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DRUG TRAFFICKING A LOT OF ITS HISTORY ENDEVR: Narco Cartels: The COMPLETE History Drug Trafficking \| ENDEVR Documentary PLAY YOUTUBE VIDEO Original article: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8JTrJIQlg_k&t=41s
Narco Cartels: The COMPLETE History Drug Trafficking \| ENDEVR Documentary ENDEVR 1.32M subscribers ... 62,198 views ... 736 likes Jun 22, 2025 #ENDEVR #FreeDocumentary #drugs The Story of Drug Trafficking \| ENDEVR Documentary Watch 'Narco State Spain: Gateway for Drugs into the European Union?' here: • Narco State Spain: Gateway for Drugs into ... There are few commodities as global as drugs. How did this trade influence relations between states, global financial interests, secret diplomacies, secret special forces and mafias, on all continents for over a century and a half. This series explores the history of drug trafficking from a political perspective and reveals the murky role played by many states which have used the drug trade as an instrument of power. Opium, heroin, cocaine, and designer drugs have sparked wars, financed militias, and brought down states. 00:00 Intro 02:09 Era of the Empires In the 19th century, opium use spread throughout Asia, promoted by colonial powers. Meanwhile, the western pharmaceutical industry was developing some miraculous products, such as morphine, cocaine, and heroin. Addiction became a global scourge, and prohibition gradually became the norm. But outlawing these substances gave rise to the first drug-trafficking networks, which often sought to operate under state protection. These networks underwent unprecedented growth during the Cold War, when secret services used the drug trade as a political instrument. The United States paid the price for this: In 1970, one third of their troops in Vietnam were addicted to heroin. A year later, in an historic speech, President Richard Nixon launched the war on drugs. 52:51 Era of the Drug Lords As the war on drugs progressed, a new generation of drug lords emerged at the end of the 1970s, more powerful than ever. These criminals were not only in it for the money; they also wanted power. Pablo Escobar was the most notorious, but there was also Toto Riina in Sicily, Khun Sa in the Golden Triangle, and Felix Gallardo in Mexico, all of whom changed the destinies of their respective territories by taking drug trafficking to a global scale. They defied states and threatened the powers-that-be. It took almost 20 years for states to get organized and come up with strategies to bring down the drug barons. 01:44:56 Era of Narco Nations The third episode opens on a world of drug trafficking that has been fragmented by the efforts of the police. Dealers have now changed; invisibility is their chief weapon. The trade has shifted to areas beyond law-and-order, like war zones in Afghanistan or areas with guerilla activity like Colombia. Designer drugs, which are easy to manufacture and conceal, play a key role in the transformation of the traffic. In Mexico, the cartels have dragged the whole country into a merciless spiral of violence – wherever one looks, the toll of the war on drugs makes for grim reading. This poses the question: Is it time to legalize drugs, radically changing the current situation and perhaps the way we perceive them? ▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬ Subscribe to ENDEVR for free: https://bit.ly/3e9YRRG Facebook: https://bit.ly/2QfRxbG Instagram: / endevrdocs ▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬ #FreeDocumentary #ENDEVR #drugs ▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬ ENDEVR explains the world we live in through high-class documentaries, special investigations, explainers videos and animations. We cover topics related to business, economics, geopolitics, social issues and everything in between that we think are interesting. Chapters View all ENDEVR 1.32M subscribers Peter Burgess COMMENTARY Peter Burgess Transcript Intro 0:10 this is a poppy field once cut the pod of the plant secretes a miraculous milky fluid called latex base opium used by man as a balm for more than 5 millennia opium relieves pain and appeases the mind and that should have been the end of it but this drug would play a part in some of mankind's greatest upheavalss imperialism colonization the Cold War and more recently globalization without the backing of states drug trafficking would never have existed released into the heart of the system drugs have dictated their own geopolitics in the shadows secret operations widespread corruption drugs are now part of the very flesh of the world's democracies from Wall Street to the jungles of Colombia from Shanghai to Kabul cartels mafia banks 1:07 pharmaceutical labs and political parties have all lived off drug trafficking the results are devastating whole populations stigmatized or displaced families torn apart today we've stopped counting the dead [Music] this documentary series looks back at the sineuous history of drug trafficking starting with opium which the farmers here call the gift from the gods heat heat [Music] Era of the Empires 2:26 at the turn of the 19th century Britain was engaged in a frantic race to conquer new territories and new resources with cotton tea pepper and other commodities the British Empire liberalized the world in India Britain laid its hands on a particularly strategic resource it was close to the city of Beneress in the Ganges Valley that the highest quality of opium grew the British structured its farming and intensified production with this opium Britain hoped to win the power struggle against the world's greatest power of the time the Empire of China 3:03 china refused all free trade it sold massive amounts of porcelain and tea so appreciated by the British but bought nothing at all in return there wasn't much that China needed china was the oldest operating economy in the world dating back millennia it was a self-contained economy and so coming up with goods that that the world's most advanced consumer economy uh needed that that wasn't an impossibility in this closed empire the Chinese elite had long sought evasion by stuffing their pipes with all kinds of spices saffron campher and one day opium and its wafts of smoke could soon cast its spell on Chinese high society in a panic the emperor decided to ban it 4:07 the modern history of drugs started here with the prohibition of an addictive substance and the greed of the British Empire these uh substances have um one very powerful um advantage from a cynical business perspective so the fact that drugs are addictive u creates um out of early possibly early willing consumers unwilling consumers they people literally get hooked on the substance the next step was purely logistical the British crown couldn't be seen to be involved in smuggling so it gave the job to private traders the most avid amongst them William Jardine and James Mat loaded thousands of chests of opium onto their ships in India and set sail for China 5:02 the distinction between private merkantal interests and the government these were not completely separate there there was a a commonality of interest this was the age of imperialism um commerce was good for the empire or the empire was good for commerce so so these things very much went together on behalf of the British crown Jardian and Mat two Scottish gentlemen in embroidered waste coats and patent leather slippers invented international drug trafficking in the Bay of Canton the two traders bribed the port authorities and sold their cargos of opium to the Chinese emperor's worst enemies the Triads these powerful secret societies had a single aim to overthrow the dynasty in power opium gave money and means to the empire's enemies to subversive forces 6:03 these subversive forces needed accompllices and together they tore the state apparel apart army officers were opium addicts state governors top public servants were opium addicts and all were accordingly traitors to the powers that be in fact opium addicts were referred to as Hien traitors to China in 1839 the emperor felt under threat he imprisoned thousands of smugglers and had 20,000 chests of British opium destroyed jardin and Mat seized on this as a pretext back in London they convinced the highest authorities that war was the only way to open up the huge market that China represented with a third of the world's population so in the name of profit Britain launched the Opium Wars 7:08 [Music] because of British superiority naval superiority the war of course ended in a disastrous defeat for the Chinese and a very unequal treaty and in fact in China many Chinese historians date the modern era from the opium wars this this is when China which had been a self-sufficient empire for for hundreds or thousands of years suddenly becomes the victim of imperialism the defeated emperor was forced to legalize opium and open up his country to foreign trade he seeded Hong Kong to the British who turned the island into an outright opium hub in 15 years sales of the drug had 8:00 risen from 3,000 to almost 6,000 tons a year [Music] to finance this boom in opium trading a bank was founded the Hong Kong and Shanghai Banking Corporation HSBC these glass towers are the heritage of an era which saw the birth of what is now the seventh largest bank in the world in terms of assets and the Jardin Mat Group a pillar of world trade and the first business to grow mega rich from drug trafficking the the symbolism really was that the colonial power was shoving opium literally down the throats of the Chinese people and sentencing Chinese men and women to u devastating drug addiction that debilitated their lives that kept them um uh often torn from their families um economically deprived following the Opium Wars uprisings broke out across China resulting in millions of deaths 9:05 the empire sunk into a slow agony to avoid the total collapse of its economy China began growing its own poppies china's borders were finally open millions of Chinese fled to the world's main ports like London Amsterdam and San Francisco and they took the practice of opium smoking with them so if the original sin was that the west or western imperialists foisted opium on the Chinese the Chinese in a way had their revenge because with this great diaspora of the Chinese immigrant community um opium smoking is transplanted all over the world in the United States at the time of the gold rush Chinese workers provided easily exploitable labor opium spread 10:06 through the Chinatowns of the big cities soon petty criminals gave in to its swirling smoke throughout the West the passion for opium reached marginal circles fed the fantasies and the verses of French poets [Music] in Europe opium also made nations heady the drug would make the dreams of colonial grandeur come true for various countries france the eternal rival of Great Britain intended to turn Indochina into a modern colony a mirror of its own power it constructed expensive infrastructures such as roads bridges and railroads the colonization wre havoc with the French budget people often mistakenly think that colonization earned big money in general colonies cost a lot of money at first 11:03 so governors were always looking for ways to balance their budget [Music] in 1882 France started buying raw opium in India and China and refining it in a modern factory in the city center of Saigon [Music] opium became a standardized ready to smoke product called Shandu on sale in a thousand or so stores with the RO sign for delopium opium regime france jealously guarded its monopoly and severely punished any smuggling [Music] the more opium addicts there were in Indochina the fuller the colonial coffers became the regime would supply almost a third of Indochina's budget this lucrative model was copied by the other colonial powers and the British Spanish and Dutch soon founded their own 12:05 regimes the opium industry would run on full steam until the end of World War II drugging millions of people across Asia now there was opposition to this and this in the 19th century one very important group opposing this traffic was of course the missionaries because they saw the traffic in drugs as being opposed to their essential mission of Christianizing these lands and so there's there's certainly tension between the merchants and the governments and the imperial administrations that are interested in revenue and the missionaries who are interested in souls this tension reached a peak in China in the early 20th century the empire had become the world's largest opium producer overtaking India 13:02 from deep within the country huge cargos descended the Yangze River to Shanghai within a few years the port city had dethroned Hong Kong shanghai was the new world capital of opium the European powers controlled entire districts of the city known as concessions where the opium trade was booming in Shanghai different qualities of opium were available foreign refined opium coveted by the wealthy youth or cut Chinese opium for the poorer classes in 1906 13 million Chinese people were opium addicts it was carnage a massive prohibition campaign was conducted across the empire the Europeans not yet addicts of the drug but of its trade ignored the ban and continued business as usual so China 14:01 turned towards a new power the Americans realized the interest the ban on opium could have for them especially as it was produced by the colonial powers the Americans had no colonies unlike the British and French and they understood that by backing the prohibition they could embarrass the colonial nations which had become its