DEA Controlled Substance Registrant Actions Crawler

Extract DEA administrative actions, registration decisions, and controlled-substance applications from the Federal Register API. Covers 7,000+ DEA publications — revocations, suspensions, show-cause orders, surrenders, and bulk manufacturer/importer applications. Enrichment mode extracts DEA Certificate of Registration numbers, state jurisdiction, and classified action types directly from document body text.

DEA Registrant Actions Crawler Features

• Classify records into DECISION_AND_ORDER, SHOW_CAUSE, APPLICATION_MANUFACTURER, APPLICATION_IMPORTER, APPLICATION_EXPORTER, APPLICATION_NTP, QUOTA, RULE, NOTICE
• Classify actions into REVOCATION, SUSPENSION, DENIAL, SURRENDER, GRANT, DISMISSAL
• Infer business activity from the title: PHARMACY, PRACTITIONER, HOSPITAL, MANUFACTURER, IMPORTER, EXPORTER, DISTRIBUTOR, NARCOTIC_TREATMENT
• Optional body-text enrichment: regex-extract DEA numbers (FS1451222 format), state/city of jurisdiction, and confirm action type
• Filter by record type (actions, applications, or all), date range, full-text search, or state
• Reads the Federal Register v1 JSON API directly — no HTML scraping
• No proxy required — Federal Register is a public US government service
• Pay-per-event pricing at $0.001 per record

Who Uses DEA Registrant Action Data and Why?

• Opioid-litigation researchers and plaintiff attorneys — identify pharmacies, prescribers, and distributors with DEA revocations or show-cause orders to support case discovery and expert witness strategy
• Pharmaceutical sales teams — flag prescribers and pharmacies whose DEA registrations have been suspended or revoked before targeting them in sales campaigns
• Pharmacy M&A due-diligence firms — screen acquisition targets against the full history of DEA administrative actions
• Compliance monitoring vendors — track new show-cause orders and immediate-suspension orders as they publish, classified by action type and jurisdiction
• Policy and academic researchers — analyze DEA enforcement patterns across states, business activities, and controlled-substance schedules

How DEA Registrant Actions Crawler Works

1. You choose a mode — actions (decisions, orders, suspensions), applications (bulk manufacturer / importer / exporter), or all.
2. The crawler queries federalregister.gov/api/v1/documents.json filtered to the Drug Enforcement Administration (agency slug drug-enforcement-administration).
3. For each document, metadata (title, abstract, publication date, citation, action, URLs) is returned immediately.
4. When enrichment is enabled (default), the crawler fetches the document body text and regex-extracts the DEA registration number(s), state jurisdiction, and action type.
5. Records are classified and saved to the dataset with normalized fields.

Input

Default: Recent DEA actions with enrichment

{
  "mode": "actions",
  "enrichFromBody": true,
  "maxItems": 100
}

Applications by manufacturer/importer

{
  "mode": "applications",
  "maxItems": 200,
  "enrichFromBody": false
}

Opioid-related actions in 2025

{
  "mode": "actions",
  "searchTerm": "opioid",
  "dateFrom": "2025-01-01",
  "dateTo": "2025-12-31",
  "maxItems": 500
}

Florida pharmacies only

{
  "mode": "actions",
  "states": ["FL"],
  "enrichFromBody": true,
  "maxItems": 200
}

Full DEA corpus (everything)

{
  "mode": "all",
  "enrichFromBody": false,
  "maxItems": 0
}

Input Parameters

Field	Type	Default	Description
mode	string	"actions"	Record filter — actions, applications, or all.
searchTerm	string	""	Full-text search within DEA documents (combined with the mode filter).
states	string[]	[]	Filter to these 2-letter state codes. Requires enrichFromBody to populate the state field.
dateFrom	string	""	Return documents published on or after this date (YYYY-MM-DD).
dateTo	string	""	Return documents published on or before this date (YYYY-MM-DD).
enrichFromBody	boolean	true	Fetch each document body and regex-extract DEA numbers, city/state, and action type. Adds ~150 ms per record.
maxItems	integer	100	Maximum number of records to return. Set to 0 for all matching records.
proxyConfiguration	object	{ useApifyProxy: false }	Federal Register is a government API and does not require proxies.

DEA Registrant Actions Crawler Output Fields

Example Output (decision with body enrichment)

{
  "document_number": "2026-00629",
  "title": "Pine Pharmacy; Decision and Order",
  "record_type": "DECISION_AND_ORDER",
  "action_type": "REVOCATION",
  "registrant_name": "Pine Pharmacy",
  "business_activity": "PHARMACY",
  "dea_numbers": ["FS1451222"],
  "state": "FL",
  "city": "Ocala",
  "publication_date": "2026-01-15",
  "effective_on": null,
  "abstract": null,
  "action": null,
  "citation": "91 FR 1818",
  "agencies": [
    "Justice Department (justice-department)",
    "Drug Enforcement Administration (drug-enforcement-administration)"
  ],
  "html_url": "https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2026/01/15/2026-00629/pine-pharmacy-decision-and-order",
  "pdf_url": "https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/FR-2026-01-15/pdf/2026-00629.pdf",
  "raw_text_url": "https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/full_text/text/2026/01/15/2026-00629.txt",
  "topics": [],
  "scraped_at": "2026-04-20T14:18:22.417Z"
}

