the Pablo Escobar story

On the second of December 1993 the infamous drug lord Pablo Escobar was gunned down on a rooftop in Medellin Colombia. Only a few years earlier he was one of the most powerful and wealthy drug lords in history. The demise of Pablo Escobar was brought about by a combination of legal and illegal means. A Colombian police unit known as the Search Bloc, with help from specialised American military units, ran the legal search for Escobar. A vigilante group known as Los Pepes used brutal illegal tactics in order to aid the search for Escobar and exact revenge for the extreme violence perpetrated by him and the Medellin Cartel.

Pablo Escobar had modest beginnings to his criminal career, but his ambition was soon apparent. Escobar was the son of a middle class school teacher and cattle rancher. At a young age he started his first criminal activities by stealing and selling tombstones with his friends. He soon moved up to car theft, street scams, and racketeering. This small gang was not nearly large enough for the ambitions of Escobar. In 1975 he killed the reigning drug kingpin, Fabio Restrepo, and took over his organisation. This gave Escobar his first foothold in the cocaine industry.

In a matter of years Pablo Escobar grew to be one of the most powerful drug traffickers in the world. Along with a group of friends and associates he formed the Medellin cartel. The Medellin cartel smuggled cocaine into the United States of America. At the height of his power, Pablo Escobar controlled eighty percent of all of the cocaine shipped to the United States. All of his business success naturally gave him a huge amount of money and power. At the height of his power Escobar was declared, by Forbes and Fortune magazines, to be one of the ten rich...

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...zation was more intact he also may have never even been found by the Search Bloc.

After a long search and the death of many hundreds of people, Los Pepes, the Americans, and the Search Bloc, completed their joint goal, the death of Pablo Escobar. When Escobar died in 1993 the amount of cocaine destined for the United States did not change. Just like in almost all situations where a drug kingpin is dethroned, a new kingpin filled the void instantly. The war on drugs and the search for Escobar have cost the lives of many people and have not improved the situation in the long term. When there is a business with such huge profits guaranteed there will always be people taking advantage of this business, whether or not it is legal. The only possible way to battle the illicit drug trade effectively is to remove the profit from the business by reducing the demand for drugs.