Speaker Meeting - How to Become a Drugs Baron and Live to tell the Tale (Jon Wright)

How to Become a Drugs Baron and Live to tell the Tale (Jon Wright)

Jon had served more than 20 years in the Army, latterly being a military attaché to Bogota and other South American countries.  After retirement he took up a post for four years with the United Nations in Columbia working to “demilitarise” rebel forces. 

The rebels were getting their funding from the cocaine “business”.  From his experiences he was able to give us complete details of the production and distribution of cocaine.  The cocaine bush, Erythoxylon Coca (in case you want to try to get it from the garden centre), grows easily in the Andes and its leaves have long been chewed by the locals, being particularly good in warding off altitude sickness (verified by one of our members after his visit there).  The leaves, however, only contain a small percentage of the drug.  It takes a tonne of leaves to make 1 kg of the pure drug. 

Jon showed us how the leaves had to be first treated with petrol and cement then compressed, sieved and dried to a paste.  Hydrochloric acid was added, compressed again and dried in microwaves! (didn’t use the oxford comma there).  From this I don’t know why anyone would let cocaine anywhere near their body! 

In the 1800s cocaine wasn’t considered to be dangerous.  It was used to infuse wine, was part of the original Coca-Cola recipe and taken by Shackleton and Scott on their expeditions.  Use died off by the 1920s but the drug then became “fashionable” in the ‘60s and ‘70s. 

Distribution was usually through Mexico or Africa by gangs.  It’s extremely profitable and some have made their own roads and constructed submarines from scratch to transport the drug.  The worldwide “value” of the drug is about $100 billion a year.   20–30 tonnes are annually used in the UK.  The price goes from $300 per kilo for the grower to $25,000 per kilo on the “street”.  

It involves the world’s worst criminals.  The notorious Pablo Escobar ran his own no-go areas and towns; and had no compunction in placing a bounty on policemen’s heads.  His deputy, “Popeye” Velasquez, confessed to murdering 300 people and died in prison earlier this month.  The Albanian Mafia have taken over and control the supply of the drug to the UK.  Drug money buys guns for rebels who threaten to overthrow elected governments, but it’s difficult to offer growers a viable alternative. 

Jon emphasised that it was a supply and demand issue and it was important to educate potential users not to take the drug.  The millions made would disappear and producing cocaine would become pointless. 

Giving us that hope for the future Jon ended what I thought was one of the most fascinating talks given to the Club. 

Clive Townsend