The Caribbean Division

DEA Caribbean Division

Last fully verified: July 24, 2026

The Drug Enforcement Administration’s Caribbean Division is unlike any other DEA field division in the United States. It is simultaneously domestic and international. Its headquarters is located in Puerto Rico, its domestic responsibilities extend through Puerto Rico and the United States Virgin Islands, and its foreign responsibilities reach across the Caribbean basin and into the South American nations of Guyana and Suriname.

DEA officially describes the Caribbean Field Division as a hybrid region composed of domestic and foreign offices. According to the agency, the division has liaison responsibility for Puerto Rico, the U.S. Virgin Islands, 27 Caribbean island nations, Guyana, and Suriname. DEA says the division covers thousands of square miles, hundreds of islands, and multiple languages. It works with foreign governments and with federal partners that include the United States Coast Guard, the Department of Homeland Security, and the Department of Defense.

That international mission is largely directed toward illicit trafficking. DEA identifies cocaine moving north from South America as the principal regional drug threat and also names heroin, marijuana, opioids, and prescription-drug diversion as concerns. Within Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands, however, the Caribbean Division also administers and enforces the federal controlled-substance system governing lawful medicine.

This page concerns that lawful system.

It explains who administers it, what offices are publicly identified, what authority belongs to the Caribbean Division, how that authority operates in practice, and what the available evidence can—and cannot—tell us about prescribing and access to medicine in Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands.

The Name Matters

The Caribbean Division is a regional DEA field division.

The Diversion Control Division is a national operational division headquartered within DEA.

They are connected, but they are not the same organization.

The national Diversion Control Division establishes program priorities, coordinates major diversion investigations, drafts regulations, administers national production quotas, controls regulated imports and exports, monitors portions of the controlled-substance distribution system, and oversees the federal registration framework. Regional diversion investigators and diversion groups carry out portions of that mission in the field.

The Caribbean Division does not independently establish national drug quotas, write national prescribing guidelines, or determine the medical standard of care. Its regional personnel do, however, investigate suspected diversion, interact with DEA registrants, work with territorial authorities, enforce federal registration and recordkeeping requirements, and refer appropriate matters for administrative or criminal proceedings.

The distinction is important because responsibility must be assigned accurately. National policies should not be attributed solely to a field office. At the same time, a field division cannot be treated as a passive observer when its personnel exercise federal authority within the lawful medical channel.

Who This Division Serves

The domestic population directly served by the Caribbean Division includes the people of:

Puerto Rico

Puerto Rico is the operational center of the division. Its headquarters is in Guaynabo, within the San Juan metropolitan area. DEA also publishes contact points for Fajardo and Ponce.

The United States Virgin Islands

DEA publishes a contact location for St. Croix. Its dedicated Caribbean contacts page directs inquiries concerning St. Thomas through the St. Croix office, although the main division page displays the same telephone number beneath both St. Croix and St. Thomas.

The Wider Caribbean Region

DEA states that the division has liaison responsibility for 27 island nations, in addition to Guyana and Suriname. The agency describes foreign offices in Barbados, Curaçao, the Dominican Republic, Haiti, Jamaica, Guyana, Trinidad and Tobago, Nassau, and Freeport.

DEA’s public pages are not fully synchronized. The agency’s domestic division page publishes contact locations in Barbados, Haiti, Jamaica, Curaçao, Suriname, and Trinidad and Tobago, but does not publish contact numbers there for the Dominican Republic, Guyana, Nassau, or Freeport. The broader foreign-office description, meanwhile, identifies Guyana rather than Suriname among its nine regional offices even though it states that the division serves both countries.

This page does not attempt to resolve those inconsistencies by assumption. It distinguishes between offices DEA says exist and contact locations for which DEA currently publishes direct information.

