Beginning in 2016, the Memphis Division of the United States Drug Enforcement Agency monitored a drug trafficking organization responsible for pumping several varieties of drugs - including heroin, marijuana and cocaine - into the city and wider metropolitan area.
"Use and trafficking of illegal drugs continues to destroy lives, families, and communities in Memphis, Shelby County, and across West Tennessee,” said US Attorney for the Western District of Tennessee, D. Michael Dunavant, as quoted in the release.Â
The sentences handed out ranged from one to 17.5 years and sent “a clear message to those gangsters, drug dealers, and money launderers who distribute poison in the Western District of Tennessee: You cannot prey upon our citizens for your selfish personal gain with impunity; For you, there is no paradise – only a reckoning that ends in federal prison," Dunavant said.
Drug trafficking and abuse is an enormous problem in the United States. According to the American Addiction Centers, “between 2010 to 2015, the number of heroin seizures on the border of the United States and Mexico more than doubled.”
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