>> american history tv, exploring the people in the events the tell the american story. at 7:00 pm eastern american history tv series congress investigates, looks at historic investigations that led to changes in policy and law. 1993-1995, we examine events around the 1993 siege carried out by the federal government and other law enforcement agencies at the branch davidian compound in waco, texas. at 8:00 eastern on lectures in history, texas a and m history professor malachi crawford talks about civil rights law and efforts to dismantle jim crow and racial segregation including the brown versus board of education supreme court decision which declared public education segregation to be unconstitutional and at 9:30 eastern on the presidency, new york times chief white house correspondent peter baker on the evolution of the american

vice presidency. he observed vice president will 10 years of our gorka a dick cheney, mike pence and kamala harris. exploring the american story, watch american history tv on c-span2 and find a schedule of your program guide or watch online on c-span.org/history. >> while testifying on capitol hill, the head of the drug enforcement administration discussed efforts to bring fentanyl traffickers to justice including ongoing investigations and charges against drug cartels and chinese chemical companies, she also gave examples of how smart phones had changed the nature of drug trafficking and outline president biden's 2025 budget request for the dea. the house appropriations committee hearing runs two hours.

>> in order, good morning, everyone. without objection, declare recess at any time. administrator, we want to welcome you to the subcommittee today to testify regarding the drug enforcement administration's fiscal year 2025 budget request. on a personal note i want to

thank you for your attendance of this year at the annual prescription drug summit in atlanta. your passion, for efforts to combat the drug epidemic and presents at the summit is greatly appreciated and understood. before we delve into the specifics of the budget request, i want to address a broader theme, that emerged in the examination. dea's operations. for the dea to remain crucial, this appears sincere, it is evident that the support agency receives on both the department

of justice and this administration in general is lacking. recent remarks by the attorney general and fbi director regarding our law enforcement with partners have raised concerns. three weeks ago when discussing law enforcement, the fbi director testified, quote, i am pleased with what we have gotten but we need a lot more. that is the fbi director. when the dea encounters obstacles like securing visas in a timely manner or agents that operate in mexico, there are outstanding warrants, that the mexican government fails to act on. it suggests the state of our

relationship with mexico may be far from ideal. additionally, it is troubling the dea administrator has not been able to secure a single meeting with a mexican government official since assuming her position. this lack of engagement, the nonsensical bureaucratic delay in visas and blatantly ignoring extradition requests for cartel members should be far from pleasing for anyone who cares about efforts to combat the cartels. furthermore despite this administration's announcement in november 2023, it secured the cooperation to take steps to curtail transit of precursor

chemicals, tangible progress in this regard seems to be lacking and more work remains to be done. in fiscal year 24. our subcommittee was faced with a challenging out location which requires significant cuts to many critical agencies budgets, the dea was the only law enforcement agency, the only one. this speaks to our commitment to the mission of the dea and hopes for success, in the dea's fiscal 25 budget request is for the expansion for the counter threat targeting teams.

and it is commendable, must ensure these investments should had measurable results but the department of justice. the attorney general's testimony, two weeks ago highlighted a concerning sentiment around the role of combating with the fentanyl crisis. when describing the whole of government approach this administration is taking to combat fentanyl, the attorney general noted treasury's role in the sanctions, homeland's rolling border security, and investigating cartels. and securing fugitives. and public affairs café.

the perception that the dea's role is limited to an education campaign, undermines the agencies vital enforcement, nevertheless, we continue to believe in the mission of the dea and recognize that. we look forward to hearing from you today about the dea's plans for fiscal 25 and how the agency addresses the challenges we expressed here. i am interested in hearing your frank and honest assessment of law enforcement relationship with mexico, your agency's assessment in stopping chinese precursor chemicals and whether

the dea is truly receiving the support it needs from this administration. i yield back the balance of my time. let me recognize mr. cartwright. >> i join you in welcoming back the administrator for her second appearance before the subcommittee as we discussed fiscal year 2025 president's budget request. i would like to take a moment to acknowledge the tragic loss of our brothers and sisters in the department of justice, last week when thomas weeks and three members of the marshall's fugitive task force lost their lives. it is a stark reminder of the risks and threats federal law enforcement and partners face

every day and the sacrifice too many have had to make in the name of keeping the nation safe. i would like to convey my deepest sympathies to families, friends and colleagues. last year we focused on types of drugs on streets have dramatically shifted from plant-based narcotics, to those made in laboratories, the accessibility and affordability of these synthetic drugs leaves federal, state, local partners, with defensive posture to keep dangerous narcotics out of our communities and drug trafficking networks trying to put them there, estimated by the cdc, we lost over 112,000 souls to fentanyl overdoses and

poisonings. dea is in many ways the last line of defense we have to save american lives in this epidemic. i want to discuss what dea has done to dismantle the entire network and what investments and other tools are most important to you when fiscal year 25 budget continued this important work in the work you've doing on the international stage to prevent these dangerous drugs from entering the country, we've already heard from fbi director ray and attorney general merrick garland this year about the mexican government and the chairman touched on this. how the mexican government

doing more, the precursor chemicals, from the people's republic of china and the mexican cartels utilizing decades old business models rapidly to produce fentanyl, distribute it and exploiting drug trafficking routes. and pills into the country, we need mexico to be a partner in this fight. i look forward to discussing that with you today. i want to say ultimately all of dea's work relies on congress to provide the resources needed to address the existing challenges and drug trafficking operations to continue investment in dea center clear signals that we will not allow

this attack on our communities to continue without consequence and those responsible will be held accountable by our justice system. i want to applaud the work of the men and women of the dea and i look forward to how we can best invest in this agency. once again, thanks for being here and look forward to your testimony. yield back. >> you are recognized for an opening statement. your written statement will be entered into the record. >> good morning, chairman rogers and members of this committee. i want to thank the subcommittee for inviting me to testify on national fentanyl awareness day. is appropriate that i am given the opportunity to highlight for you the national tragedy

caused by fentanyl. according to the cdc, 107,941 americans lost their lives, 42% of americans in the united states, and suburbs and rural communities or tribal lands. fentanyl is killing all americans. our communities hidden in other drugs were pressed into fake pills by mexican cartels. we during the past year and seized fentanyl at unprecedented levels, just last year cdc's 79 million fake pills released with fentanyl, 12,000 pounds of fentanyl, with potential deadly doses.

for the 10,000 employees working at dea, no greater urgency than to talk to the sinaloa cartels to save american lives. the 3.8 million increased this fiscal year is invaluable support for our mission. we know you under financial constraints, this increased funding will enable us to work to defeat the cartels. building on many successes over the past year requires continued support and resources from congress. we transform dea to this moment. the counter 13 which we set up in 2022-2023 are active against every part of the cartels and their criminal networks. these teams include special agents, tigers, program

analysts, data scientists and cyber specialists. we have partners from across the government who joined our team. the counter threat teams are providing an operating picture of each cartel that enables us to adapt to ever evolving threat. we added a third counter threat in 2,023 to focus on the elaborate illicit finance of the cartels. and this is their global money-laundering operations. we will talk more about this but we are tracking billions of dollars being moved by the cartels. the work of this team allowed us to open a significant number of new money-laundering investigations targeting these two cartels. in 2023, dea took action against every part of the global fentanyl supply-chain, when i testified before you

last april, we announced charges against 28 members, chemical brokers, laboratory members, managers, weapons traffickers, assassins in the network of the cartels that are responsible for bringing deadly fentanyl to the us. we announced operation last mile where we arrested 3337 people across the united states, working in partnership with the two cartels to sell deadly fentanyl in our communities and social media. those investigations showed us half of all cases were directly linked to the sale of fentanyl on social media. june and october of last year as part of the investigation into chinese chemical companies, dea charged 12 chinese chemical companies 24 chinese nationals and two chinese nationals into custody. these were the first-ever charges brought against chinese companies for fentanyl trafficking.

