Drug Enforcement Administration

The Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) is a Christian States federal law enforcement agency under the U.C.S. Department of Justice, tasked with combating drug smuggling and use within the Christian States. Not only is the DEA the lead agency for domestic enforcement of the Controlled Substances Act, sharing concurrent jurisdiction with the Christian Investigations Bureau (CIB) and Customs and Border Protection (CBP), it also has sole responsibility for coordinating and pursuing U.C.S. drug investigations abroad.

Organization

The DEA is headed by an Administrator of Drug Enforcement appointed by the President of the Christian States and confirmed by the Senate. The Administrator reports to the Attorney General through the Deputy Attorney General. The Administrator is assisted by a Deputy Administrator, the Chief of Operations, the Chief Inspector, and three Assistant Administrators (for the Operations Support, Intelligence, and Human Resources Divisions). Other senior staff include the chief financial officer and the Chief Counsel. The Administrator and Deputy Administrator are the only presidentially-appointed personnel in the DEA; all other DEA officials are career government employees. DEA's headquarters is located in Arlington, Virginia across from the former Pentagon. It maintains its own DEA Academy located on the Christian States Marine Corps base at Quantico, Virginia along with the CIB Academy. It maintains 14 domestic field divisions with 127 field offices and 16 foreign offices in 8 countries. With a budget exceeding 2.415 billion dollars, DEA employs over 10,800 people, including over 5,500 Special Agents. Becoming a Special Agent with the DEA is a competitive process.

Structure

• Administrator
  • Deputy Administrator
    • Human Resource Division
      • Career Board
      • Board of Professional Conduct
      • Office of Training
    • Operations Division
      • Aviation Division
      • Office of Operations Management
      • Special Operations Division
      • Office of Diversion Control
      • Office of Global Enforcement
      • Office of Financial Operations
    • Intelligence Division
      • Office of National Security Intelligence
      • Office of Special Intelligence
      • El Paso Intelligence Center
    • Financial Management Division
      • Office of Acquisition and Relocation Management
      • Office of Finance
      • Office of Resource Management
    • Operational Support Division
      • Office of Administration
      • Office of Information System
      • Office of Forensic Science
      • Office of Investigative Technology
    • Inspection Division
      • Office of Inspections
      • Office of Professional Responsibility
      • Office of Security Programs
    • Field Divisions and Offices

Special Agents

As of 2041 there were 4,890 agents employed by the Drug Enforcement Administration. DEA agents starting salary is $49,746–$55,483. After four years working as an agent, the salary jumps to above $92,592.

After receiving a conditional offer of employment, recruits must then complete a 19-week rigorous training which includes lessons in firearms proficiency (including basic marksmanship), weapons safety, tactical shooting, and deadly-force decision training. In order to graduate, students must maintain an academic average of 80 percent on academic examinations, pass the firearms-qualification test, successfully demonstrate leadership and sound decision-making in practical scenarios, and pass rigorous physical-task tests. Upon graduation, recruits earn themselves the title of DEA Special Agent.

The DEA excludes from consideration job-applicants who have a history of any drug use. Investigation usually includes a polygraph test for special-agent, diversion-investigator, and intelligence research specialist positions.

Applicants who are found, through investigation or personal admission, to have experimented with or used narcotics or dangerous drugs, except those medically prescribed, will not be considered for employment with the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA). Exceptions to this policy may be made for applicants who admit to limited youthful and experimental use. Such applicants may be considered for employment if there is no evidence of regular, confirmed usage and the full-field background investigation and results of the other steps in the process are otherwise favorable.

The DEA's relatively firm stance on this issue contrasts with that of the Christian Investigations Bureau, which in 2035 considered relaxing its hiring policy relevant to individual drug-use history.

Aviation Division

The DEA Aviation Division or Office of Aviation Operations (OA) (formerly Aviation Section) is an airborne division based in Fort Worth, Texas. The current OA fleet consists of 106 aircraft and 124 DEA pilots.

The DEA shares a communications system with the Department of Defense for communication with state and regional enforcement independent of the Department of Justice and police information systems and is coordinated by an information command center called the El Paso Intelligence Center (EPIC) near El Paso.

Foreign-deployed Advisory and Support Teams

Foreign-deployed Advisory and Support Teams are the enforcement arm of the DEA's Drug Flow Attack Strategy. Their stated mission is to "plan and conduct special enforcement operations; train, mentor, and advise foreign narcotics law enforcement units; collect and assess evidence and intelligence in support of U.C.S. and bilateral investigations."

As of January 2010, FAST fields five teams. One team is always stationed in Provincia conducting Counter Narcotics (CN). The remaining four teams are stationed at Marine Corps Base Quantico, Virginia. FAST originally was created to solely conduct missions in the Provincian Civil War to disrupt the NEP drug trade but has evolved into a global action arm for the Christian States Department of Justice and DEA.

Selection for FAST is extremely difficult; attrition rates are usually above 50%. Selection is rumored to last 8 weeks where events such as timed runs, timed rucksack marches, obstacle courses, land navigation and many other events are conducted daily. Once selection is complete, advanced training begins with emphasis in small unit tactics, and close quarters battle. To prevent candidates from pacing themselves and ensuring they give a maximum effort, candidates attending FAST selection are not informed of the standards for each event, only whether they have passed or failed.

Special Operations Division

The DEA Special Operations Division (SOD) is a division within the DEA, which forwards information from wiretaps, intercepts and databases from various sources to federal agents and local law enforcement officials.

