Maine and Maryland have joined a multistate effort to combat heroin distribution across the northeast and mid-Atlantic regions, state Attorney General Eric Schneiderman’s office announced Thursday.
The two states join co-chair states New York and Pennsylvania and member states Massachusetts and New Jersey to form the Northeast and Mid-Atlantic Heroin Task Force, which shares law enforcement resources and policing practices to curb use of the opioid, which has spiked throughout the country in recent years.
Officials said more states are expected to join the task force in the coming weeks.
“Heroin traffickers are spreading addiction and death up and down the eastern seaboard. We cannot allow these criminals to escape justice by crossing state borders,” Schneiderman said in a statement. “By expanding our task force to include Maine and Maryland, we are increasing our capacity to share information and resources across law enforcement agencies, which will make it easier to break up the multi-state drug rings that are poisoning our communities.”
Heroin-related deaths have increased in Maine and Maryland each year since 2011, according to Schneiderman’s office.
“The flow of heroin is not confined to one state, and fighting this scourge must not be confined to one state,” Maryland Attorney General Brian E. Frosh said in a statement. “Sharing information and leveraging resources will produce real-time results. We are facing a public health crisis that demands our best work and our most creative solutions.”
Added Maine Attorney General Janet T. Mills: “Cheap, readily available heroin is killing Maine’s youth. The criminals bringing it here cannot evade justice by simply crossing state lines.”
The task force formed in October 2014. New York and Pennsylvania are co-chairing the initiative because their biggest cities, New York City and Philadelphia, are known as common distribution hubs, officials said.
An auto repair shop in the Astoria section of Queens and a Bronx apartment served as headquarters for a heroin pipeline from Mexico that was broken up by multiple law enforcement agencies in December.
There were 159 fatal opioid overdoses in Nassau County in 2013 and 87 in 2014, according to county statistics.
In an interview with Blank Slate Media last week, Acting Nassau County District Attorney Madeline Singas called the influx of heroin use an “epidemic” in Nassau County, echoing the sentiments of other county law enforcement and health care officials.
She said curbing heroin use and distribution would be a primary objective of her tenure as Nassau county’s top prosecutor.