rivals in the early 20th century when the US was growing into one of the biggest powers in the west [Music] in 1909 in Shanghai the United States and China convened the first international opium convention the European nations unanimously refused to reduce their production but Paris London and Amsterdam would soon reconsider their position when they realized how far opium addiction had spread across the West [Music] 15:11 [Music] throughout the 19th century Europe had gone through its various industrial revolutions millions of farm laborers had left the countryside and crammed into the centers of monstrous manufacturing cities with the insolubrious living and working conditions the slightest cut became infected cases of gang green increased epidemics were rife typhoid tuberculosis cholera doctors were at a loss then suddenly the pain stopped from the fruit of the poppy chemists managed to extract a miraculous substance they named it after Morpheus the Greek god associated with sleep and dreams morphine the invention of morphine was a revolution for the mind 16:02 it changed our relationship with our body pain became a choice it was no longer something the human body had to suffer [Music] in the mid-9th century the German Hinrich Emanuel Meer pioneered the large-scale commercial production of morphine within a few decades his small lab had turned into Germany's first pharmaceutical empire today it's the fifth largest pharmaceutical group in the world from 1861 during the American Civil War 10 million doses of morphine were given to Union soldiers during this first massive blood bath of the modern era the quality of war surgery also improved greatly thanks to morphine doctors could ease pain operate and if necessary even amputate on the 17:00 battlefield the invention of the hypodermic needle accompanied this progress injected intravenously morphine's grip tightened patients no longer suffered but they became totally hooked so the pharmaceutical industry set out to find an antidote and came up with a multi-usage substance which could unhook opium addicts cocaine advocated by a young vianese doctor Sigman Freud cocaine symbolized modern times it was something very new almost magical a gift from European science you would go to a pharmacy and you would the pharmacist would have a little jar that would say cocaine and would dispense you cocaine for a variety of ailments cocaine became a flagship product sold in the form of an elixia ointment spray or cigarette 18:07 newspapers were full of ads the main targeted customer was the wellto-do woman she didn't work so her major suffering was boredom and cocaine promised to fill her life with a few moments of euphoria [Music] throughout the 19th century and in to the early 20th century drugs became cheaper and people discovered that oh you can inject cocaine or snorted up the nose or you can mix morphine and cocaine and you can inject them and it's it's it's very it produces a very powerful euphoria yeah in 1898 the industrial pharmaceutical lab buyer came up with a new opium 19:04 derivative guaranteed 100% non-addictive the results of the first tests performed on dogs were hardly conclusive intense drowsiness a tendency of vomiting and abundant salivation byer nonetheless launched its new product under the triumphant name of heroin recommended for the treatment of asthma and infant teething pains if you look at the history of morphine if you look at the history of heroin if you look at the history of cocaine these things do not enter the world as evil underworld drugs they enter the world as medicines it It's almost like a genie that escapes the bottle there was no cure for morphine addiction worse still each new product attracted 20:00 its own band of addicts throughout the 19th century the industrialization of Western nations turned living conditions hygiene and education upside down new work organization practices placed the individual at the center of their concerns the 20th century dawned with new models there was a a a rise of the idea that the state had the responsibility in order to produce a strong citizenry for uh military mobilization and for national development that the state had a responsibility to regulate how the body was used the unfettered market in addictive drugs was a real social problem and a real social evil that needed control drug control including prohibition was born of the same progressive international movement that gave us the regulatory state that 21:03 gave us the welfare state that gave us social reform that gave us protections for workers for unions prohibition was finally enforced the United States began by banning opium in 1909 this footage shot in San Francisco shows hundreds of opium pipes going up in flames [Music] in 1914 with the Harrison Act the US regulated and taxed opiates and cocoa products indispensable for surgery from then on cocaine morphine and heroin would only be available by prescription thousands of drug users who once bought their daily fix over the pharmacy counter didn't know where to turn to ease their terrible cravings 22:08 if a government says 'I prohibit all supply of this merchandise in order to curb demand.' It will only naturally generate a black market a black market that breaks the law and who's ready to break the law criminals of course to meet demand the criminal underworld learned how to refine heroin in Mexico in the fertile region of Sinaloa farmers grew poppies to supply the American pharmaceutical industry in the early 1920s they saw new customers suddenly turn up the first big figure in Mexican drug trafficking was Ignathia Yasu alias Lanacha she bought raw opium in Sinaloa and had it transformed into a brown heroin of mediocre quality by chemists in her employ 23:00 lanacha set up her clandestine laboratories close to the border with the United States in Sodad Huarees only the border separates Sudad Huarees from the first city in the US which is El Paso Texas so it's a crossing point for a lot of both legal and illegal merchandise everything goes through there arms money drugs and a host of other things all you can imagine crosses the border at Sudarees for a few years the United States have been living under the yoke of the prohibition of alcohol thirsty Americans crossed the Rio Grande to soak up bad quality whiskey in the gambling dens of Seiad Huarees amid this happy deborty of booze and contraband Lanacha had no trouble getting her heroin through the border posts her familyrun business would dominate trafficking for three generations until 24:01 the birth of the first Mexican drug cartels the illegalization of drugs gradually stretched across Europe giving rise to new black markets with increasingly powerful ships maritime transport brought borders even closer the big commercial ports became strategic smuggling points among them Marseilles where figures from Corsan organized crime seized their chance at the outset the Corsicans were what you could call seafarer traffickers meaning they were part of the French colonial empire in the 1870s after the opening of the Suez Canal Marseilles became the main port for France's colonies in the Far East and in the ports of call on the merchant shipping route the Corsicans organized trafficking of different kinds and different 25:00 intensities it started with the trafficking of women then money gold cigarettes and finally the trafficking of heroin of drugs the drug In the mid 1920s Paul Carbon a former merchant seaman turned white slave pimp became the boss of the Corsan mafia he bought opium in Turkey where it was widely grown to supply pharmaceutical labs in Marseilles the chemists employed by the Corsican mafia transformed it into heroin which was then shipped to where the prohibition of drugs was the strictest the United States little by little this drug trafficking intensified they continued to use the same routes and intermediaries but the setup became more and more sophisticated with his drug money Paul Carbone bought the mayor of Marseilles had his own men hired on the waterfronts and bribed the city's police force 26:02 the Godfather ramped up his trafficking laying the foundations of the French connection in those early days of drug trafficking arrangements with the powers that be were crucial to organized crime whether that was at a city level like with Marseilles or a country level a country where the story began China in the early 1920s the empire collapsed and armies started fighting over dozens of China's regions there was no central power and therefore nobody to fight organized crime in Shanghai the opium dens had never been so prosperous the triads reigned as masters of the underworld the triads were opium traffickers they owned the gambling dens and they had close contacts inside the city's police force from the powerful green gang one man stood out his name Duen 27:07 duhang had set up business in Shanghai's French concession where his men had eyes and ears inside the opium dens and where they wiped out his competitors duyeng's genius and this is where it gets interesting was that he didn't want to stay a simple gangster he longed to get into politics in 1921 the Chinese Communist Party was founded inside the French concession the French authorities were scared and approached Du Yusen france feared a wave of strikes and protests against the foreign presence the concessions and so on chinese nationalism was on the rise and the situation looked dangerous so the French council negotiated what would soon be referred to as the pact with the devil 28:05 the French asked Duyang to reestablish order inside their concession in exchange the trafficker would be allowed to take over all of the concession's opium dens and consequently there were no strikes in the French concession all was calm once comfortably installed Duyang offered his services to the ambitious Chinese general Xiang Kaishek as head of the army of the Quuoman Tang the Chinese nationalist party Shiang Kaishek aimed to reunify the country to do so he would have to take Shanghai in 1927 Duyang ordered his men to massacre hundreds of communists who' taken control of the city and open the gates of Shanghai to Shiang Kaishek's army 29:01 the general soon imposed the Quuomintang as the country's government but to keep control of China he needed money so the Quuomint Tang legalized opium du Yen's triad the Green Gang became the government's main supplier and a number of its members were sent to sit at parliament china became the world's first narco state duen stepped up his activities hiring chemists and setting up a heroin factory inside Shanghai's central market duen's great strength was that it became an extremely respectable figure of the Chinese underworld he was the president of several banks so he was the perfect role model of a criminal gang boss successfully increasing his involvement in the legal world again he was the perfect example let's say extreme example of the symbiotic relationship between 30:06 the criminal world and the legal world the perfect model of organized crime [Music] the heroine refined in China Mexico and France converged on the United States but in late 20s America the biggest issue was liquor prohibition was making gangsters rich the Jewish Italian and Irish mobs born out of rakateeering and prostitution in the big cities rubbed their hands together with glee organized crime took took over one of the largest industries in the United States that was the origins of modern 31:01 organized crime in the United States transforming basically street corner thugs into powerful criminal syndicates to monopolize the millions made from smuggled moonshine the Italian mafia systematically threatened and murdered until it had crushed its competitors prohibition created an unpredicted destructive power and widespread corruption al Capone had judges police officers and politicians in his pocket until he finally fell by 1930 it was clear that this was this was failing there was a government commission called the Wickersam Commission that that surveyed the alcohol prohibition and decided that that it was riven with corruption and so in 1933 you got the the end of prohibition uh of alcohol suddenly the the the mafia had lost this enormously profitable enterprise 32:08 deprived of its main source of income the Italian mafia united around Lucky Luchiano formed an alliance with the boss of the New York Jewish mob Myalanski together they took control of the heroin market to maximize profits the mobsters cut and recut the drug their adulterated product caused infections and overdoses but the end of the prohibition on alcohol also caused ranker and frustration amid puritanical conservative white Americans the enemies of all kinds of highs and pleasures the pre-prohibition fight was led by the new head of the Federal Bureau of Narcotics Harry J anslinger an advocate of strong armed tactics and a brilliant tactician the man is a legend he's a legend in drug law enforcement he was very instrumental in developing the law 33:03 enforcement tools and techniques for investigating large-scale drug trafficking both in the United States and outside the United States he saw himself not just as enforcing a prohibition on drugs you know he was in fact first of all a moral campaigner enforcing if you will a moral consensus upon the society getting rid of a of an evil influence and the male factors the the criminals that were trafficking in this and so for him it was a a moral campaign in 1930s America Hollywood was electrifying audiences harry Anslinger encouraged movie directors to instill the fear of drugs among them he directed his wroth on marijuana