Don Winslow Quotes

Show me one American drug kingpin who has been put in jail in America. There are a number of Hispanic kingpins from South and Central America but I don’t see any Mr. Smith’s.

… a succession of generals who held the chief antidrug post in Mexico are now in prison for taking part in the very kind of crime they were supposed to prevent.

The fight against the drug smuggling is lost worldwide.

We cannot sacrifice our safety to the murderous greed of drug cartels. We cannot stand idly by as drop houses, kidnappings and violence compromise our quality of life.

A lot of my friends are gangsters. Not like gangsters - well, yeah, all sorts of levels of criminality - but not the types that are preying on innocent people. I have no interest in the type of criminality that has no respect for collateral damage.

I am looking forward to a series of productive meetings in both Austria and Estonia, particularly what role organized crime plays in the Baltic drug trade.

As someone who has researched and written about the Mexican cartels and the futile 'war on drugs' for coming on twenty years, I know how tough a subject it is. Mind-bending, soul-warping, heartbreaking, it challenges your intellect, your beliefs, your faith in humanity and God.

So much for the crusade against drugs . . . all America is actually doing is consolidating its position as the biggest dealer in addictive and lethal substances on the planet, waging war on all rivals, whether they take the form of the Thai domestic tobacco industry or the Colombian cocaine cartels.

We're both Welshmen and growing up, when Howard Marks was finally caught, it was all over the news. He did an interview in the Welsh language, which I also speak, and I was sort of just amazed that this man from a small country was for many years supplying much of the world with most of the marijuana it was smoking. It was incredible.

The illegal drug trade is the financial engine that fuels many terrorist organizations around the world, including Osama bin Laden.

I've spent a fair amount of time down at the border.I have watched as these packs of marijuana are on the backs of young men that are walking across the border. They're hauling an average of about 65 pounds, some of them every day they take another load.

So long as large sums of money are involved - and they are bound to be if drugs are illegal - it is literally impossible to stop the traffic, or even to make a serious reduction in its scope.

Organized crime in America takes in over forty billion dollars a year and spends very little on office supplies.

The expansion and sophistication of transnational crime represents one of the most dangerous threats we confront in the next millennium.

The purpose of Plan Columbia was to deal with the increased cultivation and illegal activity associated with that cultivation concerning narco trafficking in Columbia.

Simply that we are mirroring the trends in society, at any given time smuggling was an issue in the seventies, corruption is an issue today, and we faithfully reflect those issues.

In fact, street gangs are the primary distributor of illegal drugs in the United States.

The war on drugs is not being won, and it continues to threaten stability and democracy not only in the Andes but throughout the Caribbean as well, where tiny police and military forces are outclassed by the sophisticated equipment in the hands of traffickers passing through the region on the way to their market in this country.

We have not won the battle against drug trafficking.

The 'Ndrangheta is an exceptionally dangerous, sophisticated and insidious criminal organization, with tentacles stretching from Italy to countries around the world.

And the people who live in the southern part of my state do not have a secure environment. To wit, there are signs that the government put up that say, 'Warning. You are in a drug smuggling area and a human smuggling area.'

Who most benefits from keeping marijuana illegal? The greatest beneficiaries are the major criminal organizations in Mexico and elsewhere that earn billions of dollars annually from this illicit trade - and who would rapidly lose their competitive advantage if marijuana were a legal commodity.

Drug smugglers often use juveniles to carry their shipments into the U.S. because they know the juveniles will not be prosecuted if caught.

You've got to exact some cost from the people who are sending these drugs into our country.

A handbook for gangsters.