Letter to Gil Kerlikowske, Director of the Office of National Drug Control Policy - Making Duchess County a High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area
Letter
Dear Director Kerlikowske,
Thank you for your continuous efforts to combat drug abuse throughout the country. The Office of National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP) has been a vital partner to Congress as we work to curtail drug abuse across the nation. Since its creation in 1988, the High Intensity Drug Trafficking Areas (HIDTA) program ran by the ONDCP has been highly successful combating abusive outbreaks of a variety of dangerous drugs. Today, I write to ask for help from the HIDTA program. In my home state of New York, Duchess County is experiencing a public health crisis.
The use of heroin has skyrocketed over the past several years, and is harming citizens throughout the county. The Dutchess undercover drug task force has said that cases involving heroin have grown from 25 percent in 2008 to 60 percent this past year. Earlier this month, three men in Poughkeepsie, NY were arrested for the sale of heroin, during which the police seized a total of 477 bags of the dangerous narcotic. Unfortunately, drug addicts have turned to heroin as a cheaper, more accessible alternative than prescription drugs such as oxycodone. I ask that the ONDCP designate Dutchess County as a HIDTA in order to help curb this emerging dilemma.
My home state of New York is also home to one of the most innovative drug-combating programs in the country, known as Rx-Stat, run by the New York City Department of Health. Rx-Stat is a comprehensive database, similar to their all-crime database COMPStat, which tracks drug abuse trends throughout the city, so that law enforcement and public officials can develop more effective strategies to combat abuse. The goal of the ONDCP's drug policy is to build safe and healthy communities, and programs such as Rx-Stat provide timely and accurate information about drug abuse and drug-related crime, which in turn help to achieve that very goal. I ask that the ONDCP provide support to counties across the state so that they can develop a COMPStat-like database. The development of these "DrugStat" databases is particularly critical at this point in time in light of the nationwide prescription drug epidemic and the alarming increase in heroin abuse throughout New York and the rest of the country.
Again, thank you for your dedicated efforts to keep the citizens of New York and the United States healthy and safe and I look forward to hearing from you soon.
Sincerely,
Charles E. Schumer
U.S. Senator
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