Original subtitles

Cop: Police.

Search warrant.

Narrator: Cocaine is a global business.

From Coca farmers in Colombia,

to trafficking cartels in Mexico,

crack houses in Miami to cocaine dealers in London,

the supply chain of cocaine stretches around

the world.

For some, cocaine is a way of life.

Chronic: It wasn't no silver spoons for me.

It was plastic spoons and dope.

Narrator: Cocaine brings vast wealth to a few.

Eddie: $5 million to get 1,000

kilos from San Diego to New York.

Narrator: And misery to millions.

Loco: The future holds nothing for me,

death or the penitentiary.

Narrator: But they're all a part of the $300 billion

global industry that is, Drugs Incorporated.

Miami, Florida, is America's cocaine capital.

Since the 1970s it's been a point of entry for

traffickers and a large population of dealers call

it home.

One of these dealers goes by the street name

"Chronic."

Crack: This here what we call crack cocaine.

I love it, for real, because this pay the bills

right here.

I could get rid of these 4 pieces right here.

I get rid of that for $200, you hear me.

And I only pay $50 for this.

Yeah, that's, that's how we get our money out here,

man, you now.

Just a way of living.

This what we call the American way.

Narrator: Cocaine is a powerful stimulant that

produces feelings of intense pleasure.

It's used in two main forms: Cocaine powder is

snorted predominantly by the rich.

Many believe it's non-addictive and can

enhance both work and play.

Crack cocaine is sold in rock form and smoked

mainly by the poor.

It delivers an intense high and offers an escape

from the reality of their lives,

if only for a brief while.

28 year-old Chronic was destined to be a crack

dealer.

His mother, an addict, abandoned him when he was

a child and he was raised by his gangbanging,

crack dealing brother in Miami's poorest

neighborhood.

Crack: It wasn't no silver spoons for me.

It was plastic spoons and dope.

I grew up in a foster home.

So it wasn't nobody else for me, but my brother,

my brother was like my daddy and my mamma.

So he brought me up in the gang basically,

he taught me just, just a way of getting money.

Narrator: Crack cocaine first emerges in 1984.

Up until then, cocaine, costing $100 a gram,

is seen only as a rich man's drug.

Crack revolutionizes the cocaine business by

offering a cheap, yet intensely powerful high

for only $5.

It soon sweeps through America's inner cities.

Within a year, 5.8 million people are addicted.

Chronic never uses crack himself.

He just preys on the addicts who come to him to

feed their habit.

Chronic: I like to tell them to put the whole

thing on (bleep) because if they put the whole

thing on there, then they going to smoke this whole

(bleep) up and they come right back.

They spend 40 more dollars.

That's how I like it.

Quick money.

Quick flip.

Narrator: His product is so addictive that Chronic

sometimes has to fight off customers.

Chronic: You've got some crack heads, man,

that'll tell you straight up,

they not leaving till they get their (bleep),

you know what I mean?

I mean they sit down and fuss with you and then,

you then have to beat their (bleep) before they

leave your premises.

Police did catch up with me (bleep),

I could say I smoke this (bleep) and get off like

that.

Instead of them trying to send me to prison,

(bleep) send me to a drug program.

Narrator: In a good week Chronic pulls in $4,000,

but holding onto the cash isn't always easy.

Drug dealers are often the target of armed robbers.

Desperate crack heads know the people with the most

money on the streets of Miami are the dope

dealers.

Chronic: It's so scary out here, man.

And one day, you know, a dude snuck up and jumped

in my brother car, and, when my brother got back

in the car, you know, they already had the pistol to

his head.

Told him don't move.

You just give me all your jewelry and all your

money.

They shot him, man, and got my brother paralyzed

right now.

And we live rough down here, man.

This (bleep) is no (bleep) is no joke.

Narrator: Chronic's not looking to make a fortune.

He just wants to survive.

Chronic: If you're making enough money to survive

out here of (bleep) like this here,

then I'd rather stay like this here,

'cause I feel like it's not about,

it's not about the person who makes the most money,

it's about the person who lasts the longest.

