Wait a second!
More handpicked essays just for you.
More handpicked essays just for you.
Don’t take our word for it - see why 10 million students trust us with their essay needs.
Recommended: The war and drugs
The documentary Cocaine Cowboys by Billy Cohen sheds light on how the cocaine industry took its hold on Miami Florida. The cocaine cowboys are the people who opened up a new frontier for selling and transporting drugs. This documentary does a great job showing the viewer who may not have a lot of knowledge on the drug war why it is so important. The film starts off by describing why the drug trade was so desirable to the people of Miami. The film introduces the audience to three people who helped sell and transport drugs. These people would use planes to take drugs from colombia to Miami. The three people described about how people in the city would go crazy for the drug and there was no law enforcement when it came to this drug. The reason …show more content…
The film explains how Miami was a peaceful town know as a place for sunshine and old people. After the drug trade in miami began the city had the highest homicide rate in the entire country. This entire city which used to be a vacation spot had turned into a place where people felt they needed to carry a gun everywhere they went. One reporter in the film describes that she didn’t feel safe in the town anymore. The murders got so out of hand that people didn’t even bat an eye when they heard there was a homicide in Miami. Murders became so common on the streets of Miami that people would hear gun shots around them during the day and night. The colombians were ruthless and didn’t care who they had to kill. One woman Griselda Blanco who was a cocaine trafficker in Miami known as The Godmother. this woman was know to kill people for no reason. She had hired gunman who would kill entire families and other random people just because they were around when the hit was happening. This woman was reckless and was said to have contributed to at least two hundred murders in the Miami area. This information presented in the film is correct. The information helps show the viewer what a menace the cocaine and the cocaine cowboys were. These people terrorized a city that used to be a peaceful place. This documentary does a great job showing …show more content…
What once was an open land for the drug trade to flourish became a place where the cocaine cowboys were killed, had to hide out away from the city, or they were put in jail. While the drug trade is still prevalent it doesn’t have a strangle hold on the city like it once had. The law enforcement in Miami for the most part is no longer corrupt and actually attempts to do right with their duties of making sure that drugs and drug dealers stay off the streets. This documentary does a great job showing the audience the history of the drug trade. The roots of this countries epidemic is explained in the film giving the viewer a proper look at what the drug trade has done to not just Miami but to the entire country. This documentary accurately portrays a reality that drug trade and the cocaine cowboys are a menace and everything possible should be done to get them off the streets of this nation. Miami is just one city that was affected. It was the beginning of the epidemic due to its close proximity to Colombia. But although Miami was one of the first places affected and it did get hit hard by the drug trade. The drug problem is something that the entire country has to deal with every day. This Documentary show the world that the drug trade is a problem and it needs to
The Cocaine Kids are about kids of New York, cocaine, and the way these kids do illegal business within their impoverished towns. There were drastic changes in the cocaine trade; from the preferred method of use, the value, to the ways it was prepared and distributed to the clients. The cocaine industry went from trying the cocaine before purchasing it, to it being prepackaged to make it simple and avoid arguments. The kids set up a crew of individuals who thought they would consider as trustful individuals. The
A Climate of Fear “The Gang Crackdown”, provided by PBS, communicates the everyday struggles that the communities of Nassau County face every day. The video’s focus revolves around the homicidal and violent crimes that have been provided by the “MS-13” and the details of cracking down on their development. The Latin American gang from El Salvador is known for their audacity to target the young population of Long Island and their homicidal tendencies. They have targeted children and teenagers at their workplace, their home, and their school. These gang members have left the community defenseless and struck fear into the hearts of many parents along with the government itself.
“She is wearing a necklace of hickeys, a black mini skirt, a pair of three-inch heels she bought two weeks ago on her 14th birthday” this sentence, for example, illustrates the character, Tequila, who is only 14 but already has experienced many things (227). What made me angry about this article was the reality of what these characters faced. The amount of crime, and the shootings, at a young age. However, what I found interesting about this was how it became different when the new drugs came. “’My people took your ideas and totally bent it and turned it around and took away any of the pride or the respect that was in a gang (235).’” Stager does an effective job in intertwining the scenes with the history of Los Angeles gangs. It allows you to understand the changes of the gangs, whereas newspapers, and other newscast would simply showcase the amount of homicide and gangs violence there has been in LA since the
“Just Say No!” A statement that takes us deep into yet another decade in the history of the United States which was excited by controversies, social issues, and drug abuse. The topic of this statement is fueled by the growing abuse of cocaine in the mid 1980s. I shall discuss the effects of the crack cocaine epidemic of the mid 1980s from a cultural and social stand point because on that decade this country moved to the rhythms and the pace of this uncanny drug. Cocaine took its told on American society by in the 1980s; it ravaged with every social group, race, class, etc. It reigned over the United States without any prejudices. Crack cocaine was the way into urban society, because of its affordability in contrast to the powdered form. In society the minorities were the ones most affected by the growing excess of crime and drug abuse, especially African Americans; so the question was “Why was nearly everybody convicted in California federal court of crack cocaine trafficking black?” (Webb: Day 3). The growing hysteria brought forth many questions which might seem to have concrete answers, but the fact of the matter is they are all but conspiracy in the end, even though it does not take away the ambiguity and doubt. I will take on only a few topics from the vast array of events and effects this period in time had tended to. Where and who this epidemic seemed to affect more notably, and perhaps how the drugs came about such territories and people. What actions this countries authority took to restore moral sanity, and how it affected people gender wise.