which was still legal in the United States oncreen white women tempted by the devil inevitably succumbed 34:02 [Music] and in the role of the suntanned mustachio tempter a Mexican little by little Harry Anslinger's moral campaign veered towards racist propaganda [Music] harry Anslinger like many other North American ultra-conservatives considered Mexicans as racially different as racially inferior inferior he made an absolute equation between ethnicity and drugs uh opiate was Chinese uh marijuana was Mexicanameans and so he was unashamed uh in in using the the drugs as a way of stigmatizing and attacking minorities in 1937 marijuana was prohibited in the United States 35:00 organized crime would benefit from this new ban harry Anslinger knew it and got ready to fight them harry Anslinger really believed in the importance of eternal vigilance there were many possible sources of drugs there were different producer nations there were new smuggling routes that could open up there were new criminal organizations so he was he was always watchful he was always worried um it's almost as if he felt he was dealing with a hydraheaded monster under Harry Anslinger the Federal Bureau of Narcotics fostered international cooperation and in 1932 the traffickers and their merchandise was finally traced from Istanbul to New York via Berlin and Shanghai [Music] 36:20 during the first years of World War II oceans and seas were the theaters of fierce battles trafficking came to a halt and the drugs ran out but this restbite was short-lived the first huge international drug trafficking network would lay its foundations at the height of war in 1943 after the US Army landed in Sicily its priority was to keep it out of Ax's hands for good washington started looking for men to temporarily govern the island [Music] 37:00 in Sicily where all of the elite were fascists the big land owners the church the administration where could the Americans find men without a fascist pedigree there were two possibilities the communists or the mafia the Americans already knew that after the war their enemy number one would be the communists so they opted for the mafia which would be able to help manage the island's towns during those troubled times backed by the Americans Mafioi moved into the town halls and took control of the different parts of the island in 1945 the US expelled to Italy more than a 100 mobsters involved in heroin trafficking including Lucky Luchiano the boss of Kosan Nostra the American 38:03 cousins and the Sicilian mafia would turn the island into a drug trafficking hub for the post-lberation Italian authorities this didn't present a public order problem because the level of drug addiction was fairly low in Europe and didn't exist at all in Italy there was no drug market in Italy and therefore no social alarm so the Italian police let Lucky Luchiano do as he pleased heroin once again flowed into the United States but heroin of poor quality sicily was short on qualified chemists in 1950 in Marseilles Lucky Luchiano met with the new bosses of the Corsan mafia Antoan and Bartellamigerini the brothers had the chemist capable of refining opium to make the highest quality heroin heroin 4 practically pure 39:03 and possible to cut dozens of times to make the biggest profits the Coskkins were very strong they were well organized and experienced they'd already done it in the 1930s they had the knowhow and that's when the big clandestine labs were set up around M but not only in Corsica and all along the French Riviera they were find tons of the stuff [Music] the meeting between the Gerini and Lucky Luchiano gave birth to the French connection a vast web of Turkish Lebanese Corsican and Sicilian traffickers kosanostra controlled the distribution in the United States but very soon the Corsacans in charge of refining and transport would gain ascendancy 40:01 the US Narcotics Bureau soon became aware of what was going on with their first seizures in New York the first smugglers arrested happened to be Corskans so the Americans realized that the chain led back to Marles to the Corskins of Marseilles lucky Luchiano the most powerful man in the American mafia was actually scared of the Corsicans he realized they were extremely powerful notably because as he underlined of their contacts inside the French secret service [Music] having infiltrated the authorities in Marseilles the Corsican mafia had strong ties inside the French state apparel in 1951 at the height of the Indochina War the French Secret Service was deployed to organize the counterattack against the Vietmin gerillas but it was seriously short of money paris begrudged having to fund this costly war and the French opium regime which once financed the colony had been 41:05 forced to shut up shop in the face of international pressure the French Secret Service mounted Operation X they contacted a tribe in the hills of Laos the Himong and bought their entire poppy crop which they transported to a military base in Saigon there French agents sold opium to Chinese Vietnamese gangs and to the Corsican mafia who turned it into heroin and dispatched it to the United States the drug money would allow French intelligence to build a counterinssurrectional army of 40,000 men recruited from the tribes of Indochina it was a one of those bizarly clear instances of a a modern western intelligence apparatus actually operating a drug trade it was 42:01 extraordinary yeah uh there's many instances of collusion and corruption but nothing quite like that where the intelligence service of a legitimate government is actually operating the traffic operation X came to nothing in 1955 France evacuated its troops from Indochina the region's geopolitics had changed the colonial powers had withdrawn the opium regimes had closed down and China a communist state since 1949 had brutally wiped out poppy growing that should have sounded the death nail for naropolitics in Asia but the Cold War had only just begun and the scene was set for secret ops and mounted coups carried out by the secret services of the great powers there are times where uh there's no question that before the collapse of the Soviet Empire and the bringing down of the Berlin Wall uh the Cold War was a 43:11 priority national security objective of the United States and if things came into absolute conflict uh I would expect that the Cold War objectives would prevail over fighting drug trafficking there is a specialist skill to operating outside the bounds of civil society of being able to transfer money mobilize people create operations uh buy arms transport arms across the globe deliver them into the hands of people there only two kinds of people on the planet that have this sensibility and have this ability intelligence operatives and criminals and and the criminals what do they need above all they need protection they need protection from state actors that can that can protect them from 44:02 investigation and prosecution that can get them off the hook if they if they if they get caught so they not only have the same sensibility but they have complimentary needs and so it's not surprising that they very often wind up working together the Asian drug trade took off again when the United States attempted to overthrow the Chinese communist regime washington gave its backing to the enemies of Chairman Mao the Quuomin Tang 6,000 Chinese nationalists were entrenched across the border in Burma the CIA sent them provisions arms and munitions the men of the Quuomin Tang made several incursions into China but were easily pushed back by the Chinese Popular Liberation Army then support from the CIA started to decrease and these local Quuom Tang units start to look for for money uh and there's a very famous famous quote from one of those Quuang generals he said 'If you have an army uh you need guns if you 45:06 need guns you need money the only money in these mountains is opium so that's what they turned into they saw there were opium fields there they collected the opium from the farmers they brought it down to the Thai border they sold it to international traders and slowly they start to um expand and increase this trade with the drug money the Quuomin Tang soldiers prospered but China put pressure on Burma in 1961 the Quuomin Tang army was evacuated a part of the troops set up a new base in northern Thailand where the monarchy welcomed them in sympathy from the high up villages they occupied the Quuomo Tang soldiers blocked the infiltration of communist groups but more importantly kept a close eye on their loads of opium as they crossed the border 46:00 everybody knew of course that the Quintang was the major organizing the opium trade into northern Thailand and organizing the heroine production and from there on the heroin trade in the region and and and internationally of course also um everybody knew this and the policy at the time was security first we feel that as the Americans would say and the Thai government communism is a major threat in the region and if the Powman could support themselves by doing opium business well that was very convenient for them of course and that lasted for a long time [Music] opium transported from neighboring Burma and Laos was refined in northern Thailand the area across the shared borders became known as the Golden Triangle [Music] the base heroine was transported to the port of Bangkok and loaded onto ships heading for Hong Kong a century after the opium wars Hong Kong still in British hands had the highest concentration of drug addicts in the world 47:07 the triads based in Hong Kong since fleeing the Chinese Communists refined the base into heroin of rare purity the drug's itinerary continued to the west coast of the United States the international traffic in heroin had never reached such a scale before and America which had used the drug as a tool during the Cold War would now pay the ultimate price the sacrifice of its youth [Music] in the mid 1960s when the war in Vietnam broke out a large part of American youth was rebelling against a patriarchal racist and consumerous society in which it felt it had no place new drugs were on the market lsd measculine peyote it was the golden age 48:04 of hallucinogens experimenting was everything the body and soul craved for freedom to fire up a joint was to make a political statement that that one was sympathetic to the goals of the counterculture or one was opposed to the war in Vietnam um drugs are very potent symbols they're not just about getting high part of this rebellious youth in search of increasingly intense experiences sought new highs with heroin [Music] within months the parks where the dreamers of Flower Power once sang in unison were turned into the hangouts of gangs and dealers the number of overdoses skyrocketed the only flowers seen now were the wreaths laid on graves and then came another tragedy in 1969 more than half a million Americans were 49:04 sent to fight in the Vietnamese jungle when the soldiers came home a third of them were completely hooked on heroin so the question was who was supplying where was it coming from and so that's what set me off on a an inquiry uh that started in the library at Yale University and eventually took me to interviews with former CI operatives and to Southeast Asia itself alfred McCoy flew to Laos and headed for the hills where the Hong tribes grew poppies to supply the local opium dens still a young student he was the first to unlock the dark secrets of naropolitics to drive back the communists the CIA had assembled a secret army of 30,000 men in remote villages and set up a welloiled logistics plan it chartered planes to transport men and supplies and cleared 200 landing strips 50:03 the Hong took advantage of the comingings and goings of these CIA planes to transport their opium so that the CIA couldn't have found out hadn't found out wasn't aware that's improbable in the extreme if a 26-year-old graduate student with no assets no authority can find this out in a conversation then I'm sure they could have done the same should they have bothered to ask those questions they of course they knew it but it wasn't their priority now were they complicit in the traffic were they they principles in the traffic no I don't think so continuing his investigation Alfred McCoy set out to meet the commanderin-chief of the Laushian army Major General Ouan Ratikon suspected of being the head of this opium traffic ring i stood on a street corner in Vian i hailed a taxi i said 'Do you know where General Owen lives?' The guy said 'Yeah 51:03 sure.' He took me there i got out i knocked on his door i walked in i introduced myself and I sat down with him and I he actually got out his ledger uh from the opium dulos and to walk me through the accounts and show me that he was running his accounts honestly that he was buying opium in these areas and he was exporting it to South Vietnam here and the money was being deposited in banks all run properly you see [Music] as long as UAN's opium supplied the local market the CIA covered him but the next step was nonetheless obvious the major general turned to Hong Kong's chemist to refine the opium into heroin and the trap was set the heroine was dispatched to US army bases customs officers policemen and South Vietnamese politicians 52:01 unscrupulously profited from the traffic helping to poison the young American soldiers who had come to fight at their side at the height of the Cold War heroine threatened to defeat the US Army while it was decimating the youth back home on American soil on June the 17th 1971 President Richard Nixon took a radical U-turn in American drug