The twelve-county Liberty Mid Atlantic HIDTA (LMA HIDTA) is contained within the seventh largest metropolitan area in the United States, comprising 6 million people. Approximately 100 million additional people live within a one day drive of the LMA HIDTA. The region’s ethnic diversity and varying degrees of economic prosperity contribute significantly to the amount of drug trafficking and distribution, illicit financial activity, and violent crime that occurs in each county. The LMA HIDTA sits within one of the most dangerous and violent regions in the nation, as Philadelphia, Camden, and Wilmington (DE) remain near the top of the rankings of the most violent cities in the country.
Fentanyl and fentanyl-related substances, counterfeit pills, cocaine, and methamphetamine are the primary drug threats to the LMA HIDTA. Fentanyl-related overdose deaths continue to climb throughout the LMA HIDTA, along with the presence of counterfeit pills. In response, law enforcement, policy makers, and the public health communities are constantly monitoring, assessing, responding to this dangerous trend. Additionally, the HIDTA Overdose Response Strategy (hyperlink to addressing the issue page) strives to enhance relationships between public health and law enforcement entities to advance overdose-related information collection and sharing practices.
Home to 6 million people, the metropolitan Philadelphia area continues to experience high levels of substance abuse, drug trafficking and drug-related violence in densely populated urban centers such as Philadelphia, Wilmington and Camden, and increasingly these same problems are reported in more affluent suburban and rural sections of the region.
DTOs and money laundering organizations (MLOs) operating in southeastern Pennsylvania, southern New Jersey, and northern Delaware are closely linked to larger domestic and international criminal groups, whom they depend on for drug supply and are obligated to return cash proceeds. Mexican DTOs, linked with transnational criminal organizations such as the Gulf, Sinaloa, La Familia, Los Caballeros Templarios (Knights Templar), and Juarez cartels, or their domestic cells, remain the dominant suppliers of heroin, cocaine, marijuana, and methamphetamine.
Urban areas within the LMA HIDTA consistently rank among the most dangerous and violent regions in the country, due in no small part to the impact of drug trafficking, distribution, and drug-related violent crime. Throughout the LMA HIDTA, territorial violence is rampant within inner-city neighborhoods, extending now more frequently to suburban communities where distribution groups as well as neighborhood-based and nationally-connected street gangs compete for control of profitable drug markets using violence and intimidation tactics.