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Police.
Search warrant.
*** is
a global business.
From Coca farmers
in Colombia,
to trafficking
cartels in Mexico,
crack houses in Miami to
*** dealers in London,
the supply chain of
*** stretches around
the world.
For some, ***
is a way of life.
It wasn't no
silver spoons for me.
It was plastic spoons and dope.
*** brings
vast wealth to a few.
$5 million to get 1,000
kilos from San
Diego to New York.
And
misery to millions.
The future
holds nothing for me,
death or the penitentiary.
But they're all
a part of the $300 billion
global industry that
is, Drugs Incorporated.
Miami, Florida, is
America's *** capital.
Since the 1970s it's been
a point of entry for
traffickers and a large
population of dealers call
it home.
One of these dealers
goes by the street name
"Chronic."
This here what
we call crack ***.
I love it, for real,
because this pay the bills
right here.
I could get rid of these
I get rid of that for
$200, you hear me.
And I only pay
$50 for this.
Yeah, that's, that's how
we get our money out here,
man, you now.
Just a way of living.
This what we call
the American way.
*** is a
powerful stimulant that
produces feelings of
intense pleasure.
It's used in two main
*** powder is
snorted predominantly
by the rich.
Many believe it's
non-addictive and can
enhance both
work and play.
Crack *** is sold
in rock form and smoked
mainly by the poor.
It delivers an intense
high and offers an escape
from the reality
of their lives,
if only for a brief while.
destined to be a crack
dealer.
His mother, an addict,
abandoned him when he was
a child and he was raised
by his gangbanging,
crack dealing brother
in Miami's poorest
neighborhood.
It wasn't no
silver spoons for me.
It was plastic
spoons and dope.
I grew up in
a foster home.
So it wasn't nobody else
for me, but my brother,
my brother was like my
daddy and my mamma.
So he brought me up
in the gang basically,
he taught me just, just
a way of getting money.
Crack ***
first emerges in 1984.
Up until then, ***,
costing $100 a gram,
is seen only as a
rich man's drug.
Crack revolutionizes
the *** business by
offering a cheap, yet
intensely powerful high
for only $5.
It soon sweeps through
America's inner cities.
Within a year, 5.8 million
people are addicted.
Chronic never uses
crack himself.
He just preys on the
addicts who come to him to
feed their habit.
I like to tell
them to put the whole
thing on because
if they put the whole
thing on there, then they
going to smoke this whole
up and they
come right back.
They spend 40
more dollars.
That's how I like it.
Quick money.
Quick flip.
His product is
so addictive that Chronic
sometimes has to
fight off customers.
You've got
some crack heads, man,
that'll tell
you straight up,
they not leaving till
they get their ,
you know what I mean?
I mean they sit down and
fuss with you and then,
you then have to beat
their before they
leave your premises.
Police did catch
up with me ,
I could say I smoke this
and get off like
that.
Instead of them trying
to send me to prison,
send me
to a drug program.
In a good week
Chronic pulls in $4,000,
but holding onto the
cash isn't always easy.
Drug dealers are often the
target of armed robbers.
Desperate crack heads know
the people with the most
money on the streets
of Miami are the dope
dealers.
It's so
scary out here, man.
And one day, you know, a
dude snuck up and jumped
in my brother car, and,
when my brother got back
in the car, you know, they
already had the pistol to
his head.
Told him don't move.
You just give me all your
jewelry and all your
money.
They shot him, man, and
got my brother paralyzed
right now.
And we live rough
down here, man.
This is no
is no joke.
Chronic's not
looking to make a fortune.
He just wants to survive.
If you're making
enough money to survive
out here of
like this here,
then I'd rather
stay like this here,
'cause I feel like
it's not about,
it's not about the person
who makes the most money,
it's about the person
who lasts the longest.
While Chronic's
business is booming in the
ghettos of Miami, on
the other side of the
Atlantic, in the UK, crack
*** has never really
become popular.