Headquarters

The Caribbean Division headquarters is publicly listed at:

DEA Caribbean Division
Metro Office Park
Millennium Park Plaza
15 Calle 2, Suite 710
Guaynabo, Puerto Rico 00968-1743

Main telephone: (571) 362-4700

Although DEA’s mailing address places the office in Guaynabo, the agency commonly identifies the division and its activities with San Juan. Both descriptions refer to the division’s Puerto Rico headquarters operation.

Current Leadership

Michael C. Mayer

Special Agent in Charge

As of July 24, 2026, Michael C. Mayer is the publicly identified Special Agent in Charge of the DEA Caribbean Division.

DEA’s current domestic division page identifies Mayer as the division’s leader. Recent official releases also identify him as Caribbean Division Special Agent in Charge, including a May 7, 2026, meeting with senior Dominican and American counternarcotics officials and a June 24, 2026, announcement concerning federal prosecutions in Puerto Rico.

An Important Official-Record Discrepancy

DEA’s separate foreign-office page still states that the Caribbean Division is led by Michael A. Miranda. That conflicts with DEA’s current domestic page and its repeated 2026 press releases naming Michael C. Mayer.

The more recent and repeatedly corroborated record supports identifying Mayer as the current Special Agent in Charge. The conflicting DEA page should nevertheless be preserved in the record rather than silently ignored.

Official websites are evidence, but they are not automatically infallible. When two current agency pages disagree, publication dates, repeated contemporary references, and the totality of the official record must be considered.

Publicly Identified Personnel

DEA does not publish a complete roster of Caribbean Division special agents, diversion investigators, supervisors, intelligence personnel, task-force officers, or administrative employees.

Seeds of Vice will not manufacture one from old press releases, social-media profiles, unattributed directories, or assumptions based on prior employment. The following people are included because DEA currently identifies them in an official public capacity.

Tony Velazquez

Media Inquiries

DEA lists Tony Velazquez as the Caribbean Division’s media contact.

Telephone: (787) 475-4504
Email published by DEA: jose.a.velazquez-vega@dea.gov

Johnny Melendez Cruz

Diversion Outreach Coordinator

DEA’s domestic Caribbean Division page identifies Johnny Melendez Cruz as the current Diversion Outreach Coordinator.

Telephone: (571) 576-2660
Email: johnny.melendez-cruz@dea.gov

A Diversion Outreach Coordinator generally serves as a public-facing connection between DEA’s diversion program and registrants, professional organizations, community stakeholders, and others seeking information about controlled-substance responsibilities. The title should not be confused with command of every diversion investigation in the region.

Samuel Esquilin-Carrero

Community Outreach — Official Listings Conflict

DEA’s domestic page identifies Samuel Esquilin-Carrero under Community Outreach:

Telephone: (787) 413-3892
Email: samuel.j.esquilin-carrero@dea.gov

DEA’s foreign-office page instead identifies him as the Diversion Outreach Coordinator and publishes a different telephone number:

Telephone: (571) 362-2097

Because DEA currently publishes two different roles and two different numbers, this page does not select one version and erase the other. Anyone relying on the listing should verify the assignment directly with the Caribbean Division.

Jacqueline R. Gordon

Demand Reduction Coordinator

DEA’s foreign-office page identifies Jacqueline R. Gordon as the Caribbean Division’s Demand Reduction Coordinator.

Telephone: (571) 362-2119
Email: jacqueline.r.gordon@dea.gov

Demand-reduction work is separate from the regulatory and investigative work of diversion control. It generally involves prevention, education, and community engagement rather than the administration of DEA registrations or the investigation of lawful controlled-substance handlers.

Richard J. Cernuda

Acting Country Attaché, Santo Domingo

DEA publicly identified Richard J. Cernuda as the Acting Country Attaché for its Santo Domingo office during a May 7, 2026, strategic meeting involving Caribbean Division leadership and the Dominican Republic’s National Directorate for Drug Control.

His inclusion documents a publicly named regional official. It should not be read as evidence of a complete foreign-office personnel roster.