policy ladies and gentlemen come on Dr jaffy america's public enemy number one in the United States is drug abuse in order to fight and defeat this enemy it is necessary to wage a new all-out offensive [Music] Era of the Drug Lords 53:01 in 1971 Richard Nixon launched the war on drugs across the United States the same scenes were repeated drug busts mass arrests and prison sentences ex-soldiers back from Vietnam were systematically tested and weaned off the world's leading producer of heroin France was in Washington's sights the Corsican mafia the pillar of the French connection was the number one target for 20 years the Corsan mob prospered due to denial impunity and protection then suddenly Nixon thumped his fist on the table france witnessed its first deaths by overdose heroin became a major public health 54:00 issue french President George Pompedu welcomed Nixon's pressure his secret service was beyond control the drug rings needed to be broken up with the help of the Americans who sent machines cars and equipment and who financed the operations it became possible to disband parts of the drug syndicate and close down the clandestine laboratories washington sent agents from its brand new drug enforcement administration specializing in intelligence the DEA partnered the French police in its investigations within 5 years 3,10 traffickers and dealers were arrested and the chemists of the Corsican mafia fled the French connection was dismantled nixon's drug war was in one sense brilliantly successful he he combines diplomacy at the highest level with the 55:02 enforcement activities of the the Drug Enforcement Administration to concentrate the full power of the United States against narcotics [Music] the first battle was won but in the mid 1970s the drug market exploded across the globe as consumption reached unprecedented levels [Music] to conquer this market a new generation of traffickers would build powerful criminal organizations headed by the so-called drug lords through them four tactical axes of power emerged which would turn drug trafficking into a globalized industry organized crime is the most agile business in the world you squeeze it you pressure it it will simply adapt to the existing conditions is like water it 56:00 follows the path of least resistance and it will always move around obstacles [Music] from the ashes of the old world drug traffic rose and reorganized at lightning speed in Mexico those who had been farming poppies and marijuana for 20 years were the first to understand the elimination of the French connection was an amazing opportunity for Mexican farming communities the price of raw opium quadrupled in just a few months [Music] new poppy fields were hastily planted in the fertile mountains of Sinaloa [Music] the DEA launched a huge operation with the Mexican army [Music] 57:01 in 1976 Washington supplied all kinds of herbicides to spray over the poppy and marijuana fields whole villages were forced to migrate small producers and smugglers were jailed the farmers who managed to survive did so by being better negotiators and by being more inventive both in their produce and in the way they trafficked it the survivors of this vast operation shifted their production and organized themselves under the leadership of a trafficker from a poor family in Sinaloa Miguel Felix Gallardo he's a very interesting guy he was a former federal policeman so he understood the workings of the police very important to any drug trafficker he also was for a time a bodyguard to the governor of Sinaloa so he understood the 58:04 political world and he understood the drug trafficking world so if you've got a foot in those three worlds that's a recipe for success felix Gallardo based himself in Mexico's second largest city Guadalajara by uniting the smartest producers and traffickers he would gain control of nearly all of the country's heroin and marijuana markets the first big Mexican drug cartel was born the Guadalajara cartels soon amassed a colossal fortune felix Gallardo became a member of the executive committee of a bank where he was able to massively launder all the profits of his and his cartel members international trafficking through his bank Felix Gallardo reinvested his money in legal activities 59:04 he became a respected businessman and delighted in rubbing shoulders with Mexican high society the crackdown carried out a few years earlier had failed to curb the rise of the first Mexican drug lord worse still it actually facilitated it the more law enforcement the more natural selection you have it's the survival of the fittest it's the drug traffickers that are most capable of evading law enforcement that have the greatest capacity to outco compete their rivals whether through smartness or through aggression and that have the greatest capacity to corrupt at least local officials that survive uh the fight [Music] as heroin continued to flow onto the American market another drug surfaced deep within the Andes 1:00:05 cocaine in Peru and Bolivia where the cocoa leaf had been used for millennia to ward off hunger and altitude sickness chemistry waved its magic wand when you see how this drug is made it doesn't give you the desire to try it the cocoa leaves are merated for 3 days in kerosene the concoction is mixed with lime and left to merate again the stench is revolting this fearsome chemistry continues with additions of acid ether and acetone [Music] in the early 70s a gram of Coke sold in the United States for $700 [Music] extremely rare the white powder lit up the world of finance the walls of Wall 1:01:04 Street and the jetet it was the drug of triumphant capitalism the drug of the successful there was actually a Time magazine cover the champagne of drugs here's a wonderful drug that you can get high on and it's not addictive wrong dead wrong but as a result there are political consequences the DEA was instructed you will devote all your investigative effort toward heroin you will not invote investigative effort to cocaine trafficking the path was open for the large-scale control of this new market in Colombia a handful of criminals began production without encountering the slightest obstacle a poor country Colombia was a vast territory of jungles and mountains which escaped all state control there the traffickers were kings 1:02:06 colombia is traditionally a very libertarian country its people naturally and instinctively reject all concentration of power it's very clear to see that they totally reject all forms of authority in the early 1970s Colombian traffickers bought cocaine in Bolivia and Peru and smuggled it into the United States the frenzy American market brought them mind-boggling profits in Medí a young trafficker convinced other criminals to step up a level together they would increase deliveries and seize control of the cocaine market this was the birth of the Medí cartel [Music] 1:03:02 pablo Escobad was the enforcer every drug trafficker had to pay him a percentage and he provided a series of services in exchange for that percentage one he guaranteed loads so he would put together loads from various different traffickers and then he would ensure they were delivered to the United States if a shipment was lost he would make it up he just didn't invent cocaine trafficking he industrialized it and moved it to this enormous scale the Medí cartel purchased a fleet of aircraft and began smuggling tons of cocaine into southern Florida [Music] in Miami drug dealers waged their own war for control america discovered the bloody face of cocaine 1:04:03 ralph the shootout occurred at about 2:30 this afternoon when two or more Latin males entered the Crown Liquor Store here on the west end of the Dave Land Mall they were followed by two or three other Latin males and then the shooting began around Dade County the bodies are piling up almost faster than they can be counted yesterday two men were killed in Medley when they threatened an armed man in a bloody truck is now being used by the Dade Medical Examiner's Office to store all the bodies shocked by the scale of the violence the DEA traced the problem back to Colombia in 1979 President Jimmy Carter imposed an extradition treaty on the Colombian government all traffickers arrested by the police in Colombia would henceforth be tried and jailed in the United States escobar realized the threat to stop 1:05:05 Parliament from ratifying the treaty he handsomely paid off a large number of politicians but he wanted further guarantees in 1982 age 33 Escobar entered politics himself running as a wealthy businessman he was elected as an alternate member of the Chamber of Representatives from then on money was no longer his only goal he started dreaming of controlling the country power became his main objective behind this man who owned one of the biggest drug businesses in the world was a killer and a man who was hungry for power he wanted to become president of this country 1:06:05 having infiltrated the Colombian democracy Pablo Escobar succeeded in having the extradition treaty blocked in the United States nobody imagined that this young politician was none other than he who had turned cocaine into a powerful industry the industrialization of drugs was also ongoing in Asia after the Vietnam War and the departure of American GIS Thailand sailed alone in a sea of red the kingdom feared communist incursions into its territory a young warlord would take advantage of this new geopolitical order he went by the name of Kunga the prince of prosperity kunga is an extraordinary figure 1:07:03 kunga is of that kind uh an inconsequential individual who would have had a a life as a market trader or farmer or a localized businessman who gets transformed into a a man of extraordinary power born in Burma and having received military training as a youngster he became a militia man in the pay of the ruthless Burmese dictatorship kungar then founded his own army financed by the opium trade soon at the head of 2,000 armed men he crossed the border and sold his services to the powers at B in Thailand he was pretty good at sensing where the power lay and the maximum amount of resources he could extract from the power arms 1:08:02 immunity the right to traffic the Kingdom of Thailand welcomed Kungar with open arms with his armed men he would defend the border against communist incursions in exchange the so-called prince of prosperity was given Carter Blanch for his trafficking his opium caravans freely traveled across borders the Thai Supreme Command had base camps for them protected them and of course received a percentage of their profits kuna built a very large heron laboratory and he became quite a powerful drug lord [Music] kungar was picked up on the DEA radar 1:09:01 but Thailand refused to hand over its precious ally to Washington faced with this stalemate the members of the American Congress tried a different approach and sent one of their emissaries to negotiate with Kunar as a British documentary maker Adrien Cow looked on as we had introduced Joe Ellis chief counsel of the congressional committee we were allowed to film this historic meeting only the president and the administration has the authority to make agreements concerning the purchase of opioid let me ask what would have to be done to eliminate opium production in the Shan states 1:10:07 we want you to you know help make contact to the persons you know who can come and collect all the opium grown in in our country uh either to throw it or to burn it the American In this game of diplomacy Kunar didn't present himself as a drug trafficker but as a defender of his people the Shan who were being brutally repressed in Burma shan State was also the main opium production area in the Golden Triangle a coveted region in a constant state of war certainly in his in his group in his army there were people with strong shun political um objectives um but there were also people in his group with mainly economic objectives and Kunga was very smart in sort of balancing these two groups in his own army publicly saying I'm fighting for Shan political rights at the same time um making most 1:11:06 of the money of the drug trade and becoming deeply involved in it and he was very good at Kunar boasted that he was powerful enough to assemble all the opium production of Shan state and transfer it to the United States in exchange of a few million dollars with which he could help his people the proposal made its way to the White House but Washington preferred strong armed tactics to eradicate opium from the Golden Triangle the US armed the Burmese military and its bloodthirsty generals american helicopters failed to destroy a single opium field instead firing on rebelling minorities [Music] 1:12:02 [Music] the prince of prosperity could continue his rise as opium continued to make its way to his laboratories protected in Thailand he stepped up production and was given a new nickname the king of heroin [Music] [Music] meanwhile in Europe [Music] in the mid 1970s a small group of Kosanostra mobsters hired the former French connection chemists known as the Godfathers of Palmo they brought in opium from the Middle East to supply their illicit labs on the Sicilian coast the Godfathers set up a distribution network in the United States in pizza restaurants in the New York area soon baptized by the FBI as the Pizza 1:13:04 Connection very soon the sums of money involved became astronomical sicilian banks were unable to soak up all the cash generated by the traffic the local Sicilian banking system exploded so some of this money made its way to countries with strict banking secrecy policies such