NATIONAL DRUG ENFORCEMENT POLICY BOARD MEETING, 24 APRIL 1985

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP88B00443R000201060001-5
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: S
• Document Page Count: 3
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: December 9, 2009
• Sequence Number: 1
• Publication Date: April 24, 1985
• Content Type: MEMO

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24 April 1985
MEMORANDUM FOR: National Intelligence Officer for Narcotics
FROM: Director of Central Intelligence
SUBJECT: National Drug Enforcement Policy Board Meeting,
24 April 1985
1. There is to be a working group of the Drug Enforcement Policy Board
which will meet every month or so, with a board meeting every three months
or so. You are to represent me on the working group at the first meeting
in 30-45 days, exact date to be determined. Every member is to present a
narcotics threat assessment and a rundown on the resources committed to
various functions and relationships in the narcotics target.
3. I attach two pieces of paper the Attorney General handed out at the
meeting, one calling for recommendations of the working group on new policy,
and legislation to address the designer drug problem.
William J. Casey
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NATIONAL DRUG ENFORCET1 iT POLICY BOARD
Issue: Statistics on Federal Drug Seizures
Discussion:
Efforts by the Federal Government to measure the effectiveness of
its drug enforcement program have been severely hampered by the lack of
centrally gathered statistics on Federal drug seizures. Historically,
each aqency involved in drug seizures has kept its own figures. This
suits the needs of the agencies to record their individual accomplish-
ments, but it has resulted in substantial overlapping of data among
agencies.
A hundred tons of marijuana, for example, seized by the Coast Guard
with the assistance of the U.S. Customs Service and the Drug Enforcement
Administration, are often logged on each agency's books for the full
amount: each system shows a hundred-ton seizure in its database.
As a result, efforts to total the seizures recorded by all Federal
agencies have produced figures that reflect double- or triple-counting
in many cases. Without a data collection system that will prevent such
errors, the Federal Government is unable to gather reliable statistics
for the total amount of drugs it seizes.
Proposal:
Because this is an interagency issue that affects the ability of
the Federal Government to assess the effectiveness of its drug
enforcement efforts, accounting for drug seizures would be an appro-
priate problem for the National Drug Enforcement Policy Board to examine
and resolve. The focus would be on developing a system that would
compile Federal drug seizure data in a manner that is both reliable and
cost effective.
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NATIONAL DRUG ENF0FZCEmE11T POLICY BOARD
Issue: Designer Drugs
Discussion:
The term "designer drugs" refers to new substances that are chem-
ically similar to drugs already subject to the Controlled Substances
Act. By making slight chemical alterations, a producer can create new
drugs that have the effect of controlled substances, but are not in
violation of the Act.
The new canpounds can be developed and marketed very quickly, and
as soon as they are identified by the Government and put under emergency
scheduling controls, the clandestine laboratories could simply introduce
another modification to circumvent the law. If this cycle should occur,
law enforcement would always be one step behind the producers, and the
toll on public health would escalate as the supply of unscheduled drugs
increased.
The profit incentive for the production of designer drugs is
exceptionally strong: it has been estimated that a small, reasonably
well-equipped lab, with college-trained chemists, can produce $2 million
worth of synthetic heroin on a $500 investment in chemicals. It would
be reasonable to expect such a lucrative enterprise to attract an
increasing number of producers, particularly if they are not subject to
the penalties of the Controlled Substances Act.
The ease with which labs can produce large quantities of designer
drugs means that increasing amounts of substitutes for controlled
substances may arrive in the marketplace. Reportedly, a single chemist
working full-time could produce enough synthetic heroin to keep the
entire country's addicts supplied indefinitely. Some heroin substitutes
widely available on the West Coast are hundreds of times more powerful
than rrorphine, and serious neurological damage and even death have
resulted from their use.
Given their availability, potency, and ambiguous legal status,
designer drugs could easily become the drug of choice for many users.
This has caught the interest of the media and the Congress, and bills
have been introduced in both the House and the Senate that would require
the Policy Board to assess the problem and submit recommendations to
Congress.
Proposal :
In view of the urgency of the designer drug problem and the need
for new policy and legislation to address it, the Policy Board should
adopt this as an issue and request the reccnTrendations of the Working
Group.
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