...lliams wrote in The Cocaine Kids was accurate. Instead of just writing more facts and statistics about these teenagers and cocaine, he told a story. He wrote something that more individuals can read and relate too. I believe the Williams successfully brings value and importance to these drug dealers lives. Williams shows drug dealing in the inner city in a very humane way. Their lives are closed to almost all outsiders because of the fact they are involved with illegal drugs. But after reading this book it showed me that even though they live a very difficult and dangerous way of life, they are not as different to us outsiders then we think. They too, have to continuously make tough and valuable decision to live and be successful within society. These dealers are just kids who had little time to be young and are trying to survive in a violent and corrupt world.
Throughout, the documentary one can come to the conclusion that most of these African- Americans who live in this area are being judged as violent and bad people. However this is not the case, many of them are just normal people who are try...
Chasing Heroin is a two-hour documentary that investigates America’s heroin crisis. The documentary details the opioid epidemic and how police offers, social workers, and public defenders are working to save the lives of addicts. The documentary explores the origins and continuing causes behind the heroin epidemic such as; massive increases in opioid painkillers starting at the turn of the century, Mexican drug cartels who are now rooted in upper-middle-class neighborhoods, and the cheap price of heroin when compared to prescription pain killers. A program in Seattle called LEAD is explored. This program channels addicts into a system that points them toward help (rehab, temporary housing, counseling, methadone treatment) instead of prison
Williams, Terry. 1989. The Cocaine Kids: The Inside Story of a Teenage Drug Ring. New York: Da Capo Press.
In conclusion, after view this film, it is clear that one can see how black youth are being viewed as killers and savages. This is not true. There have been many admirable scholars and scientists who come from the African American culture. This movie, though it depicts what goes on in South America, takes the violence committed by black youth too far. One cannot view a film and take it that this is what a race is like. The filmmakers depicted black youth in a harsher light.
Specific Purpose: To inform my audience on the history of cocaine, current prevalence rates and health effects among other issues.
Gootenberg, Paul. Andean Cocaine: The Making of a Global Drug. Chapel Hill, NC: The University of North Carolina Press, 2008.
The eighties had Ronald Reagan’s war on drugs, the crack epidemic in major cities, and the Columbian cartels’ emergence as a threat. Kingpin “freeway Ricky Ross” made his debut in the eighties and organized an empire solely on drugs. Ad campaigns featuring the first lady, Nancy Reagan, were launched in an attempt to have kids “just say no,” and “nope to dope” (Martin). The crack epidemic hit so hard, that many conspiracy theories stating that the CIA was sending crack...
Pure cocaine is the product of the Erythroxylon coca bush, which is mostly found in South America (NIDA, 2014). In South America the consumption of the coca leaf have been recorded as far back as 3000 B.C. (Warner EA, 1993). The coca leafs only contain about two percent of cocaine and in this form there is few instances of abuse. The rate at which it is absorbed is slow in the digestive system and very little cocaine reaches the bloodstream. When the Spaniards came to the Inca civilization in 1532 the drug allowed the locals to endure a harsh and physically demanding life in the Andes. It was seen as a gift from the god Inti (Inciardi, 2002, pg. 49). Even today those natives of the region chew the coca leaves.
Scarface shows how the fast life is not the best life to take. The illegal drug business will always end in negative ending resulting in death or being imprisoned. This movie showcased what the public in the area of Miami had to go through including the law. The 1980s was a major time for the break of cocaine. Tony Montana gained so much power with the distribution of cocaine. This movie came together so well because of the time frame. The break of cocaine caused a lot of crime to rise in Miami, Florida. An estimated 70% of all marijuana and cocaine imported into the U.S. passes through South Florida. Drug smuggling could be the region’s major industry, worth anywhere from $7 billion to $12 billion a year. (Rivers, 1996) This movie correlated with the immigration of the Cuban community in America. Since the spring of 1980, when Cuban President Fidel Castro opened the port of Mariel to those who wanted to leave, about 125,000 “Marielitos” have landed in South Florida. In addition, 25,000 refugees have arrived from Haiti; boatloads of half-starved Haitians are washing up on the area’s beaches every week. (Rivers, 1996) A lot of illegal immigrants rose the rate of unemployment, taxed social services, irritated racial tensions and helped send the crime rate to staggering heights. Rebellious immigrants are believed to be responsible for half of all violent crime in Miami. Tony Montana was one of those rebellious immigrants who wanted to
Cocaine is a powerful addictive drug that affects the whole body in different ways. This drug has been around in America since 1855. In this year there were products that the average person used that had amounts of cocaine in it. The products that had cocaine in it were the beverage coke cola and medicine for numbing your gums. But before manufactures’ were using cocaine in things we use, three thousand years before the ancient Inca people use to chew coca leaves, which is one of the ingredients of making cocaine. They chewed coco leaves to get there heart racing and to speed up their breathing so they can work longer hours and because they lived where there was thin air. Also by them chewing the coco leaves it would tell their body that they aren’t hunger because they didn’t have enough food to eat. Cocaine was really popular between 1970s and 1980s in New York City. It was a large amount of people that died from this drug around this time.