as Switzerland and a whole system in place to cover any tracks since the early 20th century a parallel financial system has been put in place to get around the tax laws of Western nations and mobsters realized once they started earning big bucks that this system worked wonders for them the mafia didn't create this capitalist financial system everything was organized so the tax evation remained secret 1:14:01 in Sicily the Nuvo Ree of the mafia showed off their luxury cars and private yachts the other mafia families who weren't rolling in this new money were infuriated but the godfathers of Palmo didn't care they were protected by fearsome henchmen from the small village of Corleó their leader Totoina was the bloodthirstiest killer ever recruited by Kosanostra [Music] fina killing a man was as easy as lighting his cigarette when something didn't suit him he'd say 'We'll kill him.' Nobody dared to upset Reena because if he did he knew he wouldn't be going home for dinner the godfathers of Palmo saw Reena as a brainless psychopath but instead of wiping out the families that were angry with Kosanostra Toto Reena united them to grow in strength the various families provided him with dozens of new killers 1:15:08 in April 1981 what was mistakenly called the mafia war broke out it wasn't a war at all a war presupposes two armies going face to face and the strongest winning here there was only one army arenas this was a liquidation [Music] he killed people on the street left their bodies outside police stations carried out spectacular executions whereas the old school Sicilian mafia generally used the so-called lupanka white wolf meaning a murder with no body [Music] so that doubt lingers of course he's not dead he's gone to the United States 1:16:01 [Music] totoina left 2,000 corpses in his wake and became head of Kosanostra under his reign dizzed by the phenomenal sums of money brought in by heroine the Sicilian mob went a step too far in 1982 the Communist Party parliamentarian Ptori drafted an anti-mafia bill a few weeks later he was assassinated previously when everything was done clandestinely when there was no spotlights a large part of the government turned a blind eye if I can use such a euphemism thanks to Reena or rather due to him nobody could look away anymore the state needed to send out a strong signal that it was present and intended to repost the day after Lator's death a new governor was appointed in Sicily a man 1:17:02 known for his fight against terrorism General Dalakza he was in turn assassinated in the 1980s Totoina adopted a kind of hubris and believed he could become the boss of bosses added to that was his totally crazy idea that he was capable of rivaling the state he has even been attributed with saying this in Sicily i am the state with this escalation of violence politicians were gripped by fear even the most corrupt among them parliament passed the assassinated Communist Party members bill and the word mafia entered Italian criminal law for the first time the enemy had been identified [Music] the first drug labs were dismantled and dozens of lowranking mafiosi were arrested but more would be needed to rock the organization 1:18:09 kosa Nostra's white powder was flooding New York in 1982 the Big Apple accounted for half of the United States 200,000 heroin addicts for President Reagan the drug challenge was even greater than the one Nixon had faced especially since a new epidemic was spreading the country now counted 10 million users of cocaine the president mobilized his special forces in Florida the Medí cartel suffered severe losses [Music] escobar realized he had to find new routes into the states and that's how in 1984 somewhere in Mexico the Medí cartel met the Guadalajara cartel the Colombians thought 'Hey if we don't 1:19:04 move drugs into the United States then maybe the DEA won't come for us if we sell it to the Mexicans then surely the DEA will just chase the Mexicans which was rather flawed thinking because judicially if you're involved in any link in the drug chain you can be prosecuted they joined forces with the Colombians to transport the cocaine and offered them Mexico's greatest asset for narot trafficking its border with the United States which is impossible to control and then the Colombians come in and say 'Well we need you to move tons and tons and tons of cocaine.' The Mexican traffickers kept all of their promises and tons of cocaine crossed the border into the United States the Guadalajara cartel became almighty in the fall of 1984 the DEA still hadn't worked out what had just happened 1:20:03 one of its agents Enrique Camarena discovered a vast marijuana plantation hundreds of hectares all immediately destroyed a few months later DEA agent Enrique Camarina disappeared we didn't know what had happened to our agent what had happened to agent Camarina we didn't know we couldn't get a straight answer from the Mexican government and that was when the border was shut down the Mexican government literally told the traffickers 'We have to produce the body.' Cuz they knew he was dead enrique Camarena's atrociously mutilated body was finally found it was discovered later that the special agent had been kidnapped by the Mexican police with the complicity of the Mexican secret service and handed over to the Guadalajara cartel 1:21:01 gallardo's main associates were arrested the drug lord went underground so one of the things the investigation did was expose the high level of corruption in Mexico in a way that had never been exposed before to the light of day that case revealed the widespread corruption among the Secret Service and intelligence agents and it became clear that they were the real bosses they were the ones who decided which drug trafficker reigned over which territory and they earned huge sums from this drug running it's even said that some of the money found its way all the way up to the interior ministry the DEA's investigation uncovered the bestkept secret in Mexican politics the sole party in power since the 1930s 1:22:00 the PRI maintained its grip by racketeering all kinds of economic activities both legal and illegal [Music] and when drug trafficking became rooted in Mexico the country became a narco state lots of people say that narot traffic penetrated the Mexican government but I don't think the Mexican government was penetrated by anything mexican narot traffic drug smuggling is an integral part of the entire political system basically the state offered the men who run drug trafficking in Mexico a deal associate yourselves with the PRI and we'll look after your interests it was too good an offer to turn down if they didn't accept the state would crush them [Music] 1:23:03 in Colombia the truth came out at the same moment in 1984 the new justice minister Rodrigo Lara found the courage to unmask Pablo Escobar in parliament Rodrigo Lara publicly accused Escobar of being a drug trafficker too sure of himself Escobar had forgotten one detail an old case resurfaced when a reporter from the Popular Daily El Especador discovered in the newspaper's archives an article that had appeared in 1976 the young Pablo Escobar arrested in 1:24:06 possession of 19 kilos of cocaine for the first time we had solid proof that Pablo Escobar who couldn't be accused or indicted for anything through lack of proof was heavily involved in drug trafficking in a surprising move Congress removed his parliamentary immunity and Escobar was forced to go underground he would never be an official politician nor an official drug trafficker [Music] justice Minister Rodrigo Lara embarked on a crusade he grounded Escobar's planes and demolished his labs in the jungle he launched a suicidal hunt for Escobar and in doing so signed his own death warrant [Music] 1:25:02 on April the 30th 1984 in Bogotaa Rodrigo Lara was shot by a teenage assassin employed by the Medí cartel it was a declaration of war the Colombian president hit back by ratifying the dormant extradition treaty with Washington pablo Escobar entrenched himself in Medí protected by the population for whom he constructed homes schools and soccer stadiums he recruited an army of 2,000 teenagers these new henchmen got rid of anyone who threatened Escobar's reign journalists judges policemen and politicians despite the danger the Justice Department continued to gather evidence against the boss of the Medí cartel in preparation for his extradition in 1985 Escobar made a pact with the Marxist guerrilla group M19 which led an 1:26:03 assault on the Palace of Justice in Bogotaa pablo Escobar's case file was destroyed after a two-day siege the Palace of Justice went up in flames [Music] for drug lords dabbling in politics is usually highly beneficial playing on their Robin Hood image as defenders of the poor and victims of a repressive state they enjoy strong popular support and the more they're attacked by the state the stronger they become deep within the Golden Triangle Kungar was the perfect example of this phenomenon in the early 1980s the region's geopolitics changed radically china had 1:27:01 opened itself up to other nations peace returned and the Kingdom of Thailand no longer needed its troublesome allies serving no further purpose the king of heroine was chased out of the country and sought refuge in his homeland of Burma kungar set up his new laboratories in Shan state without the slightest opposition from the Burmese dictatorship he must have made paid off paid money to my army commanders in the region um it's hard to find evidence for that of course but I think if you look at how things have developed over the years it it makes a lot of sense that some arrangements were there he had tried to form relationships with the Burmese army generals commenders and they kept on being France the Burmese military dictatorship was one of the most repressive in the world after 20 years in power the generals had impoverished the country and provoked 1:28:01 uprisings by dozens of minorities by allying themselves with Kungar they purchased peace in Shan state which represented a quarter of Burma kungar offered them that which counted most in their eyes stability in a region that had been in constant rebellion kungar did something extraordinary he gradually through by assassinating rival leaders by using uh basically the threat of death he forced the Sha the fragmented Sha movement to increasingly respect him as the leader and he built an armed force of 20,000 men i would say that having a big army is not to fight i have a big army because I don't want to fight if I have a small army the Burmese would 1:29:01 always try to uh search me and then try to eliminate me the Burmese army would not attack Kungar and Kungar could continue to present himself as the great defender of his people the Shan all the while keeping his factories ticking around the clock [Applause] [Music] kunar flooded the heroin market by selling his drugs cut price in 1980s Europe syringes passed from arm to arm addiction and AIDS spread sewing the seeds of death 1:30:03 [Music] in about 1981 Burma was producing around 500 tons of opium a year by 1989 it was producing 2500 tons a 500% increase one of the most rapid increases in opium production up to that point in history probably as far as we know the most rapid increase thousands of kilometers away in Sicily [Music] to attack Kosanostra godfather Totoina the most fearless investigating magistrates joined forces in an anti-mafia pool alongside the two charismatic figures of Paulo Borcelino and Giovani Falconee do you think that 1:31:08 one day he said this to me you know Jeppe drugs leave no trace you have to catch someone red-handed otherwise you get nothing but money does leave traces so it was obvious we had to attack the mafia's bank accounts they started looking into their cash flows and Falconee even before there was anti-moneylaundering legislation tried to track dirty money and hit the mafio's wallets he carried out detailed financial investigations which also taught him a great deal about how financial markets banking systems and banking secrecy worked [Music] judge Falconee tracked the money to the tax havens of Switzerland Panama and Gernzi and initiated more than 20,000 banking investigations falcone's method then followed the money across the Atlantic to the United States where he 1:32:01 worked closely with the FBI to unravel the pizza connection since there had never been any investigations of this kind before Mafiosi wrote checks with impunity i saw checks for 1 billion LA going through because they were untroubled nobody had ever looked into the banks in 1983 a leading figure in Kosanostra Tomaso Bushetta was arrested in Brazil the totally unexpected occurred when he broke the mafia code of Omea he was the victim of brutal repression by Totoina who killed pretty much his whole family he found himself alone and as revenge he would reveal all the secret inner workings of Kosan Nostra to Judge Falconee falone Tomaso Bushetta's statement speeded up 1:33:00 Falconee and the FBI's financial investigations a wave of arrests led to the two biggest trials ever to implicate the mafia the Maxi trial in Palmo and that of the pizza connection in Sicily 450 suspects were indicted after the 2-year trial the court gave its verdict 360 prison sentences amounting to a collective total of 2500 years toarina who was on the run was sentenced to life in New York at the trials of the Pizza Connection bosses and their associates also tumbled we never seized a single gram of heroin everything was reconstructed thanks to international cooperation and money transfers without Falcone the whole