Today the delegation of the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), USA visited the central office of the State Forensic Examination Committee. The Acting Regional Director of the Middle East Region Michael P.Nowacoski and the Chairman of the State Forensic Examination Committee Andrei Shved signed an Agreement between the State Forensic Examination Committee and the US Department of Justice Drug Enforcement Administration. Officers of the US Embassy in the Republic of Belarus took part in the ceremony of signing the Memorandum.

The Drug Enforcement Administration is a component of the Department of Justice, along with the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the U.S. Marshals Service, and the Immigration and Naturalization Service among others. DEA currently has more than 4,600 Special Agents, 680 Intelligence Analysts, and 4,100 support personnel including chemists, diversion investigators and administrative staff. The DEA was created in 1973 to consolidate and coordinate the U.S. government’s drug control activities. The mission of the DEA is to enforce the controlled substances laws and regulations of the U.S. and bring to the criminal and civil justice system of the U.S., or any other competent jurisdiction, those organizations and principal members of organizations, involved in the growing, manufacture, or distribution of controlled substances appearing in or destined for illicit traffic in the U.S.; and to recommend and support non-enforcement programs aimed at reducing the availability of illicit controlled substances on the domestic and international markets.

Cooperation in the framework of the Memorandum will be realized in the following areas: expert support of joint activities to reduce drug trafficking, their analogues and precursors through international channels, assistance in enhancing of mutual cooperation in preventing the emergence and spread of new psychoactive substances (prevention of the emergence in the illegal circulation of new «designer drugs» close in structure to substances already under control). The parties will be able to exchange information about drug sources, their analogues, precursors and methods of their establishment, new types of drugs, research methods and comparative methods, the examination of new psychoactive substances, the latest analytical equipment used in the analysis of new psychoactive substances, etc.

In August, 2019 the State Committee was already visited by representatives of the US DEA in the Russian Federation. During today’s visit of the Acting Regional Director, intentions of the parties to strengthen and develop cooperation in drug control activities were documented. During the visit, guests got acquainted with the technical equipment of drug examination laboratory, psychotropic substances, their precursors and analogues, examination of petroleum products, examination of materials, substances and items and laboratories of ballistics examination (shooting gallery and ballistic accounting) of the central office of the State Committee.

Like many other foreign colleagues, the delegation is genuinely interested in the procedure and efficiency of adding newly detected psychoactive substances to the list of controlled substances in the Republic of Belarus, as well as the organization of expert research in the State Committee. So, from the beginning of the functioning of the unified expert agency, on its initiative 225 substances have been added to the Republican List of Narcotic Drugs, Psychotropic Substances and Their Precursors under State Control in the Republic of Belarus. Annually, about 10 thousand drug examinations are carried out by the State Committee.

The signing of the Memorandum is another practical step towards the establishment and development of cooperation with American colleagues in countering the spread of drugs. Our mutual work will bear fruit in the near future, will allow experts of the two countries to exchange experience in conducting forensic examinations of narcotic drugs, which will positively affect the efficiency of the work of forensic experts of both states.