and they are sold online on websites, shipped through common barriers and payment for their chemicals being made to crypto currency, bitcoin, western union and other sources. in 2,024, dea continues to work with arjun see acted save american lives. the insights from our counter threat team, and the next step in global fight against fentanyl by standing up to the directorate. that are staffed by individuals across law enforcement. they can use every possible tool to defeat the sinaloa cartels. for state, local and federal intelligence defense partners.

we believe this task force will allow us to disrupt the two cartels globally. congress will continue to support this and help us to defeat the cartels. and because the formal rulemaking process is ongoing and my role in that process is determining the scheduling of drugs. it would be inappropriate for me to respond to questions on this rescheduling matter. i want to offer my deep thanks to every member of the subcommittee for the work that you do. the men and women of dea are working every day to defeat the cartel. the threat continues and the work continues.

>> thank you, ambassador. we will proceed under the 5-minute role, i will begin by recognizing myself. administrator anne milgram, i understand that as of last month, dea has approximately 13 visas pending mexican approval, this has resulted in some dea employees waiting 6 to 8 months for visa approval to work in mexico. additionally, there are 13 dea warrants pending extradition from the mexican government. do you believe your agents would say they are pleased with

our law enforcement the same way the fbi director did? >> the global supply-chain that are operated, they are based in mexico, the cartels are sourcing chemicals from china bringing chemicals along with guides to mexico, producing fentanyl in mexico, taking some of that fentanyl, pressing into pills in mexico and transporting it into the united states. the role that mexico plays is involved in illicit finance to get the dirty money back for their process. the role mexico plays across the global fentanyl supply-chain is significant and critical. as i said before this committee we are relentless he focused on that. let me say a few things. we are committed to working

shoulder to shoulder with anyone across the globe, in partnership on this side. the second is director ray, the cooperation has been uneven. i would echo that we have had some extra additions, we have seen law enforcement destroy the labs but there is so much work to be done and the we would like to partnership with mexico in doing this. when you talk about the visas, to recognize the incredible work happening by men and women in dea across the globe including mexico that work as hard, they work relentlessly on this and we are waiting, one has been pending for 8 months. the price you pay when we wait that long. >> let me ask you again, do you

believe, are you pleased with our relationship with mexico on this matter? >> i would describe myself, i say this very clearly on national sentinel awareness day that i think there is so much more work that needs to be done with urgency to stop this threat. >> you are not pleased. >> i could not have higher regard for the men and women of dea and the ways they are carrying out our mission and i believe we need more assistance globally as we fight this threat. we also are doing more to meet this moment internally. i couldn't say enough to you that my position is i am never going to look at family member who lost loved one in the eyes and tell them i didn't do everything i could to stop this threat from happening. >> you are not pleased. >> there's much more work to be done. >> you are not pleased.

>> i would say that, here's one i will be pleased. i will be pleased when there are no more american deaths from fentanyl and that is when we can say we have succeeded. >> i understand mexico has created approval committees but these don't appear to amount to bureaucratic hurdles that did not previously exist. what steps the department of justice and the administration taken as a whole, to improve dea's relationship with mexico, have you observed progress? >> i'm not familiar with those committees. i do know the attorney general have gone frequently to mexico and advocating on our behalf for visas for extradition and our ability to work jointly on operations.

>> with so much fentanyl flowing across our southern border from mexico and all the new limitations mexico has placed on dea, how would you respond to americans who view our counter fentanyl efforts as a war, and the mexican government complicit with the cartels? >> what i say often is right now we are in a fight to save american lives and this is as significant fighters we have ever seen. you've heard me say this before but we are losing the same number of americans every 11 days we lost on 9/11. it would be impossible to overstate how important it is that we all be working together to stop this threat and it is a grave threat. >> since being confirmed and assuming the role of administrator in june 2021.

you've been unable to meet with a single mexican government, is that true? >> i met with him in 2,020 one, fall of 2021 at the department of justice. >> how can we believe the mexican government is a partner in our counter drug efforts. when they won't meet with the head of drug enforcement administration. >> i understand the challenges we face are great and we stand ready to partner and work with any foreign counterpart that's willing to join us at the table. >> i want to tell you from one member of congress under the most difficult of

circumstances, without any support, superior functions in the government. they are not giving you the weapons you need or the support you have to have and we will tackle that problem in the subcommittee. thank you, mr. cartwright. >> administrator anne milgram, i want to follow up on the chairman's line of questioning on partnering with the government of mexico, we have to do it. i understand you are not in the state department and international relations is not your thing but we have to talk about this and this is where the rubber hits the road when we talk about distribution of fentanyl, coming from china, going to mexico, coming here and killing our kids.

the chairman was asking you about dealing issuance of work visas, mexico is delaying work visas to american dea agents working in mexico to get after the sinaloa cartel, i want to give you a chance to elaborate what effect that has on operations. >> thank you for the question. let me say a couple things. as i started to say to chairman rogers we have been waiting 8 months for one visa and we know the costs of what that means in terms of our ability to get work every day in the united states, losing 100,000 americans so time matters. i couldn't speak with enough urgency how important it is to get 13 agents and intel analysts into the country. second thing i want to assure you is our work does not stop.

we have 2,000 active investigations into those two cartels, many money laundering investigations, precursor chemical investigations across the supply-chain and the two criminal networks. i want to assure you the men and women of dea are working nonstop to defeat the cartels and shouldn't ask them to work under different circumstances but they are incredibly effective firsthand for the last three years. >> you mentioned the four indictments brought against chinese companies and individuals, for fruit precursor, fentanyl chemicals. continuing the investigation along those lines of chinese companies with precursor chemicals. am i correct on that? >> the global supply-chain the cartels are running for fentanyl and these common

organizations dominate the global fentanyl supply-chain. it starts and ends in china, pill progresses being manufactured in china. we are investigating the beginning, middle of the supply-chain, we've seen a switch to chinese money laundering, the cartels are working with chinese money laundering organizations as their bank to clean money, to launder money throughout the globe and that money is going back to the cartels. >> the appropriations panel funds the operation, less money or more money to get after chinese bad guys. >> one of my first week i spoke to one of our senior agents in the field and he said tired of doing less, tired of doing more with less. i would like to do more with more. my commitment to this committee, whatever you give us we will use in this fight and

we are grateful for this support. >> we talked about delays in mexico. we hired dea agents, you are committed to reducing the time to hire special agents. fy 23, your average time to hire was roughly 452 days and as of february this year your average time to higher in fy 24 is down to 345 days. i think it is still too longer. we are talking about an applicant pool that's easy to get to work they don't have a year to wait around for an offer, what can you tell us about how you change your hiring practices since last year and what your target to onboard special agents? >> i appreciate the opportunity to talk about this work. 245 days to hire is still too long.