investigation would never have been seen through thanks to Falconee the terms money laundering and offshore accounts entered into common usage 1:34:01 the Italian magistrate had found the fatal weapon that could bring down drug trafficking tracking money to where it was stashed in the banks it frightens the drug traffickers way more than some of their leadership being killed if we're talking about money laundering the international market is where serious blows can be dealt drug trafficking is targeted through money laundering but money laundering stretches much further than drugs everything is in place for cash to flow as freely as possible there is a financial deregulation which allows more fluid movement of people and merchandise but each state is free to make itself a tax haven or not to have a tax system or to employ specific banking secrecy but in those first years of financial globalization no state could allow itself to change the foundations of its 1:35:00 system reagan returned to the old methods of force and diplomacy [Music] in 1988 in Mexico Felix Gallardo was dropped by the men in power but from his prison cell the trafficker dissolved his cartel and split up his territories among his young guns all trace was lost of what was once an easily identifiable organization from then on each border post was controlled by a new cartel washington would only realize this much later in 1989 a few weeks after the fall of the Berlin Wall the United States invaded Panama and brought down its dictator Manuel Noriega an ally of the CIA and of the drug traffickers in the war on drugs America freed itself of its cold war logic 1:36:04 in Colombia the rumor of a military intervention by Washington made the headlines pablo Escobar didn't want to end up in an American jail if they wanted his head they would have to collect it from a mountain of corpses [Music] as long as the government refused to enull the extradition treaty not a single street corner would be safe [Music] after a series of blind attacks Escobar had four presidential candidates killed the favorite for election Luis Carlos Galan was assassinated during a public debate [Music] he was replaced by his campaign manager Sesame who luckily escaped an attempt on 1:37:02 his life still today it's hard to grasp the difficulty of the challenges that faced us back then the complicity for example among the law enforcement agencies the police the army in the deaths of certain public figures why do I say that because when you see complicity like that you realize what little control we had over the country the cartels had turned Colombia into a living hell [Music] elected President Cesar Gveria held one of the most dangerous positions in the world to stop the carnage he negotiated the conditions for peace with Pablo Escobar in exchange for his arrest he promised to revise the constitution and withdraw the extradition treaty [Music] 1:38:02 it was a massive challenge we needed to find a response which was not authoritarian but democratic to a crisis of terrifying violence on June the 19th 1991 the boss of the Medí cartel surrendered to the authorities on the wall of the living room of his prison cell which had been decorated to his taste Pablo Escobar proudly displayed his DEA arrest warrant for Colombia denounced the narot traffickers wanted Pablo Escobar Gira reward 2,700,000 pesos but Escobar didn't stay long in his bunkered palace he soon realized he was losing control of the drug traffic and organized his escape his competitors and associates who had taken 1:39:01 advantage of his absence would join forces to bring him down the mobsters decided to cooperate with the police with the help of their killers and informants the manhunt made rapid progress [Music] they took a massive risk and it's something I still question today regarding the war on drugs that to rid itself of a single trafficker the state allied itself to all of his enemies on December the 2nd 1993 Pablo Escobar was shot dead on a Medí rooftop it took the combined efforts of all parties the DEA the Colombian Police Force and the drug traffickers to finally bring down the biggest cocaine trafficker in the world 1:40:05 [Music] 28976 [Music] on May the 25th 1992 all Italy was in mourning inside the church the voice of a woman spoke out fore foreign foreign [Applause] [Music] 1:41:04 [Applause] in the coffins s the bodies of Giovani Falconee his wife and three members of his police escort all blown to bits by a bomb [Music] for this tragic crime the crowd blamed the political system which had always protected Kosanostra [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Laughter] in turn Judge Paulo Borcelino would also die in a car bomb attack 1:42:02 we're still waiting for answers there are things that have never been revealed archives that have never been made public but one thing is clear in the assassinations of Falcone and Borcelino regarding the quantity of the explosives it would have been impossible for the mafia even with all its contacts to have acquired such a large amount without leaving some kind of trace so there are a lot of gray areas the FBI investigators who were close to the two Italian judges arrived bringing support and brand new technology for the first time in Europe DNA samples were collected from the crime scenes more than a thousand people were arrested toto Reena's tactics were turning against him betrayed by his own men the boss of bosses was jailed in 1993 and would die behind bars 25 years later 1:43:07 kosanostra was weakened by the arrests and by the statements of reformed mafiozi the Sicilian mafia was eradicated from the drugs network and became invisible for Kosanostra the age of the drug lords ended here [Music] [Applause] [Music] only one drug lord remained in place Kunsa but the king of heroine had just crossed the red line in 1993 he declared the independence of Shan state the military regime instantly sent their forces against him kungar had no other option than to negotiate his surrender 1:44:04 without a shot fired Burmese troops dominated Kungar'regarding the quantity of the explosives it would have been impossible for the mafia even with all its contacts to have acquired such a large amount without leaving some kind of trace so there are a lot of gray areas the FBI investigators who were close to the two Italian judges arrived bringing support and brand new technology for the first time in Europe DNA samples were collected from the crime scenes more than a thousand people were arrested toto Reena's tactics were turning against him betrayed by his own men the boss of bosses was jailed in 1993 and would die behind bars 25 years later 1:43:07 kosanostra was weakened by the arrests and by the statements of reformed mafiozi the Sicilian mafia was eradicated from the drugs network and became invisible for Kosanostra the age of the drug lords ended here [Music] [Applause] [Music] only one drug lord remained in place Kunsa but the king of heroine had just crossed the red line in 1993 he declared the independence of Shan state the military regime instantly sent their forces against him kungar had no other option than to negotiate his surrender 1:44:04 without a shot fired Burmese troops dominated Kungar's capital in 1996 the dethroned king of heroine was granted a peaceful retirement surrounded by friends and family here he was arguably the most powerful single drug lord ever and yet you know once he fell from power the downfall of history's most powerful drug lord had very little impact on the traffic [Music] [Music] Era of Narco Nations 1:45:01 june the 18th 2019 somewhere in the Pacific Ocean i'll go to Marco [Music] the war on drugs has engendered new leviathans invisible unconquerable prey that are nearly impossible to spot today out in the open seas a rare catch [Music] in the underwater belly of this beast the Coast Guard discovers over 7 tons of cocaine loot worth $230 million when drug lords fall criminal organizations reinvent themselves once more they never disappear they simply recompose into networks not structures they become nodes in a wider network 1:46:04 and even the command nodes in these networks you can take down a command node but it doesn't dismantle the workings of the network itself [Music] a new era for criminal organizations began at the start of the '90s in a system where everything was accelerating transportation communication cash flow globalization the triumph of free trade hoped to erase borders i believe we have made a decision now that will permit us to create an economic order in the world that will promote more growth more equality better preservation of the environment and a greater possibility of world peace in 1994 the United States along with Canada and Mexico inaugurated the 1:47:02 greatest free trade zone in the world no more trade barriers and fewer border controls mexican factories stepped up the pace and lines of trucks at the US border grew longer hiding drug cargo in the stream of vehicles became the favorite pastime of the Mexican cartels implanted along the 3,000 km border heroin marijuana and cocaine flowed practically unobstructed helming the country Mexico's sole political party the PRI received its share of the profits as long as the traffickers take drugs to the gringo and as long as they don't challenge the state it's okay as long as they don't act against the interest of the PRI to keep powers the state will 1:48:00 not interfere with the drug trade very much in Colombia at the head of the cocaine trafficking chain the political establishment finally let loose on drug traffickers under pressure from the DEA the criminals who came after Pablo Escobar were hunted down their shell companies were dismantled and arrests increased to absorb losses those who'd survived counted on their Mexican transporters they asked them to step up the pace and they weren't flying one at a time they were flying convoys seven or 14 planes would take off at a time with each loaded up with nearly 1,000 kilos of cocaine and landing in northern Mexico and Chihuahua they would be staged there and then smuggled across the border into the US [Music] the logistics of the Mexican cartels were foolproof they had the upper hand over the Colombians and imposed a new 1:49:03 division of labor the Mexicans took charge of the riskiest and most lucrative component of the traffic cocaine distribution in the United States the Mexicans entered a more complicated phase that we experienced as well the level of corruption in the system sank deeper and deeper and the violence grew worse why because the money from distribution came into play and it was a huge amount of money and in this business money is synonymous with violence and death [Music] mexico got caught up in a neverending spiral of violence meanwhile Colombian traffickers stepped back to focus on production covering entire sws of their land with cocoa crops 1:50:01 by the end of the '90s drug production had become concentrated in lawless areas where it was impossible to unseat colombia was the world's leading cocaine producer and another country emerged as a permanent player in the story of drug trafficking afghanistan the world's top opium producer kabul Afghanistan today 80% of the world's heroin is produced in Afghanistan the completely illicit drug represents onethird of the country's revenue from the dusty streets of its capital Kabul to the highest levels of state all of Afghanistan has become addicted to heroin 1:51:00 an addiction that was born in the 80s in the midst of the Cold War the Soviet army occupied the country's big cities and in the countryside the Russians strove to repress Afghan resistance so in the mid1 1980s they adopted so-called scorched earth policy they decided to destroy the countryside so people could not live there and in order to do so they would burn down orchard destroyed water system poison wells but not everyone moved instead people started cultivating opium poppy for 10 years opium poppy funded the tribal leaders resistance to the Soviet occupation what was once a marginal crop became the main source of revenue for peasants and warlords when the Russians left Afghanistan tribal leaders clashed in a struggle to take power 1:52:06 [Music] several thousand Afghans died in their wars throughout the ravaged land one movement channeled the anger of a people prostrated by years of conflict the Taliban born in the Quranic schools gained ground they had political objectives they didn't like drugs when they started they really were very upset with all those corrupted warlords in Afghanistan that they really didn't like so they wanted to bring law in order it was not the kind of law and order we liked but that was their perception so part of that was to stop opium opium was a vice it's haram it's not clean everywhere they went the Taliban imposed their strict laws closing movie theaters outlawing music hiding women from view religious law triumphed over everything but opium was the livelihood of tens of thousands of families if they banned it the Taliban risked losing support in the 1:53:06 countryside to build political capital the Taliban started saying 'Well the Quran says that opium poppy is haram and it's still haram to use it.' But it would say as long as you produce opium poppy for the cafir for the infidels as long as it goes to Russia or goes to the US that's perfectly fine with us opium allowed the Taliban to finance their advance on Kabul the Afghan capital fell in 1996 afghanistan was immediately ostracized by the international community and cut off from the world afghanistan was a ravaged land and there was no foreign aid