What Lockdown? World’s Cocaine Traffickers Sniff at Movement Restrictions
The supply chains of the cocaine industry did not falter even during a worldwide shutdown.
The supply chains of the cocaine industry did not falter even during a worldwide shutdown.
How a bunch of Canadian hipsters wound up smuggling cocaine (and getting caught).
Kate Knibbs The Ringer Dec 2019 25min Permalink
Customer feedback on the New York City coke dealing industry.
Elizabeth Spiers Gawker Jan 2003 10min Permalink
Baruch Vega ran a scheme that ensnared Colombian cocaine kingpins and gave him a life of luxury. Then one put a price on his head.
Zeke Faux Bloomberg Businessweek Jul 2019 20min Permalink
What happens when a great deal of cocaine suddenly washes up on the shores of a very small island.
Matthew Bremner The Guardian May 2019 20min Permalink
Tom Bissell was an acclaimed young writer when he started playing Grand Theft Auto. For the last three years he has been sleep deprived, cocaine fueled, and barely able to write a word—and he has no regrets.
Tom Bissell The Guardian Mar 2010 20min Permalink
How the Coast Guard expanded the war on drugs into international waters.
Seth Freed Wessler New York Times Magazine Nov 2017 25min Permalink
He was a Georgetown-educated Native-American lawyer who’d left behind a career in D.C. to advocate on behalf of poor and minority populations in rural North Carolina. At the time of his 1988 murder, he was investigating ties between police and the local cocaine trade.
The author spent nearly 30 years looking into what really happened.
Nicole Lucas Haimes MEL Magazine Jan 2017 25min Permalink
How two high school wrestling teammates ended up on opposites side of the law during Miami’s cocaine wars.
Brett Forrest ESPN the Magazine Aug 2016 25min Permalink
The idea was to shoot a Neiman Marcus fur catalog in the Andes mountains, not get stranded on them.
Mickey Rapkin Elle Feb 2016 Permalink
Everything that happened before former NBA star Lamar Odom suffered multiple strokes on the floor of a Pahrump brothel.
Ramona Shelburne ESPN Oct 2015 15min Permalink
Scott Storch, a producer who earned six figures for beats he made in less than an hour, was worth an estimated $70 million. Then he blew it all in a bizarre cocaine binge.
Gus Garcia-Roberts Miami New Times Apr 2010 20min Permalink
Bringing down a cocaine empire in 1980s rural Maine.
Brian Kevin Down East Jan 2015 25min Permalink
A three-part investigation into links between the cocaine trade, Nicaragua’s CIA-backed Contra rebels, and California’s crack epidemic in the 1980s.
Backers of CIA-led Nicaraguan rebels brought cocaine to poor L.A. neighborhoods in the early 1980s to help finance war – and a plague was born.
How a smuggler, a bureaucrat and an ambitious teenager created the cocaine pipeline.
The impact of the crack epidemic.
Gary Webb San Jose Mercury News Aug 1996 Permalink
In exchange for his surrender, the top Colombian drug lord was allowed to build his own jail, complete with a disco, jacuzzi, and waterfall. Now 23 years later, it’s a home for the elderly.
Jeff Campagna Daily Beast Jun 2014 15min Permalink
How Leo Sharp got busted.
Sam Dolnick New York Times Magazine Jun 2014 25min Permalink
How a 40-year-old IT consultant became nod, one of Silk Road’s highest volume heroin dealers, who turned informant and then fugitive.
Patrick Howell O'Neill The Daily Dot Jan 2014 20min Permalink
How Chicago is key to a business moving tons of drugs for billions of dollars.
Jason McGahan Chicago Oct 2013 Permalink
How a Mexican drug cartel makes its billions.
Patrick Radden Keefe New York Times Magazine Jun 2012 20min
Scott Storch, a producer who earned six figures for beats he made in less than an hour, was worth an estimated $70 million. Then he blew it all in a bizarre cocaine binge.
Gus Garcia-Roberts Miami New Times Apr 2010 20min
The rise and fall of the Black Mafia Family, once one of the largest cocaine empires in American history.
Mara Shalhoup Creative Loafing Atlanta Dec 2006
A profile of Gil-Scott Heron.
Alec Wilkinson The New Yorker Aug 2010 25min
How the bulk of the cocaine entering the U.S. ends up cut with a cattle dewormer.
Brendan Kiley The Stranger Aug 2010 15min
A profile of Griselda Blanco, aka the “Black Widow,” who pioneered the cocaine trade in New York and Miami.
Ethan Brown Maxim Jul 2008 15min
Dan Aykroyd, John Belushi and the making of The Blues Brothers.
Ned Zeman Vanity Fair Jan 2013 25min
Customer feedback on the New York City coke dealing industry.
Elizabeth Spiers Gawker Jan 2003 10min
Two aggressive Dallas cops. One confidential informant. Hundreds of pounds of cocaine. Fifty-three drug traffickers busted. Sound too good to be true? It was.
Skip Hollandsworth Texas Monthly Apr 2002 10min
Apr 2002 – Jan 2013 Permalink
On the production team of Don Simpson and Jerry Bruckheimer, who defined the’90s at the box office with films like Top Gun and Beverly Hills Cop, then struggled amidst Simpson’s hedonistic excess and the failure of Days of Thunder.
Richard Natale The Los Angeles Times Jun 1993 20min Permalink
A statistics-based argument that drug pricing, not drug use or law enformencement, is the only way to predict swings in violent crime rates.
Llewellyn Hinkes-Jones The Atlantic Nov 2011 10min Permalink
GQ moved up the release of this Charlie Sheen profile: ”The fucking AA shit. The sobriety shit. It was always for other people. I just wanted to get a job back and get enough money to tell everybody to go fuck themselves and then roll like Errol Flynn and Frank Sinatra—the good parts of those guys.”
Amy Wallace GQ Apr 2011 Permalink
A former pilot of miniature cocaine-smuggling submarines tells his story.
Alexander Bühler Der Spiegel Dec 2010 10min Permalink
How the bulk of the cocaine entering the U.S. ends up cut with a cattle dewormer.
Brendan Kiley The Stranger Aug 2010 15min Permalink
It took a desperate screenwriter to find Max Mermelstein, Miami’s former coke overlord, after twenty-five years in hiding.
Gus Garcia-Roberts LA Weekly May 2010 20min Permalink