Narrator: While Chronic's business is booming in the

ghettos of Miami, on the other side of the

Atlantic, in the UK, crack cocaine has never really

become popular.

The British prefer powder cocaine and use more than

any other nation in Europe.

Adrian: Every day people are doing it now.

It certainly the, the choice of drug that

everyone's doing nowadays.

Narrator: In the 1990s the demand for cocaine in the

UK skyrockets.

It's seen as a glamorous drug that allows users to

work and play harder and longer.

Cocaine becomes the drug of choice for Britain's

middle class.

42 tons of cocaine are consumed in the UK each

year.

Adrian: It's going everywhere.

I mean especially like you know the,

the stock market boys and the city boys,

they all use because they've got to perform

with their job really hard so it keeps them all

going.

Narrator: Chronic believes his business would suffer

if he smokes crack, but this dealer,

known by the alias "Adrian,"

started out as a user.

Adrian: You start doing it,

then your mates start asking you to get them

some, and, oh, can you get me a bit of gear,

and eventually you go: you know what,

I might as well just buy a big lump and sell it off

to them and that way I'll get a bit of coke and a

bit of money for myself.

Narrator: Finding a supplier of high quality

cocaine isn't hard, Adrian comes from a long

line of British gangsters.

Adrian: My family are quite well connected in

the underworld as it were, so I just get it straight

from them.

Narrator: Adrian's cocaine comes from the other side

of the world.

From Colombia the cartels ship their product to

depots in Guinea Bissau, West Africa.

Then the cocaine is trucked to Morocco.

From there it's shipped to Spain where it's sold to

British gangsters who load it onto trucks sent to the

UK by ferry.

Adrian: They stick it in about say 10 trucks.

But you don't stick your, all your eggs in basket

you know, and, er, out of those 10 trucks they

expect at least 2 of 'em to get caught.

Narrator: The trucks that manage to clear the border

head to London.

The cocaine is then delivered to a central

distribution point.

Adrian: It's taken straight over to,

you know, a warehouse or a basement somewhere like

that.

And soon as it comes through then they start

breaking up and it all gets split all over London

everywhere.

Narrator: Adrian receives the cocaine in bulk which

he then breaks down into retail sized packages.

Adrian: Weighing it up individually on these

digital scales and then putting it into me little

packets.

Narrator: Adrian buys his cocaine for $25 per gram

and sells it for $75.

He boosts his profits by skimming 20% off every

gram he sells.

Adrian: Nobody gets a gram anymore so there's point 8

in there of a gram.

Otherwise it's just not worth your while anymore.

Narrator: In a good week Adrian sells 100 grams and

makes $6,000 in profit.

He meets his regular customers in a London pub.

Adrian: I tell 'em, what time that I'm going to

meet them at the pub.

We go down there and we sit down for a little

while, have er, a little drink and whatever,

and then we just, er, sort of pass cigarette packets

around to each other, if you know what I mean.

They get, they go to the toilet and get their gear.

They put the money in the cigarette box and then

when they come back and see me later,

they pass the cigarette box over,

deal done.

There's so much competition out there,

you know, anyone can sell you a bit of rubbish gear.

So you get a reputation for selling good stuff,

and that's how your clientele book as it were,

though we don't, keep books,

starts climbing all the time.

Narrator: Adrian has been dealing cocaine his entire

adult life.

Unlike crack dealers in the US,

he's not worried about being robbed or even

busted by the police.

Adrian: I don't think the police are too bothered

about it.

They, you know, you're all having that fun time in

the pub.

It's not spilling out into the streets and it's done

behind closed doors.

I think they actually, they let a lot of people

get off with it.

They're, they're not after the little boys that deal

in the pubs anymore.

They're after the big fish.

Narrator: Around the world there are two million

cocaine dealers.

It's a good living but few can make a fortune.

The big fish are the traffickers who supply the

dealers with the 1,000 tons of cocaine produced

each year.

Drug traffickers are the real winners in the

cocaine business.

They earn millions of dollars smuggling large

shipments of drugs across international borders.