Public Contact Locations

The following are the direct Caribbean contact locations currently published by DEA.

Puerto Rico

Fajardo
(571) 362-5100

Ponce
(571) 362-2130

United States Virgin Islands

St. Croix
(340) 692-9500

St. Thomas
DEA’s dedicated contact page instructs the public to contact the St. Croix office. The main division page displays the St. Croix number beneath St. Thomas as well.

Barbados

Bridgetown
(246) 437-6337

Haiti

Port-au-Prince
(509) 223-8888

Jamaica

Kingston
(876) 929-4956

Curaçao

Curaçao
599-9-461-6985

DEA’s domestic page currently places Curaçao beneath the heading “Netherlands Antilles.” This page preserves the contact information but uses the actual location name rather than treating DEA’s heading as a current political designation.

Suriname

Paramaribo
011-597-478-300

Trinidad and Tobago

Port of Spain
(868) 628-8136

These contacts are reproduced from DEA’s current public pages. DEA’s broader regional description also identifies offices in the Dominican Republic, Guyana, Nassau, and Freeport, but the agency does not publish direct numbers for those locations on its main Caribbean contact page.

The Official Role and Mission

The national Diversion Control Division states that its mission is to prevent, detect, and investigate the diversion of controlled pharmaceuticals and listed chemicals while ensuring an adequate and uninterrupted supply for legitimate medical, commercial, and scientific needs.

That is a dual obligation.

The first responsibility concerns control. DEA attempts to keep legally manufactured drugs and regulated chemicals from being stolen, fraudulently obtained, improperly prescribed, unlawfully dispensed, falsified in records, or transferred into illicit markets.

The second responsibility concerns availability. The federal control system is not supposed to eliminate lawful medicine or make legitimate medical use impossible. DEA’s own mission recognizes that controlled substances have medical, scientific, commercial, and research uses that must be supplied.

Neither responsibility is described as optional.

Diversion control therefore cannot be evaluated solely by the number of registrations surrendered, investigations initiated, prescriptions prevented, drugs seized, or defendants prosecuted. A complete evaluation must also ask whether lawful patients, hospitals, pharmacies, researchers, and practitioners can obtain an adequate and uninterrupted supply for legitimate purposes.

The Closed System of Distribution

Federal controlled-substance law operates through what DEA calls a closed system of distribution.

Manufacturers, importers, exporters, distributors, pharmacies, hospitals, physicians, dentists, veterinarians, researchers, and other lawful handlers generally must be registered or otherwise authorized. They must maintain required records, secure controlled substances, account for inventories, report certain thefts and losses, and comply with rules governing ordering, prescribing, dispensing, importing, and exporting.

This means diversion control is not limited to pursuing people who sell drugs illegally.

It reaches the lawful channel before a controlled substance arrives in a patient’s hand. Registration determines who may participate. Recordkeeping creates traceability. suspicious-order reporting and distribution monitoring identify activity for review. Inspections test compliance. Administrative proceedings can threaten or remove a registration. Criminal investigations address conduct believed to cross from regulatory noncompliance into fraud, theft, unlawful distribution, or other offenses.

The system is powerful because most people and businesses cannot lawfully operate outside it.

A physician may possess a territorial license yet still require federal authority to prescribe controlled substances. A pharmacy may be licensed locally yet still require DEA registration to handle them. A hospital’s supply chain depends on registered manufacturers and distributors. Every participant knows that the federal registration is not merely a certificate; it is the legal doorway into the controlled-substance system.

What the Caribbean Division Controls—and What It Does Not

The Caribbean Division can enforce federal controlled-substance requirements within its jurisdiction. Its diversion personnel can work with registrants, examine records, investigate theft or fraud, coordinate with territorial and federal agencies, and support administrative or criminal action when the evidence warrants it.

The Caribbean Division does not independently practice medicine.

