Pubdate: Sun, 16 Sep 2012
Source: Norman Transcript (OK)
Copyright: 2012 The Norman Transcript
Contact:  http://www.normantranscript.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/552
Author: Andy Rieger

NEW CHALLENGES IN WAR ON DRUGS

Darrell Weaver still remembers the first time he listened in on an 
illegal drug transaction. He was a rookie law enforcement agent and 
he couldn't believe such things were going on in rural Oklahoma.

"My parents would have killed us if we were involved in something 
like that. I had no idea what was going on out there," he said.

Friday marked 25 years since Weaver began as an agent with the 
Oklahoma Bureau of Narcotics. He chose police work after the 1984 
bank robbery in Geronimo, Oklahoma where robbers killed four persons. 
"I knew from then on what I wanted to do," he said.

Now the drug agency's director, he said the issues agents face today 
are far different than those of 1987.

Today, the bureau battles the influence of Mexican drug cartels, 
prescription drug abuse, methamphetamine, synthetic drugs and, 
beginning Nov. 1, human trafficking.

Lawmakers gave his agency the authority to investigate human 
trafficking beginning this fall. Weaver told Norman Chamber of 
Commerce members it will become as big an issue as drug trafficking.

Meanwhile, the agency tackles the prescription drug abuse problem 
headon. Oklahoma leads the nation per capita in painkiller abuse. The 
state is also the ninth highest in overdose deaths, mostly from 
prescribed drugs, up 137 percent in a decade.

The state's top "doctor shopper" was in McClain County, visiting 195 
doctors and 105 pharmacies before being arrested.

Weaver's agency oversees 17,000 "registrants" who have prescribing 
authority. "Way less than one percent ever have an issue with us," he said.

Physicians and dentists are aided by the prescription monitoring 
database which allows them to check in real time whether someone is 
"doctor shopping."

"Three hundred thousand Oklahomans have prescription drug problems," 
he said. "It can sneak up on anybody. The drug issues are affecting 
all of Oklahoma."

When he began with the agency in 1987, drug cartels were mostly in 
Colombia, as portrayed in the popular "Miami Vice" television show. 
Today, second and third generation Mexican Americans still have ties 
to super labs south of the border.

Infiltrating such gangs is hard. Wiretaps must be authorized by the 
chief justice of the Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals.

He said the FBI's takedown of a Lexington horse ranch that was 
allegedly laundering drug money this year involved a well-known, 
violent sector.

"Trust me, they're a very violent group and they're right in our back yard."
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