uh and so uh opium uh was the the knife that cut through the Gordian knot of this social puzzle 1:54:01 of how to restore economy it's an annual crop you you put the seed in the ground and a few months later you've got a a commodity it's illicit it magically crosses all boundaries you know without any impediment whatsoever to fulfill their dream of a fundamentalist state the Taliban set up labs on their land and turned Afghanistan into the world's leading heroin producer drug money made them bold thinking they could flout international law in 1998 they granted a safe haven to members of al Qaeda but heroin could not ensure the survival of an entire country poverty was rife in Afghanistan the Taliban regime sorely needed international aid in hopes of regaining international favor the Taliban outlawed opium poppy production throughout the country in 2000 1:55:05 peasants risked death if they planted the forbidden seed in just one year nearly every poppy field in Afghanistan had disappeared and the international community said things like 'Well you know thank you.' And the United States under Secretary of State Colin Pal actually awarded the regime I think $41 million in foreign aid but there were other issues human rights the status of women uh and so the UN wasn't going to recognize them and so the Taliban had you know in retrospect conducted an act of economic suicide after the terrorist attacks of September the 11th 2001 the United States invaded 1:56:00 Afghanistan [Music] and it's not surprising that when the first US bomb started falling that that hollow shell of a society and a state collapsed because it was already dead on the inside you know it wasn't very strong to begin with but whatever strength it might have had was gone [Music] in a matter of weeks the Taliban were pushed back into isolated zones doomed to disappear but patiently little by little they reconquered the land by encouraging the cultivation of opium poppy a miraculous source of funds for the rebirth of their movement 1:57:00 colombian airspace in Colombia in the mid '90s cocoa fields covered whole stretches of land far from the cities which were now under high surveillance drug traffickers sought refuge in the jungles and mountains well out of the state's reach colombia is a country in spite of itself its geography is extremely complex it's a country that still has many communication problems and it's had to work incredibly hard to control its land we've barely finished inhabiting our landri and there are still many unpoliced areas deal in these remote areas a modernday far west land belonged to whoever had the means to take it large land owners purged Colombia's land of its wealth gemstones minerals oil rare woods 1:58:04 to extend their operations these large families created militias that would move populations by force colombians called them paramilitaries with cocoa crops booming in the countryside drug traffickers also outfitted themselves with paramilitary groups the paramilitaries protected the land for the drug traffickers who ordered them to clear the land of peasants and settlers and everything then the paramilitary started to accumulate lots of money and they took the initiative to enter into the drug business themselves the paramilitary leaders gradually took control of cocoa production and the labs and handle connections with the Mexican cartels and major international crime networks 1:59:06 deep in the jungle the scramble for Kok would change the fate of another armed group the FARC a Marxist guerilla group fought for a fair distribution of land active on a few fronts but with meager means they would extort large land owners and kidnap them for ransom but in the mid '90s FARC guerrillas adapted to the changing times there's nothing more conservative than a communist communists are very conservative and at first they were against drug trafficking because it was going to corrupt the revolution but there was a lot of pressure from peasants because they needed money and so they say it's okay to u cultivate cocoa and being good revolutionaries and 2:00:00 trying to build a social base so they start delivering a variety of public services flush with the money they get from taxing uh cultivation the FARC used drug money to buy arms and ammunition but also communication tools that allowed them to synchronize their various fronts and make rapid progress the FARC continued their abductions targeting the very heart of the government governors deputies and former ministers were all held hostage the gorillas camped outside Bota they were here in Medí and they were outside Kali and at the end of the 90s people were talking about the potential of Columbia becoming a narco state with the guerillas taking power faced with the FARC's growing power paramilitary groups wanted to retain control of Koka production zones in 1997 2:01:02 all the paramilitary factions gathered under one commander a far-right militia of 20,000 men the united self-defenders of Colombia defied the guerillas meanwhile Colombia's legitimate military suffered ambushes by the FARC soldiers were abducted in their hundreds in that kind of desperate situation there were elements of the military who said 'Look you know we have to get into bed with this with with the paramilitaries this is the only way to stop the the gorillas taking power.' So what happens these mafias end up carrying out a number of massacres throughout Colombia claiming to be fighting the gorillas but actually what they do isn't just drive the gorillas out of certain areas but take the land themselves and use it as export corridors for Koka 2:02:03 the paramilitaries eliminated their opponents the systematic killing led to the displacement of millions of people the paramilitaries dictated their laws in the zones they took over areas the state could never reach if you're looking for crimes against humanity in Colombia this is where you'll find them with the paramilitaries they were the main violators of human rights and committed the most massacres and barbaric acts now the political class in Colombia as we've seen has nothing honest about it and is extremely corrupt and at a certain point it saw the paramilitaries as a great opportunity to obtain votes and political representation it's quite practical to receive the votes and armed support of the paramilitaries 2:03:02 but it's less practical when you become governor and they ask for a spot in the housing or health administration where the largest public contracts are or if you're a senator and a paramilitary phones to tell you to resign for a year because one of his men is going to take your seat in the early 2000s the paramilitaries were in the same position as Pablo Escobar 20 years earlier before the Congress one of their leaders Salvator Manuzo defended the role of his men a few years later Salvatori Monuzo nicknamed trip0 would admit to the murder of 300 people 2:04:06 [Music] salvator Manuzo spoke to an appreciative audience paramilitaries controlled a third of parliament colombia had failed to push traffickers out the paramilitaries had turned it into a narco state unlike Colombian traffickers the cartels in Mexico never tried to take the reigns of the government traffickers accepted the game of corruption orchestrated by the single party the PRI in power for 70 years 2:05:01 in 2000 Mexicans shrugged off the authoritarian reign of the PRI by electing Vicente Fox as president it was the promise of a new era for Mexico and the change in power reshuffled the cards for traffickers it did break what I would call the pox mafiosa and that is to say the uh essentially the understanding between the Mexican state and the major narcotic trafficking organizations that they were they were untouchable they weren't going to be touched so it did break that certainty uh of that you had had for years under the PRI [Music] the PRI acted as a mediator between the cartels once they were gone violence was the only way to weed out competitors overlapping wars soon broke out among all the cartels 2:06:03 at that time the local and regional political class no longer had the means to contain the drug lord's power and so in Mexico we could say that the drug war is the price of democratization [Music] in this cartel war the historic bastion of trafficking the Sinaloa was on every front driven by the insatiable appetite of its leader El Chapo freshly escaped from a highsecurity prison el Chapo Guzman is one of the most successful uh drug traffickers ever in history and his nickname before Chapel was Elapidor the quick one because he was able to move drugs into the US at a very very high speed he became an emblematic figure 2:07:02 practically a mythical figure of Mexican drug culture chapo was also very diligent and very systematic in how to manage brutality and extortion against rivals clever and ruthless El Chapo would have to strike even harder if he wanted to stay in the game on the other side of the country the Gulf cartel recruited elite soldiers from the Mexican army and created an armed wing Losas military discipline planned operations intelligence methods were redirected with a single goal terrorize the competition and take over their territory losettas triggered one upmanship among the other cartels tijuana Sudadarez and Sinaloa all outfitted themselves with elite units scenes of horror erupted my god they were in Mitch Khan i mean the uh 2:08:01 organized crime group there they were cutting off heads of rival cartels and literally tossing them on the dance floor i mean it was it was out of hand in 2006 the newly elected president Filipe Calderon declared war on the cartels and sent the army to the front 45,000 soldiers tried to win back the lost territories focusing their efforts on Losus the most bloodthirsty of the cartels [Music] under the army's blows Los Zetas imploded into a multitude of groups they tightened their grip on smaller territories and the violence ratcheted up a notch lozetas filmed their murders and tortures in detail leaving a zed on the walls and bodies of their victims 2:09:00 what happened with Losas is that they didn't have enough money to remain in constant conflict with the state so they turned violence into a commodity loettas didn't sell the logistics to move cocaine loettas sold the ability to use violence in a professional manner in order to impose a local state of terror they didn't just stay involved in drug trafficking you had to pay what's called the peace for everything so if you were running human smuggling through their territory um if you were engaged in kidnapping in their territory extortion they got involved in all you had to pay the you had to pay the separ the army unable to fight on every front left the Sinaloa cartel to prosper by the end of the bloody wars El Chapo had expanded his zone of influence to Tijuana and Sodues 2:10:10 the use of the army to try to reduce violence was counterproductive not only did the violence continue in the atrocious forms we'd seen but it gradually increased quantitatively until it hit dramatic levels at the start of the 2000s the US and Colombia also chose the military option they elaborated the most extensive plan for battling drug trafficking Plan Colombia $4 billion over 5 years 2:11:08 hundreds of American advisers revamped the Colombian army bolstered by these new means Colombia turned away from its initial goal the main traffickers paramilitaries allies of the state were not targeted the plan against drugs became a war plan bogotaa poured everything it had into fighting its main enemy the FARC guerrillas active in nearly half of the country the situation shifted in the state's favor for the first time and Colombia's army began to regain control of territory for the first time in many years to put it plainly it was the most effective plan of American military aid in the past 20 to 25 years plan Colombia restored the country's security and brought kidnappings down from 3,000 to 200 2:12:07 so in that way I think it was very important but there was a high price to pay for a war waged in those conditions it was an irregular war with bombings we never even heard about here in Bogota the dirty war waged far from the cameras dealt a severe blow to the FARC its historic leaders were eliminated in time a process of negotiation would begin with the guerrillas for Colombia the military offensive was just the first step the next stage was initiated under pressure from Washington despite Plan Colombia tons of cocaine was still flowing into the US the Colombian government was ordered to take action against the paramilitaries in 2006 the hard right in power practically offered them an amnesty 2:13:04 leaving over a 100,000 killers unpunished paramilitary fighters turned in their weapons to carnival music [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] the agreement was made in a way that the perpetrators didn't need to compensate their victims for their land or property nor by telling the truth and that's something that hurt me deeply 2:14:04 for all the massacres they committed including the one that concerns me in which my sister was killed for all those years the paramilitaries enjoyed infinite impunity the biggest jolt came from the Supreme Court the judges decided to open an investigation into the incestuous relationships between paramilitaries and political leaders a large-scale cleanup began the court examined flushed out and convicted several politicians what changed the life of Colombians was the unrelenting effort Colombia made to strengthen its public force its security and rule of law that's what has transformed and changed Colombia 2:15:00 