Its agents and diversion investigators do not examine the ordinary pain patient, determine that patient’s diagnosis, select a treatment plan, or assume the treating clinician’s ethical duty. DEA relies in part on professional licensing authorities to determine who is medically qualified and what authority a practitioner possesses under local law.

The division also does not bear sole responsibility for every prescribing decision or every denial of medication. Prescribers, pharmacists, health systems, insurers, pharmacy chains, territorial legislatures, licensing boards, federal agencies, clinical guidelines, civil litigation, and institutional policies can all affect access.

DEA nevertheless occupies a unique position. It administers the federal permission required to participate in the lawful controlled-substance channel and possesses enforcement powers capable of changing institutional behavior far beyond the person or business directly investigated.

That influence should be described neither as total nor as trivial.

How Diversion Control Works in Practice

The clearest way to understand diversion control is to observe the conduct it investigates.

On June 3, 2026, DEA announced an eight-count federal indictment against a licensed advanced-practice nurse specializing in anesthesia. Prosecutors alleged that she removed fentanyl from vials intended for patient care and replaced it with clear liquid in an attempt to conceal the theft. DEA stated that approximately 120 fentanyl vials were connected to the suspected theft or tampering.

The investigation was conducted by the Caribbean Division’s San Juan Diversion Group in cooperation with the Puerto Rico Department of Health Office of Controlled Substances, the Food and Drug Administration’s Office of Criminal Investigations, and the Puerto Rico Police Bureau. The case began after healthcare professionals reported suspected irregularities.

The allegations had not been proven merely because an indictment was returned. The defendant was entitled to the presumption of innocence unless and until guilt was established in court.

The case nevertheless provides a concrete example of legitimate diversion-control work. Medication intended for patients was allegedly removed from the lawful channel, the integrity of medical vials was allegedly compromised, and healthcare personnel reportedly detected the irregularities and notified authorities.

Stopping that conduct protects patients.

The case also demonstrates that diversion investigations are not abstract statistical exercises. They can involve physical inventories, medical facilities, patient-care supplies, professional access, chain-of-custody evidence, territorial regulators, federal investigators, and criminal prosecutors.

How Enforcement Pressure Travels

Formal prosecutions are only the most visible part of the system.

Regulatory authority can affect conduct before charges are filed. Registrants know that failures in security, documentation, ordering, prescribing, dispensing, or reporting may bring scrutiny. Institutions respond by creating internal controls intended to reduce legal and regulatory exposure.

Some controls are necessary and protective.

Others can become broader than the underlying law requires.

A hospital may adopt a restrictive medication policy. A pharmacy may refuse prescriptions that are lawful but considered difficult. A practitioner may reduce treatment not because an individualized medical analysis demands it, but because controlled-substance practice appears professionally dangerous. An insurer or health system may translate a guideline into a rigid numerical ceiling. Each actor may describe its decision as caution while responsibility becomes dispersed across the system.

The existence of DEA authority does not prove that DEA ordered each individual denial. It does establish the environment in which federal registration, investigation, and enforcement consequences are understood by every lawful handler.

The distinction between direct causation and systemic influence must remain clear.

How This Affects Pain Patients and Lawful Medicine

A controlled-substance system should protect patients from stolen, adulterated, counterfeit, fraudulently prescribed, or dangerously dispensed drugs.

It should also protect patients from the disappearance of medically necessary treatment.

DEA’s mission expressly contains both purposes. A system that prevents diversion while preserving legitimate supply is functioning according to the mission. A system that ignores diversion is failing. A system that controls the channel so aggressively that legitimate medicine becomes practically unavailable is also failing.

The modern federal record recognizes that poorly implemented opioid policy can harm patients.

CDC states that its 2022 opioid guideline is not a replacement for clinical judgment, is not a rigid standard of care, and is not intended to produce rapid tapering or abrupt discontinuation. For patients already receiving opioid therapy, CDC advises clinicians to weigh individual benefits and risks. Unless a life-threatening condition is present, opioid therapy should not be stopped abruptly or rapidly reduced from higher dosages.

