21 U.S.C. § 873 Cooperative Arrangements

• Library: United States Statutes
• Edition: 2023
• Currency: Current through P.L. 118-34 (published on www.congress.gov on 12/26/2023), except for [P. L. 118-31]
• Year: 2023
• Citation: 21 U.S.C. § 873

(a) Cooperation of Attorney General with local, State, tribal, and Federal agencies

The Attorney General shall cooperate with local, State, tribal, and Federal agencies concerning traffic in controlled substances and in suppressing the abuse of controlled substances. To this end, he is authorized to-

(1) arrange for the exchange of information between governmental officials concerning the use and abuse of controlled substances;

(2) cooperate in the institution and prosecution of cases in the courts of the United States and before the licensing boards and courts of the several States;

(3) conduct training programs on controlled substance law enforcement for local, State, tribal, and Federal personnel;

(4) maintain in the Department of Justice a unit which will accept, catalog, file, and otherwise utilize all information and statistics, including records of controlled substance abusers and other controlled substance law offenders, which may be received from Federal, State, tribal, and local agencies, and make such information available for Federal, State, tribal, and local law enforcement purposes;

(5) conduct programs of eradication aimed at destroying wild or illicit growth of plant species from which controlled substances may be extracted;

(6) assist State, tribal, and local governments in suppressing the diversion of controlled substances from legitimate medical, scientific, and commercial channels by-

(A) making periodic assessments of the capabilities of State, tribal, and local governments to adequately control the diversion of controlled substances;

(B) providing advice and counsel to State, tribal, and local governments on the methods by which such governments may strengthen their controls against diversion; and

(C) establishing cooperative investigative efforts to control diversion; and

(7) notwithstanding any other provision of law, enter into contractual agreements with State, tribal, and local law enforcement agencies to provide for cooperative enforcement and regulatory activities under this chapter.¹

(b) Requests by Attorney General for assistance from Federal agencies or instrumentalities

When requested by the Attorney General, it shall be the duty of any agency or instrumentality of the Federal Government to furnish assistance, including technical advice, to him for carrying out his functions under this subchapter; except that no such agency or instrumentality shall be required to furnish the name of, or other identifying information about, a patient or research subject whose identity it has undertaken to keep confidential.

(c) Descriptive and analytic reports; limitation on court challenges

(1) The Attorney General shall, once every 6 months, prepare and make available to regulatory, licensing, attorneys general, and law enforcement agencies of States a standardized report containing descriptive and analytic information on the actual distribution patterns, as gathered through the Automated Reports and Consolidated Orders System, or any subsequent automated system, pursuant to section 827 of this title and which includes detailed amounts, outliers, and trends of distributor and pharmacy registrants, in such States for the controlled substances contained in schedule II, which, in the discretion of the Attorney General, are determined to have the highest abuse.