For Phila. DEA chief, heroin and painkillers top priorities

Placed purposefully around Gary Tuggle's new office are small treasures picked up on past assignments: a Don Quixote statue recognizing his work in Trinidad, a Baltimore Ravens cap from his hometown, and, from a visit to Colombia, three dried opium poppies.

"I use them as inspiration," he said of the flowers whose seed pods are the source of heroin. "Every time I look at them, it reminds me of how bad the problem is in this country, and how much needs to be done to combat it."

In June, Tuggle reported to work as special agent in charge of the Drug Enforcement Administration's Philadelphia Field Division, which covers Pennsylvania and Delaware.

Tastes in illicit drugs vary around the country. Methamphetamine is the drug of choice in some western states (and pockets of rural Pennsylvania). Baltimore, where Tuggle began his career as a police officer and spent the last two years with the DEA, has long been big on heroin.

Heroin is at least as big in Philadelphia. But the drug available on the street now is hardly comparable to that of past years.

"When I was a cop in Baltimore," 25-plus years ago, "purity was 2 to 5 percent," said Tuggle, 51. Now it is over 85 percent.

Philadelphia heroin is more than 90 percent pure - the highest average found over the last two years in the United States, he said. Meanwhile, prices per kilo have been cut in half over a quarter-century.

Cocaine has also been a major drug here, but its price has recently gone up as heroin's has been coming down, Tuggle said.

Historically, he said, Baltimore's heroin problem was "generational." He dates it to the 1970s and '80s, when industry began to leave, and poverty and despair became more entrenched. He saw it growing up on the city's east side.

"A lot of people couldn't make the adjustment," he said. Philadelphia followed a similar pattern.

Those communities of older, largely African American, heroin addicts are still around. But they have been joined by growing numbers of younger users, predominantly white and from rural or suburban counties, who got hooked on prescription painkillers containing synthetic opioids. Low on OxyContin or the cash to buy it, desperate to avoid withdrawal sickness, they try heroin - the exceptionally pure stuff can be snorted or smoked - and get addicted.

"Oxy would go for approximately $1 per milligram on the street, so 30 milligrams cost $30," Tuggle said. "Heroin is $5, $10, $15 on the street" for an equivalent dosage. But heroin, lacking the quality control and precise dosage labeling of pharmaceuticals, can be more deadly, especially for inexperienced users.

Because of the "gateway" role played by prescription painkillers, sometimes written for legitimate reasons, Tuggle refuses to single out heroin as his top priority.

"Heroin and prescription opioids," he said, "you can't say one without the other."

The dried stalks on his table stand in for both. Heroin is derived from the opium poppy, while synthetic opioids like oxycodone and Percocet attach to the same receptors in the brain, mimicking the effect. Together, they were responsible for more than 23,000 overdose deaths nationwide in 2013, a number more than quadrupling over 15 years, according to federal data.

Tuggle, who recently moved to Center City, was speaking from his 10th-floor office at DEA division headquarters in the federal building at Sixth and Arch Streets, sun streaming through huge windows overlooking the Ben Franklin Bridge.

This is his eighth assignment in 23 years with the DEA, which he joined after a short stint with what is now the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives. That has given him a variety of perspectives on drug issues - some of them academic, from an M.B.A. and a master's in government from Johns Hopkins University that he picked up along the way.

Each location was unique. From Miami in the early 1990s, he worked on cases involving Colombian drug cartels. In a Caribbean posting, he got to see the corruption-infused "narco-democracy" that the trafficker Charles "Little Nut" Miller built on the tiny island of St. Kitts, using fees he charged those cartels to safeguard their drugs en route to the United States.

His next assignment was Chicago, where he saw the same drugs killing kids.

The narcotics business has changed a lot since then. "Drug cartels used to be linear. Pablo Escobar controlled everything," Tuggle said. Then the Colombian cartels started using Mexicans to smuggle their goods across the border. Mexican cartels grew, and viewed the Colombians as mere suppliers. Street dealers here started buying from whichever distributor could provide the highest purity for the lowest price.

The evolving business model made tracking illegal imports like heroin more difficult. But the rapid growth in prescription opioids presents additional challenges. The pills can be stolen from a pharmacy or sold by a patient. Legitimate use can turn into addiction if not carefully managed. A handful of doctors sell painkillers for cash, leaving their patients addicted and vulnerable to heroin.

Tuggle said his staff of 300 would target the traditional criminal gangs, "but we'll also go after the 'rogue providers' that are putting these illicit opioids on the street."

Although his field is law enforcement, Tuggle is aware that demand drives supply, and considers raising public awareness about the risks of prescription painkillers to be part of his job. He says his past postings have broadened his perspective. They also have taught him to think beyond the next undercover operation.

In Baltimore, he said, he organized a trip to Colombia for four local police chiefs. They flew down in black ops helicopters, and met and talked with farmers as well as law enforcement officers. The goal was motivation and education.

"You had four police chiefs," he said, who would "come back and communicate about the issue."

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@DonSapatkin