- Title Pages
- Dedication
- Epigraph
- Introduction
-
1 Drugs 101 -
2 Alcohol -
3 Cocaine -
4 Opium -
5 Cannabis -
6 Tobacco -
7 Crackdown -
8 Amphetamines -
9 Alternative Consciousness -
10 Nixon’s War -
11 Reagan’s War -
12 Supply Side -
13 Kingpin -
14 Plan Colombia -
15 Catastrophic Success -
16 Our Man in Lima -
17 Bolivian Backlash -
18 El Narco Mexicano -
19 Fear and Loathing in Central America -
20 The Global War -
21 The War over the War on Drugs -
22 Law Enforcement and Incarceration -
23 Cannabis Revisited -
24 Big Tobacco -
25 Psychedelics 2.0 -
26 The Most American Drug -
27 Opioid Nation - Concluding Thoughts and a Tentative Way Forward
- Notes
- Gratitude
- Index
Kingpin
Kingpin
- Chapter:
- (p.191) 13 Kingpin
- Source:
- Drugs and Thugs
- Author(s):
Russell Crandall
- Publisher:
- Yale University Press
This chapter introduces Colombia's sweet-smelling cannabis as an export-grade product that was abundant from the countryside to interior cities, such as Medellín, and became the global gold standard for pot. It identifies that Colombian kingpins first shipped cannabis northward using American pilots who would land at remote airstrips to pick up hundreds of kilos at a time. It also details how cocaine was brought across by paid smugglers known as mules, estimating that imports of the white powder to the United States totalled six hundred kilos a year. The chapter recounts that the American pot generation found cocaine, which they bought for $2,000 a kilo in Colombia and started selling for more than $55,000 in the United States. It explains how the incredible profit margins of cocaine attracted a motley assortment of kingpins, such as José Gonzalo Rodriguez Gacha, who was an emerald dealer before he got into the cocaine game.
Keywords: cannabis, Colombian kingpins, American pilots, drug mules, American pot generation, drug smugglers
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- Title Pages
- Dedication
- Epigraph
- Introduction
-
1 Drugs 101 -
2 Alcohol -
3 Cocaine -
4 Opium -
5 Cannabis -
6 Tobacco -
7 Crackdown -
8 Amphetamines -
9 Alternative Consciousness -
10 Nixon’s War -
11 Reagan’s War -
12 Supply Side -
13 Kingpin -
14 Plan Colombia -
15 Catastrophic Success -
16 Our Man in Lima -
17 Bolivian Backlash -
18 El Narco Mexicano -
19 Fear and Loathing in Central America -
20 The Global War -
21 The War over the War on Drugs -
22 Law Enforcement and Incarceration -
23 Cannabis Revisited -
24 Big Tobacco -
25 Psychedelics 2.0 -
26 The Most American Drug -
27 Opioid Nation - Concluding Thoughts and a Tentative Way Forward
- Notes
- Gratitude
- Index