The British prefer powder
*** and use more than
any other nation
in Europe.
Every day people
are doing it now.
It certainly the, the
choice of drug that
everyone's doing nowadays.
In the 1990s the
demand for *** in the
UK skyrockets.
It's seen as a glamorous
drug that allows users to
work and play
harder and longer.
*** becomes the drug
of choice for Britain's
middle class.
consumed in the UK each
year.
It's
going everywhere.
I mean especially
like you know the,
the stock market boys
and the city boys,
they all use because
they've got to perform
with their job really
hard so it keeps them all
going.
Chronic believes
his business would suffer
if he smokes crack,
but this dealer,
known by the alias "Adrian,"
started out as a user.
You
start doing it,
then your mates start
asking you to get them
some, and, oh, can you
get me a bit of gear,
and eventually you
you know what,
I might as well just buy a
big lump and sell it off
to them and that way I'll
get a bit of coke and a
bit of money for myself.
Finding a
supplier of high quality
*** isn't hard,
Adrian comes from a long
line of British gangsters.
My family are
quite well connected in
the underworld as it were,
so I just get it straight
from them.
Adrian's ***
comes from the other side
of the world.
From Colombia the cartels
ship their product to
depots in Guinea
Bissau, West Africa.
Then the *** is
trucked to Morocco.
From there it's shipped to
Spain where it's sold to
British gangsters who load
it onto trucks sent to the
UK by ferry.
They stick it
in about say 10 trucks.
But you don't stick your,
all your eggs in basket
you know, and, Er, out
of those 10 trucks they
expect at least 2 of
'em to get caught.
The trucks that
manage to clear the border
head to London.
The *** is then
delivered to a central
distribution point.
It's taken
straight over to,
you know, a warehouse or
a basement somewhere like
that.
And soon as it comes
through then they start
breaking up and it all
gets split all over London
everywhere.
Adrian receives
the *** in bulk which
he then breaks down into
retail sized packages.
Weighing it up
individually on these
digital scales and then
putting it into me little
packets.
Adrian buys his
*** for $25 per gram
and sells it for $75.
He boosts his profits by
skimming 20% off every
gram he sells.
Nobody gets a gram
anymore so there's point 8
in there of a gram.
Otherwise it's just not
worth your while anymore.
In a good week
Adrian sells 100 grams and
makes $6,000 in profit.
He meets his regular
customers in a London pub.
I tell 'em, what
time that I'm going to
meet them at the pub.
We go down there and we
sit down for a little
while, have Er, a little
drink and whatever,
and then we just, Er, sort
of pass cigarette packets
around to each other, if
you know what I mean.
They get, they go to the
toilet and get their gear.
They put the money in the
cigarette box and then
when they come back
and see me later,
they pass the
cigarette box over,
deal done.
There's so much
competition out there,
you know, anyone can sell
you a bit of rubbish gear.
So you get a reputation
for selling good stuff,
and that's how your
clientele book as it were,
though we don't,
keep books,
starts climbing
all the time.
Adrian has been
dealing *** his entire
adult life.
Unlike crack
dealers in the US,
he's not worried about
being robbed or even
busted by the police.
I don't think the
police are too bothered
about it.
They, you know, you're all
having that fun time in
the pub.
It's not spilling out into
the streets and it's done
behind closed doors.
I think they actually,
they let a lot of people
get off with it.
They're, they're not after
the little boys that deal
in the pubs anymore.
They're after
the big fish.
Around the world
there are two million
*** dealers.
It's a good living but
few can make a fortune.
The big fish are the
traffickers who supply the
dealers with the 1,000
tons of *** produced
each year.
Drug traffickers are
the real winners in the
*** business.
They earn millions of
dollars smuggling large
shipments of drugs across
international borders.
Eddie, a 48 year old
father of three,
used to traffic ***
from Colombia to America.
For six years, Eddie,
worked as a drug
trafficker with
the Arellano-Felix
Organization, a drug
trafficking cartel based
in Tijuana.