these efforts towards justice and memory continue today in a Colombia that seems to be catching its breath violence is diminishing in the big cities and Colombia is becoming a tourist destination yet well out of sight in hardto-reach areas the same actions are carried on endlessly here we harvest the cocoa and take it to the lab every 3 months every 3 months we harvest it and take it to the lab where it's transformed into paste and the buyers come to our home [Music] like thousands of cocoa growers this farmer has endured eradication campaigns led by authorities with the help of the DEA for 30 years Agent Orange Monsanto's glyphosate and thousands of liters of herbicides were sprayed on cocoa plants 2:16:03 and ravaged entire regions [Music] in 1994 I was in Keta it was a great place to grow cocoa with the harvest you could earn a little money but when they started spraying everything was ruined people got sick and wound up nearly blind cattle trees everything it destroyed the earth when they sprayed you couldn't plant anything anymore because the soil was no good and when they sprayed then it was all over i came here to Ninho and I pulled out all the coffee plants to grow cocoa on his three hectares this grower produces roughly 70 kilos of cocoa paste 2:17:02 which earns him 10 times more than if he grew coffee the transformed paste goes to the other side they send it to Mexico the US to other countries because that's where it's worth money because one kilo here is worth almost nothing whereas over there it is to make 1 kilo of cocaine it takes 350 kilos of cocoa leaves $400 once it is transformed crosses borders is sold bulk than retail and cut all this means that same kilo of cocaine sells for over $120,000 on the streets of New York 300 times its base price when part of the harvest in Colombia is eradicated the price of the cocoa leaf could triple out on the streets this makes the cost of one gram rise from $122 to $122.77 not enough to discourage the New York 2:18:03 user or to slow down the traffic in Colombia Koker still finances dozens of armed groups they are the distant successors of the great cartels direct descendants of the paramilitary factions or FARCs who refused the historic peace deal in 2016 [Music] after 30 or 40 years of waging the war on drugs in Colombia we're producing more cocaine than ever but nevertheless we consider this a success because criminal organizations are governing less we've made progress for sure but we're still in a complicated and difficult situation with the fear that these amounts of cocoa crops could reactivate things we're unable to control and yes I'm scared that fuse will get lit again 2:19:01 [Music] as long as drug crops grow criminal or insurgent movements can take possession of them in Afghanistan the US underestimated this latent danger after driving the Taliban out of power in 2001 Washington thought the problem was solved a few years later the US Army was facing a powerful insurrection the Taliban had used drug money to enlist thousands of fighters in 2004 under pressure from Washington President Hammed Kazai declared a jihad against opium [Music] but the Afghan president would play against his side his authority was held only by the fragile coalition of warlords and former mujahedin who used drug money themselves to run their fifoms of course there are many people 2:20:02 in the Afghan government who were involved in in the drug trade same as in in the other uh the opposing forces this is not a secret everybody knew it it was not very convenient in those days to talk about it because there are political allies yeah that's was that was the logic in 2005 in the region of Helmand over 9 tons of opium were discovered in the governor's basement president Hammed Kasai had to remove him without his revenue the governor's militia changed sides his 3,000 men joined the Taliban and upset the balance of power the region of Helmond fell into the hands of the Taliban who turned it into the country's leading zone of heroin production to cut off the Taliban's main source of revenue the US beefed up its military response 2:21:01 us B-52 bombers and US F-22 Raptor fighters bomb Taliban heroin labs so here's a an F-22 fighter costs about $400 million and a heroin lab which sounds fancy but really is is a a mud brick shed with some rusting tin drums and a and a cheap electric heater probably $50 worth of equipment where the US uses its most sophisticated military equipment and all of its targeting and intelligence and research the drones to monitor movement you know the satellite imagery the the B-52 bomber which is the biggest military airplane on the planet to to to attack these these these tin roof sheds with their steel drums is a I think a a demonstration of the limits of coercion 2:22:08 there is not one case where eradication has bankrupted belligerents or significantly weakened them to make them easier to defeat people go hungry they literally don't have anything to eat and they will protest and they will mobilize and so what happens is that the criminal groups insurgent groups like in Afghanistan or in Colombia get a lot of political capital people switch allegiance to them and in fact uh the history of the so-called narco militancy nexus narcoins insurgency nexus is that the state wins against insurgents when it stops eradicating after 50 years of war Kabul Afghanistan's capital is now home to the world's highest concentration of drug 2:23:01 addicts in the countryside practically one out of every two families is affected by heroin addiction the country continues to found her [Music] [Music] in Mexico a century after trafficking first began popular culture celebrates naros and their swift rise in society the small farmers who planted poppies in the last century in the mountains of Sinaloa gave birth to traffickers able to exploit every crack in the system absolute symbol of the revenge of the weak el Chapo Guzman leader of the Sinaloa cartel dodged authorities for 15 years and amassed a fortune of 1 billion which police are still looking for 2:24:01 the drug trafficking organizations can afford the best lawyers they can afford the best investment brokers they can afford the best accountants and the security forces and law enforcement are hugely outgunned in terms of accountants and lawyers hundreds of millions of dollars belonging to the Sinaloa cartel were found laundered in the accounts of the world's biggest banking institutions the banks all obtained a legal settlement no convictions were pronounced but rather than say that this financial system is deeply unstable and fueled by dirty money we continue not to penalize it and say that for lack of anything better we're moving forward this way and we close our eyes a little so for them it's always worth it to continue this trafficking it remains profitable and that shows on 2:25:03 the level of big banks with legal departments that provision more and more money from one year to the next in other words in the prospect of a trial they've evaluated and set a price on fraud on skirting the rules and on lack of banking responsibility [Music] in 2015 El Chapo was caught when he contacted an actress he'd grown infatuated with one of the world's greatest drug kingpins was brought down by an amateur mistake extradited to the United States and sentenced to life in prison El Chapo left in his wake a nebula of drug trafficking and the myth of a hierarchical cartel held by a single man 2:26:09 the current criminal world is no longer in the hands of those whose names we hear in the media and perhaps what remains of the Sinaloa cartel for Mexico is above all nostalgia the nostalgia of a criminal organization that used violence in a predictable manner today in Mexico violence has crept in everywhere all the time yesterday's big cartels have been split up by the army which is still deployed throughout the country a myriad of small elusive groups appear decline disappear and reform constantly 2:27:05 [Music] on the Pacific coast Akapulco Mexico's crown jewel has become one of the most dangerous cities in the world around 30 crime organizations are active in the region [Music] small groups in Mexico are a major problem and the fact that there are small and very many and that they that they operate in the context of law enforcement that is seen as weak and incompetent means that there is tremendous violence 2:28:00 i'm the person who picks up the bodies from the hospitals from the coroners from homes [Music] i'm the one who offers support to people who helps support them in their pain i've already had to go to collect corpses from graves where there were eight or nine bodies when there are disembodied bodies we have to inject them piece by piece sew the bodies together so they're in one piece so families can see their relatives and then we give the families an explanation often in many cases the bodies can't be given awake because of their state of decomposition we prepare them then we close the caskets because you can't see a body in a state like that 2:29:13 in Mexico death has every right the bodies are stacked one on top of the other and there's no power that can repair the damage that is done each day every day every day we wake up to the news of another hidden grave we wake up to learn a new organized crime group has emerged over the past 10 years more than 40,000 people have disappeared in Mexico killed by criminal organizations that blindly strike extort or kidnap for ransom people who often times are innocent 2:30:00 i'm searching for my brother Tomas my big brother who was kidnapped on July 5th 2012 from Witziko Guerrero mario Vegara combs the land relentlessly searching for his brother's body with other grieving families he has dug up over 400 bodies over the last 5 years here just an hour's drive from Akapulco [Music] in this place which is called the lake of Iguual Guerrero we found 21 bodies all bearing signs of torture hands and feet bound blindfolded they recruit your children to turn them into killers if you're a farmer they force you to give up your corn crops to plant opium poppy instead they can make your husband go missing and you might spend your whole life 2:31:04 looking for him because they've recruited him for criminal work or you could find him dead in one of the secret graves the mountains are very beautiful and the landscape is stunning it's true but it hides the horror that man has committed within it [Music] here's the skull this is someone's skull you can see where the bullet went in here according to what I was told this man was brought here they shot him and he fell face first we're digging up the truth of this country we're telling the government 'Yes people have disappeared in Mexico yes there are secret graves in Mexico and you're not doing your job we're doing it for you the only good thing in all of this is that the Mexican people are getting more and more organized each day there are lots of women's organizations that are standing up to a state that lacks the capacity to provide justice and to find their loved ones 2:33:18 each mass grave must be visited by the authorities who are storing over 27,000 unidentified bodies as of today [Music] a new chapter in the story of drug trafficking is opening somewhere in China a return full circle criminal organizations have stolen yet another secret from the pharmaceutical industry by manipulating chemicals they've managed to synthesize fentinel a distant cousin of opium 2:34:02 manufactured since the 1950s for medical use fentinyl is made without the slightest trace of poppy flour the drug is 100% synthetic today these ports where the first bundles of opium arrived in the 19th century mark the point of departure for invisible cargos of an infinitely powerful drug fentanil is at least 100 times more um potent than heroine so um it might take several trucks trailer trucks of cocaine to supply the US drug market for a year well it might take just one car load to supply a small car load to supply the US entire opioid market with fentanil you can basically forget about the agriculture i mean you don't need peasants growing opium poppies in Afghanistan or in Mexico or Colombia you don't you don't need armies and warlords 2:35:02 who are shipping opium if you simply have chemicals that that you can you can manufacture in China and then ship to Mexico and then use them to produce drugs like fentanyl it greatly simplifies the process and it means that you can base your operations anywhere so um modern synthetics drugs really have the potential to radically change uh the illegal drug trade and the politics international relations and geopolitics to surround it fentinel flows into a country grappling with the greatest addiction epidemic in its history in the United States the overprescription of painkillers encouraged by pharmaceutical lobbies has caused hundreds of thousands of patients to become addicted to opiates when their treatment stops and the illusion of well-being is shattered they turn to elicit markets every day middle-class men and women join the horde of heroin addicts and 2:36:03 fall victim to fentanyl which is less expensive and a lot more powerful fentanyl kills 30,000 people each year in the US this vial is a death trap for those who seek refuge from the pain of living yet there's nothing fatal about that as long as the war targets drug trafficking rather than the causes of drug use we will live in a constantly shifting mafia environment the world of drugs was created by our socal choices and our economic system the only solution is to change it [Music]

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