DEA: Broward County Leads Nation in Number of Flakka Cases

Back in May, our Palm Beach and Broward County drug crime defense lawyers at Leifert & Leifert wrote a blog about a series of bizarre crimes, seemingly influenced by the new drug called flakka, that were committed here in Florida.

Now, as the Sun-Sentinel has reported, it seems flakka is officially taking hold in South Florida and in Broward County in particular; according to crime statistics, Broward now leads the entire country in number of flakka cases.

Stats supplied by the Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) show that Broward was, by far, the county with the highest number of flakka confiscation cases in 2014 throughout the United States. The county with the second-highest number, Chicago’s Cook County, had less than half the number of cases that Broward supplied.

As our Palm Beach and Broward County drug crime defense lawyers know from analyzing the statistics, Broward’s unflattering position as the county with the most flakka confiscation cases is uncontested. While Broward saw just one case of flakka (which can now be purchased on the street for just $3-$5 per “hit”) back in 2011, it had an astonishing 477 cases in 2014. As we noted earlier, Cook County, in Illinois, came in second after Broward, but Cook County only registered 212 flakka cases, far behind Broward.

The skeptic might argue that one can’t genuinely label a county as having the most flakka cases purely based on volume; after all, an urban zone with a higher population will inevitably have higher numbers of cases. One must look at proportion. But even when the numbers are adjusted for population, Broward County’s rate of flakka cases (27 cases per 100,000 residents) beats all other urban counties in the country.

Of course, with this new information, people in Broward County, and across the country for that matter, want to know why Broward has emerged as flakka’s apparent national headquarters. While the answer is unclear, as our Palm Beach and Broward County drug crime defense lawyers know, many experts have argued that when Florida law enforcement agencies targeted and cracked-down on so-called “pill mills” in Broward and its surrounding counties, a void was left and, subsequently, flakka traffickers filled that void.

As our Palm Beach and Broward County drug crime defense lawyers know, flakka’s prominence in South Florida is not an anomaly. As Special Agent Kevin Stanfield of the DEA’s Weston office noted, “South Florida has a reputation as party people and has always been ground zero for cocaine and oxycodone, now it’s flakka.”

If you have any questions about this growing criminal issue, or if you have been arrested for or charged with a crime in Palm Beach, Broward or Miami-Dade County, please contact our Fort Lauderdale criminal defense lawyers at the Law Offices of Leifert & Leifert by calling 1-888-5-DEFEND (1-888-533-3363) to schedule a free consultation. We look forward to assisting you.