It is a plague that is tormenting too many Virginia families for far too long. As the opioid epidemic supplants the methamphetamine epidemic, the fact that Virginia State Police are not taking their eyes off the ball is encouraging news indeed.
From Luanne Rife over at the Roanoke Times:
The grant, one of six awarded nationwide, comes from the Office of Community Oriented Policing Services and will be used by the State Police Bureau of Criminal Instigation in the Salem, Wytheville, Culpeper and Appomattox field offices.
Police said the regions serviced by those offices are experiencing the greatest meth availability and seizures.
In 2016, these four field offices accounted for 72 percent of state police meth seizures statewide, as well as 87 percent of known meth lab incidents and 93 percent of new meth investigations initiated by state police, Lt. J.A. Robinson, of the BCI Wytheville Field Office Drug Enforcement Section, said in the news release.
Unfortunately for most law enforcement, tackling epidemics often times means tackling the lower-rung users and abusers of a controlled substance — effectively treating the symptoms rather than the causes, and too often demonstrating to policy makers a degree of “success” built off of racking up cases against the victims of abuse rather than the individuals and drug dealers creating the problem.
This grant specifically will assist in tackling that problem — targeting mid-level to high-level drug dealers and logistics trains that create the victims of drug abuse, much needed resources for a community ravaged by meth.
