The Billion-Dollar Cocaine Business: Insights from the 1980s

Ioan Grillo (@ioangrillo) is a contributing writer at The New York Times specializing in crime and drugs. He is the author of El Narco: Inside Mexico's Criminal Insurgency; Gangster Warlords: Drug Dollars, Killing Fields, and the New Politics of Latin America; and Blood Gun Money: How America Arms Gangs and Cartels. [This is part one of a two-part episode. Stay tuned for part two later this week!]

• How did Ioan Grillo -- a journalist from the UK -- find himself covering the illicit guns and drugs trade from behind the scenes in cartel-controlled Mexico and other pockets of Latin America?
• The opulent cemetery where narcos are buried in multi-leveled, air-conditioned mausoleums that would make the ancient pharaohs blush.
• The most devastating examples of human catastrophe Ioan has witnessed while reporting narcos-related crimes over the past two decades.
• How much danger is a journalist like Ioan really in while reporting from the thick of such unfettered violence?
• How thousands of children are recruited or forced into doing the cartels' most bloody work.
• And much more...

Full show notes and resources can be found here: jordanharbinger.com/700

Miss our interview with Freeway Rick Ross, the crack empire kingpin gone good? Catch up with episode 121: Freeway Rick Ross | Life in the Crack Lane here!

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