To further complicate matters, the amounts Blandon sold to Ross fluctuated according to his supply and competition with Ross' various other suppliers. Some estimates have failed to take these factors into account and have instead assumed that the quantity Ross was buying at his peak in remained constant over the duration of his relationship with Blandon.
From our interviews of both Ross and Blandon, we know that this was not the case. When interviewed by the OIG, Ross recalled that the first kilogram he ever bought was purchased from Blandon. Before that he was dealing in smaller quantities. As discussed above, the OIG believes that Ross began buying cocaine from Blandon in late or early According to Blandon, Ross bought two or three kilograms every few days, until Blandon, wearying of these repeated transactions, started selling Ross about 25 kilograms at a time.
Blandon noted that this reduced his profit per kilogram because of volume discounts, but increased his overall profit because he was selling more cocaine. Blandon testified at Ross' trial that he was selling kilos per month to Ross in Blandon also testified that by he was selling kilos per week to a combination of four or five different customers, including Ross.
Blandon told the OIG that during and , the amounts he sold Ross ranged from 50 kilos in a week, to nothing. It is possible that Ross did not begin buying in large multi-kilo quantities until mid or late When Ross was asked during his December testimony in the "Big Spender" trial to estimate how much his drug organization sold over its lifetime -- which the OIG believes began in or and ended with his arrest in -- he said the total amount was between 2, kilos and 3, kilos.
Such an estimate is consistent with Blandon's account above and with an estimate Blandon made in July during a conversation with an individual who, unbeknownst to Blandon, was a DEA informant wearing a hidden recording device. Blandon told the informant that he estimated that he had sold between 2, and 4, kilos to black drug dealers. Ross noted that he had never received cocaine on credit from either the Torres brothers or Blandon, but was occasionally given partial credit when he did not have enough cash to pay for a delivery.
Blandon denied to the OIG ever making a multi-million dollar shipment to Ross. Instead, he maintained that he delivered approximately 50 to 60 kilos of cocaine to Ross with Lister. He denied that Ross paid him millions of dollars for this transaction.
Some of Ross' estimates of his cocaine sales have far exceeded the to kilo estimate he made in Ross told the OIG that, in and , he frequently got about kilograms a week from Blandon and about 40 kilograms a week from Edgar and Jacinto Torres, two of Blandon's competitors who sold to Ross until If this pattern of purchases occurred consistently for only a single year, this would amount to close to kilograms.
Ross also estimated that Blandon sold him between and kilograms every month. According to his testimony, Ross first became a millionaire in or It seems unlikely that his profits increased two-hundredfold in a single year.
It is unlikely that we will ever know exactly how much cocaine Blandon sold to Ross. Needless to say, regardless of whether Ross' or Blandon's figures are credited, Blandon sold a massive volume of cocaine to Ross over the duration of their association.
The OIG believes that Ross' own estimate of how much cocaine he sold -- 2, to 3, kilos -- is credible and supported by both his other testimony and by Blandon. While this amount is considerable, it alone was clearly not enough to spark the cocaine epidemic of the s, especially since it was spread over seven years. To put that amount in perspective: 2, to 3, kilograms equals roughly two to three tons of cocaine handled by Ross' organization over seven years.
The DEA estimated in that 44 tons of cocaine had been brought into the country in alone, and 40 to 48 tons in About 20 percent of that cocaine was believed to be destined for Los Angeles. In November , the State Department Bulletin reported that an estimated 70 tons of cocaine was being smuggled into the country. Furthermore, there were a number of traffickers who dealt in quantities far greater than did Ross' organization during this period.
In March , two tons of cocaine were seized at the Miami Airport. In May , the Associated Press reported the arrest of members of a ring in southern California and Miami that smuggled a ton of cocaine in just the prior year.
In September , Alan Mobley pleaded guilty to smuggling two tons of cocaine a year to the West Coast for a cocaine ring run out of Orange County, California. In , Harold Rosenthal was convicted in federal court of bringing five tons of cocaine into the country during a month period. Cocaine was a status drug for the wealthy in the late s and early s. It was not widely used in South Central Los Angeles in , principally because it was not affordable to many drug users.
Phencyclidine PCP was still prevalent in that era. Nonetheless, the Mercury News ' assertion that cocaine was not available in South Central Los Angeles before Blandon began selling to Ross is inaccurate, or at least hyperbolic.
First, cocaine was apparently present in South Central Los Angeles before Ross even began to sell it. In October , the Los Angeles Times published a story recounting Thomas "Tootie" Reese's claim that he was introduced to freebasing in He soon learned how to make crack and became a substantial drug dealer in the black community in Los Angeles. And Reese was not the only South Central dealer selling cocaine.
When the OIG interviewed Ross, we asked whether others were dealing cocaine in the early days of his organization. Ross stated that there were "a few people I used to hear about," and he named several. As Ross' operation grew, he had other South Central dealers to contend with. Perhaps the most successful of these was Brian Bennett, also known as "Waterhead Bo. As discussed below, Bennett is believed to be responsible for a large, multi-state cocaine operation in the mids.
Law enforcement wiretaps that intercepted communications related to Bennett's operation indicate that, in one month in , Bennett purchased just under 1, kilos of cocaine from a Colombian source. Ross was also not the first crack dealer in South Central Los Angeles.
