Chairman Hagel, Chairman Coleman, Senator Sarbanes, Senator Dodd, and distinguished Members of the Subcommittees: thank you for the opportunity to appear before you today to discuss such an important issue and to address our international efforts against methamphetamine and its precursors.
Since the early 1990s, and especially over the last few years, the illicit use of synthetic drugs has become a severe and troubling problem, at both the international and national levels. The most devastating of these synthetic drugs for the United States has been methamphetamine.
In response to these developments, in October 2004, the United States Government released the National Synthetic Drugs Action Plan, the first comprehensive national plan to address the problems of synthetic and pharmaceutical drug trafficking and abuse. The Action Plan outlined current Federal and state efforts in the areas of prevention, treatment, regulation, and law enforcement and made concrete recommendations for enhancing government efforts to reduce synthetic drug abuse.
On June 1, building on these earlier efforts ONDCP, DOJ, DHS and HHS released the Synthetic Drug Control Strategy. The Synthetics Strategy, a companion document to the President’s National Drug Control Strategy, details plans for unprecedented cooperation with Mexico and other international partners to drastically reduce the flow into the United States of both methamphetamine and the precursor chemicals used to produce the drug. The Synthetics Strategy calls for 15 percent reductions in methamphetamine use and prescription drug abuse over the next three years and a 25 percent reduction in domestic meth labs.
The Synthetics Strategy outlines a three-tiered approach to the United States’ international efforts: improving intelligence and information on the global market for precursor chemicals; effective implementation of the Combat Meth Act, signed into law by President Bush this March, which sets a national standard for restricting the retail sale of precursor chemicals within the United States; and strengthening law enforcement and border control activities, particularly with Mexico.