between 6 to 8 months on the outside, what we have done is we have mapped our entire hiring process and created a dashboard so we can track every applicant, if there's a delay we can figure out very quickly why there's a delay and we have a weekly meeting where we are working to execute our goals. one of our goals is to reduce the time. i would say every time we put out a job application or invite people to apply, those notices close in a day or two. we are seeing a desire out there for americans to join dea. we need to work quickly to get them on board. >> we are ironing out the clunks and eliminate the bottlenecks. >> making a lot of progress because there's more work to do. >> mr. cline. >> thank you, anne milgram, for being here.

the honorable men and women of drug enforcement agency administration play a role in interdicting illicit deadly drugs before they end up in the hands of unsuspecting americans. it is evident that you have support in this committee. the stakes couldn't be higher but undermining your efforts, i noticed you have a 5% budget increase proposed but can you speak to the $10 million decision by omb for your budget request? >> my understanding is all agencies took that decision. >> it is across the board. >> that is my understanding. >> we want to support you but we also recognize that sometimes the best of intentions by agencies like yours have unintended consequences. dea proposed rulemaking for

emergency medical services, under protecting patient access to emergency medication act of 2017. the rule isn't set to go into effect until november of this year i am hearing concerns from operations in this district. my understanding is some ems providers may have to scale down in advance, life-saving treatments are basic to achieve compliance with what limited resources they have. are you concerned this proposed rule with treatments when they need it most. >> i've not looked specifically into their will. i would be happy to follow-up with you. >> proposed rule targets drugs scheduled to through 5 but it would end up pushing rural ems for a controlled substance registration to maintain a supply of basic drugs and 1-for-1 exchanges with hospital pharmacies.

volunteer ems and rural communities in my district, to afford these compliance costs for the most basic lifesaving services, taking out loans being considered. can you commit to working on a solution to reduce the cost of compliance before my constituents experience the unintended consequences. >> i would be pleased to look at that. we will follow-up with you. >> would like to find ways to reduce compliance costs. i want to go back to chinese precursors. last year you said the only limit on how much fentanyl power they can make is how many chemicals they can purchase. november 23rd summit, announced

a verbal agreement in which the department of commerce would delist china's public security from the entity list in exchange for counter narcotic cooperation. a recent select committee report found any form of cooperation is an empty gesture considering the chinese government continuing to direct a companies trafficking fentanyl materials. and combating the precursor trade, you made it your top priority and that is ours as well. do you think this rhetoric from the biden administration rings hollow considering they failed to make any arrests and warranted targets of us investigations? >> thanks for the opportunity. this is one of the most important things that can be focused on and talking about. i noted earlier the supply-chain begins and ends in china and so there is no way to do the work we need to do without being focused on it.

i went to beijing after the two presidents met and had the opportunity to have a number of meetings with senior leadership with law enforcement people in china and i would say a few things. my commitment to you, this committee, we are going to do the investigative work we need to do around cartels or supply chains including d focus on precursor chemicals, we will work shoulder to shoulder with any law enforcement agency, and in partnership with us, this is a global threat, we know those two cartels are engaged in either drug trafficking or money laundering or getting chemicals around the globe. the last pieces, i heard constrictive meetings to date with mps. what i say to you is too soon for us to know where this will end.

there's a limitless supply of chemicals, we need to do what we can to stop that from happening. we will do what we can investigating and if we can partner we will but we won't stop the work we have to. >> i yield back. >> mr. ruppersberger. >> i understand dea is recommending reclassification of marijuana as a less dangerous drug. is that correct? >> under the controlled substances act but there's a formal rulemaking process for scheduling or rescheduling substances, that process is ongoing, the next step in that process will be a notice of proposed rulemaking and an opportunity for public comment. because dea's involved in that scheduling process and the dea administrator is involved in it it would be inappropriate for me to comment at this time.

>> we bought and sold under a licensed regulatory framework. without scheduling controlled substances act, very complex between federal and state law. whatever direction you recommend, and exercising federal oversight and responsibilities while preserving each state's ability to determine the best approach to cannabis. what is happening in maryland is working well and preserve each state's ability to determine the best approach to cannabis. >> i can't get into details. i appreciate your comments. >> at the beginning of the year, dea had a huge bust of pills laced with fentanyl's in

dc region, 639,000 pills, 2000 pounds of drugs, 300% increase in the previous year. please talk to us about the drug cartels, how the drug cartels are working with local gangs, what tools and resources you need to combat the cartels and kangas and please talk about the use of crypto currency to facilitate their activities, what i am interested in is technology like artificial intelligence and how it is used by the dea. >> let me start, 79 million fake pills, 12,000 pounds of powder fentanyl, the most fentanyl that dea has ever seen. every year we are seeing more deadly fentanyl. we are also seeing the amount

of purity has gone up and the number of pills that had a deadly does have gone up. in 2021, it was seven of ten pills with the deadly dose. the work the men and women of dea are doing taking deadly fentanyl is a loss. talking about drug trafficking organizations, that is the operation we've seen to identify people in local communities working with these two cartels to essentially cross the last mile, because cartels need to get those pills into americans hands. that's how they make money. we've seen it continue to beyond the streets but overwhelmingly we've seen a shift to the digital world to social media. we say all the time the most dangerous place in the world is our home because everyone has a smart phone and within 2 or 3

clicks on a smart phone people are having pills delivered to their front door like who burritos. we are losing 22 american teenagers between 14 and 18 every week right now so this is a national tragedy. we need help on technology. we are committed to using the best technology we can and my feeling is we cannot allow the speed of crime to move faster than the speed of government. we have to meet these moments. the work i have seen from crypto currency tracking and illicit finance team in the last year's second to none, the best work i have ever seen in my career. we have a lot of data, a lot of technology, we need to do more and we need more but we are making progress could have tracked this money across the globe. the answer is yes, we would like to do more.

we are setting ourselves up to do this effectively. >> my apologies to my colleagues, for cutting in line. good to see you again. hard to believe another year has passed about a devastating issue in our country. 47,000 men died in vietnam, 30,000 in korea and that is over 23 years. we equal that every year and the loss of fentanyl. fentanyl poisoning plus overdoses in one year equals all the mores since world war ii combined. that is a war. being administered by the cartels in mexico.

put another way, if you cratchit airbus 321 every day in this country do you think this body would act? do you think the international community would act? if you kill 200 people every day and one airplane, 360 days of the year we would be howling in this body, passing laws and airplanes, this is china's way of ensuring, in the military or world dollars or plumbers or police officers or teachers. in 1941 we were at war with japan but hadn't declared it yet. we are at war with the cartels at least. you are at the front line of the job. i want to thank you, anyone who wears the badge, i would like to say yesterday in my state, you work closely with local law enforcement, the local sheriff

and police department and you've got a guy who has two kilos of math, 1 kg of heroin and ten pounds of fentanyl. how many would that kill? >> i would have to do the math for you with our lab. but tens of thousands. >> i don't have a question, i just want to say you do a great job and each of you has on your shoulders the idea we are losing 70,000 americans to fentanyl every year and you are the front line of defense and that has to weigh heavily on you and i appreciate your sacrifice each of you make, the work you do with local law enforcement and went to visit your station in dallas next to the fbi, it takes a partnership with local and federal law enforcement and your job never ends. other folks have questions and i would yield back the balance of my time.

