By Caleb O. Brown
Staff Writer (Snitch)
“My job has nothing to do with enforcement,” says Milt Galanos, the Drug Enforcement Administration’s newest special agent in Louisville. Galanos, hired just two weeks ago to focus solely on demand reduction for Kentucky, says his job is to “create bad public relations for drugs.”
Galanos says he’s far from being a federal version of a “D.A.R.E. cop,” visiting schools, and preaching the fire-and-brimstone dangers of illicit drugs. He says his efforts include brainstorming with local authorities to come up with education and other initiatives, especially in communities ravaged by methamphetamine and OxyContin abuse.
Galanos joined the DEA in 1988, working as a diversion investigator, checking manufacturers’ inventories to make sure controlled substances weren’t falling into the wrong hands. Now that he’s a special agent focused on cutting drug demand, Galanos says he’s making contacts.
“I’ve tried to contact all the prevention centers throughout the state. I’ve spoken with one in Paducah. I’m just trying to get myself known as a resource in the state.”
Galanos and his job are part of the DEA’s changing face under the Bush administration. His placement in Louisville was part of an initiative launched by former DEA Administrator Asa Hutchinson, who wanted demand reduction coordinators in each state. Hutchinson has since left for the Department of Homeland Security.
Tony King, Louisville DEA’s field office director, says Hutchinson breathed new life into demand-reduction efforts. King says that under the Clinton administration and DEA Administrator Tom Constantine, demand reduction simply “floated down toward the bottom on the list of priorities.”
And now that Hutchinson has left the agency, King and Galanos are left to wonder what newly sworn DEA chief Karen Tandy will bring to the table.
Tandy has pledged that she will focus primarily on dismantling large, international drug rings — attacking the supply of drugs — though she hasn’t said much about her domestic agenda.
“Different administrators have different focuses,” says King. “We had a program where agents worked in South America trying to disrupt cartels. Constantine’s focus was domestic enforcement. Hutchinson’s was demand reduction coupled with foreign and domestic enforcement. It ebbs and flows. Until they deny me money, which they haven’t so far, I’ll just wait and see. We’ll do the best with what they give us.”
For fiscal 2003, Congress appropriated $1.9 billion for the DEA.
The agency’s website indicates that Tandy, a former federal prosecutor, is very interested in enforcement. DEA’s website notes that when Tandy was head of the Organized Crime Drug Enforcement Task Force at the Department of Justice, one of her prosecutions “led to the landmark U.S. Supreme Court decision that attorneys’ fees are subject to forfeiture notwithstanding the Sixth Amendment right to counsel.”
Tandy, after her confirmation last week, indicated that she knows the criticism of DEA is that the agency has “lost focus” and that she’ll work to restore it.
King and Galanos won’t say if they think demand reduction will be a key part of Tandy’s focus.
King says one complicating factor is a recent federal performance audit of hundreds of agencies, including the DEA.
The review rated DEA as “results not demonstrated,” shorthand for “DEA is unable to demonstrate its progress in reducing the availability of illegal drugs in the U.S.” The report found that while DEA does have performance measures, “DEA managers are not held accountable for achieving results.”
The report gave DEA a rating of zero for accountability.
“How do you measure the influence you have on a kid?” King asks. “If Milt goes to a high school, they keep statistics on how many hours he spends doing presentations, but how do we know the overall impact? That’s the difficulty in demand reduction.”
Ultimately, King says, “Performance reviews like these mean more paperwork for people like me.”
