Yeah, and that would be 80-90%. ibid.
It was like total destruction. It spread like cancer. Straightening out your foil, putting in your little bit of powder, at the corner where you wanted it. Getting a little pleat in your foil. Tilting it a little bit. Your flame underneath the powder. And then inhaling. Everything seemed to slow down a bit. You feel comfortably numb. No more worries, no stress, nuttin’, just comfy. ibid. Billy Moore, former addict
It was an epidemic that happened in this city. You know this city was flooded with narcotics. ibid.
Everyone’s on heroin? How the hell did that happen? ibid.
Operation Rainman surveillance … Suddenly, these guys were doing seriously well. And flaunting it. And that kind of rankled with us. So we kind of took that personal. ibid. rozzers
This was the early ’80s. You drove round in a white Rolls Royce? ibid. rozzers to Showers
So in 1983 the police tried to prosecute Michael Showers for the second time in short succession. On this occasion it was for possession of a firearm, cannabis, and heroin. The case collapsed in court. And Michael Showers to this day maintains that the case was never legitimate against him. In effect he was fitted up. ibid.
British Customs subsequently bring the heroin into the UK. ibid.
Rozzer: You were convicted of smuggling heroin?
Showers: Yes, convicted on fabricated evidence by Her Majesty’s Customs and Excise. ibid.
And he was sentenced to twenty years in prison. Which for that amount of drugs was extraordinary … The system wanted to make an example of him … ibid.
In 1991 Michael went to prison for 20 years. He served 10. Then in 2010 he was arrested in Turkey and charged with intent to supply heroin internationally. He denied the charges but was sentenced to 10 years in a Turkish prison. He returned home to Liverpool in 2016. ibid.
’89 is a key year for Liverpool … After Hillsborough so many people and so many things changed … And then this drug popped up; a small tablet that created happiness. Liverpool Narcos II: Ecstasy, Emile Coleman, Sky Documentaries 2021
Best buzz you’ll ever get. It’s a love drug. ibid. user
In a sense there was something evangelical about selling ecstasy. You were doing a good thing for people … Demand outstripped supply in terms of quality. ibid. Counsellor
Much of the blame for all that can be laid on the burly shoulders of 34-year-old Curtis Warren. Arrested after a raid on a warehouse; investigators discovered cocaine with a street value of £75 million. Once known as Interpol’s Target One, Warren led a gang who for years had flooded Europe with heroin, cocaine, ecstasy and hashish. Liverpool Narcos III: Cocaine
Curtis Warren was released from Dutch jail in 2007. He was convicted in 2009 on further drug smuggling charges in Jersey. He remains in prison. ibid.
The Dominican Republic is a major transit point for heroin and cocaine. From here it is smuggled into the United States. Narco Wars: The Mob s2e1: The Heroin Don
In 2016 almost a million Americans used heroin. Double the number of users in the 1970s. They’re supplying a mass market created in the 1950s by one of the most powerful crime syndicates in the world: the American Mafia. ibid.
Carmine Galante was far and away the biggest heroin kingpin in the world. He developed a whole system of smuggling tons of heroin into the country. ibid.
Carmine Galante is a trusted member of one of the most brutal Mafia families in New York: the Bonanno Family. ibid.
Galante is on the brink of transforming the North American heroin trade. But in 1962 his plans are thwarted. He’s sentenced to 20 years in federal prison for drug offences. ibid.
In 1974 there are 460,000 heroin addicts in the US. Almost half are in New York. ibid.
‘They had to make an example of Galante. It was a daylight assassination to send a message that we are the ones who rule, the rules are not to be broken.’ ibid.
Operation Shampoo: it would unearth one of the largest heroin smuggling operations ever discovered in Britain. Gangs of Britain with Gary and Martin Kemp: London E&W s1e5
The Tooti Nungs were bringing in ten kilos a day ... for ten years. ibid.
One of America’s biggest law-enforcement scandals for a generation. Operation Fast and Furious involved agents from the Department of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms or ATF deliberately allowing guns to be smuggled from the United States to Mexico. Sky News 25th March 2016
Ecstasy is smuggled from Canada and Europe. Drugs Inc s4e2: Jamaican Gangs, Guns & Ganja, National Geographic 2013
Tiny is the first point of call for cartel mules crossing the border east of Laredo. He’s expecting a new shipment to push up the line … The US/Mexico border is ground zero for narcotics heading north. Drugs Inc s7e21: Chasing the High, National Geographic 2016
Convicted of three murders, linked to five others, Garza and his gang moved tons of marijuana across the US/Mexican border. Gangsters: America’s Most Evil s1e1: First Kingpin: Juan Raul Garza, Bio 2012
Which is smuggled into India through the 553-kilometre-long international borders shared with Pakistan. Glut, The Untold Story of Punjab, 2010
Stolen gold melts through the world’s smuggling corridors. Illicit blood-diamonds spawn rebel brutality making risk-takers rich but at a cost. A notorious black-market arms dealer is stopped by the DEA. These are the shadowy figures and deeds behind the criminal dark trades in the underbelly of diamonds, gold and guns. Diamonds, Gold & Guns, National Geographic 2017
Latin America: the dark heart of the global drugs trade … I’m in Mexico where the drug industry is bigger and more organised and more deadly than anywhere else on the planet. Jason Fox, Meet the Drug Lords: Inside the Real Narcos I, Channel 4 2018
The Sinoloa cartel employs more than 100,000 people and they far outnumber the local police. ibid.
The big money in the drug world isn’t from producing but from smuggling. ibid.
The border with the US: drugs triple in price as soon as they cross it. ibid.
The story of how cocaine took America by storm starts here in a Connecticut federal prison where this man is locked up for car theft: Carlos Lehder … Lehder’s cellmate is an American with a passion for aviation, George Jung, a hippy misfit who specialised in smuggling marijuana from Mexico to the US on small planes. America’s War on Drugs II: Cocaine, Cartels & Crackdowns, History 2017
Medellin: The home of the man of whom Carlos Lehder and George Jung would revolutionise the cocaine trade: Pablo Escobar Gaviria. ibid.
Lehder is bringing in [Bahamas] $20 million a month. ibid.
Carlos Lehder is now head of logistics for Pablo Escobar. ibid.
‘Pablo Escobar was just a customer of Roberto Suarez.’ ibid. undercover agent
Barbie began working for Roberto Suarez. ibid.
Miami starts to look like an occupied zone. ibid.
‘Barry Seal: a legend in the world of drug-smuggling.’ ibid.
A small airport in city of Mena, Arkansas. ibid.
CIA contract pilots illegally arming the Contras … also smuggling cocaine to help the cause. ibid.
At the height of his profession Marks was globally shipping up to thirty tons of hashish. Howard Marks on Drugs, 2010
America’s war on drugs: an eternal battle waged by agents of the Drug Enforcement Agency or DEA. Inside Cocaine Wars I: Airport Sting, National Geographic 2013
Affluent western nations have an insatiable appetite for cocaine. ibid.
Much of the cocaine trafficked through El Dorado airport ends up in America. ibid.
Drug couriers typically travel in teams of two. ibid.
Traffickers are increasingly smuggling cocaine in liquid form; it’s notoriously difficult to detect. ibid.
A sleek super-charged speedboat streaks across the Caribbean on a tropical night. A staggering two tons ... of pure Colombian cocaine is crammed in the hull. Inside Cocaine Wars II: Drug Speedboats
At least eight out of ten boats make it through. ibid.
The underworld went underwater trafficking cocaine in private submarines. Inside Cocaine Wars III: Narco Sub Mystery