The key to success in this racket is this little baby right here – it’s called cocaine. The Wolf of Wall Street 2013 starring Leonardo diCaprio & Jonah Hill & Margot Robbie & Matthew McConaughey & Kyle Chandler & Rob Reiner & Jonn Favreau & Jean Dujardin & Joanna Lumley & P J Byrne et al, director Martin Scorsese
Equal parts – cocaine, Testosterone and body fluids. ibid.
Nothing reflects on Washington’s fundamental hypocrisy on [the drug] issue as the fact that while it rails against the adverse effects of cocaine in the United States, the number of Colombians dying each year from subsidized North American tobacco products is significantly larger than the number of North Americans felled by Colombian cocaine. Peter Bourne, director of drug abuse office for Jimmy Carter
Middle-class use has been decreasing. But the inner city is a different matter ... The cocaine boom correlates with major social and economic processes, including a historically unprecedented stagnation of real wages since 1973 ... towards a two-tiered society with a large and growing underclass mired in hopelessness and despair. Noam Chomsky, Deterring Democracy
As the first anniversary of the drug war approached, the House Government Committee released a study concluding that US antidrug efforts had made virtually no headway in disrupting the cocaine trade in Peru and Bolivia, largely because of corruption. ibid.
Spurred by his success in moving heroin, Spasojevic wanted to expand his operations by trading in another drug: cocaine ... Spasojevic soon realised that he had hit a goldmine. Cocaine usage in Europe was rising everywhere, with significant new markets opening up in the former communist countries of the East. Spasojevic quickly understood that he was not alone in wanting to exploit the Balkans’ collapsing infrastructure. Another group of people had begun to monitor it very closely. These people lived far away in Colombia. Misha Glenny, McMafia
The Santa Cruz bust (tons of cocaine) was the culmination of Operation Moonlight, which included the cooperation of British intelligence, the Bulgarian police, Washington’s Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), the Spanish police and the Bolivian Special Force. ibid.
Ever since the collapse of Francoism, there had been two main centres for the import of cocaine into Europe: Spain and the Netherlands. Spain had been the entry point of choice for South American coke-smugglers as they cashed in on the habits of Europe's yuppies during the boom years of the 1980s. ibid.
The Colombian producers sought out new marketing and distribution strategies. Not only did their research establish that the European markets were still underdeveloped, but they realised that with the collapse of the Berlin Wall, a new middle class, young and dynamic, was springing up in Eastern Europe and Russia. ibid.
As America’s baby-boomers turned from protesting to making money, they sought a champagne-style narcotic that represented this shift in their lives from philosophical introspection to brash acquisitiveness. ibid.
The Cali Cartel was one of the top three cocaine clans to emerge in Colombia during the 1970s and 1980s. In an agreement with the other two clans, who were based in Medellin, the Cali Cartel had carved up the US export market with precision – New York belonged to the Cali. ibid.
And yet cocaine from Colombia is cheaper and easier to acquire in the United States than ever before. Billions upon billions of dollars have been spent in an attempt to root out an industry that has merely grown in size, in profits and in human sacrifices – tens of thousands of people have lost their lives; millions more have been shattered. ibid.
The havoc that the cocaine trade wreaks on Colombian society is wildly disproportionate to coca’s economic value. ibid.
Washington’s favoured method of coca eradication – the spraying of plantations with glyphosate, a killer cocktail supplied by Dow Chemicals and delivered in the field by DynCorp. ibid.
Since 2003 there have been a total of twenty-one positive tests for cocaine. Dispatches: The Truth About Drugs in Football, Channel 4 2011
Nation’s Largest Cocaine Importer Revealed: The DEA. Illuminati Plans, viz Youtube, Next News Network 2016
A long white line winds its way to America … part of a thirty billion dollar industry. Cocaine: History Between the Lines, History 2014
The US/Mexican border is where the vast majority of cocaine enters the United States. ibid.
Sigmund Freud thought is was a cure for everything. ibid.