Eddie, a 48 year old father of three,

used to traffic cocaine from Colombia to America.

For six years, Eddie, worked as a drug

trafficker with the Arellano-Felix

Organization, a drug trafficking cartel based

in Tijuana.

For the first time, he has agreed to tell his story.

Eddie: Gus and I ended up being partners and,

and then we started bringing over on a regular

basis you know quite a bit, and you know,

I had a good job, I was making $40,000 a month.

Narrator: First, his partner travels to Colombia.

Then he buys the cocaine, and packs it onto a boat.

Eddie: Gus's crew would go down and he'd,

he'd sit on the boat.

you know with them when they left Columbia.

And he stayed with 'em all the way until they took it

as far as Baja.

Narrator: Once the shipment arrives

in Baja, Eddie takes control of the boat.

Eddie: I drove the boat And then we had guys meet

us there.

And then we brought it up to Tijuana,

to our safe house.

Narrator: Eddie then has to smuggle his cocaine

across the heavily guarded US Border.

Since 9/11 the US Department of Homeland

Security has strengthened its border with Mexico by

building hundreds of miles of fences and installing

license plate readers at all points of entry.

It also increased border patrol units on land, sea,

and air.

But Eddie sneaks in under the security radar.

He bypasses the major border crossings and ships

his cocaine out to small American fishing boats

waiting off the Mexican coast.

Eddie: I had my guy who was an excellent fisherman

so he would take off, at four in the morning and go

fishing, they would ferry everything out to him on

jet skis.

And he'd put it in the cabin area of the boat and

then he would go fishing for four or five hours,

and then when everybody start coming in from going

fishing, he would go in with them at the same

time.

Narrator: Posing as just another recreational

fisherman, Eddie's boat arrives in San Diego

harbor.

The cocaine is taken from the docks to a safe house,

where it will be prepped and distributed to

different cities.

New York usually brings in the big money.

Eddie: In LA it was like 13 million and New York it

would be like 18 million.

So, $5 million to get 1,000

kilos from San Diego to New York.

Narrator: Eddie's crew drives the cocaine across

the country in inconspicuous vehicles

carrying 200 kilos per car.

He makes sure his drivers look like regular Joes.

Eddie: They had to have the look, you know,

that would pass for what we called the 30 second

test, which is when a policeman pulls a car

over, they got 30 seconds to determine whether that

person that they pulled over is a threat, is, er,

is worth interrogating or they're just gonna give

them a ticket and let them go.

Narrator: Once in New York,

Eddie and his drivers leave their vehicles in a

parking lot.

Eddie: I would, um, meet somebody in an area and

leave the keys in the ashtray and then they

would pick the car up.

Narrator: Two weeks later Eddie returns to New York

to pick up payment for the shipment.

Traffickers make approximately 25% of the

retail price of cocaine.

That equals a worldwide total of $50 billion per

year, but danger is always present.

Eddie: You'd pick up the backpack with a quarter of

a million dollars in it and you're walking away,

you could feel the bullet going through the back of

your head 'cause you know that guy could kill you in

half second, and say you never showed up.

Narrator: Violence is a fact of life inside the

cartels.

Mexican recruits must prove their loyalty by

killing.

Eddie: Blood in, blood out is when you,

you come into an organization,

usually you kill somebody or you,

you're to prove yourself worthy of being part of

the organization, the only way to get out is to blood

out means you die, you know.

You kill someone coming in,

you get killed to go out.

Narrator: Eddie's fate is sealed if he betrays the

cartel leaders.

Eddie: They would pick them up and torture them

to see if they, what they knew or said.

If the guy wasn't a snitch or an informant they'd

still kill him but they would say well at least he

was a good guy.

Narrator: Through the 1990s,

the cocaine trade wreaks havoc on countries around

the world.

Cash from the sale of cocaine finances coups in

Bolivia, fuels guerrilla wars in Nicaragua and

Colombia, and threatens the stability of the

Mexican state as a wave of violence spreads through

Northern Mexico.

The drug cartels fight each other for control of

the cocaine trafficking routes into the US.