For the first time, he has
agreed to tell his story.
Gus and I ended
up being partners and,
and then we started
bringing over on a regular
basis you know quite
a bit, and you know,
I had a good job, I was
making $40,000 a month.
First, his
partner travels to Colombia.
Then he buys the ***,
and packs it onto a boat.
Gus's crew
would go down and he'd,
he'd sit on the boat.
you know with them when
they left Columbia.
And he stayed with 'em all
the way until they took it
as far as Baja.
Once the
shipment arrives
in Baja, Eddie takes
control of the boat.
I drove the boat
And then we had guys meet
us there.
And then we brought
it up to Tijuana,
to our safe house.
Eddie then has
to smuggle his ***
across the heavily
guarded US Border.
Since 9/11 the US
Department of Homeland
Security has strengthened
its border with Mexico by
building hundreds of miles
of fences and installing
license plate readers
at all points of entry.
It also increased border
patrol units on land, sea,
and air.
But Eddie sneaks in under
the security radar.
He bypasses the major
border crossings and ships
his *** out to small
American fishing boats
waiting off the
Mexican coast.
I had my guy who
was an excellent fisherman
so he would take off, at
four in the morning and go
fishing, they would ferry
everything out to him on
jet skis.
And he'd put it in the
cabin area of the boat and
then he would go fishing
for four or five hours,
and then when everybody
start coming in from going
fishing, he would go in
with them at the same
time.
Posing as just
another recreational
fisherman, Eddie's boat
arrives in San Diego
harbor.
The *** is taken from
the docks to a safe house,
where it will be prepped
and distributed to
different cities.
New York usually brings
in the big money.
In LA it was like
would be like 18 million.
So, $5 million to get 1,000
kilos from San
Diego to New York.
Eddie's crew
drives the *** across
the country in
inconspicuous vehicles
carrying 200
kilos per car.
He makes sure his drivers
look like regular Joes.
They had to have
the look, you know,
that would pass for what
we called the 30 second
test, which is when a
policeman pulls a car
over, they got 30 seconds
to determine whether that
person that they pulled
over is a threat, is, Er,
is worth interrogating or
they're just gonna give
them a ticket
and let them go.
Once
in New York,
Eddie and his drivers
leave their vehicles in a
parking lot.
I would, um, meet
somebody in an area and
leave the keys in the
ashtray and then they
would pick the car up.
Two weeks later
Eddie returns to New York
to pick up payment
for the shipment.
Traffickers make
approximately 25% of the
retail price of ***.
That equals a worldwide
total of $50 billion per
year, but danger
is always present.
You'd pick up the
backpack with a quarter of
a million dollars in it
and you're walking away,
you could feel the bullet
going through the back of
your head 'cause you know
that guy could kill you in
half second, and say
you never showed up.
Violence is a
fact of life inside the
cartels.
Mexican recruits must
prove their loyalty by
killing.
Blood in,
blood out is when you,
you come into an
organization,
usually you kill
somebody or you,
you're to prove yourself
worthy of being part of
the organization, the only
way to get out is to blood
out means you
die, you know.
You kill someone
coming in,
you get killed to go out.
Eddie's fate is
sealed if he betrays the
cartel leaders.
They would pick
them up and torture them
to see if they, what
they knew or said.
If the guy wasn't a snitch
or an informant they'd
still kill him but they
would say well at least he
was a good guy.
Through
the 1990s,
the *** trade wreaks
havoc on countries around
the world.
Cash from the sale of
*** finances coups in
Bolivia, fuels guerrilla
wars in Nicaragua and
Colombia, and threatens
the stability of the
Mexican state as a wave of
violence spreads through
Northern Mexico.
The drug cartels fight
each other for control of
the *** trafficking
routes into the US.
The Mexican drug wars cost
the lives of 20,000
people who are shot, macheted,
or even beheaded, often
after being brutally
tortured.
In 2006, everything
changes when Felipe
Calderon is elected
president of Mexico.