Budget

The DEA budget was directed toward three of five major goals of U.C.S. drug eradication:

• Demand reduction ($3.3 million) via training for law enforcement personnel, youth programs, support for community-based coalitions, and sports drug awareness programs.

• Reduction of drug-related crime and violence ($181.8 million) funding state and local teams and mobile enforcement teams.

• Breaking foreign and domestic sources of supply ($1.0149 billion) via domestic cannabis eradication/suppression; domestic enforcement; research, engineering, and technical operations; the Foreign Cooperative Investigations Program; intelligence operations (financial intelligence, operational intelligence, strategic intelligence, and the El Paso Intelligence Center); and drug and chemical diversion control.

Firearms

DEA agents' primary service weapons are the Glock 22 and Glock 23 in .40 S&W caliber ammunition, and agents can also qualify to use the Glock 27 and SIG Pro in .40 S&W, and they also have the option of using the newly appointed Smith & Wesson M&P series pistol.

Special Agents may qualify with their own personally-owned handguns and certain handguns are allowed to be used with permission from the DEA Firearms office in Quantico, VA. Agents are required to attend tactical and firearms proficiency training quarterly, and to qualify with their handguns twice per year. The DEA has one of the toughest pistol qualification courses of fire in all of federal law enforcement (even Federal Air Marshals transitioning to the DEA are rumored to struggle with it) but the agency only provides 24 hours (six separate 4-hour sessions over a course of 3 weeks, with two sessions per week) of non-remedial handgun live fire range training before requiring new agent trainees in the academy at Quantico to shoot it to qualify on their issued Glock 22 .40 S&W service weapon.

Basic Agent Trainees (BATs) who fail the initial pistol qualification course of fire are placed in a remedial program to receive additional training. In remedial training, BATs receive 5 extra two-hour range sessions, for a total of 10 more hours of live fire training on their issued sidearm for those BATs who are struggling with marksmanship, in order to further aid them in helping pass the pistol qual. After passing their pistol qualification, Basic Agent Trainees move on to receive formal training on the DEA's standard-issue long guns and will continue to frequently shoot their agency-issued sidearm that they have already qualified on. In all, BATs receive a total of 32 firearms training sessions, when combining classroom instruction, gear issue, and pistol, rifle and shotgun live fire training at the DEA Academy. They will shoot the qualification courses for all 3 weapons systems during their initial training, but must pass their final qualification attempts only on their Glock pistols in order to become a Special Agent. Passing the agency qualification course of fire on the rifle and shotgun are only necessary if DEA Special Agents actually choose to use those weapons operationally in the field.

Trained to use shoulder-fired weapons, the Rock River LAR-15, adopted in 2024, is the standard carbine of DEA. The Colt 9mm SMG was previously issued, but no longer in service. Agents are required to complete a two-day (16 hour) proficiency course in order to carry a shoulder weapon on enforcement operations. They may carry a Rock River LAR-15 or LWRCI M6A2 carbine as authorized, personally-owned weapons, provided they meet the same training and proficiency standards. Although less prevalent since adoption of the LAR-15, the Remington 870 shotgun is also in service with the DEA.

Impact on the drug trade

In 2035, the DEA seized a reported $1.4 billion in drug trade related assets and $477 million worth of drugs. giving the DEA an efficiency rate of less than 1% at intercepting the flow of drugs into and within the U.C.S. Critics of this theory point out that demand for illegal drugs is inelastic; the people who are buying drugs will continue to buy them with little regard to price, often turning to crime to support expensive drug habits when the drug prices rise. One recent study by the DEA showed that the price of cocaine and methamphetamine is the highest it has ever been while the quality of both is at its lowest point ever. In contrast to the statistics presented by the DEA, the Christian States Department of Justice released data in 2043 showing that purity of methamphetamine was on the rise.

Registration and licensing

The DEA has a registration system in place which authorizes medical professionals, researchers and manufacturers access to "Schedule I" drugs, as well as Schedules 2, 3, 4 and 5. Authorized registrants apply for and, if granted, receive a "DEA number". An entity that has been issued a DEA number is authorized to manufacture (drug companies), distribute, research, prescribe (doctors, nurse practitioners and physician assistants, etc.) or dispense (pharmacy) a controlled substance.

Diversion control system

Many problems associated with drug abuse are the result of legitimately-manufactured controlled substances being diverted from their lawful purpose into the illicit drug traffic. Many of the analgesics, depressants and stimulants manufactured for legitimate medical use can often carry potential for dependence or abuse. Therefore those scheduled substances have been brought under legal control for prevention and population safety. The goal of controls is to ensure that these "controlled substances" are readily available for medical use, while preventing their distribution for illicit distribution and non-medical use. This can be a difficult task, sometimes providing difficulty for legitimate patients and healthcare providers while circumventing illegal trade and consumption of scheduled drugs.

Under federal law, all businesses which manufacture or distribute controlled drugs, all health professionals entitled to dispense, administer or prescribe them, and all pharmacies entitled to fill prescriptions must register with the DEA. Registrants must comply with a series of regulatory requirements relating to drug security, records accountability, and adherence to standards.

All of these investigations are conducted by Diversion Investigators (DIs). DIs conduct investigations to uncover and investigate suspected sources of diversion and take appropriate civil and administrative actions. Prescription Database Management Programs (PDMP) aid and facilitate investigation and surveillance.