The Mexican drug wars cost the lives of 20,000

people who are shot, macheted,

or even beheaded, often after being brutally

tortured.

In 2006, everything changes when Felipe

Calderon is elected president of Mexico.

He pledges to defeat the drug cartels responsible

for plunging Mexico's northern cities into

anarchy.

Calderon dispatches state police and troops to

crackdown on the cartels.

The boss of Eddie's cartel,

Eduardo Arellano Felix, is one of the many leaders

arrested and imprisoned.

The leadership vacuum left behind sparks a war for

control of the drug smuggling routes into the

US.

Eddie: Everybody wanted to be the top dog and because

they didn't really have the experience or patience

that some of us had,

they just started killing everybody.

Narrator: The war is brutal,

in the three years following Calderon's

election another 15,000 people are gunned down.

But the deaths don't deter people from entering the

business.

Hundreds of poor Mexicans are eager to step into

Eddie's shoes and take over his trafficking

routes by undermining his position.

As an American working in Mexico,

he's under constant suspicion.

Eddie: I was the only white guy at my level and

every time something happened everybody would

look at me first.

Narrator: Eddie's partner and friend,

accuses him of being an informant,

and demands a meeting in Tijuana.

Eddie: I wasn't that stupid,

I brought my crew with me, so, he had his crew,

you know, armed crew and I had mine too and he didn't

want a big blood bath so we just left it at that.

Narrator: Eddie realizes it's time to leave Mexico;

he leaves behind everything he owns and

escapes to the US.

Eddie: I'm one of the lucky guys that got out.

There's not, there's a lot of guys,

there's a whole cemetery, not even a cemetery,

there's a whole, you know, fields in Mexico,

you know, just full of dead bodies,

unidentified bodies that didn't make it out.

Narrator: Despite the on-going violence in

Mexico, 51 billion dollars worth of cocaine still

floods across the border into the US every year.

Narrator: The Mexican cartels purchase their

cocaine from Colombia where over half of the

world's cocaine is produced.

While the cartels earn millions of dollars

smuggling cocaine; the peasant farmers who grow

the coca plants are lucky to earn enough to survive.

28 year-old Andres Varela is one of the tens of

thousands of farmers who grow the Coca that will

become cocaine.

Andres Varela: In the good times,

yes it gave me good monthly return.

You could get a profit of a million pesos ($500),

it depended on the harvests.

That was enough for you to pay for clothes, for food,

to be able to sustain yourself.

Narrator: Andres prefers to grow food crops,

but he knows cocaine paste is where the money is.

Andres Varela: My father and mother cultivate corn,

yucca plants, and other crops,

and they couldn't afford to send me to school.

Narrator: Colombian farmers sell yucca plants

for 40 cents a kilo, but cocaine paste sells for

$750 per kilo.

More importantly, there's constant global demand for

cocaine, unlike corn or yucca.

But growing coca isn't without risk.

Andres is constantly under threat.

Andres Varela: The government,

regard us as big drug traffickers,

big mafia guys.

They regard us as terrorists.

Narrator: Every day Colombian special forces

enter the jungle looking to eradicate illegal coca

fields and arrest farmers.

Eight months ago Andres' farm is raided.

Andres Varela: They caught us at about four in the

morning, they surrounded the house and laboratory.

They burnt the whole plantation,

all the fruits of my labor.

They were going to take me to prison,

but they said they wouldn't take me if I

handed over everything.

I even had to give them money so that they'd let

me go.

Narrator: To feed his family of five,

Andres's only option is to replant his coca fields.

Andres Varela: The planting takes a lot of

work.

It takes between 8 months and a year before it

starts to produce leaves.

Narrator: Once the fields are planted,

Andres waits for his crop to grow.

After 8 months he returns to harvest the coca

plants.

It takes Andres two days to pick his one acre of

plants.

He's eager to get back to his famil y .

Andres Varela: When I get home, the first

thing I feel happy because

my daughters welcome me with happiness.

Narrator: The next morning Andres walks five miles to

the makeshift lab he's built deep in the jungle,

hidden from the Colombian army.

