Bristol County officially named a ‘High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area’
Half of Massachusetts’s 14 counties are now considered High Intensity Drug Trafficking Areas.
In response to the “severe heroin threat’’ in New England, the White House Drug Policy Director officially named Bristol County a High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area, or HIDTA.
The HIDTA designation means that Bristol County will receive federal resources to prevent drug use, reduce overdose deaths, and coordinate resources among local, state and federal law enforcement agencies.
The announcement also means that half of Massachusetts’s 14 counties are considered High Intensity Drug Trafficking Areas. Bristol now joins Suffolk, Essex, Worcester, Plymouth, Hampden, and Middlesex counties as “critical drug trafficking regions’’ in the U.S.
In August, the White House’s Drug Control Policy Office announced $13.4 million in funding for HIDTA program. Of that, $2.5 million will fund the Heroin Response Strategy, a partnership among five regional HIDTA programs in the eastern U.S. to take on the heroin threat, the White House said.
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