He pledges to defeat the
drug cartels responsible
for plunging Mexico's
northern cities into
anarchy.
Calderon dispatches state
police and troops to
crackdown on the cartels.
The boss of
Eddie's cartel,
Eduardo Arellano Felix, is
one of the many leaders
arrested and imprisoned.
The leadership vacuum left
behind sparks a war for
control of the drug
smuggling routes into the
US.
Everybody wanted to
be the top dog and because
they didn't really have
the experience or patience
that some of us had,
they just started
killing everybody.
The war is brutal,
in the three years
following Calderon's
election another 15,000
people are gunned down.
But the deaths don't deter
people from entering the
business.
Hundreds of poor Mexicans
are eager to step into
Eddie's shoes and take
over his trafficking
routes by undermining
his position.
As an American
working in Mexico,
he's under constant
suspicion.
I was the only
white guy at my level and
every time something
happened everybody would
look at me first.
Eddie's
partner and friend,
accuses him of
being an informant,
and demands a
meeting in Tijuana.
I wasn't
that stupid,
I brought my crew with
me, so, he had his crew,
you know, armed crew and I
had mine too and he didn't
want a big blood bath so
we just left it at that.
Eddie realizes
it's time to leave Mexico;
he leaves behind
everything he owns and
escapes to the US.
I'm one of the
lucky guys that got out.
There's not, there's
a lot of guys,
there's a whole cemetery,
not even a cemetery,
there's a whole, you
know, fields in Mexico,
you know, just full
of dead bodies,
unidentified bodies that
didn't make it out.
Despite the
on-going violence in
Mexico, 51 billion dollars
worth of *** still
floods across the border
into the US every year.
The Mexican
cartels purchase their
*** from Colombia
where over half of the
world's ***
is produced.
While the cartels earn
millions of dollars
smuggling ***; the
peasant farmers who grow
the coca plants are lucky
to earn enough to survive.
is one of the tens of
thousands of farmers who
grow the Coca that will
become ***.
Andres Varela: In
the good times,
yes it gave me good
monthly return.
You could get a profit of
a million pesos ,
it depended on
the harvests.
That was enough for you to
pay for clothes, for food,
to be able to
sustain yourself.
Andres prefers
to grow food crops,
but he knows *** paste
is where the money is.
Andres Varela: My father
and mother cultivate corn,
yucca plants,
and other crops,
and they couldn't afford
to send me to school.
Colombian
farmers sell yucca plants
for 40 cents a kilo, but
*** paste sells for
$750 per kilo.
More importantly, there's
constant global demand for
***, unlike
corn or yucca.
But growing coca
isn't without risk.
Andres is constantly
under threat.
Andres Varela:
The government,
regard us as big
drug traffickers,
big mafia guys.
They regard us
as terrorists.
Every day
Colombian special forces
enter the jungle looking
to eradicate illegal coca
fields and arrest farmers.
Eight months ago
Andres' farm is raided.
Andres Varela: They caught
us at about four in the
morning, they surrounded
the house and laboratory.
They burnt the
whole plantation,
all the fruits
of my labor.
They were going to
take me to prison,
but they said they
wouldn't take me if I
handed over everything.
I even had to give them
money so that they'd let
me go.
To feed
his family of five,
Andres's only option is to
replant his coca fields.
Andres Varela: The
planting takes a lot of
work.
It takes between 8 months
and a year before it
starts to produce leaves.
Once the
fields are planted,
Andres waits for
his crop to grow.
After 8 months he returns
to harvest the coca
plants.
It takes Andres two days
to pick his one acre of
plants.
He's eager to get
back to his family y .
Andres Varela: When I
get home, the first
thing I feel happy because
my daughters welcome
me with happiness.
The next morning
Andres walks five miles to
the makeshift lab he's
built deep in the jungle,
hidden from the
Colombian army.
Here he turns his coca
crop into *** paste,
the base material from
which the drug *** is
refined.