Here he turns his coca crop into cocaine paste,

the base material from which the drug cocaine is

refined.

Only one half of one percent of each coca leaf

is cocaine.

So Andres first chops the leaves into smaller

pieces.

This makes extracting the cocaine from the rest of

the leaf easier.

He breaks down the leaves with an inexpensive

mixture of cement powder and liquid fertilizer.

Andres Varela: Now I'm going to use liquid

fertilizer.

It does the job of softening the leaf.

Narrator: He places the softened leaves into a

drum and adds gasoline to extract the cocaine.

Andres Varela: This is the gasoline that we add here,

we'll leave for a few minutes,

it will bring out the merchandise (cocaine).

Narrator: After four hours the cocaine is extracted

from the leaves and is now infused in the liquid in

the drum.

To separate the leaves from the liquid,

Andreas uses a press.

He squeezes out every last drop of the

cocaine-infused fluid.

Andres Varela: We do a test to see how the yield

is going to be.

If this water is very bitter,

and numbs the lips, the tongue and the mouth,

well, that means we're going to have a good

yield.

So I'm going to try it.

It's a little bitter.

Narrator: Andres is happy and he sets off on the

long journey home.

There he completes the process of producing his

cocaine paste.

He adds soda crystals to the liquid mixture which

act as a neutralizing agent.

Then he heats it on a stove until all the

remaining liquid evaporates.

He then lets the paste dry overnight.

The next morning, the cocaine paste has dried

into a crumbly texture.

Andres is eager to discover how much paste

he's produced.

Andres Varela: I'm hopeful that I will get about 130

or 140 grams out of it.

The yield wasn't very good.

I have 120 grams.

It was not a good yield.

Narrator: He'll be lucky if he makes 100,000 Pesos,

or about $50, for all this work.

Andres will sell his paste to the Colombian cartels

who will turn it into high grade cocaine powder.

Andres never uses cocaine himself but he knows he's

an accessory to the global cocaine trade that brings

misery to millions of addicts.

Andres Varela: For me it's something really hard,

It's very sad.

It's a vice which brings them nothing but death.

But we never do this with a bad intention of making

people into addicts.

Narrator: Coca farming is the only way Andres can

provide a better life for his family.

Andres Varela: I would like to give my daughters

all the education that they deserve and I would

really like them to have a good future.

Narrator: For Andres and the other peasant farmers,

growing and producing cocaine paste for the

international drugs trade is a tough choice.

They receive a mere 5 cents for every gram of cocaine sold

on the street.

But growing any other crop only condemns them to

poverty.

Narrator: The cocaine produced by peasant

farmers in Colombia is smuggled across

international borders by traffickers.

It's sold on city streets by dealers,

and snorted and smoked by 1.9 million Americans.

360,000 of these are hard core crack addicts.

And one of these addicts is 49 year-old "Loco."

Loco: I first started using cocaine when I was

like 15.

One day I was down in the basement with my uncle,

and I see my uncle doing something,

and I got curious and I wanted to know what it

was, so I tried it.

I tried it and I liked it, and I've been using it

ever since.

Narrator: Smoking crack has diminishing returns.

The euphoria delivered by the first hit from a crack

pipe is always the greatest.

Then users continue to smoke in an attempt to

recapture the impact of that first hit.

Loco: Once you get high with the cocaine once,

you basically high as you're going to get,

that first hit.

What you're doing is chasing that first hit

over and over and over and over, which you never,

never get.

Narrator: Loco smokes at least 10 crack rocks a

day.

At $10 a rock his habit costs him a small fortune.

Loco: If I get $200 today, I'm gonna spend $200 today,

whatever I have, that's what I'm gonna use.

It'll take me four or five hours to smoke that.

Narrator: Loco quickly develops a crack addiction

and falls in with the notorious Chicago street

gang, the Conservative Vice Lords.

Loco: I could've been a professional boxer but I

choose drugs and gangbanging.

Crack cocaine, it used to make me just want to rob

everybody I come across, you know what I mean.

I became very aggressive.

