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A Game Plan for the War on Drugs
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15105 |
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Section : |
BOOK WORLD
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| Issue
Date : |
4 / 1989 |
2,814 Words |
| Author
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James Skinner
James Skinner, foreign affairs legislative adviser to
Congressman Robert K. Dornan (R-California), was involved in
the formulation of several amendments to the 1988 Anti-Drug
Abuse Act. His previous publications include articles about
the Nicaraguan resistance, democracy in Latin America, and
narcotics issues. |
On November 22, 1988, a grandmother from Anacostia, in the southeast quadrant of the District of Columbia, calmly washed dishes at home while her grandchildren played nearby. As an older black woman living in the nation's "murder capital," Washington, D.C., the proliferation of gangland drug wars in her area had likely often crossed her mind, especially when the issue surfaced on the evening news.
Tragically, Mrs. Stevens would not have the luxury of pondering the ramifications of our drug-racked society or the impact of a far-off cocaine network in Colombia, the Medellin cartel. A stray shot from a high-caliber handgun, originating from a wild drug fight in the street, shattered her second-story kitchen window, hitting Mrs. Stevens in the head. She died instantly.
Mrs. Stevens, like Vondalia Robinson, a bright college-bound teenager and innocent bystander who had been shot in the head twice drugging a drug-related shootout about three weeks earlier, share a common background as victims of a "business" where, in the words of drug baron Carlos Lehder, "some people have to die." The real tragedy is that the morbid consequences of the drug war scarcely merit any reaction by most Americans, barraged as they are by daily revelations of shootings, gang wars, and corruption. The community is shocked but not surprised. Clearly, it isn't necessary to take drugs to die in the war.
Kings of Cocaine is the most detailed and readable account to date about the infamous cocaine network known as the Medellin cartel. The book shows vividly how the "fruits" of this multibillion-dollar enterprise, including death, crime, and suffering, can be felt on a daily basis in almost every town and community throughout the United States. But even those previously jaded by the incredible violence of the cartel, and those already impressed by the tenacity of its efforts to undermine the social fabric of the United States, will be surprised by heretofore unknown details of the cartel's exploits. The book helps illuminate nontraditional linkages in the drug war: the nexus between Marxist guerrillas and the cartel; networks of corruption-driven distribution centers in the Bahamas, Haiti, Mexico, Panama, Nicaragua, Cuba, and Colombia; as well as a seemingly endless string of drug-related homicides in the United States. In short, the book helps explain the industry of death that inevitably follows the demand for cocaine.
Kings of Cocaine enables the reader to see the cartel and its elaborate network through the eyes of major drug traffickers, drug
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