LEWISTON – The seven-member staff of the Lewiston office of the Maine Drug Enforcement Agency may get drastically whittled, if not eliminated, as federal spending cuts trickle down to the state level.

State leaders, including the commissioner of Maine Public Safety and the Attorney General, have said the MDEA may be wiped out. At best, local supervisor Gerry Baril and other supervisors may be forced to get by with fewer agents.

“There’s a real risk that the agency staff will have to be reduced,” Baril said. “Right now, it’s too early to make predictions.”

The five agents, one analyst and Baril are responsible for investigating drug activity across a tri-county area. They work undercover, make buys from suspected dealers and conduct raids. The agents make arrests and then help prosecutors handle their cases.

“For a small staff, we make a lot of things happen,” Baril said.

In Androscoggin, Oxford and Franklin counties, Baril and his team focus mostly on cocaine, heroin and marijuana cases. They are training to handle investigations into methamphetamine manufacturing, as use of meth is expected to rise in this area.

With only five agents working, staffing is thin already, Baril said.

“That’s the whole staff for three counties,” he said. “I don’t think we’re too fat, do you?”

The problem is with federal money the state uses to pay for drug investigators. After the so called Omnibus Budget Act, approved last month, the state will no longer have access to money to pay for fully staffed drug agencies.

The MDEA is a division of the Maine Department of Public Safety.

Baril did not want to speculate on the consequences of a disbanded or sharply reduced drug agency. However, he said logic follows that diminished investigations will result in more drugs and drug abusers on the streets. Typically, higher incidents of drug use mean a higher crime rate.

The federal budget cuts may also result in fewer prosecutors to pursue drug cases in the court system, Baril said.

“If there is no money for investigators, what do you do with the investigators you have?” Baril asked. “How do you investigate cases without agents? How do you prosecute cases without assistant district attorneys?”

Across the tri-county area, the MDEA works closely with groups like the Central Maine Violent Crimes and the High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area task forces. Those federally funded agencies could also be affected by the budget cuts.

If the state and federal agencies are eliminated, the investigation of drug networks would fall to local police departments, with officers who are not necessarily trained to investigate those cases.

Investigators say the demand for crack in the Lewiston area is as high as ever. Typically, a half-dozen organized groups operate in Lewiston alone, shipping cocaine in from southern parts of New England and distributing it here.

The heroin trade also has a strong foothold here, drug officials say. And Maine has followed the nationwide trend of drug trafficking spreading out into smaller towns.

With no real knowledge of exactly how his agency would be affected by spending cuts, Baril said his staff was continuing with its work. For now, long hours, sordid sources and continual surveillance remain the norm.

“That’s how things get done,” he said. “Through dedication to the work.”