Only one half of one
percent of each coca leaf
is ***.
So Andres first chops
the leaves into smaller
pieces.
This makes extracting the
*** from the rest of
the leaf easier.
He breaks down the leaves
with an inexpensive
mixture of cement powder
and liquid fertilizer.
Andres Varela: Now I'm
going to use liquid
fertilizer.
It does the job of
softening the leaf.
He places the
softened leaves into a
drum and adds gasoline
to extract the ***.
Andres Varela: This is the
gasoline that we add here,
we'll leave for
a few minutes,
it will bring out the
merchandise .
After four hours
the *** is extracted
from the leaves and is now
infused in the liquid in
the drum.
To separate the leaves
from the liquid,
Andreas uses a press.
He squeezes out every
last drop of the
***-infused fluid.
Andres Varela: We do a
test to see how the yield
is going to be.
If this water
is very bitter,
and numbs the lips, the
tongue and the mouth,
well, that means we're
going to have a good
yield.
So I'm going to try it.
It's a little bitter.
Andres is happy
and he sets off on the
long journey home.
There he completes the
process of producing his
*** paste.
He adds soda crystals to
the liquid mixture which
act as a
neutralizing agent.
Then he heats it on a
stove until all the
remaining liquid
evaporates.
He then lets the
paste dry overnight.
The next morning, the
*** paste has dried
into a crumbly texture.
Andres is eager to
discover how much paste
he's produced.
Andres Varela: I'm hopeful
that I will get about 130
or 140 grams out of it.
The yield wasn't
very good.
I have 120 grams.
It was not a good yield.
He'll be lucky
if he makes 100,000 Pesos,
or about $50, for
all this work.
Andres will sell his paste
to the Colombian cartels
who will turn it into high
grade *** powder.
Andres never uses ***
himself but he knows he's
an accessory to the global
*** trade that brings
misery to millions
of addicts.
Andres Varela: For me it's
something really hard,
It's very sad.
It's a vice which brings
them nothing but death.
But we never do this with
a bad intention of making
people into addicts.
Coca farming is
the only way Andres can
provide a better
life for his family.
Andres Varela: I would
like to give my daughters
all the education that
they deserve and I would
really like them to
have a good future.
For Andres and
the other peasant farmers,
growing and producing
*** paste for the
international drugs
trade is a tough choice.
They receive a mere 5 cents
for every gram of *** sold
on the street.
But growing any other crop
only condemns them to
poverty.
The ***
produced by peasant
farmers in Colombia
is smuggled across
international borders
by traffickers.
It's sold on city
streets by dealers,
and snorted and smoked by
hard core crack addicts.
And one of these addicts
is 49 year-old "Loco."
I first started
using *** when I was
like 15.
One day I was down in the
basement with my uncle,
and I see my uncle
doing something,
and I got curious and I
wanted to know what it
was, so I tried it.
I tried it and I liked it,
and I've been using it
ever since.
Smoking crack
has diminishing returns.
The euphoria delivered by
the first hit from a crack
pipe is always
the greatest.
Then users continue to
smoke in an attempt to
recapture the impact
of that first hit.
Once you get high
with the *** once,
you basically high as
you're going to get,
that first hit.
What you're doing is
chasing that first hit
over and over and over and
over, which you never,
never get.
Loco smokes at
least 10 crack rocks a
day.
At $10 a rock his habit
costs him a small fortune.
If I get $200 today,
I'm gonna spend $200 today,
whatever I have, that's
what I'm gonna use.
It'll take me four or
five hours to smoke that.
Loco quickly
develops a crack addiction
and falls in with the
notorious Chicago street
gang, the Conservative
Vice Lords.
I could've been a
professional boxer but I
choose drugs and
gangbanging.
Crack ***, it used to
make me just want to rob
everybody I come across,
you know what I mean.
I became very aggressive.
Powder ***
users tend to have
lucrative jobs that enable
them to fund their drug
use.
