U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen will travel to Atlanta on Thursday to stand with law enforcement leaders from the area and announce a new effort to combat fentanyl trafficking by cutting off the flow of money to and from dealers.
She will also meet with local business leaders and tour a drug treatment program while in town.
This will be Yellen’s second visit to Atlanta this year. In March, she toured a solar cell manufacturing plant in Norcross to highlight the Biden administration’s clean energy policies.
On Thursday, Yellen will start her day by highlighting a new public-private partnership that brings law enforcement agencies, the Internal Revenue Service and Treasury Department together with banks and other financial institutions to share information. That initiative allows these organizations to collaborate on ways to curb the flow of fentanyl in cities where opioid abuse has been most acute.
After a roundtable discussion with banks and law enforcement officials, Yellen will stop by a lunch meeting at the Metro Atlanta Chamber. In the afternoon, she will tour Grady Memorial Hospital to learn more about its drug rehabilitation efforts focused on opioid addiction.
Drug overdose deaths related to fentanyl and other synthetic opioids have skyrocketed in recent years. Because the drugs are so potent, tiny amounts can be deadly. The rise in fentanyl deaths has been attributed to its presence in street and counterfeit narcotics, while others point to the flow of the drug from outside of the U.S.
Gov. Brian Kemp recently signed a bill into law making naloxone, an opioid-reversal drug, more readily available in schools and government buildings.
