HIDTA Overview

The PC HIDTA was designated in 1995 to address the threat posed by illegal drugs in Philadelphia County, Pennsylvania (which includes the city of Philadelphia), and Camden County, New Jersey (which includes the city of Camden), and to increase the safety and quality of life of the citizens in the region by measurably reducing drug-related crime and violence. The HIDTA region and surrounding counties (Bucks, Chester, Delaware, and Montgomery Counties in Pennsylvania, and Burlington and Gloucester Counties in New Jersey), which together compose the Philadelphia metropolitan area, have a population of more than 5.1 million, making the Philadelphia metropolitan area the fourth-largest in the United States and the second-largest on the East Coast. Approximately 100 million people--over a third of the U.S. population--live within a day's drive of Philadelphia, giving many distributors and abusers ready access to illicit drugs sold in the HIDTA region.

The PC HIDTA region is ethnically diverse; more than 137,000 foreign-born residents dwell there, a factor that helps many drug traffickers assimilate within communities and mask their illicit activities. Philadelphia has the second-largest Jamaican population, the third-largest Puerto Rican population, and the fifth-largest African American population in the nation. The majority of Camden residents are African American, and the local Hispanic population is rapidly increasing, especially in the East Camden section of the city. Philadelphia also has a large Asian population, composed mainly of Chinese, Korean, and Vietnamese individuals.

The HIDTA region has a well-developed transportation infrastructure (including interstate highways, passenger rail and bus service, an international airport, and a seaport) that is ideally suited for the movement of illicit drugs and drug proceeds to and from the region. Interstate 95, the major north-south route on the East Coast, is the highway most frequently used to transport drugs to the area from New York City; Atlanta, Georgia; and Miami, Florida. Drug shipments arriving in the PC HIDTA region are typically broken down into smaller quantities for local distribution within the region and transportation to other cities throughout Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and Delaware.

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