This July, DEA turns 50. As keepers of the agency’s history, Museum staff is working full throttle to augment permanent gallery content and experiences with two new exhibits and an anniversary history book. It’s a tough challenge, but the end results will engage and fascinate visitors later this year.

The DEA Museum shares the Drug Enforcement Administration’s story, past and present. Its new design features a special changing display honoring recent Basic Agent Training (BAT) graduates. Visitors can now see a BAT guidon, or swallow-tailed flag, on display. The flag, and its donation to the Museum’s collection, is a DEA tradition.

A panel discussion exploring how partnerships and collaborations help DEA further its mission.

The Museum recently acquired new books, documents, and more from the DEA Library. The rich material, dating back to DEA’s predecessor agencies, will be added to the collection or used for reference.

After a successful run in West Virginia, the Museum’s traveling exhibit Drugs: Costs and Consequences opened in Albany, Georgia, on February 7, 2023. The Thronateeska Science Museum is the exhibit’s 20th venue, and the eye-opening and interactive displays will welcome visitors through September 6, 2023.

In the 1990s, DEA enacted the Kingpin Strategy to target drug trafficking organizations’ most vulnerable areas: leadership, production, distribution, and assets. The Museum’s new exhibit showcases drug smuggling tools and other artifacts highlighting the strategy’s disruption, dismantling, and destruction of illegal operations.

What’s more fun: becoming a Junior Special Agent or practicing the science of fingerprinting? Student groups visiting the Museum’s traveling exhibit Drugs: Costs and Consequences can participate in both of these engaging programs. Stop by the West Virginia State Museum before the exhibit hits the road!

Another year, another AFNA conference. Director Jan Wrzesinski and Deputy Director Steve Stuart met with retired DEA agents and collected oral histories at the annual Association of Federal Narcotics Agents Conference in Las Vegas, Nevada.