Example Output (manufacturer application, no enrichment)

{
  "document_number": "2026-07562",
  "title": "Bulk Manufacturer of Controlled Substances Application: Usona Institute, Inc.",
  "record_type": "APPLICATION_MANUFACTURER",
  "action_type": "",
  "registrant_name": "Usona Institute, Inc.",
  "business_activity": "MANUFACTURER",
  "dea_numbers": [],
  "state": "",
  "city": "",
  "publication_date": "2026-04-17",
  "abstract": "Usona Institute, Inc. has applied to be registered as a bulk manufacturer of basic class(es) of controlled substance(s)...",
  "action": "Notice of application.",
  "citation": "91 FR 20702",
  "html_url": "https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2026/04/17/2026-07562/bulk-manufacturer-of-controlled-substances-application-usona-institute-inc",
  "pdf_url": "https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/FR-2026-04-17/pdf/2026-07562.pdf"
}

Output Field Reference

Field	Type	Description
document_number	string	Federal Register document number (e.g., 2026-00629)
title	string	Document title
record_type	string	DECISION_AND_ORDER, SHOW_CAUSE, APPLICATION_MANUFACTURER, APPLICATION_IMPORTER, APPLICATION_EXPORTER, APPLICATION_NTP, APPLICATION_OTHER, QUOTA, RULE, NOTICE
action_type	string	REVOCATION, SUSPENSION, DENIAL, SURRENDER, GRANT, DISMISSAL, or empty
registrant_name	string	Business or practitioner name extracted from the title
business_activity	string	PHARMACY, PRACTITIONER, HOSPITAL, MANUFACTURER, IMPORTER, EXPORTER, DISTRIBUTOR, NARCOTIC_TREATMENT, or OTHER
dea_numbers	string[]	DEA Certificate of Registration numbers extracted from the body (2 letters + 7 digits, e.g., FS1451222)
state	string	2-letter state code of jurisdiction (requires enrichment)
city	string	City of jurisdiction (requires enrichment)
publication_date	string	Federal Register publication date (YYYY-MM-DD)
effective_on	string	Effective date of the action where specified
abstract	string	Document abstract provided by the Federal Register
action	string	Regulatory action description from the metadata
citation	string	Federal Register citation (e.g., 91 FR 1818)
agencies	string[]	Publishing agencies — always includes Drug Enforcement Administration
html_url	string	Document URL on federalregister.gov
pdf_url	string	PDF URL on govinfo.gov
raw_text_url	string	Full body text URL
topics	string[]	Federal Register subject matter topics
scraped_at	string	ISO timestamp when this record was scraped

FAQ

How many DEA records does this cover? Roughly 7,000 Federal Register documents from the Drug Enforcement Administration going back to 2006. Around 500–700 new documents publish each year.

What does "enrichment" actually do? For each document, the crawler fetches the body text from raw_text_url and runs regex extraction. It pulls DEA Certificate of Registration numbers, the registrant's city/state, and — when the metadata didn't classify it — infers the action type (REVOCATION, SUSPENSION, etc.) from phrasing in the body. Enrichment adds ~150 ms per record but is the main value of the crawler.

Can I turn off enrichment? Yes. Set enrichFromBody to false. You still get title, record_type, business_activity, registrant_name, action, abstract, and all URLs — just no DEA numbers or extracted state.

Does the state filter work without enrichment? No. The state is extracted from the document body. If you use states without enrichFromBody, no records will match.

Do I need a proxy? No. The Federal Register API is a public US government service with no authentication, no rate limiting, and no anti-bot measures. Proxies are disabled by default.

How fast does it run? A 100-record run with enrichment completes in ~25 seconds. A full 7,000-record corpus crawl with enrichment takes ~18 minutes. Memory usage is low — 256 MB is the default.

What does it cost? $0.001 per record. A 100-record run costs $0.20. A full corpus crawl (7,000 records) costs $7.10 including the $0.10 start charge.

Can I schedule this to monitor new DEA actions? Yes. Set dateFrom to the previous run date (e.g., { dateFrom: '2026-04-01' }) and schedule the actor to run daily. New documents will appear within 1–2 business days of publication.

Does this include ARCOS distribution data? Not in this version. ARCOS quarterly drug distribution reports are published as PDF tables and require a separate extraction pipeline. The data you get here is the DEA's administrative side — registration decisions, actions, and applications.

Does it link to NPI numbers? Not yet. You can combine this actor with the OrbLabs nppes-npi-crawler actor to join DEA actions with NPI registry data by practitioner name.

Need More Features?

Need ARCOS distribution data, NPPES cross-linking, or custom classification? File an issue or get in touch.

Why Use This DEA Registrant Actions Crawler?

• Classified output, not raw PDFs — Every record is tagged with record type, action type, and business activity. No post-processing required.
• Body-text enrichment — DEA registration numbers, state jurisdiction, and action types pulled from the document body, not just the title and metadata.
• Zero Apify competitors in this niche — This is the first Apify actor unifying DEA enforcement actions in a structured dataset.
• Priced per record — $0.001 per record. A targeted 100-record query costs less than a dollar.
• Built on the Federal Register API — Reads a stable, documented, government-maintained JSON endpoint. No website scrape to break.