>> thank you mr. chairman. administrator anne milgram, thank you for taking time to speak with us and your service to the country and thanks to your entire agency and the agents who worked tirelessly. and i wanted to talk a little bit about operation overdrive, 2022, the dea, data focused dea law, criminal justice networks causing the most harm. continuing to be in the position on the phase of the operation and its success. can you give me an update on phase 2 of operation overdrive and what your team saw on the

ground, in the operating locations in rochester? >> thank you. we launched operation overdrive in 2021, we started to effectively launch it in 2022. the idea is to go into local communities where we live and work and where every american is impacted. .. being impacted and focus on two things. violent crime and drug poisoning and deaths. we do that in partnership with our state and local law enforcement with the local prosecutors, with the u.s. attorneys. we have now been in 86 locations across the united states. and we are very actively working on our next phase, which will be phase four. what we have seen from this work i would note a few things. one, just remarkable partnerships with our local law enforcement, police departments, sheriffs. that is the kind of work we need to be doing together to really effectively stop the next shooter in a community or stop the person who is going to sell the next pill. one of the things i was reading recently was a report on little

rock, arkansas. we just finished work in little rock, arkansas, the team working together, again i want to give credit to the entire team, we geospatially mapped the community. and what that means is we are able to provide to local law enforcement a map of where the crimes are happening, where the shootings are happening, where the drug poisoning are happening. that together lets us figure out how do we stop tha we are about to announce, we are going to start moving on a rolling basis so we can keep moving and communities across the united states. we are moving to do geospatial work across the country because it allows us to provide local law enforcement with more insight into what we see in the community and they are able to provide it with inside into what they see and together we can identify one of the

greatest threats, who are the individuals causing most harm and together we can pretty rapidly target the individuals to make sure they cannot harm >> you comment that the requested budget amount will allow you to do what you need to do. >> i'm confident we can do that and what i would like to be able to do is get to a point where the kind of geospatial work we are doing we are able to leave behind in communities. i don't think we are financially very odd but i would love to be able to help our local police department and i was the state attorney general and have the privilege of overseeing more than 500 police departments for the great state of new jersey i an know how much they could use that kind of help to have that kind of assistance with the geographic mapping of threats. and getting access to what we see as the threat i would like to evolve and get there but right now i'm absolutely confident we can do phase 4 and what makes this work is the partnership between local and state law enforcement community the prosecutors and dea all of us together.

and often we have other federal partners, atf marshals, fbi, i'm pleased with the work in the partnerships. >> last year you were kind enough to host myself mr. clyde mr. elzie to da in quantico and during that conversation we talked about finances aiding the illegal drug trade which i thought was fascinating into that and i understand your counter functional threat team has been essential to combating money laundering organizations and expanded influence of the mexican transnational criminal organization, can you lidiscuss little bit more da work to identify and mitigate the cartel and the work that is pushing fentanyl into communities like mine. >> we founded the first two counter threat teams in 2022.

identifying vulnerabilities we can target to take down and defeat the cartels. we were doing so much work ver quickly around the illicit finance that we realized last summer in the summer of 23 we needed to create a third team around illicit finance we have some of the finance experts from across the united states and the globe that have now come together, some of the most creative people i've ever seen they were able to really figure out how to leverage every piece of dea financial data in order for us to understand the threat and start tracking globally. we have a great number of money laundering illicit finance cases investigations ongoing the majority of which right now relate to chinese money laundering and you'll see in the coming months a lot of that were coming forward. >> thank you i appreciate. >> thank you. thank you for hobeing here.

and your work. i know you mentioned you don't want to speak about the process of going to the schedule 1 to 3 but i do want to ask you a little bit different question i- hope you can answer that i will talk a little bit about that. there was a 2023 study. by the national institutes of health in reference to a rise in influx of cases of reports asof cannabinoid hyper and assistant syndrome, probably saying it and correct but it's chs is what is referred to. exhibits a distinctive pattern of cycling through nausea, vomiting, abdominal pain and often other several things over several month period prior to cannabis use the cdc three in

10 people who use marijuana have this disorder. did you talk to the adverse affects of marijuana use disorder. >> because that is going to be a part of this regulatory process it would be inappropriate for me to comment at this time. but i appreciate your mentioning the study and of course i will read it. >> okay. my understanding is that this same study did numerous studies establishing connection between marijuana use and elevated risk of psychotic conditions including psychosis, depression, anxiety, schizophrenia and substance use disorder. i can speak to this let me put my thoughts about it. i believe the united states is in the midst of a mental health

crisis and with the adverse effects i just mentioned such as psychosis, depression, anxiety, schizophrenia, substance abuse disorder, my concern is rescheduling marijuana would make the crisis worse. i know you say you can't comment but i want to go on record with that because i do think it's a real concern and i am very very concerned about this rescheduling and it's very disconcerting. i'm very concerned about forming lifetimes of addiction. there's many of us in washington and the congress and i'm sure not all but a lot of us very concerned about that. we hope this is something that is not done and i yield back.

>> on a follow-up of my colleagues mr. marelli is comments and express appreciation of communities in new york city, queens specifically appreciation on the many ways the da partners with our state and new york city local law enforcement agencies to take off our streets and make the communities safer. i'm proud of how the bipartisan savers communities act which president biden signed into law in 2022 has empowered law enforcement and the courts to hold the firearms traffickers responsible. as you know well, this created the first federal criminal offense for firearms

trafficking. i was glad to see the da work within ipd to dismantle gun trafficking operation in brooklyn in march of this year the defendants pleaded lty to multiple charges to the distributional fentanyl and d firearms trafficking. this case became one of the first cases in the country to use the provision of the bipartisan safer communities act that made trafficking a criminal offense in federal law. which makes a huge difference in the city like new york. where the overwhelming majority of crime guns were last go from licensed dealer from another state. administrator, can you speak to how these provisions of this bill support the work that your agents are doing to take guns off our streets and reduce violent crime and how is the dea allocating resources to coordination efforts with local and state law enforcement to

crack down on inter-jurisdiction firearms trafficking. >> dea we are focused relentlessly on drug trafficking and particularly on the fentanyl threat. that said, we been doing extensive work around violence in the communities because we know the intersection between drugs and violence. there inextricably intertwined. we do work around operation overdrive as you heard earlier. we also see is an enormous amount of illegal firearms was heard of the law enforcement work across the united states. last year i think we seized almost 1200 firearms as part of our operations. we also partner very closely with all the doj components the fbi, atf, marshals, and new york city as you know, the atf hosts the daily meeting with nypd with federal law enforcement prosecutors are in that room state and federal and

they are talking about who are the individuals likely to be the next shooters and really focus on how to they stop the threat of violence on the streets.dea has a regular presence we have deep partnerships across the united states of our state and local law enforcement or parts. our main focus is on drugs but we are absolutely working on violent crime in communities and very strongly working in partnership. one of the most important things in the partnerships because we call upon one another when we can be proactive in stopping the next crime from happening or when we need to investigate and prosecute thing that is already happened. >> thank you, i yield back. >>. >> it dawned on me you have will be one of the most unenviable positions in the

