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Enforcement push coming against drugs

By Damien Fisher - Staff Writer | Jul 13, 2018

CONCORD – Signaling a renewed strategy to get tough on criminal syndicates dealing deadly opioid synthetics, U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions on Thursday said New Hampshire will soon get an additional federal prosecutor.

“We are not going to stand by while deaths continue to go up,” Sessions said.

Sessions arrived at the federal courthouse in Concord on Thursday to announce the new prosecutors for 10 of the federal court districts with the most significant drug problems. New Hampshire has the second highest opioid overdose death rate in the country, with only West Virginia’s being more severe.

“We are facing the deadliest drug crisis in American history,” Sessions said. “We’ve never seen anything like it. … For Americans under the age of 50, drug overdoses are now the leading cause of death.”

Sessions announced the start of Operation Synthetic Opioid Surge, in which staffing and resources will go to bust up the criminal rings responsible for dealing synthetic opioids, such as fentanyl and carfentanil. Sessions said the plan is to “systematically and relentlessly” prosecute the dealers part of the drug crisis.

Besides New Hampshire, the program will provide a new assistant U.S. attorney to districts in California, Kentucky, Maine, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Tennessee and West Virginia.

“We are going to arrest, prosecute and convict fentanyl dealers and we are going to put them in jail,” he said.

The focus of this program will not be on the users and addicts of the opioids, Sessions said, but the dealers, gangs, and cartels profiting from the addiction.

“We want to go up the chain,” he said.

Operation Synthetic Opioid Surge is modeled on work done by the U.S. attorney’s office in Manatee County, Florida, an area south of Tampa with a population of about 320,000 where there were 1,287 opioid overdoses and 123 opioid-related deaths in 2016.

Last year, federal prosecutors there brought every “readily provable” case they could involving synthetic opioids, regardless of the quantity of the drug involved, Sessions said. As a result, the county indicted 45 alleged synthetic opioid traffickers, while overdose deaths dropped by 22 percent from 2016 to 2017, he said. The county sheriff’s department went from responding to 11 overdoses a day to an average of one a day, he said.

This announcement of the surge comes as the government is putting $6 billion behind efforts to combat the opioid addiction crisis. Money is going to education, public outreach, and recovery. Sessions said it is also going toward law enforcement efforts to stop the dealers.

“(President Donald Trump) also recognizes that law enforcement is also prevention,” Sessions said. “We can save lives by arresting (the dealers.)”

Sessions said the shift to aggressive prosecution is part of the strategy Trump announced in Manchester earlier this year, in which the president suggested drug dealers should receive the death penalty. Sessions did not touch on executions during his Thursday remarks.

Last month, the AG’s office dispersed more than 300 new prosecutors to every state, with New Hampshire getting two. The new prosecutor announced Thursday will be in addition to that, Sessions said.

This announcement comes after federal prosecutors announced busting up a fentanyl ring based in Lawrence, Massachusetts, earlier this year, resulting in more than 50 arrests. Sessions said places such as Lawrence, a known sanctuary city, make the fight against opioids more difficult.

“There can be no sanctuary for drug dealers, in my opinion,” Sessions said.

Sessions said two of the more than 50 people arrested in the Lawrence ring were illegal immigrants.

Damien Fisher can be reached at 594-1245 or dfisher@nashuatelegraph.com or @Telegraph_DF.

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