Narrator: Powder cocaine users tend to have

lucrative jobs that enable them to fund their drug

use.

But crack cocaine users are predominantly poor and

live in the inner city .

Many turn to crime to fund their habit s .

Loco: I take what you got, with whatever I had, guns,

knife, stick, because if I had it I would use it.

And if you didn't give me what you had you were

gonna see I was gonna use it.

And that's the way I kept my habit up.

I've been in the penitentiary six times.

Narrator: Loco manages to stop smoking crack just

once.

Loco: I stopped using cocaine on my own for like

18 months, I didn't have it for 18 months.

That was the best feeling in my life.

My mother passed away and I was going again.

Narrator: Loco desperately wants to stop smoking

crack but he's in the grip of addiction.

Loco: If I could just stop being high today,

I think I'd be the happiest man in the world,

but it's not easy.

The future holds nothing for me,

death or the penitentiary.

Narrator: The United Nations World Drug Report

declares there are up to 20 million cocaine users

worldwide.

The majority of these users snort cocaine.

People like the drug because it creates intense

feelings of pleasure without a loss of control.

Unlike heroin and methamphetamine,

powder cocaine users don't fall into a stupor or

hallucinate.

When a user snorts a line, it enters the bloodstream

through the nasal membrane.

The drug races to the pleasure centers of the

brain where it triggers a massive increase in

dopamine, the neurotransmitter that

signals euphoria.

30 year old Christophe has been chasing this euphoria

for the past 15 years.

Christophe: I started when I was 13,

14 smoking spliffs, then went on to ecstasy and

stuff when the rave party time was on, er,

and then when I, moved on to cocaine quite quickly

because, um, it's pretty much my favorite drug.

Narrator: Today Christophe works in London in the

television industry where cocaine use is rampant.

Christophe: We've about 50 or 60 people in my

company, I know that more, more than 40 people

probably use it, in this industry.

A lot of people like partying,

a lot of people like drinking and lot of people

like taking drugs, cocaine being one of their

favorite ones.

Um, I use a lot of cocaine.

Narrator: Christophe goes through 7 grams a week.

Christophe: Which is quite a lot,

and I think I've reached my,

sort of high level of consumption.

Narrator: His habit costs over $500 per week.

Christophe: It is quite a lot of money, yeah,

but I'm lucky I've got quite a good job.

Um, I wouldn't spend that much if I wasn't making

that much money, er, it's a bit of a vicious circle.

Narrator: Christophe doesn't see himself as an

addict like Loco.

Christophe: I think there's two different

cultures.

There's, you've got the druggy people that will

use cocaine or crack cocaine and then you've

got all these other people that have a bit of money,

er, work every day, er, are married,

have got kids, they've got kids, they've got,

they've got sort of a normal life.

Narrator: He believes his use of cocaine is no

different than drinking beer.

Christophe: It's like going to the pub at some

point.

You'll have a beer.

Or you'll have a couple of beers,

you'll have a line of coke,

you'll have another beer, then another line of coke,

and then you go home, and go to bed and wake up at

7.00 in the morning and go back to work.

Narrator: But he wants to stop taking the drug to

concentrate on bringing up his young family.

Christophe: I've got two kids,

they're growing older, and they notice things,

whereas before, I mean, it was, it was easy,

I could be on coke and still doing stuff.

But I don't want them to notice it.

Narrator: Giving up cocaine may be harder than

he thinks.

New research shows cocaine addiction grips snorters

just as tightly as crack smokers.

Narrator: 25% of Americans who have used cocaine in

the past year will develop a problem.

Some will end up in prison.

Many will seek help for addiction.

At the Brookhaven National Laboratory in New York,

a set of remarkable experiments is being

conducted to discover the true nature of cocaine

addiction.

Mexican-born Professor Nora Volkow is one of

America's leading specialists on drug

addiction.

She's on a personal mission to understand the

cause of addiction, driven by memories of her

alcoholic uncle.

Nora Volkow : My uncle, who I loved dearly,

was an alcoholic.

And, and to me it was very painful to see this man

who I adored, basically be rejected by the system.

