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[narcopedia1]

Watch The Doc

View the Cocaine Cowboys documentary on Netflix to dive deep into the impact of cocaine on the Magic City. 

[narcopedia1]

Cocaine Cowboys

While most of the cocaine smuggling was happening under the radar, the violence was hard to ignore. According to FBI statistics, there were 3,245 murders in Miami from ’79 to ’84. The Dade-County Medical Examiner’s office had to rent a refrigerated truck from a local fast food company to handle the overflow of corpses. The deadly shootout outside of Dadeland Mall in 1979 was what really put the violent drug wars on the map. Cops on the scene called them the "Cocaine Cowboys.”

View images of this historic shootout here.

You will be redirected to an outside site. By providing links to other sites, Narcospedia does not guarantee, approve, or endorse the information or products available on these sites nor does it have an affiliation with or endorsement from such third party site.

[narcopedia1]

Carlos Lehder: The Pilot

It wasn’t until Carlos Lehder came into the picture that Miami really became the epicenter of drug trafficking from Colombia to the U.S. Before him, no one had thought of bringing drugs into the U.S. on airplanes. Drug lords would hide them in cargo or in drug mules, but both had a high risk of either interception or death. Lehder and Pablo executed their vision of hiding coke on small planes and before long they were smuggling 300 kilos of coke each day. At the height of Escobar’s power, he was bringing in 15 tons of cocaine a day into Miami. No wonder it started a drug war!

[narcopedia1]

Cocaine Mules

The Medellin Cartel began to expand its footprint by being the first to bring cocaine into Miami. They started out using cocaine mules. They targeted desperate people in need of money, including pregnant women, and had them swallow about 20 pellets of narcotics totaling about two pounds of cocaine. The pellets consisted of a condom or a latex glove stuffed with coke. But that rubber pellets didn’t prove to be safe at all. There are many documented cases of the pellets rupturing inside the mules’ stomachs causing an immediate drug overdose.

[narcospedia]

Cocaine Cowboys

While most of the cocaine smuggling was happening under the radar, the violence was hard to ignore. According to FBI statistics, there were 3,245 murders in Miami from ’79 to ’84. The Dade-County Medical Examiner’s office had to rent a refrigerated truck from a local fast food company to handle the overflow of corpses. The deadly shootout outside of Dadeland Mall in 1979 was what really put the violent drug wars on the map. Cops on the scene called them the "Cocaine Cowboys.”

View images of this historic shootout here.

You will be redirected to an outside site. By providing links to other sites, Narcospedia does not guarantee, approve, or endorse the information or products available on these sites nor does it have an affiliation with or endorsement from such third party site.

[narcospedia]

Carlos Lehder: The Pilot

It wasn’t until Carlos Lehder came into the picture that Miami really became the epicenter of drug trafficking from Colombia to the U.S. Before him, no one had thought of bringing drugs into the U.S. on airplanes. Drug lords would hide them in cargo or in drug mules, but both had a high risk of either interception or death. Lehder and Pablo executed their vision of hiding coke on small planes and before long they were smuggling 300 kilos of coke each day. At the height of Escobar’s power, he was bringing in 15 tons of cocaine a day into Miami. No wonder it started a drug war!

[narcospedia]

Cocaine Mules

The Medellin Cartel began to expand its footprint by being the first to bring cocaine into Miami. They started out using cocaine mules. They targeted desperate people in need of money, including pregnant women, and had them swallow about 20 pellets of narcotics totaling about two pounds of cocaine. The pellets consisted of a condom or a latex glove stuffed with coke. But that rubber pellets didn’t prove to be safe at all. There are many documented cases of the pellets rupturing inside the mules’ stomachs causing an immediate drug overdose.