The Organized Crime Drug Enforcement Task Forces (OCDETF) Program was established in 1982 to mount a comprehensive attack and reduce the supply of illegal drugs in the United States and diminish the violence and other criminal activity associated with the drug trade.  OCDETF is headquartered in Washington, District of Columbia, but operates nationwide and combines the resources and the expertise of the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) and numerous federal agencies to target drug trafficking and money laundering organizations.  The DEA has been a decades long partner with OCDETF and since OCDETF’s inception tens of thousands of arrests have been made and hundreds of tons of narcotics and billions in currency, real property, and conveyances all have been seized. 

OCDETF employs a national strategy of coordinating multi-agency, prosecutor-led law enforcement operations, driven by intelligence and supported by OCDETF funding.   OCDETF uses this strategy to target the supply, transportation, leadership and financial networks of drug trafficking and money laundering organizations.  DEA partners with law enforcement agencies to combine their expertise, resources, and authorities with those of other law enforcement entities to combat these threats against the US. 

Within the OCDETF Program structure are nineteen OCDETF Strike Forces.  OCDETF Strike Forces are teams comprised of members from various prosecutorial, state and federal law enforcement agencies who are collocated and situated in key cities throughout the United States.  DEA participates in all OCDETF Strike Forces and play an integral role in their success.  The collocated OCDETF Strike Forces employ the OCDETF national strategy to target threats specific to the location of the Strike Force.

The Attorney General’s (AG) Interagency list of Consolidated Priority Targets (CPOT) is comprised of leaders of the most prolific drug trafficking/money laundering organizations who have the greatest impact on the United States illicit drug supply.  OCDETF maintains and manages the CPOT List on behalf of the AG.  Working within the OCDETF national strategy, DEA and other law enforcement agencies combined their efforts to target CPOTs with the goal of disrupting and dismantling their operations. 

OCDETF has focused resources to combat the opioid and methamphetamine crisis through the National Heroin Initiative (NHI) and National Methamphetamine Initiative (NMI) programs.  OCDETF provides financial resources to member agencies, including DEA, which allows law enforcement to develop street level cases into investigations targeting drug traffickers operating at a much higher level and worthy of OCDETF designation.   Additional resources provided under the NHI and NMI play a vital role in supporting DEA’s mission to reduce the availability of these drugs in areas and communities in the US hardest hit by these epidemics.

DEA’s mission and OCDETF’s main priorities are of the same accord:  Target, disrupt and dismantle drug trafficking and money laundering organizations, reduce the illegal drug supply in the United States, seize assets, and bring criminals to justice.