country right now. i don't envy you your job. it's like being a goalie for your own coaches calling plays to score against you right now it's got to be frustrating. you don't have to comment on that we have a president right now that has an open border policy you do work for attorney general that has effectively relegated the dea to be in his words, the very end of the line with the public affairs mission or campaign. this has got to be very frustrating for you. with that inference is that your job is to focus on the demand side and not the supply side which is literally the what the dea is supposed to do, your job description has the word cement in it. so we look forward as a sub community giving the tools to do your job which is the enforcement side to make sure we can catch the bad guys, stop the cartels, give you the

resources despite the leadership above you and, by the way, ag garland gave himself a capital a in front of this committee a couple weeks ago which was in my opinion offensive to victims of fentanyl. i was going ask you if we are winning or losing this war against fentanyl but the metrics are self-evident, we are losing the war right now and it's okay for you to say you are not pleased i think the chairman asked that several times with us i don't think any of us are pleased with the number of deaths we are seeing as a result of this poison coming across our borders. last year you responded to mr. klein's testimony he asked if you would commit to calling china major illicit drug trafficking producing country i'm assuming now the prc has been put on the major drug transit illicit drug producing with you it's a prc is actually a country we should be targeting? >> yes the majors was changed to include precursor chemicals so escongress along with the

state department has listed china as a source of fentanyl production in those precursors. >> we appreciate your support on the communication of the chain of command for that. we talked about the fact that some chinese companies have been charged to this date you have $500 million budget footprint for foreign international companies going after those folks can you talk about if i budget is filled what is the mission look like and how do we continue on that please use the metaphor last year and this year if we had slow-moving ship crossing the pacific full of vx gas coming from china we would stop that ship before it got to the long beach or mexican port inbound for the u.s. borders. talk to us about the sort of ttp's and policies the $500 million and able for us.

>> if i could start about saying one thing about demand because i said and a lot of rooms across the united states and the world where people talk about demand and we very much understand substance use disorder. what we are seeing happening in the united states is not demand driven. i want to be really clear this is the cartels driving what we are seeing. that's why they are hiding fentanyl and other drugs. that's why they are not selling fentanyl as though it was fentanyl. is a really important point we do a lot of work around public awareness one pill can kill because the cartels are being so perceptive about how they try to get these drugs to americans. talking about your analogy of stopping the ship i think is a great way to think about analogy. what we've done over the past two years is try to map the criminal network so we can get proactive and get in front of them. i believe we will not be effective unless we are able to target the networks

proactively. we cannot wait until the harm has happened or until there is a particular thing that happens to galvanize us when we do it before and work it is vital to the va. more than 69 countries right now more than 90 offices around the world all of those offices number one focus is the united states of america. of course we assist our foreign partners with their local issues but our prime work across the globe is how do we stop the fentanyl threat how do we stop the two hotels. having mapped i see the map of the committee i look at it and think about the map that the teams have done showing 50 countries. we are working on multiple countries across the globe. i want to thank you because in la we have district attorney that won't charge fentanyl dealers with murder if a deal known poison pills or corrective pills. we are able to raise those at the federal level under the dea

we appreciate the ability to do that and your comment that this is not demand driven is not lost on us this is policy driven and education is key so we appreciate everything i yield back. >>. >>. >> if you recall in last year's budget echearing made a commitment to provide specifically the total of no bid or sole-source contracts administered during dollar value of the contracts my staff emailed your congressional affairs office eight different times over the last year following up on this commitment may 24 june 8, june 23, july 5 july 14 etc., etc., despite your staff promising this request would be fulfilled

soon, we never received a response. your staff wasn't the one who made the commitment, administrator, you made this commitment and in this very room. i realized the department of justice inspector general is currently investigating your contract dealings with congress is also an investigatory body. when i was a young navy officer station will strike fighter squadron and 61 i had a commanding officer he had three letters, three words printed in our hangar bay, three foot high those three words stuck with me my entire life and those words for performance, not excuses. all i have gotten for the last year has been excuses. i believe you are one of the few agencies within the department of justice to

actually get a budget increase, last year he sent yet i still do not inhave the information i have requested so you can add to that list not just the number and dollar value of no-bid contracts but also list them individually by recipient so we can see who got them. and with what dollar value was associated with each one. i guess i can add them up, you don't have to give me the total. my question is then when will you provide me with this information? >> let me start by apologizing for the delay on this. as i said to you yesterday, it's not acceptable and you have my commitment it will not happen again. we do a weekly meeting where we track a number of things at dea we been tracking letters to members of congress we have not tracked keepers until recently we are now tracking that you have my song, and on that. i have worked with and i want to take responsibility for this.the answers went to the department of justice this last

week so we are working very actively with them to get them to you. i had hoped to get them to you by the end of the day yesterday that did not happen. i think it's eminent i'd be happy to call your office we can call your office every day and give you a status update its not in our hands right now. but i think it will be very soon. >> i would appreciate that, thank you, i will accept your offer, please let us know on a daily basis weekly basis would be just fine. we would like to follow-up. in the fy 23 budget there was a $30 million program increase for the information sharing center that your administration requested. was that for what's called the mission operating system or mission os or was that another purpose? >> i'm not sure i have to look closer. i do know there was some funding that came for our

internal data technology overhaul, mission os would be a part of that. but i'm not sure about that. >> can you briefly describe to me what you are doing with the mission operating system? >> to come very high level and a little more granular, when i came in i found we had a lot of technology that was over 20 years old and as you know, when you look at our sole-source contracts a lot of those related technology. our systems are so old that to have coders nobody called in the same language are systems built a long time ago. all of that needs to be upgraded. we need to make changes so another example when i came in we were only tracking the time. obviously right now live in a polydrug world so we cannot be effective unless our system lets us capture multiple drugs.

it's basically the broader system we are creating allow warning us to collect the information we correct, collect digital stop. >> what's the current status? >> we made a number of changes but the sort of overall, i would use mission os to describe the overall the place we want to get to which we are not there yet but we've made a number of system changes and we are already taking a lot of ground. >> i think my time is expired so i tyield back. thank you.