But crack *** users
are predominantly poor and
live in the inner city .
Many turn to crime to
fund their habit s .
I take what you got,
with whatever I had, guns,
knife, stick, because if
I had it I would use it.
And if you didn't give
me what you had you were
gonna see I was
gonna use it.
And that's the way
I kept my habit up.
I've been in the
penitentiary six times.
Loco manages to
stop smoking crack just
once.
I stopped using
*** on my own for like
have it for 18 months.
That was the best
feeling in my life.
My mother passed away
and I was going again.
Loco desperately
wants to stop smoking
crack but he's in the
grip of addiction.
If I could just
stop being high today,
I think I'd be the
happiest man in the world,
but it's not easy.
The future holds
nothing for me,
death or the penitentiary.
The United
Nations World Drug Report
declares there are up to
worldwide.
The majority of these
users snort ***.
People like the drug
because it creates intense
feelings of pleasure
without a loss of control.
Unlike *** and
methamphetamine,
powder *** users don't
fall into a stupor or
hallucinate.
When a user snorts a line,
it enters the bloodstream
through the
nasal membrane.
The drug races to the
pleasure centers of the
brain where it triggers
a massive increase in
dopamine, the
neurotransmitter that
signals euphoria.
been chasing this euphoria
for the past 15 years.
I started
when I was 13,
went on to ecstasy and
stuff when the rave
party time was on, Er,
and then when I, moved on
to *** quite quickly
because, um, it's pretty
much my favorite drug.
Today Christophe
works in London in the
television industry where
*** use is rampant.
We've about
company, I know that
more, more than 40 people
probably use it,
in this industry.
A lot of people
like partying,
a lot of people like
drinking and lot of people
like taking drugs, ***
being one of their
favorite ones.
Um, I use a
lot of ***.
Christophe goes
through 7 grams a week.
Which
is quite a lot,
and I think
I've reached my,
sort of high level
of consumption.
His habit costs
over $500 per week.
It is quite
a lot of money, yeah,
but I'm lucky I've
got quite a good job.
Um, I wouldn't spend that
much if I wasn't making
that much money, Er, it's
a bit of a vicious circle.
Christophe
doesn't see himself as an
addict like Loco.
I think
there's two different
cultures.
There's, you've got the
druggy people that will
use *** or crack
*** and then you've
got all these other people
that have a bit of money,
Er, work every day,
Er, are married,
have got kids, they've
got kids, they've got,
they've got sort
of a normal life.
He believes
his use of *** is no
different than
drinking beer.
It's like
going to the pub at some
point.
You'll have a beer.
Or you'll have a
couple of beers,
you'll have a
line of coke,
you'll have another beer,
then another line of coke,
and then you go home, and
go to bed and wake up at
and go back to work.
But he wants to
stop taking the drug to
concentrate on bringing
up his young family.
I've
got two kids,
they're growing older,
and they notice things,
whereas before, I mean,
it was, it was easy,
I could be on coke and
still doing stuff.
But I don't want
them to notice it.
Giving up
*** may be harder than
he thinks.
New research shows ***
addiction grips snorters
just as tightly
as crack smokers.
who have used *** in
the past year will
develop a problem.
Some will end
up in prison.
Many will seek
help for addiction.
At the Brookhaven National
Laboratory in New York,
a set of remarkable
experiments is being
conducted to discover the
true nature of ***
addiction.
Mexican-born Professor
Nora Volkow is one of
America's leading
specialists on drug
addiction.
She's on a personal
mission to understand the
cause of addiction,
driven by memories of her
alcoholic uncle.
Nora Volkow : My uncle,
who I loved dearly,
was an alcoholic.
And, and to me it was very
painful to see this man
who I adored, basically be
rejected by the system.
As late as the
politicians believed
*** was non-addictive.
Professor Volkow
believes they're wrong.
