Drug Trafficking

12 Pages 2982 Words

of recreational drug use and crime in the United States (“Thirty Years of America’s Drug War”). Studies were showing that heroin addiction links with crime (“Thirty Years of America’s Drug War”). The first known drug traffic between one country and another is hard to tell but it is suggested that it may have occurred before A.D. times because studies suggest that local Andes Mountain villagers ate coca leaves in 1800 B.C (Williams 155).
In the late nineteen seventies, major drug dealers expanded their empires and became more widely known across the world. One of the biggest known drug dealers in the late 1970’s from Colombia was Carlos Lehder (“Thirty Years of America’s Drug War”). He became well known because he was the first person ever to ship drugs by a small plane. The small plane would fly from the Bahamas on an island called Norman’s Cay, where Lehder kept many planes on a one hundred and sixty-five acre lot and were shipped exclusively to the United States of America (“Thirty Years of America’s Drug War”). The shipments were known as the Medellin Cartel because the cocaine was grown in Medellin, Colombia. Because of these shipments, an alliance would be formed between the Ochoa family where they would agree on full terms with the manufacturing, distributing, and marketing of cocaine. However, Carlos Lehder was captured in 1987 and was sentenced to life in prison without parole.
The Ochoa family consists of many members including the most famous drug-dealing brothers from Colombia whom are Juan David, Jorge, and Fabio. All three surrendered to Colombian police in 1990 because Colombia offered reduced prison sentences in order to entice the brothers to surrender (“Thirty Years of America’s Drug War”). After their release from prison in 1997, they ended the family drug reign because they were already wealthy and they wanted to spend more time with their family in La Loma, Colombia. However, be...