>> think back to my time in the military you train the way you fight, you fight the way you try. your allies are your allies, your enemies or your enemies, let's line them up, go to war and may the strongest person when. we need more allies. allies are the allies on the ground doing the work, the sheriffs, the police chiefs, the local law enforcement. i fully support state and local taskforces i continue to hear every day how critical they are for the ongoing criminal and counter drug smuggling efforts. this is absolutely critical that we have a federal, state, local nexus that tackles and wins and make sure our communities are more say. you reported in your budget that through the fourth quarter fiscal year 23 is approximately

2800 special agents and 3000 task force officers across 600 taskforces dedicated to transnational crime. and drugs. is there a need for additional special agents or task force operators? >> a couple things, first, as we stand up the trident teams want to set up along the border we will use the el paso office because we have great capacity there. and one in new york to start. these will be state local federal teams that also have the intelligence community and defense community. so that's an example for the next step or we can use every piece of information dea has to target the international threat we serve in taskforces across the united states every day, we have remarkable partnerships we leave many this is one of the

ways i think we do really important work across the country. one of my personal views is that we need to figure out how we can share more information with our state and local partners. i sat as a state attorney general i know we were talking about tens of thousands of law enforcement professionals across the knights on the front line every saturday and incredible partners and can be very effective. and work with us on a daily basis with this threat but how do we provide even more support and information on the cartels and the threats to them to help them. >> the da needs a when america needs a win n and i'm tired of everyone else placing the blame on the problem we need a win win starts at the local level with the taskforces. we need to go out and take block by block street by street i have the fbi friday i'll be in west texas we are doing a roundtable with local state and federal law enforcement to

specifically talk about expanding some of the taskforces that are out there. this is how you win you don't talk about the problem you solve the problem solve the problem by getting more good guys than bad guys rolling them up one block at a time. blank checks won't solve a problem he's blaming china or someone else that's fine and dandy but doesn't keep our kids safe doesn't make sure people don't die. that's what this game is about is about life or death is a life or death game we are playing and the dea used to be at the center of this game. a major chess piece in this game and it feels as if now they are a smaller part of it. that needs to change. you have my commitment but i need your commitment where we can work together on building out these taskforces in a more robust manner and when we do roll up somebody the world knows about it can't just be in secret. >> first of all, our national

fentanyl awareness day, you have my deepest commitment i will never stop doing everything i can to stop this threat. i do believe we have a plan and we are making progress but we have lost there's a lot more work to do we are committed to doing it in partnership with you. in texas and with this committee and with every american community. >> i will end with this am very interested in the directorate and direction that is going, intel is absolutely critical to solving the problem in being able to get that in an actionable way that boots on the ground to be able to do that is critical any times they want to be able to do but they don't have the intelligence to be able to perform that i'm very interested in that and would love to stay abreast of that, thank you chairman and thank you administrator and i yield back.

>> and: thank you. >> gentlemen yields back. that concludes the first round of questions i assume there is a desire for a second round. some members at least. so we will do just that. consistent with your desire to be out of here by noon. we will live up to that commitment. i yield myself as much time to consume just you previously testified before this subcommittee the flora fentanyl precursor from china to mexico. in november of 23 president biden announced a partnership with china where they would help stem the flow of precursor chemicals. i understand china new efforts are mainly civil enforcement matters with little to no

actual criminal enforcement. has the dea observed any significant decrease in the amount of precursor chemicals flowing from china to latin america? >> at this moment in time, and we work very closely with our partners at cbp on the flow of cursor chemicals. at this point in time we continue to see precursor chemicals going to mexico for the production of fentanyl. we continue to see fentanyl produced at historic and catastrophic rates. what i would say to you is that dea began re-engagement with mips in january of this year. we have partnered with mps and again, in 2019 china had "finished fentanyl " we began re-engagement last year and had constructed meetings we are committed to working with any partner across the globe we can work with to fight the threat

so are continuing to do all the investigative work the dea does and has done over the last couple years and bringing the first criminal charges against chinese chemical companies and really focusing on the movement of those chemicals. we will continue to do that work investigating we would like to see our partners in china take similar actions and we are law enforcement agency we always ask law enforcement counterparts to engage in law enforcement activity. >> so not only did we not see a decrease in precursors out of china but we are seeing an increase. is that accurate? >> i couldn't say that i would have to bring in my colleagues from cbp to point to the exact numbers. what i can tell you is that fentanyl has increased over the last three years in the united

states and this partnership this work has been constructive so far but i believe it's too early to know whether we have the results we want to see. my commitment to you is that w are doing this work and we will continue to do this work and as long as there is a global fentanyl threat we will continue to investigate every part of that supply chain. >> based on recent actions how would you characterize our relationship with china when it comes to the fight against fentanyl and what would you say to those who view china as complicit with the cartels? >> when i came in we had no law enforcement cooperation or communication with mps the chinese law enforcement agencies. that changed starting last november when the two presidents president biden and president xi jinping met and they agreed to resume counter

narcotics cooperation there's a few things e we've done one is asked for their help in prosecuting and shutting down chemical companies stopping build process from going out of china number two, being willing to stop global money laundering and crypto currency that's originating with many instances in their going into the capital issue which we could talk about if you would like. and then scheduling additional chemicals. one of the things china did effectively in 2019 was to schedule "finished fentanyl. there are many fentanyl precursor chemicals the building blocks we now ask them to schedule. just to be clear, what we know from investigations is that there are people working at those chemical companies that are chemists who are actively assisting drug traffickers or people they believed to be drug traffickers with how to produce fentanyl they are essentially

teaching them how to make fentanyl i will be clear in saying what a great i believe this is and also that i believe if we could stop the flow of precursors from china we could have a significant impact on the amount of fentanyl being made. >> how are we supposed to reconcile the administration november 23 announcement that china is a partner in the efforts to combat functional with what our dea agents are actually hang out in the field? what i would say to you is that the meetings have been constructive but it's too early to tell what the results would be stop i'd be happy to come back to the committee as this goes on to let you know whether we see the results we believe we need to see. >> how would you rate mexico's lack of action to get your people into mexico and in place. i would you characterize

china's impact on that matter? >> i would take the same position as to both countries is we stand ready and willing to work with any law enforcement partners that will work with us that are committed to help us stop american lives being lost and we will continue to do the investigative work we do and dea has incredible capabilities i'm so proud of the men and women in the united states and across the globe that are working on this threat day in and day out even in difficult circumstances.and third, i think we've seen some progress but to start to refer back to director ray we need much more. we've got to see sustained scalable cooperation in order for us to be able to have impact we know we need. the threat is driven by two global criminal enterprises that are headquartered in mexico. >> keep up the good work.

>> not to put too fine a point i'm interested in more questions about precursor chemicals your written testimony includes the t. following statement on june 23, 2033 indictments were announced against for chemical companies and eight individuals all based in the prc people's republic of owchina for knowingly providing customers in the united states and mexico with the precursor chemicals and scientific know-how to manufacture illicit fentanyl indictments were the first ever charges against fentanyl precursor chemical companies. is that correct that was the first time? >> yes, how long has fentanyl been hurting americans? >> the threat began around 2014 and slowly increased europe on your.

