Thank you, Scott, for that kind introduction and thank you
for your more than 30 years of service as a prosecutor.
The President just nominated a Supreme Court Justice who is
the son of a prosecutor. He grew up with
a mom who was practicing closing arguments at the dinner table. He understands and appreciates the value of
the work that we do and he is committed to interpreting the law as
written. His record shows that he serves
under the law, not above it. I think he
is a fabulous choice and all of us in the law enforcement community can feel
good about his nomination.
It is an honor to be here with my fellow prosecutors and law
enforcement officers to make an announcement about one of the most important
issues we face: our fight against the opioid epidemic.
But first I want to thank all of the federal officers who
are here with us today, who do so much to fight opioid trafficking in New
Hampshire, across state lines, and even international lines. That includes Brian Boyle of DEA, HIDTA
Director Jay Fallon, Amanda Cahill with ATF, and our partners Mike Posanka with
HSI and Robert Garcia with Border Patrol.
And, of course, I want to thank our new DEA Administrator
Uttam Dhillon for joining me here today.
Uttam has had a long career battling drug traffickers and
violent crime and I am confident he will be a strong leader for our fabulous
men and women at the DEA for this critical fight.
And while we are inexpressibly proud of our fabulous federal
officers, we also understand and appreciate the fact that 85 percent of the law
enforcement officers in this country serve at the state and local levels. You are the ones in the trenches every day
gathering the street-level intelligence that can lead to national and even
international cases.
And so I want to give a special thanks to Concord Police
Chief Bradley Osgood, Manchester’s new police chief Carlo Capano, as well as
the eight other police chiefs who are here, Colonel Chris Wagner of the New
Hampshire State Police, Sheriff Mike Hureau, as well as five county
prosecutors.
It is an honor to be with you all.
I know that—with the help of these fabulous law enforcement
partners—this U.S. Attorney’s office is doing a lot of great work. Prosecutors like Georgiana Konesky, Seth
Aframe, and Debra Walsh have brought charges against some 50 people involved in
distributing fentanyl—including four illegal aliens residing in the sanctuary
city of Lawrence, Massachusetts.
Donald Feith secured a 20-year sentence for a drug dealer
who had enough heroin to kill tens of thousands of people. And of course, you are achieving successes on
so many other issues as well.
But our shared work of enforcing our drug laws has never
been more important than it is right now.
Today we are facing the deadliest drug crisis in American history. We’ve never seen anything like it.
Approximately 64,000 Americans lost their lives to drug
overdoses in 2016 – the highest drug death toll and the fastest increase in
that death toll in American history.
That’s the equivalent of more than half of the population of
Manchester—dead in one year just from overdoses. Meanwhile millions of people are living with
the consequences of a family member’s addiction or an addiction of their
own. It is incredible but true that for
Americans under the age of 50, drug overdoses are now the leading cause of
death.
Preliminary data show that the drug death toll continued to
rise in 2017, but at a much slower pace.
And according to CDC data through November 2017, it appears that we are
starting to making progress.
But sadly, New Hampshire knows the tragic consequences of
drugs and addiction all too well.
From 2013 to 2016, opioid-related deaths in New Hampshire
tripled. And in 2016 the Granite State
had the second-highest rate of opioid overdose deaths in America.
I visited Manchester last March for the New Hampshire Youth
Summit on Opioid Awareness. Fifty
mothers stood before thousands of high school students holding large pictures
of their child who had been lost to drug overdoses. It was extremely moving and it’s something I
will never forget.
It reminds us that we are not just talking about numbers –
these are moms, dads, daughters, sons, spouses, friends, and neighbors.
We are talking about people like Eve Tarmey, a 17-year old
high school senior from Rochester, New Hampshire. She was injected with fentanyl by her mom’s
boyfriend, who later woke up to find her dead.
Thanks to the people of this office, he is now serving 20 years in
federal prison.
We are talking about the one-year old child from Brentwood,
New Hampshire, who got into his father’s fentanyl stash and ate some of
it. Now he is dead—and his Dad is in
jail.
Unfortunately, there are many more tragic stories like
these. This crisis is devastating.
But we will not stand by idle.
We are not going to accept the status quo. We will not allow this to continue.
President Trump has made clear that business as usual is
over.
Ending the drug crisis is a top priority of this
administration. As he laid out a few
months ago at Manchester Community College, President Trump has a comprehensive
plan to end this national public health emergency.
He has negotiated and signed bipartisan legislation to spend
$6 billion to win against this danger.
He wants to improve our prevention efforts by launching a
national awareness campaign about the dangers of opioid abuse.
He has set the ambitious goal of reducing opioid
prescriptions in America by one-third in three years—an ambitious goal that we
can achieve. And he is a strong
supporter of our law enforcement efforts.
He recognizes that law enforcement is crime prevention.
We’re not just locking up criminals for the sake of locking
them up. We are preventing addiction
from spreading and we are saving lives.
That is what is at stake in our work. And that is why we are attacking the gangs
and cartels—damaging, weakening, and even destroying their distribution
networks.
Today I am announcing our next steps to do just that.
It’s called Operation Synthetic Opioid Surge—or S.O.S.