That does not mean every patient should receive an opioid or that every existing dosage should continue unchanged.

It means the patient must remain a person rather than become a number.

Risk exists on both sides of the decision. There are risks in prescribing. There are risks in failing to treat severe pain. There are risks in continuing medication without adequate review. There are also risks in sudden abandonment, involuntary rapid reduction, fragmented care, and policies that treat every patient as a suspected source of diversion.

Diversion control is justified by the need to distinguish lawful medicine from unlawful conduct. It becomes self-defeating when the distinction is replaced by generalized suspicion.

Prescribing and Dose-Decline Context

Why There Is No Honest 1984-to-Present Caribbean Line

No single official dataset provides one continuous, comparable measure of opioid prescribing in Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands from 1984 through the present.

The historical record changes measure, population, geography, sampling frame, and terminology. Office-visit drug mentions are not prescriptions per 100 residents. Prescriptions are not dosage. Dosage is not morphine milligram equivalents per capita. Medicare claims are not the entire population. Dental prescriptions are not all prescriptions. Puerto Rico cannot be merged with the U.S. Virgin Islands, and neither territory can be assigned a state rate that CDC never published.

The responsible method is to present each defensible period separately.

1984: A National Historical Reference, Not a Caribbean Rate

In March 1984, the National Center for Health Statistics published a report on analgesic use in office-based ambulatory care using data collected during 1980 and 1981. It documented how analgesic medications appeared in physician-office practice, but it was not a Puerto Rico or U.S. Virgin Islands opioid-dispensing series. It also used a different measure and healthcare setting from modern retail-pharmacy data.

It is evidence that the federal government studied analgesic use during that period.

It is not a territorial prescribing rate and should never be plotted as though it were directly comparable to a 2024 retail dispensing figure.

1999–2015: National Prescribing Expansion and Decline

CDC later estimated that the amount of opioids prescribed nationally was approximately 180 MME per capita in 1999. It reached 782 MME per capita in 2010 and declined to 640 MME per capita in 2015.

During the same 2006–2015 study period, the national prescribing rate rose from 72.4 prescriptions per 100 persons in 2006 to 81.2 in 2010, remained approximately level through 2012, and then declined to 70.6 in 2015. Average days supplied per prescription increased from 13.3 days in 2006 to 17.7 days in 2015.

Those figures are national context. They do not establish corresponding Puerto Rico or U.S. Virgin Islands rates.

They also illustrate why measures must remain separate. Prescriptions per 100 persons, MME per capita, average daily MME, high-dose prescribing, and average days supplied describe different aspects of medication use.

2019–2024: CDC’s Current Retail-Pharmacy Series

CDC reports that the national retail opioid-dispensing rate declined from 46.8 prescriptions per 100 persons in 2019 to 35.4 in 2024.

The underlying IQVIA Xponent data are based on approximately 54,600 non-hospital retail pharmacies representing nearly 94 percent of retail prescriptions. The measure counts new and refilled prescriptions dispensed through the sampled retail pharmacies.

However, CDC’s state maps cover only the 50 states and the District of Columbia. Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands are not included in that state series.

Therefore:

Puerto Rico must not be assigned the national rate.

The U.S. Virgin Islands must not be assigned the national rate.

Neither territory should be colored, ranked, or compared as though CDC published a territorial value when it did not.

The national decline is relevant context for the federal environment in which territorial medicine operates. It is not a substitute for territorial evidence.

CMS Territorial Data

The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services publishes separate geographic datasets for opioid prescribing within Medicare Part D and Medicaid. The latest available versions reviewed for this page cover 2023 and report numbers and percentages of opioid prescriptions at geographic levels that include states and territories.

These datasets can help examine prescribing among specific covered populations.

They cannot be treated as population-wide dispensing rates.

