The Arellano-Felix Organization (AFO) is North America's most violent drug trafficking cartel. Based out of Tijuana, Mexico, for over a decade they've shipped tons of cocaine, heroin, methamphetamine into the U.S. Annual revenues are into the hundreds of millions of dollars says the FBI.
AFO's innovative strategy is befriending and recruiting 'juniors'-young, educated men of middle-and upper-class families living on both sides of the San Diego-Tijuana border. AFO uses them as drug runners and hit men. 'Juniors' get involved with the cartel not necessarily to become wealthy but for "la fama"--the fame of the gangster life. This is the story of what happened to one of these young men, told by his family and a fellow 'junior.'
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Seizing drug traffickers' money is a key strategy in the war on drugs. But narco dollars increasingly have become intermingled in legitimate businesses through money laundering schemes like the black market peso-dollar exchange. So tracking drug money can catch the wrong people--as this report shows.
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During the late 1970s, the Carter Administration was giving a low priority to the issue of recreational drugs. In fact, recreational use of drugs like cocaine and marijuana was considered to be non-addictive and relatively safe, according to Carter's drug czar, Peter Bourne. In 1977, a group of parents in Atlanta challenged that thinking and the "parents movement" was born. This is the story of what they did and how their influence helped to shape a powerful new direction on fighting drugs during Jimmy Carter's and Ronald Reagan's administrations.
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This excerpt chronicles the lockhold Colombian drug cartels had on their society and government, and the terror unleashed by the cartels when they decided to fight U.S. and Colombian plans to extradict the kingpins. Includes interviews with Medellin's Ochoa brothers and Carlos Toro.
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