The Obama administration dismantled several key intelligence programs that once played a vital role in the fight against drug trafficking, gang violence, and organized crime. These programs integrated law enforcement data with public health metrics to create early warning systems for emerging threats.
Yet they were terminated, driven largely by political considerations and concerns that the data disproportionately reflected criminal activity in specific demographic groups.
Under Democrat administrations, uncomfortable truths, such as the disproportionate amount of crime, drug trafficking, gang activity, and smuggling committed by illegal aliens, Latinos, and other minority groups, are suppressed and dismissed as disinformation.
The National Drug Intelligence Center (NDIC), established by Congress in 1993 and placed under the Attorney General’s authority, served as the nation’s primary hub for strategic domestic counterdrug intelligence until President Obama shut it down in 2012. Based in Johnstown, Pennsylvania, the NDIC employed over 300 federal and contract personnel at its peak.
What made the center unique was its integration of law enforcement intelligence with data from drug treatment facilities, enabling a more comprehensive view of the national drug landscape.
NDIC fulfilled several critical functions. Its predictive analysis capabilities allowed it to forecast emerging drug trends, giving federal agencies time to prepare and respond proactively rather than reactively. Its Document and Media Exploitation (DOMEX) teams analyzed seized assets, financial records, communications, and other materials to produce detailed profiles of drug trafficking networks, helping law enforcement “make sense of everything they seized.”
NDIC also produced in-depth regional threat assessments, such as the 2008 Indian Country Drug Threat Assessment, which examined trafficking across Native American reservations. Additionally, the center played a vital role in inter-agency coordination, synthesizing intelligence from the DEA, FBI, ATF, U.S. Marshals, and state and local law enforcement into unified reports.
Despite its effectiveness, NDIC faced political pressure throughout its existence and was ultimately shut down in 2012 under President Obama.
The Arrestee Drug Abuse Monitoring (ADAM) program operated from 1997 to 2003, collecting vital data on drug use among individuals arrested for various offenses. Revived briefly as ADAM II from 2007 to 2014, the program combined interviews and urinalysis to track drug use patterns within the criminal population, offering a rare and valuable window into the link between substance abuse and criminal behavior.
Unlike general population surveys, ADAM focused exclusively on arrestees, delivering real-time intelligence on drug use among those actively engaged in criminal activity. It highlighted regional variations by operating across dozens of metropolitan areas, allowing law enforcement to identify geographic patterns and emerging threats. Interviews provided long-term behavioral context, while urinalysis delivered objective, verifiable data on recent drug use, eliminating the inaccuracies of self-reporting.
Hellbound and Down 