Narrator: As late as the 1980s many scientists and

politicians believed cocaine was non-addictive.

Professor Volkow believes they're wrong.

Nora Volkow: Take a group of animals give them free

availability on one side heroin,

and in another group give them free availability of

cocaine.

Investigators did that and then one month later they

came and they went and I look at the animals that

were given free availability of heroin,

which no-one will doubt, is a very addictive drug,

and they were happily over there.

The group of the cocaine animals,

they were all dead.

They had actually compulsively taken cocaine

to the extreme that none of them survived.

Narrator: Professor Volkow uses a PET scanner to take

pictures of human brains under the influence of

cocaine.

Nora Volkow: What we're trying to do is use

imaging to help us identify the areas of the

brain and proteins in the brain that get disrupted

by the use of drugs in people that lose control

of their drug intake and at the expense of,

of basically everything else in their life.

Narrator: Her images show cocaine changes the

brain's structure.

Nora Volkow: Repeated exposure produces changes

on the way that the brain gets connected and

functions that result in pathological behavior,

and that's why it's called a disease.

Narrator: Professor Volkow scans hundreds of users

and ex-users.

W nix-rs noes

irregularity, whenever they discuss cocaine,

their dopamine levels rise.

At first she doesn't understand why.

Then, it hits her.

Nora Volkow: You could make a case that people

become addicted to the lifestyle,

because their brain has started to respond to the

lifestyle and that is their environment,

their friends, their situations.

Narrator: Her team sets up an experiment to test the

theory.

Volunteers are placed in a PET scanner,

and shown images of people preparing and snorting

lines of cocaine.

Incredibly, the images alone significantly

increase the dopamine levels in the brains of

users.

Nora Volkow: When we expose them with stimuli

that have been linked with drugs,

what we observe is that a significant increase in

dopamine signaling in those areas of the brain

that drives the motivation of your behavior.

Narrator: Dr. Volkow's research is revolutionary,

it shows cocaine is so addictive that simply

showing images of its use is enough to increase

their dopamine levels and lead them into relapse.

Nora Volkow: People can go to a detoxification

program, they do very well,

they go out into the neighborhoods where they

are used to taking the drug and they relapse.

And they relapse exactly because of these effects

on the memory systems.

So they say, I'm not going to take the drug,

I'm not going to, I'm not going to,

I'm not going to, I'm not going to and before they

even realize it, the drug is already in their

mouths, or they're smoking it.

Narrator: Law enforcement treats cocaine users as

criminals rather than people suffering from a

disease.

Over the past ten years, the government has

repeatedly slashed funding for drug rehabilitation

programs and increased funding for prisons.

The result: a million Americans are imprisoned

on drug related charges, costing the American

taxpayer $12.5 billion a year.

Prof Volkow believes the government's approach of

criminalizing and imprisoning drug users

without proper treatment is misguided.

Nora Volkow: When you just take a person that's

addicted and push them in jail and you don't give

them treatment, you can guarantee that that person

will relapse within a few weeks of actually leaving,

the jail, no matter how long they've been there.

With no drug exposure, if you don't treat they will

immediately relapse for drug taking.

But very importantly, they'll end up

re-incarcerated pretty soon.

Narrator: Statistics support her claim,

40% of cocaine convicts and 77% of crack convicts

are re-offenders.

Cop: Police.

Search warrant!

Narrator: For the past 25 years,

governments around the world have been fighting a

war against cocaine.

In Colombia, the American government is financing an

eradication operation to reduce cocaine production

in the country by 50%.

These special forces are preparing to destroy a

cocaine laboratory.

Major Quiroga leads the mission.

Major Quiroga: The mission we're going to carry out

today is to destroy a laboratory,

which processes cocaine.

These laboratories in this area of the country,

they could be producing around 500 to 600 kilos

per week.

Narrator: Major Quiroga is well aware of how

dangerous these daily missions can be.

The Colombian cartels gun down 400 of his colleagues

every year to protect their cocaine profits.

Each man is fully armed and wears body armor.

