The cocaine comeback

可卡因的卷土重来

Today, Explained

2025-12-31

25 分钟
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单集简介 ...

Demand for cocaine around the world has exploded. Production is at record highs. Law enforcement can barely keep up. Cocaine is back in a big way. This episode was produced by Kelli Wessinger, edited by Jolie Myers, fact-checked by Laura Bullard, engineered by Patrick Boyd, and hosted by Jonquilyn Hill. Photo by Matthieu Delaty / Hans Lucas / AFP via Getty Images. Listen to Today, Explained ad-free by becoming a Vox Member: vox.com/members. New Vox members get $20 off their membership right now. Transcript at ⁠vox.com/today-explained-podcast.⁠ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
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单集文稿 ...

  • Let President Trump tell it, and America has a problem.

  • A drug problem to be specific.

  • The administration thinks fentanyl is so widespread that they're calling it a WMD and bombing boats in the Caribbean.

  • But for all the press it gets, fentanyl isn't the fastest growing illegal drug around the world.

  • That would be...

  • Cocaine.

  • Cocaine.

  • Oh, I would just do cocaine.

  • That was really, yeah.

  • So not just, yeah.

  • That's down and dirty, right?

  • The down and dirty might make you think of discos in the 70s or 1980s penthouse parties,

  • but this resurgence is rooted in modernity.

  • The coke games changed.

  • I'm John Glenn Hill, and for the usual suspects,

  • and up next on Today Explained, where the cocaine comeback came from.

  • This is Today Explained.

  • I'm Samantha Schmidt and I'm the Washington Post's Mexico City Bureau Chief.

  • Okay, I want to start by getting a rough sense of scale.

  • How big is the global cocaine trade right now?