Niko Vorobyov is the author of the book Dopeworld
In December 1989, the United States invaded Panama. The objective was Manuel Noriega, a pineapple-faced general who’d risen to power in a coup d’etat and turned his small, Central American country into a pit stop for Pablo Escobar’s cocaine moving north. Noriega fled to the Vatican Embassy, where the US Army blasted heavy metal music
In 2022, Thailand became the first nation in Asia to lift its ban on cannabis (or ‘kancha’ in Thai) after decades of prohibition. A massive industry mushroomed practically overnight: you couldn’t turn a street corner in Bangkok without seeing a shopfront with ‘DOCTOR WEED’ in big, green, neon letters. But now, Bangkok’s hazy days might be
A rickety boat took me across the murky, brown waters of the mighty Mekong River from Chiang Saen in Thailand, with its giant golden Buddha perched on the hillside, to the Golden Triangle Special Economic Zone (SEZ) in supposedly communist Laos. But the SEZ is neither particularly communist, nor even really a part of Laos.
I saw my first murder scene in Manila. On the evening of the 22 January 2018, a pair of assassins on motorbikes rode up to the scrap metal dealer Manny ‘Buddy’ Wagan and blasted him twice in the head. I didn’t witness the killing itself but arrived with my fixer just in time to see a passerby
US president Donald Trump has pardoned Ross Ulbricht, the cybercriminal mastermind who founded Silk Road and pioneered the drug trade’s move into cyberspace. Ulbricht was serving life without parole after he was found guilty in 2015 of conspiracy to commit drug trafficking, money laundering and computer hacking. On Wednesday, after over a decade in the dungeons, Ross
Being a drug addict has never been sunshine and roses, especially not on the cold, rainy streets of Glasgow. At least now there may be a glimmer of hope. From today, a ‘Safer Drug Consumption Facility’ called ‘The Thistle’ will open in the city that has been labelled Europe’s drugs death capital. Drug addicts ‘under
Russians are, stereotypically, known as heavy vodka drinkers – a fact that is often celebrated, despite all the bodily perils it entails. What’s rather less talked about is that Russia suffers one of the worst HIV epidemics outside Africa. This is thanks, in no small part, to heroin users sharing needles. But the latest challenge to public
On Friday morning, Azwan bin Bohari was marched to the gallows. The 47-year-old Singaporean, himself an addict, was convicted of trafficking 26.5 grams of heroin in 2019. Despite pleas for the Singaporean authorities to halt it, and the fact Azwan was waiting on the outcome of a legal appeal, the execution controversially went ahead. Azwan’s
On Friday, a hostage crisis unfolded at the IK-19 prison colony near Volgograd, the southern Russian city once known as Stalingrad. Four convicts – who declared themselves members of Islamic State – took 12 of their wardens and fellow inmates captive. In one video a guard can be seen lying in a pool of blood, his throat
Donald Trump has said he would not rule out military action against Mexico’s narco-cartels which he blames for the opioid crisis killing astronomical numbers of Americans. ‘Mexico’s gonna have to straighten it out really fast, or the answer is absolutely. They’re killing 300,000 people a year with fentanyl coming in,’ he told Fox News host. The narcos
Kamala Harris is the Democrats’ new hope for keeping Agent Orange out of the Oval Office. It’s probably for the best. Many younger, more progressive voters saw president Joe Biden as a dinosaur, a relic of a bygone era. Among other things, Biden was an old-school drug warrior who co-wrote the 1986 Anti-Drug Abuse Act, which
17 October 2019 will forever be etched in the memory of Culiacán, the capital of Sinaloa in northwest Mexico, as Black Thursday. That afternoon, two convoys of soldiers knocked on the door of a safehouse hiding Ovidio Guzmán López, son of drug baron ‘El Chapo’ Guzmán and scion of the Sinaloa Cartel, to execute an arrest
In a heavily-fortified Amsterdam courthouse known as The Bunker, Ridouan Taghi, the chieftain of the so-called ‘Mocro-Maffia’ (Moroccan mafia), and 16 of his henchmen learned their fate today. The gang were all found guilty of a series of murders that shocked the Netherlands. Taghi’s case is symptomatic of a wider illness within Dutch society. In
Ecuador was once spared the worst of the narco-warfare and insurgencies that have plagued Latin America. No longer. The storming last week of a TV station in Guayaquil by gun-brandishing thugs showed how no one, and nowhere, is safe from the narco gangs who rule the streets. The latest chaos was unleashed after a major
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Freddy Gray speaks to journalist and author Niko Vorobyov who wrote Dopeworld: Undercover in the secret war on drugs. 90 years after Prohibition ended, what are some of the biggest misperception about that era? And what has been the legacy of repealing the 18th amendment?
The meth and heroin addicts were still gathering in their hundreds in a squalid encampment under the Pul-e-Sokhta bridge in the Afghan capital of Kabul. It was a sorry sight to see them squatting beside bonfires while stray dogs ran around them, barking. Many were homeless and had nowhere else to go. ‘It’s easier to
