§ 873 — Cooperative Arrangements

(a) 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) (b) 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. (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. (2) If the Attorney General publishes the report described in paragraph (1) once every 6 months as required under paragraph (1), nothing in this subsection shall be construed to bring an action in any court to challenge the sufficiency of the information or to compel the Attorney General to produce any documents or reports referred to in this subsection. (1) The Attorney General may make grants, in accordance with paragraph (2), to State, tribal, and local governments to assist in meeting the costs of— (A) collecting and analyzing data on the diversion of controlled substances, (B) conducting investigations and prosecutions of such diversions, (C) improving regulatory controls and other authorities to control such diversions, (D) programs to prevent such diversions, (E) preventing and detecting forged prescriptions, and (F) training law enforcement and regulatory personnel to improve the control of such diversions. (2) No grant may be made under paragraph (1) unless an application therefor is submitted to the Attorney General in such form and manner as the Attorney General may prescribe. No grant may exceed 80 per centum of the costs for which the grant is made, and no grant may be made unless the recipient of the grant provides assurances satisfactory to the Attorney General that it will obligate funds to meet the remaining 20 per centum of such costs. The Attorney General shall review the activities carried out with grants under paragraph (1) and shall report annually to Congress on such activities. (3) To carry out this subsection there is authorized to be appropriated $6,000,000 for fiscal year 1985 and $6,000,000 for fiscal year 1986.