The Cocaine Wars

British journalist Paul Eddy’s non-fiction book The Cocaine Wars (1988), co-written by his colleagues at London's Sunday Times, Hugo Sabogal and Sara Walden, chronicles the cocaine trafficking trade in the Americas while concluding that the US government is failing in its efforts to combat it. The authors received an Edgar Award nomination for Best Fact Crime for The Cocaine Wars.

The authors begin by exploring the roots of the Medellin Cartel, a Colombian criminal organization that at its height supplies 85 percent of the United States' cocaine market. Based in the city of Medellin, the second-largest city in Colombia, Fabio Ochoa Restrepo—nicknamed Don Fabio—is a wealthy cattle rancher, horse breeder, and restaurateur. Although his wealth comes largely from legal business activity, Don Fabio begins to supplement his income with the criminal smuggling of items such as Scotch and television sets. In 1976, Don Fabio's son Jorge Luis Ochoa assumes nominal control of the family business. Many of the authors' sources suggest that Don Fabio continues to run the business, installing his son in charge to avoid criminal liability as the family expands its reach further into Colombia's growing cocaine trade.

Meanwhile, Pablo Emilio Escobar Gaviria, a Colombian from a middle-class upbringing, engages in a wide range of criminal activity, from stealing cars to ransoming rich businessmen. With demand for cocaine in the United States on the rise, plenty of raw cocaine paste available in South America, and no powerful criminal organizations devoted to trafficking the drug, Escobar seizes an opportunity to corner the market. Escobar buys cocaine paste in Peru, refines it in a two-story laboratory in Medellin, and smuggles it onto planes flying to South Florida and California. On early smuggling flights, Escobar hides the cocaine in old plane tires. Each flight nets as much as $500,000 for Escobar and his associates. In 1978, Escobar and his criminal associate Carlos Lehder buy most of the land on a tiny island in the Bahamas called Norman's Cay about 220 miles from the Florida coast and force or pay its local population to leave. This acts as the de facto headquarters and hub for Escobar's growing drug smuggling empire. On Norman's Cay, Escobar and Lehder build a one-kilometer airstrip, a harbor, hotels, and a giant refrigerated warehouse in which they store cocaine.



In 1981, an event occurs that helps unite the various Colombian smugglers into one criminal organization. In an effort to fund its paramilitary activities, the Colombian guerrilla organization M-19 kidnaps and ransoms Don Fabio's daughter, Martha Nieves. To encourage Martha's release and deter future kidnappings, the Ochoas strike an alliance with Escobar and Fehder to form Muerte de Secuestradores or "Death to Kidnappers," solidifying the alliance between Colombia's trafficking giants under what would later be known as the Medellin Cartel. At its height in the mid-1980s, the Medellin Cartel brings in more than $70 million a day, amounting to roughly $26 billion in a year. Fifteen tons of cocaine are smuggled into the United States each day, with a street value of $500 million. The cartel amasses so much cash that it spends $1000 a week just on rubber bands to wrap the bills.

Disturbed by the volume of illicit drugs entering the United States and the growing cocaine epidemic in American cities, President Ronald Reagan intensifies the US war on drugs, focusing its efforts on the Medellin cartel. The failure of the US government to fight the cartel is attributed to the difficulties of implementing an extradition treaty with Colombia. Colombian politicians who voice support for the extradition treaty are subject to death threats by the Medellin cartel. Ironically, it is the 1984 Escobar-ordered assassination of Colombian Minister of Justice and pro-extradition advocate Rodrigo Lara Bonilla that finally changes the political calculus in Colombia surrounding the treaty. After Bonilla's death, Colombian President Belisario Betancur, formerly in opposition to extradition, announces his willingness to extradite the country's top drug lords to the United States. This forces Escobar, Ochoa, and Lehder to flee to Panama where they hope for protection under military dictator Manuel Noriega. However, Noriega has secret contacts with the US government and plans to betray the cartel leaders. Escobar uncovers this plot by bribing Noriega's top colonels, and the kingpins flee to Nicaragua.

Despite the Reagan administration's hard-line approach toward both the Medellin drug cartel and smaller drug dealers and users on US soil, the authors explore allegations related to the US Central Intelligence Agency's involvement with the drug smuggling operations of right-wing Nicaraguan paramilitary groups known as Contras. Throughout the Contras' war with the socialist Nicaraguan government, the United States offers financial and military support to the Rebels. Although investigations are ongoing, the authors allege that Raul Diaz helped set up an informal alliance between the CIA and Nicaraguan drug smugglers to help fund the Contras. While the U.S. acknowledges that some of the proceeds of cocaine sales in the United States go to fund the Contras, the government denies allowing or authorizing the activities of Nicaraguan drug smugglers.



Finally, the authors explore widespread corruption among law enforcement officials in Dade County, Florida, which further undercuts the federal government's efforts to stem the tide of cocaine abuse in the United States.

The Cocaine Wars is a thoroughly researched and dispiriting look at the growth of the cocaine trade and the United States' failure to halt it.