WASHINGTON – Sen. Chuck Grassley of Iowa, Chairman of the Judiciary Committee and the Caucus on International Narcotics Control, today praised Judiciary Committee passage of a bill he co-sponsored to help combat transnational drug trafficking.
“Since drug cartels are continually evolving, this legislation ensures that our criminal laws keep pace,” Grassley said. “The bill closes a loophole abused by drug traffickers who intend for drugs to end up in the United States but supply them through an intermediary. The Justice Department needs every legal tool to help crack down on those who ship these substances over the border into our country.”
Grassley is the lead Republican on the bipartisan Transnational Drug Trafficking Act, introduced in January with Sen. Dianne Feinstein as the lead Democrat. The bill, which passed the Senate unanimously in the 112th and 113th Congresses, would provide the Department of Justice with new tools to prosecute international drug traffickers in foreign countries. In particular, it would help the department build extradition cases on drug kingpins from the Andean region, which includes Colombia and Peru. Kingpins from these countries often use Mexican drug trafficking organizations as intermediaries to ship illegal narcotics to the United States.
The bill also would help the Department of Justice combat the international trafficking of methamphetamine, which is increasingly being trafficked from Mexico into the United States, including into Iowa. Meth continues to be a problem in Iowa. The latest data indicates that meth labs are at an all-time low in Iowa, but treatment admissions are at an all-time high.
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