Medicare Part D reflects a particular insured population. Medicaid reflects another. Differences in eligibility, age, disability, plan participation, coverage, claims processing, and healthcare access affect what each dataset measures. Their percentages should not be inserted into the CDC retail-pharmacy series or described as prescriptions per 100 residents.

A Narrow Puerto Rico Measure: Dental Prescriptions

A 2026 study in JAMA Network Open provides a current but narrowly defined Puerto Rico measure.

The researchers estimated that opioid prescriptions dispensed from dentists in Puerto Rico declined from 1,116.8 prescriptions per 100,000 residents in 2021 to 1,005.0 per 100,000 in 2024, a reduction of approximately 10 percent.

This is useful direct evidence concerning one prescribing sector.

It measures dental opioid prescriptions only. It does not measure hospital medicine, chronic-pain treatment, surgical prescribing outside dentistry, emergency care, cancer care, palliative care, medication for opioid use disorder, or total territorial opioid availability. The researchers also lacked information about dosage and the clinical indication for individual prescriptions.

It should be presented for what it is—not expanded into what it is not.

The U.S. Virgin Islands Evidence Gap

The official sources reviewed for this page did not provide a current, continuous, population-wide U.S. Virgin Islands opioid-dispensing series comparable to CDC’s state tables.

The absence of a published comparable rate is itself important.

A missing number does not mean prescribing was high, low, adequate, or inadequate. It means the available public record does not support the calculation. Seeds of Vice will not manufacture a value to fill the space.

What the Statistics Can Prove

The available evidence proves that opioid prescribing and dispensing changed substantially across the United States over the last generation.

It proves that national opioid volume rose dramatically before reaching a peak and later declining.

It proves that the national retail dispensing rate continued to decline from 2019 through 2024.

It proves that CDC’s current state maps exclude Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands.

It proves that narrower territorial evidence exists, including CMS beneficiary data and a recent Puerto Rico dental-prescribing series.

It also proves that no single public measure reviewed here can describe whether an individual Caribbean patient received adequate treatment.

What the Statistics Cannot Prove

A lower dispensing rate does not automatically prove better medicine.

A higher dispensing rate does not automatically prove reckless medicine.

Prescription counts do not reveal pain severity. MME does not reveal whether a patient could walk, work, sleep, recover from surgery, or remain independent. Claims data do not disclose every prescription refused, every pharmacy unable to fill an order, every clinician unwilling to accept a patient, or every person who stopped seeking care.

The data also do not isolate the effect of DEA from the effects of prescribers, pharmacists, insurers, territorial laws, licensing boards, health systems, manufacturers, distributors, shortages, clinical guidelines, or patient demographics.

The numbers describe portions of the system.

They do not absolve anyone from examining what happened to the people inside it.

Seeds of Vice Analysis

What the Official Record Proves

The Caribbean Division administers federal drug authority across a jurisdiction more geographically and politically complex than an ordinary domestic field division.

It serves American citizens in Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands while coordinating with sovereign governments throughout the Caribbean and northern South America. Its attention is divided between international trafficking, territorial violent-crime investigations, foreign partnerships, prevention work, and the regulation of lawful controlled substances.

The official record also proves that a dedicated San Juan Diversion Group is active. The June 2026 fentanyl-tampering prosecution demonstrates that Caribbean diversion personnel investigate suspected theft from the medical channel and work directly with Puerto Rico’s controlled-substance authorities and healthcare institutions.

The record proves that DEA’s mission includes preserving legitimate supply, not merely reducing diversion.

Finally, the record proves that DEA’s own public information is imperfect. Its pages conflict over the current Special Agent in Charge, the role and telephone number of Samuel Esquilin-Carrero, the regional office list, and the St. Thomas contact. A public institution entrusted with enforcing meticulous recordkeeping should maintain meticulous public records of its own.

What the Record Suggests

The Caribbean Division’s hybrid structure likely creates competing operational priorities.