I am ordering our prosecutors in 10 districts with some of
the highest overdose death rates—including this one—to systematically and
relentlessly prosecute every synthetic opioid case. We can weaken these networks, reduce fentanyl
availability, and save lives.
We are going to arrest, prosecute, and convict fentanyl
dealers and we are going to put them in jail.
When it comes to synthetic opioids, there is no such thing
as a small case.
Three milligrams of fentanyl can be fatal. That’s equivalent a pinch of salt. It’s not even enough to cover up Lincoln’s
face on a penny. Depending on the
purity, you could fit more than 1,000 fatal doses of fentanyl in a teaspoon.
I want to be clear about this: we are not focusing on users,
but on those supplying them with deadly drugs.
Manatee County, Florida shows that a united and determined
effort, focusing on fentanyl dealers, can save lives.
Your counterparts in the U.S. Attorney’s Office in the
Middle District of Florida tried this strategy in Manatee County, which is just
south of Tampa. Like many parts of this country, they had experienced massive
increases in opioid deaths in 2015 and 2016.
In response, they began prosecuting synthetic opioid sales,
regardless of the amount. They
prosecuted 45 synthetic opioids traffickers—and deaths started to go down.
From the first six months of 2016 to 2017, overdose deaths
dropped by 22 percent. This past
January, they had nearly a quarter fewer overdoses as the previous
January. The Manatee County Sheriff’s
Office went from responding to 11 overdoses a day to an average of one a
day. Those are remarkable results.
As you implement this proven strategy, I am sending in
reinforcements to help you.
Last month, I sent more than 300 new AUSAs to districts
across America—including two here to this office. It was the largest prosecutor surge in
decades.
Today I am announcing that each of these ten districts where
the drug crisis is worst will receive an additional prosecutor.
As a former AUSA and U.S. Attorney myself, I know what you
can do—and my expectations could not be higher.
Our goal is to reduce crime, reduce fentanyl, and to reduce deaths,
plain and simple.
I believe that this new strategy and these additional
prosecutors will have a significant impact.
Scott and I have talked about this. He is excited about it and I know that you
all are going to achieve similar results here in New Hampshire.
I believe that this is going to build on the new tools that
we have given our prosecutors over these past 18 months.
One of these tools is the Opioid Fraud and Abuse Detection
Unit – a new data analytics program that focuses specifically on opioid-related
health care fraud. This sort of data
analytics team can tell us important information, like who is prescribing the
most drugs, who is dispensing the most drugs, and whose patients are dying of
overdoses.
As part of this initiative, I have assigned a dozen
experienced prosecutors in opioid hot-spot districts to focus solely on
prosecuting opioid-related health care fraud.
They are achieving positive results.
We have begun J-CODE, a new team at the FBI that focuses
specifically on the threat of online opioid sales. They have already begun carrying out
nationwide enforcement actions, arresting dozens of people across the country.
These new tools have helped us to deliver results for the
American people.
Since January 2017, we have charged more than 200 doctors
and another 220 other medical personnel for opioid-related crimes. Sixteen of
those doctors prescribed more than 20.3 million pills illegally.
Last summer we set a record for the largest health care
fraud enforcement action in American history.
Just a few weeks ago, we set a new record.
We coordinated the efforts of more than 1,000 state and
federal law enforcement agents to charge more than 600 defendants—including 76
doctors—with more than $2 billion in fraud.
This was the most doctors, the most medical personnel, and
the most fraud that the Department of Justice has ever taken on in any single
law enforcement action. This is the most
defendants we’ve ever charged with health care fraud.
It’s also the most opioid-related fraud defendants we’ve
ever charged in a single enforcement action.
Almost exactly one year ago today, the Department announced
the seizure of the largest dark net marketplace in history – AlphaBay. This site hosted some 220,000 drug listings
and was responsible for countless synthetic opioid overdoses, including the
tragic death of a 13 year old.
In the first three months of 2018, the DEA seized a total of
more than 200 pounds of suspected fentanyl in cases from Detroit to
Boston. Depending on its purity, that
can be enough to kill tens of millions of people.
In 2017, we tripled the number of fentanyl prosecutions at
the federal level.
Our efforts are already bearing fruit. The DEA’s National Prescription Audit shows
that in the first quarter of 2018, opioid prescriptions went down by nearly 12
percent compared to the first quarter of 2017, when President Trump took
office. And we are confident that the
decline for 2018 will be even bigger.
We are right to celebrate these accomplishments, but we have
to acknowledge that we still have a lot more work to do.
That’s why we are going to keep arming you with the tools
that you need to keep drugs out of this community. We are going to keep up this pace.
We know that our mission is difficult—but it’s not
hopeless. Together, we can break the
vicious cycle of drug abuse, addiction, and overdose that has devastated
countless American families.
And so I want to close by reiterating my deep appreciation
and profound thanks to all the women and men of law enforcement – federal,
state, local, and tribal – as well as their families, for sacrificing so much
and putting your lives on the line every day so that the rest of us may enjoy
the safety and security you provide.
The work that you do is essential. I believe it.
The Department of Justice believes it.
And President Trump believes it.
You can be certain about this: we have your back and you
have our thanks.
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