By BRENT MARTIN
St. Joseph Post
ST. JOSEPH, Mo. — Drug Enforcement Administration agents want to get across a message: the scourge of drugs is very real and not just confined to the big cities.
DEA spokeswoman Emily Murray says the Omaha office traveled to southeast Nebraska to emphasize the drug problem is no longer just a big city problem.
“So, unfortunately what we’re seeing is that smaller communities are truly no more immune to the threat of methamphetamine that the larger cities,” Murray tells KFEQ/St. Joseph Post.
Murray spoke with elementary and middle school children in the Falls City, Neb., public school district. DEA agents met with the Falls City Police Department and the Richardson County Sheriff’s Office.
Falls City is a town of about 4,200 people.
“Certainly, you hear about methamphetamine and fentanyl and other drugs being abused more commonly or you hear about it more often or frequently, I guess, in larger cities,” Murray says. “But these small cities, they’re just not immune to this. It’s certainly a problem that we’re seeing all across the state, all across the country for that matter.”
Murray, who works in the Omaha office, says methamphetamine once was produced in meth labs, but when governments cracked down on buying the ingredients to make it, production shifted to Mexico. She says the precursors are shipped to Mexico from China and then sold in America.
“Whether that’s walking something across the border, driving it across the border, flying it across the border,” Murray says. “Obviously, they’re using our interstate system. They’re mailing drugs. So, the drugs are just flooding into the nation at an alarming rate.”
Murray says the DEA has seen drug trafficking growing, no matter where you live.
“The drug threat is not limited to just big cities. Methamphetamine and fentanyl are certainly being seen in small cities, both in Nebraska and Missouri and all across the country,” according to Murray. “Nobody is immune from this threat and we all like to think it can never happen to us, but the drug threat really is real.”
Murray says the DEA has assembled a coalition of law enforcement to attack the drug problem in Nebraska, comprised of the DEA, the FBI, the Nebraska Attorney General’s office, the Nebraska State Patrol, the and US Attorney’s Office.
Cover image courtesy Pixabay