Nora Volkow: Take a group
of animals give them free
availability on
one side ***,
and in another group give
them free availability of
***.
Investigators did that and
then one month later they
came and they went and I
look at the animals that
were given free
availability of ***,
which no-one will doubt,
is a very addictive drug,
and they were
happily over there.
The group of the
*** animals,
they were all dead.
They had actually
compulsively taken ***
to the extreme that
none of them survived.
Professor Volkow
uses a PET scanner to take
pictures of human brains
under the influence of
***.
Nora Volkow: What we're
trying to do is use
imaging to help us
identify the areas of the
brain and proteins in the
brain that get disrupted
by the use of drugs in
people that lose control
of their drug intake
and at the expense of,
of basically everything
else in their life.
Her images
show *** changes the
brain's structure.
Nora Volkow: Repeated
exposure produces changes
on the way that the
brain gets connected and
functions that result in
pathological behavior,
and that's why it's
called a disease.
Professor Volkow
scans hundreds of users
and ex-users.
While scanning ex-users
she notices an
irregularity, whenever
they discuss ***,
their dopamine
levels rise.
At first she doesn't
understand why.
Then, it hits her.
Nora Volkow: You could
make a case that people
become addicted
to the lifestyle,
because their brain has
started to respond to the
lifestyle and that is
their environment,
their friends,
their situations.
Her team sets up
an experiment to test the
theory.
Volunteers are placed
in a PET scanner,
and shown images of people
preparing and snorting
lines of ***.
Incredibly, the images
alone significantly
increase the dopamine
levels in the brains of
users.
Nora Volkow: When we
expose them with stimuli
that have been
linked with drugs,
what we observe is that a
significant increase in
dopamine signaling in
those areas of the brain
that drives the motivation
of your behavior.
Dr. Volkow's
research is revolutionary,
it shows *** is so
addictive that simply
showing images of its use
is enough to increase
their dopamine levels and
lead them into relapse.
Nora Volkow: People can
go to a detoxification
program, they
do very well,
they go out into the
neighborhoods where they
are used to taking the
drug and they relapse.
And they relapse exactly
because of these effects
on the memory systems.
So they say, I'm not
going to take the drug,
I'm not going to,
I'm not going to,
I'm not going to, I'm not
going to and before they
even realize it, the
drug is already in their
mouths, or they're
smoking it.
Law enforcement
treats *** users as
criminals rather than
people suffering from a
disease.
Over the past ten years,
the government has
repeatedly slashed funding
for drug rehabilitation
programs and increased
funding for prisons.
The result: a million
Americans are imprisoned
on drug related charges,
costing the American
taxpayer $12.5
billion a year.
Prof Volkow believes the
government's approach of
criminalizing and
imprisoning drug users
without proper
treatment is misguided.
Nora Volkow: When you
just take a person that's
addicted and push them in
jail and you don't give
them treatment, you can
guarantee that that person
will relapse within a few
weeks of actually leaving,
the jail, no matter how
long they've been there.
With no drug exposure, if
you don't treat they will
immediately relapse
for drug taking.
But very importantly,
they'll end up
re-incarcerated
pretty soon.
Statistics
support her claim,
and 77% of crack convicts
are re-offenders.
Police.
Search warrant!
For the
past 25 years,
governments around the
world have been fighting a
war against ***.
In Colombia, the American
government is financing an
eradication operation to
reduce *** production
in the country by 50%.
These special forces are
preparing to destroy a
*** laboratory.
Major Quiroga
leads the mission.
Major Quiroga: The mission
we're going to carry out
today is to destroy
a laboratory,
which processes ***.
These laboratories in
this area of the country,
they could be producing
around 500 to 600 kilos
per week.
Major Quiroga
is well aware of how
dangerous these daily
missions can be.
The Colombian cartels gun
down 400 of his colleagues
every year to protect
their *** profits.
Each man is fully armed
and wears body armor.
Carrying crates
of explosives,
the commandos lift off
from their base in
Mariquita and fly 45 miles
north to the eastern banks
of the Rio Magdalena.
Cartels go to great
lengths to hide their
activities.