Carrying crates of explosives,

the commandos lift off from their base in

Mariquita and fly 45 miles north to the eastern banks

of the Rio Magdalena.

Cartels go to great lengths to hide their

activities.

The commandos march deep into the dense jungle to

find the illegal laboratories.

The ground troops are provided air cover by a

chopper that constantly searches for signs of

armed resistance.

After marching through the jungle for an hour,

Quiroga's men discover discarded barrels of toxic

waste, evidence that the cartels are working

nearby.

Major Quiroga calls in the chopper for backup in case

they're ambushed.

The men proceed on high alert.

Quiroga's commandos follow a trail of discarded

equipment leading them to a recently abandoned lab.

The cartel's men have fled without a fight.

Major Quiroga: This still is for cooking the drugs.

They make blocks of roughly a kilo and they

put them in the microwaves to dry.

A medium sized lab with a good production,

around 400 to 500 kilograms per week.

Narrator: The commandos rig the entire laboratory

with explosives.

Once airborne, they blow up the lab.

One victory in the ongoing war against the cartels.

Major Quiroga: It was a successful mission,

we are able to destroy their installations.

it will be a great loss for them.

Narrator: Since 2000 the US Government has poured

$5 billion into eradication missions,

but to little effect.

The amount of cocaine manufactured in Colombia

is the same today as it was a decade ago.

The majority of this cocaine is smuggled into

America.

50 American law enforcement agencies are

engaged in the war on drugs.

And Austin, Texas is one of the main battlegrounds.

Greg Thrash: Austin sits in a perfect spot to be

used by the Mexican cartels as a,

what we consider a transit hub.

Narrator: 4 hours from the border and with a hub of

highways going across the country,

Austin has long been a base of operations for the

cocaine cartels.

Greg Thrash has witnessed a marked change in the

tactics adopted by the Mexican cocaine

traffickers at the border.

Instead of shipping large loads across the country,

they are forced to ship smaller units due to the

success of the DEA and Border Patrol.

But with the huge number of cars crossing the

border and coming into Austin,

law enforcement knows it has no hope of stopping

every shipment.

Greg Thrash: All we, we as law enforcement can

essentially do is contain the situation.

Contain the, the problem.

Narrator: But even containing the cocaine

problem is an uphill battle.

Not only have the cartels divided their shipments

between hundreds of traffickers,

they now employ thousands of dealers to sell their

product.

Greg Thrash: We have multiple agencies, er,

assigned to the DEA here, full time,

that do nothing but coordinate efforts,

bring resources together and er,

and target and attack the infrastructure of these

cartels that are operating in the Austin area.

Narrator: Greg Thrash dispatches a unit in the

middle of the night following a tip-off about

the location of a crack dealer.

They approach the house, guns drawn,

ready for anything.

Cop: Police.

Search warrant!

Narrator: After smashing open the front door the

cops quickly overpower the suspects.

They search every room, but there's no sign of any

cocaine.

Then, one of the cops finds a strongbox.

He uses a crow bar to force it open.

Inside is a package of cocaine.

Cop: Watch yourself, bro.

Sgt. Jesse Lopez: In the search process we came up with

approximately 4 ounces of cocaine and

almost $1900 in cash and some, some,

a few grams of marijuana, that's what we got out of

the bust.

It was, er, what I would term successful, er,

these are the type of operations that my unit

does day in and day out.

Cop: So we're at four and a half right now.

So 4.8, I've already taken the weight of the lid out,

so it's 4.8, so that will be a first degree felony.

Narrator: Last year, American cops arrested

approximately 1.8 million people on drug charges.

That's one arrest every 20 seconds.

But no matter how many dealers are arrested,

there's always someone else eager to take their

place.

Greg Thrash: I don't think we'll ever eradicate the

problem of drug trafficking and drug

abuse.

Where there is a demand there will be a supply.

We're actually being invaded,

by an army of ants trafficking cocaine.

Narrator: Today more cocaine enters the US than

ever before.

And an army of dealers is selling it to America's 7

million users.

The vast profits made from cocaine will continue to

finance drugs incorporated for the foreseeable future.