The
U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency is targeting the opioid epidemic in Appalachia by establishing a new field office in Louisville, Ky., on Jan. 1. Louisville already has a district office--one of 222 offices across the country--but it and the rest of Kentucky were part of the Detroit division, while West Virginia was part of the Washington, D.C. division and Tennessee was part of the Atlanta division. By converting the Louisville district office into a field office and grouping Kentucky, West Virginia and Tennessee together in their own division, the DEA hopes to better organize efforts to tackle a crisis that has hit Appalachia particularly hard.
"The Appalachian region has been ground zero for the opioid problem in recent years. Overdose deaths were 65 percent higher among people in Appalachia than in the rest of the country in 2015, a recent
Appalachian Regional Commission study found. The study,
Appalachian Diseases of Despair, reported that nearly 70 percent of the overdose deaths in the Appalachian region in 2015 were caused by opioids. West Virginia had the highest opioid overdose mortality rates with 52.8 deaths per 100,000 people," Dylan Lovan
reports for
The Associated Press.
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| The new DEA Louisville division; click the image to enlarge it. (DEA map) |
Attorney General Jeff Sessions said at a Nov. 29 press conference that this is the first restructuring of DEA's field offices since the creation of the El Paso Division in 1998. The Louisville office will have 150 positions with 90 special agents in the three states. D. Christopher Evans, an associate agent who helps lead the Detroit field office, will lead the Louisville office.
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| The old DEA divisions with field offices; click the image to enlarge it. (DEA map) |
from The Rural Blog http://ift.tt/2kfuvGd DEA targets opioid abuse in Appalachia with new field office in Louisville over Ky., Tenn., and W.Va. -
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