Others taught him about crack cocaine. Ross told the OIG that he first learned to "rock up" cocaine powder so that it was suitable for smoking from Stefan Moore, and told LASD investigators that he learned from "watching different people in the neighborhood," including Michael McLaurin and a "pimp named Martin. It is also worthy of note that Ross has never claimed that Blandon, or any other Nicaraguan, taught him how to make crack cocaine.
Ross has specifically denied in both his interview with the OIG and in trial testimony that Blandon taught him how to cook crack. The Mercury News ' contention that Blandon was a prime factor in the growth of cocaine in South Central Los Angeles appears to be based in part on the low per-kilo prices that Blandon was able to provide to Ross, which enabled Ross to buy cocaine in large quantities.
However, cocaine prices dropped throughout the s as a result of activity by South American drug cartels. During the s, cocaine producers in South America -- particularly Colombia -- increased production of cocaine. Cocaine is a commodity whose prices follow the same basic economic rules of supply and demand that apply to most products: when supply is abundant, prices fall; when there is scarcity, prices rise. When huge seizures have no effect on street prices, it indicates that a large supply is still in circulation.
The drop in the price of cocaine, despite increased seizures and purer product, suggests that the amount of cocaine in the United States grew steadily throughout the s. The wholesale market became flooded with cocaine and the price of cocaine dropped dramatically as a result of a glut.
In sum, anyone with a Colombian source could have taken advantage of the glut on the supply side. In , the DEA began investigating Mario Ernesto Villabona Alvarez, a Colombian drug source, and soon discovered that Brian Bennett, who became one of the largest traffickers in Los Angeles, was one of his customers. During an intercepted telephone conversation in April between Villabona and an individual in Cali, Colombia, Villabona was given an accounting of money owed by Bennett for and cocaine deliveries.
At the time of his arrest, the Bennett-Villabona drug organization was selling approximately a ton of cocaine per week, according to law enforcement sources quoted in news coverage about the arrest. McCarver alone was buying thousands of kilos of cocaine. Nevertheless, it is apparent that other South Central drug dealers forged ties to Colombian dealers without the assistance of Blandon or any other Nicaraguans associated with the Contras.
If Ross was indeed the first to establish a connection to Colombia, others followed closely in his wake. It should also be noted that the prices at which Villabona sold cocaine to Bennett reflected the drop in cocaine prices that occurred during the s in Los Angeles and across the country.
We believe this occurred in The Villabona conversation suggests that Blandon was simply charging Ross prevailing rates for cocaine, not fantastically discounted rates as was alleged by the Mercury News. But, contrary to the suggestion of the Mercury News , there is no evidence that they were singularly or primarily responsible for it. First, the timing of Ross' ascension as a cocaine dealer makes it improbable that he was a pivotal factor in the explosive growth of cocaine in South Central Los Angeles.
It appears that sometime between and , crack became a concern among law enforcement and medical health experts in South Central Los Angeles. Los Angeles Police Detective Ben Gonzalez of the South Bureau juvenile narcotics division reported that juveniles were arrested on cocaine-related charges from January to November In contrast, 34 were arrested during all of An interview with a year veteran of the Los Angeles Police Department who spent the early s working in South Central Los Angeles revealed a similar story.
Detective Richard Ginelli became a supervisor of the South Bureau's narcotics squads in Flip through the Booklet. Reset Your Password. Please provide the email address you used when you signed up for your account. We will send you an email with a link to reset your password. Email Address. What is Crack Cocaine? International Statistics. Effects of Crack Cocaine. Crack Cocaine: A Short History. What Dealers Will Tell You. The Truth About Drugs.
How much do you really know about crack cocaine? Contact Us. Start Free E-Courses. Take the Quiz. According to the U. Drug Enforcement Agency DEA , the price of illegal cocaine dropped by as much as 80 percent during the late s as a glut of the white powder flooded the U. Dealers looking for new ways to sell their products turned to crack. Crack could be produced by dissolving powdered cocaine in a mixture of water and ammonia and boiling it down until a solid formed.
Smoking crack brings a short, intense high, making the substance more addictive than powdered cocaine. Crack was also a lot cheaper than cocaine powder. In , crack sold for about five dollars a rock in most cities. When the first crack house was discovered in Miami in , it drew little national attention. The DEA thought it was a localized phenomenon. But by , crack appeared in New York and soon spread to other major cities. Crack usage began to surge in the s. Between and , the number of regular cocaine users jumped from 4.
Around the same time, crime in some major cities spiked. A study by the Bureau of Justice Statistics found that crack use was tied to 32 percent of all homicides and 60 percent of all drug-related homicides in New York City. For example, the same minimum penalty of five years was given for 1 gram of crack cocaine as for grams of powdered cocaine. Opponents argued the law was racist, since crack users were more likely to be African American.
In response to these criticisms, the Fair Sentencing Act of reduced the weight ratio between crack and powder to and eliminated the mandatory five-year sentence for crack possession. Drug Fact Sheet: Cocaine. Drug Enforcement Administration. National Institute on Drug Abuse.
The Nation. Cocaine: What is the Crack? Anesthesiology and Pain Management. But if you see something that doesn't look right, click here to contact us! Subscribe for fascinating stories connecting the past to the present.
A Japanese chemist first synthesized methamphetamine—also called meth, crank, crystal meth or speed—from another stimulant in Methamphetamine was used early on as a medical treatment for narcolepsy, asthma and as a weight-loss drug. Heroin, morphine, and other opiates trace their origins to a single plant—the opium poppy.
0コメント