Drug Enforcement Administration, December 2019
The 2019 NDTA is a comprehensive assessment of the threat posed to the United States by the trafficking and abuse of illicit drugs. The report provides strategic analysis of the domestic drug situation during 2018, based upon the most recent law enforcement, intelligence, and public health data available for the period. It also considers data and information from 2017 and earlier, when appropriate, to provide the most accurate assessment possible to policymakers, law enforcement authorities, and intelligence officials.
In preparation of this report, a full year of data is collected for each drug category by DEA Intelligence Research Specialists. DEA Intelligence Research Specialists considered quantitative data from various sources (seizures, investigations, arrests, drug purity or potency, and drug prices; law enforcement surveys; laboratory analyses; and interagency production and cultivation estimates) and qualitative information (subjective views of individual agencies on drug availability, information on the involvement of organized criminal groups, information on smuggling and transportation trends, and indicators of changes in smuggling and transportation methods).
