ONDCP’s New Heroin Strategy
The Office of National Drug Control policy (ONDCP) has a new heroin strategy. The short of it is that local law enforcement and other officials will report data to analysts that will use it to provide assistance to targeted areas. It’s a boots on the ground and brains in the air type of plan that has the potential to do a lot of good if it works as planned.
Police officers know best where heroin is flowing in the community, and they know when a dangerous lot of it has hit the streets. These High Intensity Drug Trafficking Areas, or HIDTA, are followed and targeted today. The problem is getting ahead of them and stopping the traffic before it spreads too far. When a potent batch of heroin enters an area, overdoses are bound to increase in very short time.
More details can be found about the new heroin strategy in an article posted by the Christian Science Monitor. What is appealing is the plan to send Naloxone to areas where heroin traffic has increased or where the supply is dangerous, which is a good way to decrease the amount of overdoses. Charting the traffic flow also increases law enforcement’s chances of shutting down supply lines and possibly deterring heroin distributors.
The ONDCP appears to be off to a good restart under the direction of Michael Botticelli. Even if this strategy only succeeds at decreasing overdoses, it can be called a success.