Operation Overdrive

In 2022, The Drug Enforcement Administration announced a new initiative, Operation Overdrive, aimed at combatting the rising rates of drug-related violent crime and overdose deaths plaguing U.S. communities. Last fall, DEA initiated a data-driven approach using national crime statistics and CDC data to identify hot spots of drug-related violence and overdose deaths across the United States, in order to devote its law enforcement resources to where they will have the most impact—the communities where criminal drug networks are causing the most harm—Operation Overdrive uses a data-driven, intelligence-led approach to identify and dismantle criminal drug networks operating in areas with the highest rates of violence and overdoses. DEA, working in partnership with federal, state, and local law enforcement agencies, has mapped the threats and initiated enforcement operations against those networks across the United States. Today, the United States faces an unprecedented overdose epidemic. Violence, often associated with drug-related activity, is also rising sharply: in 2020, homicides increased a record 30 percent, and 77 percent of the murders in the United States were committed with a firearm. Operation Overdrive has revealed alarming trends about the networks that the DEA has mapped. The vast majority of identified criminal drug networks are engaged in gun violence. A majority of identified criminal drug networks sell fentanyl or methamphetamine. And almost all of the identified criminal drug networks that sell those deadly synthetic drugs (fentanyl or methamphetamine) are also engaged in violent gun crimes.