Video shows intensive DEA training for drug busts as cocaine surges in Chicago area

CHICAGO (WLS) -- New video of from a special exercise in Indiana shows just how hard DEA agents train for drug busts as they continue to fight the battle against illegal drug trafficking.

The video shows Drug Enforcement Agency agents from the Chicago division break down a door with a battering ram before executing maneuvers used in drug house raids. The exercise may look like something for a Navy SEAL team or the Army Rangers, but the training on breach strategies and suspect takedowns reveals the high intensity tactics in this new war on drugs.

Drug overdoses continue to take thousands of lives across the Chicago area and Midwest. In response, DEA agents train for breaches and building entry, close quarter suspect encounters, speed drills and marksmanship. They even toss concussion grenades into mock drug houses.

DEA Chicago agents face these dangers on a daily basis, as part of their work to keep increasingly dangerous illicit drugs off the streets and away from users who could potentially die of an overdose.

"They didn't know how drug traffickers mix fentanyl, in cocaine and heroin and methamphetamine," said Special Agent in Charge Sheila Lyons. "They didn't know that the prescription pill they bought from a dealer on social media was fake and actually contained fentanyl. And they didn't know that just one pill can kill."

And the current cheap, diabolical drug vexing law enforcement and driving overdoses is not a new concoction but a blast from the past: cocaine. Forty years after the drug boom of Miami Vice, it is the drug of choice in Chicago and beyond.