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Drug Situation: Heroin, powder cocaine, crack cocaine, and marijuana are the four most available, popular, and trafficked illegal drugs in Delaware. However, clandestinely manufactured drugs, such as methamphetamine and club drugs, such as MDMA (ecstasy), are also readily available to users of various ages and socioeconomic backgrounds. While OxyContin® appears to be less available, other diverted pharmaceutical drugs remain available to users in Delaware. Delaware’s largest city, Wilmington, is located on the Interstate 95 corridor, the East Coast’s most frequently traveled highway that runs from Boston, through New York City, Philadelphia, and Washington, DC, to Miami. Due to its location and proximity to Philadelphia and New York, Wilmington has become a lower-level source city that is accessible both to trafficking organizations looking to move operations from major cities as well as to distributors from within Delaware and from surrounding areas in southeastern Pennsylvania and Maryland. While Philadelphia’s street corner distribution networks are generally considered the main sources of supply for drugs sold to users in Delaware, intelligence indicates that local distribution networks are also directly supplied by trafficking organizations based in New York. Heroin trafficking and distribution are the DEA Philadelphia Division’s top enforcement priorities. Investigations reveal that trafficking organizations, in search of new customers, higher profits, and less law enforcement, are relocating from the inner city neighborhoods of Pennsylvania and New York into Delaware. This trend remains a significant concern to state and local law enforcement, community, and treatment officials. Another concern to Delaware law enforcement officials is the availability of various drugs to teenagers and young adults during the summer months at Rehoboth Beach. Recent investigations revealed that the influx of visitors to this beach community during the summer results in an increased availability of methamphetamine, MDMA (ecstasy), and GHB to individuals who go to nightclubs or attend rave parties there.
Philadelphia and New York City remain the primary source areas of cocaine distributed in Delaware. While some distributors continue to travel to Philadelphia to purchase cocaine and crack cocaine, distributors also travel to New York to purchase large quantities of powder cocaine for distribution to local users or to “cook” and sell as crack cocaine. However, as with heroin, more recent reports indicate that traffickers and distributors from source areas are moving into Wilmington to distribute large quantities of cocaine.
The increasing availability of cheaper, higher purity heroin over the last few years has caused concern in Delaware over a growing heroin use problem that reaches all socioeconomic backgrounds. Heroin is popular among teens and young adults, who consume heroin either by itself or in combination with cocaine or alcohol, a combination that typically leads to overdose deaths. In Delaware, the perception of heroin remaining a problem only in the region’s major metropolitan areas is no longer accurate.
Though not nearly as popular as heroin, cocaine, or crack cocaine, methamphetamine is attractive because of its longer lasting high and because users can easily produce their own methamphetamine with readily available recipes, precursor chemicals or ingredients, and equipment. Laboratory operators use various means to obtain precursor chemicals, including diversion from legitimate sources and self-production. However, precursor chemicals include commonly used household products/chemicals, such as lye, and over-the-counter drugs, such as pseudoephedrine, most of which are readily available at retail stores.
Philadelphia and New York City are the primary source areas for the retail quantities of MDMA available in Delaware. Investigations also indicate that MDMA is smuggled by Israeli and Dutch nationals as well as by members of Russian and Israeli organized crime groups from the Netherlands, through Canada, the Caribbean, New York, and Pennsylvania. Wholesale quantities of MDMA tablets are also shipped and transported directly into Delaware via mail/parcel services or couriers who fly into major international airports, including nearby Philadelphia International Airport, with suitcases or wearing clothing that conceals tablets.
The primary source area of marijuana distributed in Delaware is the US southwest border region, including Texas, Arizona, California, and Mexico. Various means of transport are typically employed by traffickers transporting large quantities of marijuana into the state, including concealing it among loads in tractor-trailers, private vehicles, and in passenger luggage on commercial aircraft, buses, and trains. The US Postal Service and parcel shipping companies (e.g. UPS, Fedex) are also used to transport marjuana. Smaller amounts of marijuana are “home-grown,” as recent reports of indoor and outdoor marijuana grow seizures indicate that smaller growing operations are active in Delaware.
Financial/Money Laundering: The money raised from drug sales is transported to source areas from Delaware using any or a combination of several common methods. These methods typically fall under one of two categories: physical transportation or electronic transfer. Methods of physical transportation include direct shipment of cash via parcel or mail services and transportation by vehicle using a variety of concealment measures. Technology developed and advanced in the last several years made the electronic transfer of funds a much more attractive and much less risky method to pay sources of supply around the world. While wire remittance companies are regularly used to transfer money, the use of internet banking to transfer funds into domestic and international bank accounts has become increasingly popular. Money laundering methods include purchasing valuables, vehicles, real estate, and other property with drug proceeds; the creation and use of fictitious front companies and illegitimate businesses, including internet-based companies and businesses; and the “structuring” of electronic transfers over several days, even using several different financial institutions, to avoid transaction reporting.
DEA Regional Enforcement Teams: This program was designed to augment existing DEA division resources by targeting drug organizations operating in the United States where there is a lack of sufficient local drug law enforcement. This program was conceived in 1999 in response to the threat posed by drug trafficking organizations that have established networks of cells to conduct drug trafficking operations in smaller, non-traditional trafficking locations in the United States. As of January 31, 2005, there have been 27 deployments nationwide, and one deployment in the U.S. Virgin Islands, resulting in 671 arrests. There have been no RET deployments in the State of Delaware. More information about the Philadelphia Division Office. Factsheet last updated: 1/2008 |
Pharmaceutical Diversion: Current investigations indicate that diversion of immediate release oxycodone products (such as Percocet®, Percodan®, Tylox® and Roxicet®) continue to be a problem in Delaware. Primary methods of diversion being reported are illegal sale and distribution by health care professionals and workers, especially pharmacy technicians who are not licensed in Delaware, “doctor shopping” (going to a number of doctors to obtain prescriptions for a controlled pharmaceutical), forged prescriptions, and the Internet. 
DEA
Mobile Enforcement Teams: This cooperative program with state and local law enforcement counterparts was conceived in 1995 in response to the overwhelming problem of drug-related violent crime in towns and cities across the nation. Since the inception of the MET Program, 473 deployments have been completed nationwide, resulting in 19,643 arrests. There have been three MET deployments in the State of Delaware since the inception of the program, in Wilmington (2) and Rehoboth Beach.