>> so there been a few presidential administrations during the fentanyl crisis but this administration is the first to prosecute chinese companies is that right? >> yes the first charges were last year. >> do you intend to keep it up? >> yes. >> okay good i want to shift gears and talk about marijuana for a moment. last week the administration announced that they would be looking to reclassify marijuana from schedule one narcotic for example, heroin, lsd, to a scheduled three narcotic for example, steroids, tylenol with codeine. that will still need to go through a formal rulemaking process and you alluded to that in response to mr. ada holds questions and you are carestricted in how much you ca go into that by i think the administrative procedures act so i won't ask you to get into dea formal position on the

decision will forward without rulemaking but i do want to ask you to give us a sense for how reclassification of marijuana might allow dea to allocate more resources to chasing fentanyl and other narcotics that are killing people, in other words, do we have agents working on marijuana investigations that could be freed up to go to work on cases we do currently do work around marijuana across the united states where it rises to the federal level and example we've done work in a number states on current illicit there is work

we do, our top focus is fentanyl the drug killing americans but we do work on it currently. you have said there is no greater urgency than defeating the lower cartels on fentanyl but beyond that and you walk through what your top priorities are in the fy 2020 or 2025 budget request two main pieces we requested in this budget art additional funding more than $18 million for the counter threat teams. all this is the longest to map the cartels and what are their roles in the organization that allows us to look for vulnerabilities and really

target in a way that can defeat the cartels. we are then going to expand into the trident work i was describing so a lot of the work is coming out of the counter threat teams right now and we started the counter threat teams in the field so each of our field divisions now has one, some are just getting up and running but the idea with the funding would be to allow us to establish the teams we have at headquarters the three teams in a permanent way adding staff to them and then we ate broader teams in the field that allow us in every single part of the united states to be able to know what's the specific threat is it what are they doing was the money launder is responsible and so on. it really is the evolution of that work as well as it answer to trident. the other request which i think is a little more than $15 million is for you body worn cameras that affirmative justice dea we made a commitment to expand the use of body worn cameras so as a

matter of public accountability and transparency that work continues. >> thank you for your testimony. administrator milgram, you've been a state prosecutor you been a federal prosecutor you've been federal law clerk you been state attorney general, we are grateful for your service dea in this administration i yield back. >> thank you for alleging us a second round i end of the last line of questioning with the partnership between the local law enforcement and the dea at the federal level specifically the federal target being raised against dealers who are selling this stuff. we have text messages coming off of phones of dead children 16-year-olds where the dealer admits that the batch they gave

them may be tainted and not made correctly because little johnny died yesterday so little susie when you take this make sure someone is with you with narcan to make sure they can bring you back to life. this is self-evident in terms of an aggravating assault of the murder effectively. we talked about in my county north la has the highest density of functional poisonings in all of la county we had 80 just in my district alone last year and 27 congressional district. we have a da da george gascon like the penguin of gotham city he actually helps the criminals rather than helps the victims of the criminals and it's very frustrating. having the ability to go prosecutor is key. i submitted a combating retinal poisoning bill which allows for two boroughs burns job grants

one to directly fund local law enforcement for the efforts of chasing down the dealers in cooperation with the dea. another for nonprofits to educate kids, parents, grandparents, by the way i think it's not your job your job is the enforcement side our job as parents and grandparents and neighbors and teachers on francis to educate hekids on th fact that this is a very real threat, one pill one pill is very real. my question is, what can we do to better synergize so the federal government and local law enforcement regardless of county das regardless of state ag paradigms that might be pro-crime how do we better synergize one plus one equals three the lessee is the problem of open border policy is the source of the problem, china is the source the precursor but how do we get to one plus one equals three on the enforcement side.

>>. >> is a really important part of our work stop a lot of the work we are doing across the u.s. is based on our additional. >> what does that stand for? >> od justice basically one of our operations we now have in every single field division. a lot of the work is based on the work the teams in la have stood up and remarkable work that's been happening for many years between local law enforcement da. we use that as a model of how to do the partnership with state and local law enforcement. we now have this in every single field division across the united states and i'm pleased that we significantly increased number of cases we can do where we charge death resulting. someone is given a pill or powder that contains fentanyl they die and we are able to bring federal prosecution holding them accountable. we've also set up a special unit at our special operations division in virginia for local law enforcement we have

checklist for what they should look for when they get to the scene where somebody has been poisoned or overdosed. we have agents in the field it's really important work we significantly increase it and la has been a model for the work that we've done. >> we appreciate that because seeing the parents and the sheriff's lustration at the local level they have cases where they have all these text messages and the da doesn't file charges it's absurd. so that partnership is literally the only lifeline of hope being given to some of these victims families right now and the sheriffs out there trying to do the work and enforce the law. you have a venue and a vehicle to bring federal charges and i applaud you and thank you for allowing that and encouraging that i'm glad it's running across other major cities and

throughout entry. i think the technology piece is also very important you have access to technologies that maybe some of the local law enforcement agencies don't. whether it surveillance or drones etc., where we stay within the limits of the constitution but also improve probabilities of successful arrest and preventing poison from getting on the street. >> first i want to thank you for all your experience you bring a lot of experience to this job. i was years i mean many years ago former investigator prosecutor and most of what you do work for federal state and local and it's really effective. probably more effective than any other law enforcement i've bseen. i think the biggest problem we have now is money, no question.

but a based on my experience of a bit more in this committee. the dea are very unique. work in tough places where it's very dangerous where fbi and other areas we don't have the backup. they are on a continual basis working in that regard. you seem to be involved and want to help them any way you can. and we appreciate that. can you talk more about the chinese money laundering? what can the appropriations committee do to help you? what staff resources do you need to investigate tracking and stopping while all this was going on. and you know what treasury is doing. >> we work very closely with

treasury. they often will bring sanctions when we done investigation so we have a very close partnership with them they have folks that are stations with us at our headquarters and we've invited them to enjoy the counter threat team they could be very helpful on the finance work. in terms what we are seeing on illicit finance to explain it a little bit in 2016 china passed a law limiting the amount of monies that chinese nationals can take out of the country. that has created a space where individuals in china who would like to get money out of china above that amount to about 50,000 u.s. dollars equivalent. somebody who wants to get that money in the u.s. needs to use a money broker and those money brokers are now essentially becoming the engine of global, at least in the united states, fentanyl money laundering the people in the net states that te have cash that have cash

available for individuals who want cash in the united states of the cartels. drug trafficking we believe the cartels are making each fake pill around $0.10 a pill and selling it in the u.s. for between five dollars and $30. attracting billions of dollars globally, a lot of the reason it has shifted to chinese money laundering organizations as this desire to get money out of china. they are essentially the bank for the court tells where they can put the dirty money laundering and then a money gets back to the els. . she's amazing. she's an incredible part of our team. >> thank you chairman.

administrator, according to a letter dated december 19, 2023 from the das office of congressional affairs, the dea has the final authority to schedule schedule, or d schedule i drug under the controlled substances act, do you agree? >> yes sir. >> so you are the final? >> yes. if there is relation.fi >> in your state you mentioned it's been publicly reported and confirmed by the doj a ngnotice of proposal to make marijuana from schedule one to schedule three and currently being considered by the office of management and budget i ask unanimous consent to enter into the record this article it's usda reclassify marijuana instructions according to the ap news from april 30, 2024. >> moved. >> thank you.