The commandos march deep
into the dense jungle to
find the illegal
laboratories.
The ground troops are
provided air cover by a
chopper that constantly
searches for signs of
armed resistance.
After marching through
the jungle for an hour,
Quiroga's men discover
discarded barrels of toxic
waste, evidence that
the cartels are working
nearby.
Major Quiroga calls in the
chopper for backup in case
they're ambushed.
The men proceed
on high alert.
Quiroga's commandos follow
a trail of discarded
equipment leading them to
a recently abandoned lab.
The cartel's men have
fled without a fight.
Major Quiroga: This still
is for cooking the drugs.
They make blocks of
roughly a kilo and they
put them in the
microwaves to dry.
A medium sized lab
with a good production,
around 400 to 500
kilograms per week.
The commandos
rig the entire laboratory
with explosives.
Once airborne, they
blow up the lab.
One victory in the ongoing
war against the cartels.
Major Quiroga: It was
a successful mission,
we are able to destroy
their installations.
it will be a great
loss for them.
Since 2000 the
US Government has poured
$5 billion into
eradication missions,
but to little effect.
The amount of ***
manufactured in Colombia
is the same today as
it was a decade ago.
The majority of this
*** is smuggled into
America.
enforcement agencies are
engaged in the
war on drugs.
And Austin, Texas is one
of the main battlegrounds.
Greg Thrash: Austin sits
in a perfect spot to be
used by the Mexican
cartels as a,
what we consider
a transit hub.
border and with a hub of
highways going
across the country,
Austin has long been a
base of operations for the
*** cartels.
Greg Thrash has witnessed
a marked change in the
tactics adopted by
the Mexican ***
traffickers at the border.
Instead of shipping large
loads across the country,
they are forced to ship
smaller units due to the
success of the DEA
and Border Patrol.
But with the huge number
of cars crossing the
border and coming
into Austin,
law enforcement knows it
has no hope of stopping
every shipment.
Greg Thrash: All we, we
as law enforcement can
essentially do is
contain the situation.
Contain the, the problem.
But even
containing the ***
problem is an
uphill battle.
Not only have the cartels
divided their shipments
between hundreds
of traffickers,
they now employ thousands
of dealers to sell their
product.
Greg Thrash: We have
multiple agencies, Er,
assigned to the DEA
here, full time,
that do nothing but
coordinate efforts,
bring resources
together and Er,
and target and attack the
infrastructure of these
cartels that are operating
in the Austin area.
Greg Thrash
dispatches a unit in the
middle of the night
following a tip-off about
the location of
a crack dealer.
They approach the
house, guns drawn,
ready for anything.
Police.
Search warrant!
After smashing
open the front door the
cops quickly overpower
the suspects.
They search every room,
but there's no sign of any
***.
Then, one of the cops
finds a strongbox.
He uses a crow bar
to force it open.
Inside is a
package of ***.
Watch yourself, bro.
Sgt. Jesse Lopez: In the search
process we came up with
approximately 4
ounces of *** and
almost $1900 in
cash and some, some,
a few grams of marijuana,
that's what we got out of
the bust.
It was, Er, what I would
term successful, Er,
these are the type of
operations that my unit
does day in and day out.
So we're at four
and a half right now.
So 4.8, I've already taken
the weight of the lid out,
so it's 4.8, so that will
be a first degree felony.
Last year,
American cops arrested
approximately 1.8 million
people on drug charges.
That's one arrest
every 20 seconds.
But no matter how many
dealers are arrested,
there's always someone
else eager to take their
place.
Greg Thrash: I don't think
we'll ever eradicate the
problem of drug
trafficking and drug
abuse.
Where there is a demand
there will be a supply.
We're actually
being invaded,
by an army of ants
trafficking ***.
Today more
*** enters the US than
ever before.
And an army of dealers is
selling it to America's 7
million users.
The vast profits made from ***
will continue to finance Drugs, Inc.
for the foreseeable future.