencies is necessary in order to effectively confront the present domestic illicit drug trafficking landscape. The near continual year-on-year rise in American overdose deaths between 1999311 and 2021312 culminated in the unprecedented and somber milestone in April 2021 when the 12-month provisional overdose deaths exceeded 100,000313 for the first time in our history. This is the clearest indicator yet that, while individual agency efforts to confront the TCOs responsible for bringing drugs into our communities may be laudable, collectively, the U.S. Government (USG) is dedicated to stemming the flow of illicit drugs or to impose costs sufficient to deter TCOs from trafficking illicit drugs into the United States and distributing them into our communities and could do more. Additionally, considerable additional domestic effort is needed to improve our data collection and policy and program assessments so we are clear on what efforts are working, and which need to be improved or replaced with alternatives. Four principal lines of effort are necessary to improve domestic collaboration, reduce the supply of illicit substances, and decrease the harms caused by these substances in the United States and abroad: • Improve information sharing and cooperation across all levels of government to strengthen the domestic response to drug trafficking; • Deny and disrupt domestic production, trafficking, and distribution of illicit substances; • Improve assessments of supply reduction initiative effectiveness and efficiency and allocate resources accordingly; and • Protect individuals and the environment at home from criminal exploitation by those associated with drug production and trafficking. These domestic lines of effort are complemented by the activities outlined in the Southwest, Northern, and Caribbean Border Counternarcotics Strategies, and by the National Interdiction Command and Control Plan, which collectively serve as companions to the National Drug Control Strategy. The three border strategies provide strategy guidance linking international supply reduction efforts with domestic efforts. « « « « « « NATIONAL DRUG CONTROL STRATEGY 77 Principle 1: Improve information sharing and cooperation across all levels of government to strengthen the domestic response to drug trafficking. Law enforcement capacity cannot be static in a dynamic drug threat environment. Improving information- and intelligence-sharing across the federal government and with state, territorial, local, and Tribal partners to target drug traffickers and their networks is essential to addressing the public health threat posed by TCOs. Successful seizures, or interdictions, of illicit drugs, illicit proceeds, and weapons, and the dismantling of TCOs require building the tools, relationships, and capacity to address a constantly evolving set of criminal networks that adapt their methods, change their tactics and techniques, and employ new technologies to avoid detection, interdiction, arrest, and prosecution. A. Leverage information-sharing structures to deepen a collective understanding of the drug trafficking and distribution environments and enhance investigations. (Agencies Involved: DHS/CBP, ICE, USCG; DOJ/ATF, DEA, FBI, OCDETF; IC; Treasury/FINCEN, IRS, TFFC; DOD; USPIS) Agencies’ structural and cultural impediments to sharing information hinder public safety and public health entities’ ability to fully understand and respond to drug trafficking threats and substance use in our communities. Mitigating these impediments requires a fresh, open, and collaborative agency-agnostic approach. Public safety, public health, and regulatory agencies, the U.S. Intelligence Community (IC), and the national security community will coordinate development of policies and systems that provide the strategic drug intelligence elements necessary access to domestic public safety and aggregate public health information and appropriate national security information in a way that preserves the individual privacies and civil liberties of American citizens. Robust strategic drug intelligence, synthesized by elements charged, resourced, and governed to provide federal, state, local, Tribal, territorial, and private/public sector agencies with meaningful information to shape proactive, coordinated, whole-ofgovernment counternarcotics and counter-TCO planning and
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