The War on Drugs

When people think about Jamaica and drugs, they tend to think of weed, Rastafari and reggae music. The reality is that Jamaica sits in the middle of the cocaine corridor between South America and the US, and the violent gang wars and billions of dollars this trade generates have fundamentally shaped its history. This violence is inseparable from Jamaica’s politics, creating a uniquely Jamaican kind of gang boss – the Don. And no Don was bigger than Christopher “Dudus” Coke. This is the story of Dudus, the drug lord who became the secret “President” of Jamaica.

In July 2021, gunmen broke into Haiti’s presidential residence and murdered the country’s president with automatic weapons. This kind of violent assassination is usually associated with military coups and civil wars. But, new evidence has come to light that may indicate this was a drug hit, carried out to protect the interests of cartels with connections deep in the Haitian government itself. This is the story of how Haiti’s president may have become another casualty of the War on Drugs.

Since becoming the President of Brazil in 2019, Jair Bolsonaro has signed decrees to get tough on drugs and relax gun laws. But has it worked? Not really. This is how Brazil’s deadly drug wars have been fuelled by a president who thinks the solution is to throw more guns at the problem.

When we think about cartel bosses, we almost always think of one group of people – men. But this misses out on key parts of the story. Across Latin America women have been rising through the cartel ranks – taking command, making millions and committing terrifying acts of violence just like their male counterparts.

But this was not a war against some communist regime or terrorist group – this was a drugs bust, aimed at arresting Manuel Noriega, the dictator of Panama, who was wanted on trafficking charges in Miami. Awkwardly for the US, Noriega had been a major CIA asset for decades – even as they knew he was becoming massively embedded with the cartels flooding the streets of the US with coke. This is how US intelligence shielded Noriega, even as he trafficked cocaine and laundered cartel millions – and also how the War on Drugs came to replace the Cold War as the central feature of US foreign policy.

Just as Vladimir Putin launched his war in Ukraine, he went on Russian TV and accused the Ukrainian government of being drug addicts. This reveals a wider pattern in Russian policy and society, where people who use drugs are routinely stigmatized and brutalized in the most horrific ways..

For decades an amphetamine-like drug has been gaining popularity across the Middle East. From Lebanon to Saudi Arabia, use of the drug Captagon has been spreading throughout all levels of society. Then came the civil war in Syria. The brutal and despotic regime of Bashar al-Assad saw an opportunity to finance its war machine – and used its military to take over the Captagon trade. This is how Syria became the world’s most industrialised narcostate, using illegal speed to finance crimes against humanity.

New Zealand is a long way from anywhere, and drug cartels have traditionally not bothered sending them much cocaine or heroin. So, Kiwis have had to improvise – and they discovered a love for meth, and random new chemicals no one’s ever heard of. This was all getting very dangerous, with rising addiction and biker gangs fighting over territory. Then one man – a steam-punk glam-rock musician named Starboy – decided to try and end New Zealand’s drug war once and for all. And he almost managed it!

When you think of the Pacific Islands, you tend to think of a tropical paradise – not bricks of cocaine and meth being cooked up with rat poison. But there’s a new Pacific drugs superhighway emerging across the South Pacific islands, with unforeseen and devastating consequences.

MS-13 is a gang so deadly and violent that the Trump administration tried to officially label them a terrorist group. But how does this gang really operate? How do they fit into the drug trade which is transforming Central American countries into narco-states? How have they virtually taken over entire cities? This is how America gets MS-13 totally wrong – totally misunderstanding what this gang is and how they actually work. We go inside El Salvador's deadliest street gang.

As Rodrigo Duterte’s presidency in the Philippines is over, we look at what his deadly drug war actually achieved, and whether the new president Bongbong Marcos – the son of the Philippines' former dictator – will continue the bloodshed.

The Albanian Mafia is the new power in international drug trafficking. Over the past decade, organized crime groups from Albania have taken over huge sections of the cocaine trade – particularly trafficking to Europe, which has become the biggest coke market in the world. A lot of myths have sprung up around these Albanian mafia networks – about how they operate and the violence they inflict. We separate truth from fiction – showing how the Albanian crime groups maintain their power, and how they have revolutionized the cocaine trade using innovation, entrepreneurial flair and deadly violence.

Asia’s Golden Triangle is a lawless area running along the borders of Myanmar, Thailand and Laos. These semi-autonomous zones are loosely ruled by local warlords and have suffered decades of conflict – the perfect breeding ground for drug trafficking empires. For decades, the Golden Triangle was known as the world centre of heroin production. But in recent years, the focus has switched from opiates to amphetamines – particularly meth. The Golden Triangle meth trade is now a multi-billion dollar industry, rivaling anything in Central or South America. Furthermore, there is speculation that parts of the Chinese government are flooding the area with weapons, supplying the rival meth warlords, and making huge profits along the way.

The Sinaloa Cartel are probably the richest and most powerful criminal organization on Earth. From the mountains of North West Mexico, their reach now extends not just across North and South America, but into Europe, Africa, and Asia. This reach and power are based on one thing – trafficking illegal drugs. The US spent millions trying to capture its leader Joaquin ‘El Chapo’ Guzman, but his imprisonment in 2019 has barely dented the cartel’s ability to traffic drugs, murder competitors, corrupt officials and rake in billions. This is because law enforcement and most media fundamentally misunderstand how the Sinaloa Cartel works.

The Jalisco New Generation Cartel is Mexico’s deadliest narco empire. But amidst rumours that their leader is actually dead – could this all be about to crumble? In ten years, the Jalisco New Generation Cartel has come from nothing to become the deadliest rising power in Mexican drug trafficking. They have achieved this by applying unprecedented levels of organised, paramilitary-style violence – even using tanks and drone warfare against other cartels and the Mexican military. But, rumours are swirling that the near-legendary boss of the CJNG is out of action – and possibly even dead. Could this be the beginning of the end of this brutal cartel empire?

For over 50 years, Colombia has been ravaged by a brutal civil war – involving communist guerrillas, right-wing death squads and the Colombian state all fighting a messy and violent struggle for control of the country. And this decades-long conflict has largely been financed by Colombia’s multi-billion dollar cocaine economy. This is how half a century of aggressive drug prohibition – and the booming global cocaine market – have prolonged and worsened Colombia’s bloody civil war.

When we think about the global heroin trade, the news is usually about Mexican cartels and North American opioid crisis. In fact, the country seizing more heroin and opium than any other is usually the Islamic Republic of Iran. Despite being an authoritarian, religiously puritanical state that even bans alcohol, drug addiction has spread like wildfire across Iranian society. This is how a combination of geography, geo-politics and failed War on Drugs policies in Iran have created what might be the world’s worst heroin crisis – and how corrupt elements of the Iranian state itself might be profiting from it.