International cocaine trafficking, maritime interdiction, violent organizations, foreign liaison work, prescription-drug diversion, healthcare compliance, public outreach, and legitimate-supply concerns all exist within one sprawling regional command. The public record does not disclose how personnel, funding, and investigative attention are divided among those responsibilities.

The structure also suggests that federal controlled-substance policy may be experienced differently in island jurisdictions than in the continental United States.

Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands depend upon supply chains that cross water and involve transportation, distribution, territorial regulation, federal registration, and institutional purchasing. The official record reviewed here does not quantify how those conditions affect patient access. It does establish that the region’s geography is unusually dispersed and that controlled medicine remains subject to the same federal closed system.

Where supply options are limited, the loss of a distributor, pharmacy, prescriber, hospital service, or registration may have consequences extending beyond a single registrant.

That is a reasonable concern requiring measurement—not an excuse to invent conclusions.

What Seeds of Vice Concludes

Diversion from hospitals, pharmacies, practitioners, and distributors is real. It can deprive patients of medication, expose them to tampered products, finance illegal markets, and destroy trust in the lawful medical channel. Investigating actual theft, fraud, falsification, and unlawful distribution is a legitimate public duty.

Pain is also real.

The person who lawfully needs morphine, hydromorphone, oxycodone, fentanyl, methadone, or another controlled medicine is not an unfortunate exception to diversion control. That person is one of the reasons the lawful channel exists.

The Caribbean Division should therefore be judged by both halves of DEA’s mission.

Does it identify and stop actual diversion?

Does it preserve an adequate and uninterrupted supply for legitimate medical needs?

Does it distinguish evidence of unlawful conduct from ordinary medical complexity?

Does it communicate clearly enough that lawful practitioners understand the line without abandoning patients merely to remain far from it?

Does it recognize the special vulnerabilities created by island geography and limited medical options?

And when the lawful channel fails a harmless patient, does anyone within the institution measure that failure?

Control alone is not success.

A perfectly controlled medicine that no legitimate patient can obtain is not a functioning medical system. An uncontrolled supply vulnerable to theft and fraud is not one either.

The standard must be both lawful control and lawful availability.

The Caribbean Division operates where domestic medicine, international trafficking, territorial government, federal authority, and island geography meet. That makes its responsibility difficult.

It does not make the patient less important.

Contact Information

DEA Caribbean Division Headquarters
Metro Office Park, Millennium Park Plaza
15 Calle 2, Suite 710
Guaynabo, Puerto Rico 00968-1743

Main telephone: (571) 362-4700

Media inquiries: Tony Velazquez
(787) 475-4504

Diversion Outreach Coordinator: Johnny Melendez Cruz
(571) 576-2660
johnny.melendez-cruz@dea.gov

Community Outreach: Samuel Esquilin-Carrero
(787) 413-3892
samuel.j.esquilin-carrero@dea.gov

Because DEA’s foreign-office page publishes a different role and telephone number for Samuel Esquilin-Carrero, callers should verify the appropriate contact through the division’s main number.

Sources and Methodology

This page was assembled primarily from current official DEA, DEA Diversion Control Division, CDC, and CMS records. A 2026 peer-reviewed study was used for the narrowly defined Puerto Rico dental-prescribing measure.

Official DEA sources were compared against one another rather than presumed to be internally consistent. Where current pages conflicted, the conflict was disclosed. Current leadership was determined from the domestic division page and repeated 2026 official releases rather than the contradictory foreign-office heading.

Historical measures were kept separate according to their original definitions. No interpolation was performed across missing years. No Puerto Rico or U.S. Virgin Islands value was inferred from the national rate. Office-visit utilization, prescription counts, prescriptions per population, Medicare and Medicaid percentages, dental dispensing rates, MME per capita, daily dosage, and days supplied were not merged into a single line.

An absence of data is reported as an absence of data.

It is not converted into a claim of safety, danger, adequacy, or neglect.

Verification date: July 24, 2026