Crack usage peaked around 1989 but it never went away. ibid.
The process of smuggling it across the border is a story of innovation and determination. ibid.
The Pittsburgh Pirates returned early this morning after winning the World Series in Baltimore. The Pittsburgh Drug Trials, television news, ESPN short 2015
‘Everywhere you went someone was snorting this or sniffling that.’ ibid. dealer
‘Scurry said he had a $100,000 a year cocaine habit.’ ibid. news
‘The second full day of testimony in Pittsburgh …’ ibid. news
Hernandez: Over 40% used cocaine. ibid. newspaper article
Dadeland Mall July 11th 1979 2.28 p.m. ‘They call them the Cocaine cowboys. Yesterday they struck busy Dadeland shopping mall executing two Latin males in the Crown Liquors store.’ Cocaine Cowboys, news report, 2006
Jon Roberts: distributed over $2 billion’ worth of Cocaine for the Medellin cartel. ibid.
Mickey Munday: transported over 38 tons of cocaine from Colombia to the United States. ibid.
‘Wide open back then.’ ibid.
‘The man that was really the king was Ochoa.’ ibid.
‘We were getting $3,500 a kilo. ibid. Roberts
‘Florida is awash with cocaine.’ ibid. 4 news
‘Every day cash pours into our cocaine economy.’ ibid. television news
‘I had forty, fifty horses at a time - racehorses.’ ibid. Roberts
‘Everybody does have a price.’ ibid.
‘Miami is in the middle of a narcotics war between Colombian and Cuban drug dealers.’ ibid. news
‘The worst multiple homicides in the city’s history.’ ibid.
‘The so-called cocaine cops have been charged with conspiracy, drug trafficking and racketeering.’ ibid.
‘She [Griselda Blanco] had the three older sons.’ ibid. rozzer
‘Griselda was worse than any of the men involved with this.’ ibid.
Paradise Lost. ibid. Time magazine cover
‘Peru doesn’t want to be a country with the title of coca or cocaine producer.’ Peru: The New King of Cocaine, rozzer, Vice 2014
One of the more astounding failures of US diplomacy in the last forty years. ibid.
The city is now filled with a series of underground laboratories. ibid.
These are coca leaves which are turned into a coca paste. The leaves are washed and processed into paste. With that paste, we start the process of making ‘chloro’, which is known as cocaine. We mix it with alcohol or acetone depending on the quality; we wet and mix it: when we’ve rolled it into balls we press it. Cocaine I: Viva la Coca, Channel 4 2005
The farmers have become dependent on supplying their coca leaves to the drug trade … 2003: the government has promised to send a delegation to negotiate with the local coca farmers about programmes to replace the crops. ibid.
The Favela of Santa Marta February 2004: ‘This is the heart of the crime. No crime: no money. This is marijuana: you smoke it … Over there is the white stuff: white is the real business: lots of money.’ Cocaine II: Leo & Ze, gang
‘A kilo of coke with a kilo of mix makes about £5,000.’ ibid.
‘Drug-dealing’s taken over the whole slum.’ ibid. mother
‘In the Colombia jungle one kilo of cocaine costs $1,200; in New York it costs $25-30,000 depending on the purity; in Europe a kilo costs $60,000. Cocaine III: An Honest Citizen
Colombia: for over a generation a civil war fuelled by money from the cocaine trade has turned Colombia into a bandit country. ibid.
‘We’ve received information about an assassination attempt on someone in the Attorney General’s office.’ ibid. colleagues’ meeting at Maria Chirolla’s flat
Many public figures have been assassinated by the terrorist groups. ibid.
‘Drug dealing is a thousand times more addictive than drug taking.’ Secrets and Lines, Channel 4 1999
‘A form of pyramid selling where the people are the most visible and the mostly to be apprehended are just those at the bottom of the pyramid. And they’re the most easily replaceable.’ ibid. Russell Newcombe, Liverpool John Moores University