San Antonio College Library

Cocaine Confidential goes inside the lives of the coca farmers, the jungle sweat-shop workers, the smugglers, the suppliers, and, ultimately, the dealers who provide for the world's hundreds of millions of users, to reveal their stories for the first time.

"Spillane examines phenomena that have eluded earlier students of drug history. He explores the role of American business in fostering consumer interest in cocaine during the years when no law proscribed its use, the ways in which authorities and social agents tried nonetheless to establish informal controls on the substance, and the mixed results they achieved." "Arguing that the underground drug culture had origins other than in federal prohibition,...

"This book shows how the commercialization of cocaine was driven by cartels, pharmaceutical companies, and private enterprises across Europe, Asia, and the United States. Featuring new and reorganized chapters, A Brief History of Cocaine, Second Edition contains the latest data and statistics that correlate drug trafficking to terrorism and illustrate recent trends in worldwide production, consumption, cost competition, and international transport....

This is a different view of cocaine's expansive history. Illuminating a hidden and fascinating chapter in the history of globalization, the author chronicles the rise of one of the most spectacular and now illegal Latin American exports: cocaine.

Queen Cocaine takes place amid the violence that rules everyday life in Colombia. In the remote Pacific Coast jungle, a region of incessant rain that is ravaged by the drug trade and by civil war, the army, the guerillas, and the drug traffickers spin a perilous web in which the three main characters who inhabit this novel are caught: Rat, a young Catalan woman who has recently arrived in Colombia; Aida, a local visionary who is adept at weaving spells,...

It takes 500 grams of powder cocaine to receive the same sentence that is meted out for possession of only five grams of crack cocaine. Yet five grams of crack is a user's dose, while 500 grams of cocaine is a dealer's supply. Why a 100-to-1 disparity? In this program, ABC News anchor Ted Koppel and correspondent Don Dahler explore how the panic inspired by crack cocaine in the 1980s has left a legacy of crowded jails with overwhelmingly African-American...

"Colombia's $5-billion-a-year cocaine trade has funded brutal civil war involving leftist guerillas, right-wing paramilitaries, and a national government severely undermined by corruption. This Wide Angle report spotlights the efforts of Maria Cristine Chirolla, head of the Colombian attorney general's anti-money laundering office, to crack down on the drug lords"--Container.

The rise of leftist leaders in South America has surprised the international community-and has resulted in some equally surprising alliances. This Wide Angle documentary focuses on populist leader Evo Morales, who has taken up the fight of coca farmers against the Bolivian establishment. Traveling to the stunning highlands of Bolivia, the program examines Morales' efforts to expand the amount of coca that can be legally grown and fend off the Bolivian...