Maine is becoming the poster child for failed leadership in the drug area. Maine is now being aggressively targeted by transnational organized crime (TOC). If leaders do not wake up, trends will accelerate. Effects are horrific, facts worth pondering.
One: All 16 of Maine’s counties are under siege from foreign traffickers, including Dominican, Mexican Sinaloa, Chinese fentanyl, and grow house operations, fresh offshoot traffickers (domestic and foreign), and recent appearances by MS-13 and Tren de Agua gangs.
Two: Drug types are proliferating, including high-potency synthetics (resistant to Naloxone), carfentanil (100 times more potent than fentanyl), fentanyl (50 times more potent than heroin), heroin (highest purity recorded), meth (newly resurgent in Portland), and crack-cocaine (kilo loads to north of the state).
Three: DTO methods are shifting, showing unprecedented confidence in hitting Maine, trafficking in all counties, local and state police forces are undermanned, underfunded, outgunned, and not given the support found in other New England states.
Four: DTOs travel Route 95 with near impunity, confidently fronting drugs to franchises more permanent than temporary. With drugs coming from north and south, America’s southern border is tighter, and Maine is poised to get hit harder.
Five: Anyone historically familiar with Portland, Lewiston, Bangor, Waterville, and other Maine cities knows the once safe, prosperous, productively occupied cities are suffering “big city” problems. Flow down crimes, personal and property, new diseases (including TB), homelessness, and fresh fears abound.
Six: Current drug policies in Maine are a textbook failure, elevated naloxone (20,000 units a month) and needle giveaways, adding to the pro-criminal outlook of Maine’s Democrat legislature – together producing record recidivism and addiction. Cashless bail, no consequences, unprosecuted cases, indifference to illegal aliens, and conviction reversals are a rolling disaster, visible to all.
Seven: Drug trafficking around the state is transforming formerly safe, prosperous, industrial, agricultural, and fishing towns into drug hubs, takedowns from Coast to Rumford, Farmington, Windam, Fairfield, Skowhegan, and a dozen points north. Local forces are overwhelmed, many just vanishing, burdens growing on the State.
Eight: Effective, habit-ending drug treatment options, done by residential centers like Hazelton and Betty Ford Clinic, do not exist for most in Maine, a mere 300 beds for 1.4 million people, the addiction industry flourishing, discarded needles everywhere, methadone, no endgame.
Nine: Lewiston is the poster child for failure. Unassimilated foreigners, mass drug trafficking, countless group homes, 192 shootings “from the start of 2019 to early July of this year, and a staggering 1,503 drug overdoses,” according to The Maine Wire, Lewiston is inner city Chicago writ small.
Trends are all in the wrong direction: ten shootings in 2019, jumping to 36 in 2024, more than half that in early 2025, 2019 overdoses at 113, 115 already in 2025.
Bottom line: Lewiston needs help, focus, dramatic federal and state support, a makeover based on real consequences, hard targets, more law enforcement resources, accountable and effective treatment, and realistic infrastructure. Ugly trends do not reverse themselves; they require leadership. Maine badly needs help.
Robert Charles is a former Assistant Secretary of State under Colin Powell, former Reagan and Bush 41 White House staffer, Maine attorney, ten-year naval intelligence officer (USNR), and 25-year businessman. He wrote “Narcotics and Terrorism” (2003), “Eagles and Evergreens” (North Country Press, 2018), and “Cherish America: Stories of Courage, Character, and Kindness” (Tower Publishing, 2024). He is the National Spokesman for AMAC. Today, he is running to be Maine’s next Governor (please visit BobbyforMaine.com to learn more)!
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