>> in this particular article it says the proposal, which still must be reviewed by the white house office of management and budget it says also today the attorney general circulated the proposal to reclassify marijuana from schedule one to schedule three so is the decision to reschedule marijuana being initiated or encouraged predominantly by the white house office of management and budget the attorney general's office for the da. >> there will be a notice of proposed rulemaking that's released unfortunately i'm not to be able to get into this conversation right now. >> okay. you have said multiple times it would be inappropriate for you to talk about this. inappropriate or illegal, violation of law or just inappropriate? >> inappropriate according to our counsel i should not be engaged in a conversation to explain a little bit of that,

since dea is ultimately the decider of scheduling and rescheduling the dea administrator in that ulrole it would be inappropriate for me to make comments about this process or parts of the process. >> we are the united states congress you wouldn't have authority if we didn't give it to you. we make the law, you execute the law, we give you the authority, we are asking the questions. it's like, you're an extension of us when we create the law so i'm asking you the question, where is it coming from is coming from the dea is it coming from the attorney general is a coming from the white house office of omd where is it coming from?>> under the administrative procedures act which congress made into law there is a formal rulemaking office that goes on that leaves to the issuance of an prm then the opportunity for public comment and then the process plays out beyond the ultimate decision being made at dea as to the scheduling or

rescheduling of a substance. as agency that will be the ultimate decider, i'm not going to engage in conversations about issues that could be part of this conversation. >> marijuana is a very dangerous drug. not as dangerous as some of the others we talked about but it certainly is much more dangerous than what you see regularly people partake of like alcohol etc. you have a significant increase in traffic accidents we have seen and sent people to the emergency room's simply because they have been partaking of marijuana. so have you had any outreach from the white house or the vice president's office regarding scheduling of marijuana? >> i'm knocking to be able to get into any of the e process.

>> are you aware of any instance in which a rulemaking that's schedules reschedules rd schedules a drug the controlled substances act is not signed by the administrator or dea? >> stepping out of marijuana talking about this generally, i am not. >> i will look and confirm it's accurate but at least in my experience i will confirm that with your office but i'm not aware personally. >> that's all i have, thank you mr. chair and i yelled back. >> first of all i was can ask about the director, mr. trident asked the question i appreciate your response is that one of the things i'm interested you can perhaps help expand on this is i've always assumed the cartels interest was in creating dependency, addiction

may have a market that you continue to supply because there's a demand. i understand that that has changed, part of what is wh resulted in your one pill can kill project to educate the american public. there's really no longer in the interest of the cartels per se to make sure that people stay alive so they can continue to feed the addiction, the models change pretty dramatically i was wondering if you could help the american public understand what we are dealing with right now e and sort of new mode of operation if you could walk through that and ouwhy the one pill can kill campaign is so important to that. >> you just ask the question i think we get asked or than any other thing when we go to schools where we are people always ask the same question, why would a drug dealer kill their customer? it's the right way to think about it in the older model of drug trafficking that when i was coming up the manhattan das

office we strongly believe that drug traffickers did not kill their clients and in part it was based on some relationship even a relationship is a strange thing to say but drug traffickers knew their clients clients knew who to go to to purchase drugs. we now live in a largely digital world where more than 200 million americans anare on social media. the cartels can operate largely anonymously without ever knowing their clients and the clients don't know their traffickers. so this has completely changed what we see we are also in a world where the cartels are actively trying to deceive people they are not selling sentinel as fentanyl they are selling it as for those that look identical to real l oxycodone to real xanax, adderall are hiding it another drugs that they sell as though it were ken kane when it's actually cocaine laced with fentanyl. the whole model has changed. with think about this a lot as

cartels want to sell more drugs, fentanyl is the most addictive substance we've ever seen 50 times more powerful than heroin so they are using it to get people to come back again and again and as long as people survive they believe they will have more customers. and if they died, they will go back on social media and find someone else stop. >> it's interesting the sense you can become u addicted clear one pill can kill but not so your building ntessentially a market of repeat customers but to the degree they might die it's just because of the addictive nature of this and because the deception in their practices. it's not only that you need to get hooked on it they don't even care about that is that you need it legitimately opioid for a medical condition or you are buying it what do you think you are buying it for prescription and you are not, that's really part of the additional t aldanger to americ.

>> any american to and i always like to emphasize this, anyone gets a prescription from your doctor and fills it at the pharmacy you have nothing to worry about. those painkillers or other drugs are arabsolutely fine. >> because they are highly regulated. >> what the cartels have done is by pill process from china along with dies and molds they can make a pill that o looks identical to oxley identical to xanax, identical to adderall. they advertise for cell oftentimes on social media as though they are real. >> so i'm a patient may be dealing with some knee issue or some issue that requires this prescription i get the prescription from the dock but instead of going to my local pharmacy i go online and get it cheaper this way is that essentially how it works. >> what we see a lot of people are looking for whether foxy,

adderall, xanax, some people have had prior prescriptions some have not. summer young people who are looking for a painkiller, anxiety or other issue we should be ngreally clear and saying you cannot buy legitimate prescription drug on social media at all. that's not for sale. anything any young person finds on social media is we can tell you is going to be most likely to. that's killing people. we want to be really careful. we are also seeing this goes across the united states all ages. >> i'm sorry to interrupt i'm just trunning out of time. have you been in consultation with the major platforms about advertising those on social media? >> we are pushing social media very hard to do more. i don't think we would get to 107,941 deaths if not for the scale and scope of social media. we are asking them to take a

zero tolerance policy to raise public awareness there's a host of things we are pushing them to do. >> thank you. >> the dea's budget request outlines a substantial increase of sentinel increase for counter threat teams to combat. while you are having so much trouble operating abroad and though it appears to be receiving necessary support from the administration, how can we be sure we are making a smart investment in the agency at this time? >> we did talk about it being difficult to work in some parts of the world but let me assure you, we have incredible firm partners. i've met with dozens of farm partners at across the last year we have incredible

cooperation goes out the flybys law enforcement meeting just last week in washington and our relationships of our partnerships are very strong and the work we are doing together is very effective. on the counter threat teams the reason this is a top priority for us is that this lets us pull together everything a piece of information across dea every investigation every seizure and allows us to do it out of double to do if you think about targeting the entire network which is the switch we made we need all the information to be pulled together so we can identify the key abilities and take the next step forward to share the information with the intelligence community and get to a point where we can figure out the right ways to dismantle the organization's. >> house the agency planning to measure the success of these new intelligence driven initiatives and what progress have we seen so far? >> we measure success in a number of ways we have weekly

.meeting we hold ourselves accountable because you can have the best plan but if you're not executing on that plan you not to get something done. we are actively looking at a number of things, as i said earlier, the one that matters in the whenever we care about football is american lives. in terms of our internal work we measure a number of things including how many accurate investigations we have we have more than 2000 right now against the two cartels how we are able to identify how many members of the cartels are able to identify. ...... sent, where prosecutions are being done, we are tracking this in each part of the network and that let's say how many operations do we have going on precursor chemicals? we are using the metrics to drive us to work in a strategic way and then we always measure the amount of fentanyl we sees,

every single daily dose of the street we think is a life saved. we take that very seriously as well. >> i understand you are conducting a review of your foreign operations. that could lead to possible closures or relocations of certain foreign offices. is that correct? >> we had a foreign review report that came out about a year ago and 17 recommendations. we have taken on the number of those recommendations including a foreign footprint review so for the first time in many years we have asked the question where should dea be and what's the threat posed to the united states from drugs coming through those countries, what is the risk of operating and net region ander how much operational capability do we have. that's ongoing and we will make ourec decisions at the end becae we need to be in the countries that will allow us to be most effective combat this threat.

>> this concludes today's hearing. we thank you for your service to the country and the fight that you are making and one of the most important developments in our nations history is the sentimental action that we talked about today. so thank you for your service and thank you for doing a job as an aea administrator. it's a tough chore. and thank you senator. thank you for coming and without objection all members will have seven days to submit additional written questions for the witness or additional materials for the record. with that the hearing is adjourned.

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