Today, Explained - The cocaine comeback

Episode Date: December 30, 2025

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

Let President Trump tell it, and America has a problem. A drug problem, to be specific. We're formerly classifying fentanyl as a weapon of mass destruction. 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 Glyn 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? It basically year after year is breaking records. We are seeing, from the origin, the land in Colombia that is used to cultivate cocaine is about more than five times the size during the Pablo Escobar years. Today it is so much bigger and we see both demand and supply surging in many parts of the world

and particularly we see seizures in Europe growing to levels that now rival the United States as a main destination point. Pavel Escobar was killed in 1993, so up until that point, you know, that was when the United States was really focused on cocaine and trying to, you know, tackle the cocaine trade and the cartels moving it. Cocaine in the United States, a multi-billion dollar high for the corrupt and the rich. Despite our best efforts, illegal cocaine is coming into our country at alarming levels, and four to five million people regularly. use it. The experts apparently disagree on whether or not the government is doing enough about the increasing use of cocaine. But one thing they do agree on, cocaine is not a harmless and frivolous plaything. But that was a very different era. At that point, we were talking about

mostly the United States as a destination point, mostly, you know, Colombia, Mexico, and the United States when we talked about the trade. Now it is globalized. We are talking about a proliferation of smaller, much more nimble, very strategic drug trafficking organizations across South America. Many people will say Ecuador is now the world's cocaine superhighway. On the Pacific coast of Peru, just above the capital, Lima, sits El Cayao, the country's main shaping port. It's also one of the world's primary distribution points for cocaine. Even within Colombia, of proliferation of these small, smaller armed groups that have mastered the cultivation process and the production process

to more quickly, easily move it out of the country. And we see all these new different transit points and routes that are capable of moving the drugs in much larger quantities around the world to destinations that previously were pretty irrelevant in terms of the cocaine trade. So it is a much more globalized business than before. and it works in an entirely new way. That makes it much more difficult to combat. Yeah, what's behind that globalization?

Why? What's driving that growth? Some of it is the demand side. We are seeing demand soaring in countries that previously were not considered main markets. Europe now is a top destination alongside the United States. There is now more cocaine flooding into Europe than ever before. We see a lot of cocaine in the European streets,

especially in the past two, three years. Basically, the Europe cocaine market is oversaturated. So some of it is demand side, but some of it is also supply side. I mean, we are seeing within Colombia just the amount of land with cocaine and the productivity of that land is so much higher than before,

and each year it grows and grows. And when you talk to experts, some of that is explained by the way that they've created, created these cocaine enclaves where they not only have much more productive land and they grow a lot more of the crop. The base plant is called coca. It's way more productive and they've managed to concentrate these enclaves near the borders and near the coasts so they can more quickly move it out. And before we had this sort of like one or two main armed groups that controlled

the trade in Colombia. The revolutionary armed forces of Colombia, known by their Spanish acronym FARC are Colombia's largest and oldest guerrilla group. This is the ELN. It's a leftist anti-government group that is made up of more than 2,000 fighters plus militias, based in the Colombian countryside. Now because of the peace negotiations in 2016 and sort of the collapse of those peace negotiations and the aftermath of that. The Colombian president and the FARC rebel leader will sign a deal to end 50 years of fighting that has killed more than 200,000 people. The peace agreement between the government. between the government and the revolutionary armed forces of Colombia, known as FARC,

was rejected by Colombian voters by less than one percentage point. And it's also sort of opened up the country to criminal networks from around the world, from Europe, you know, the Mexican cartels, groups like these Albanian mafias that have been able to take advantage of this and move the drug through different transit countries as well. So they'll take it out of Columbia and move it through countries like Ecuador. And so we just have these sort of much more creative and strategic ways of moving these drugs. We're talking about how the trade has expanded via, you know, cultivation methods and diversified markets and logistics.

It feels like we're talking about any other kind of business. Absolutely. And actually, much of this is happening on legal container ships. So we're not necessarily talking about, you know, sometimes you do see, you do see these, you know, crazy stories about these submarines ending up in Australia and these, you know, these go fast boats in the Caribbean. But a lot of times it's container ships, legal container ships, banana ships that are leaving through legal ports. And so a lot of what has also allowed this explosion in the cocaine trade. is corruption. It's, you know, buying off people in the ports, in the police, in the courts. So it's going to be a lot harder to get rid of of this when it has infiltrated every level of the state.

So you profiled this guy who's sort of emblematic of the way the cocaine trade has changed, an Albanian guy who created an empire from an Ecuadorian jail. Who is he? Yeah, so this is a fascinating character named Drittin Rijepi, who is an Albanian criminal who essentially started off as this gunman, hitman, who was sort of one of the most wanted criminals in Europe. But he actually, after fleeing prison multiple times, he managed to sort of find a home in Ecuador and actually built his. cocaine business out of a prison cell because he once again was caught and he was put in prison in Ecuador. But actually, that was the perfect location for him to develop alliances, to learn how the criminal world worked in Ecuador, at times working with rivals in Mexican cartels, and using these connections to find new ways to move large quantities of drugs through Ecuador and primarily to

Europe. You know, when we think about cocaine, we think about cartels, right? We think about these organizations that demand loyalty. You know, when we think about sort of the Narcos Netflix series, right? That is not how it works these days. It is not about hierarchy. It's about being strategic. It's about developing alliances.

It's about who you know. And sometimes you don't even need that many people to move cocaine. You just need to know the right people in the right ports and the people. and the people who can get the drugs across one border into another and who can ship it off to Europe. And sometimes it's just about having those few people who can make that work and building from there. And it's a low bar of entry, basically.

And I think that's what Tritin Rejepi exemplifies. So we have a global cocaine trade that's acting like a lot of legal supply change for stuff that's in demand. But this is not legal. How is law enforcement dealing with this new era of the cocaine trade? So the answer to that depends on whether you're talking about last year or this year under the Trump administration. You know, sort of last year we were following, and I think the focus was, you know, on trying to dismantle the criminal structures from the top. and fast forward to this year, and in the current moment we're in,

the Trump administration has taken a vastly different approach. Colombian president Gustavo Petro criticized the United States by saying, well, the Southwest is stolen land and that it should be returned to Latin America. I just wanted to know what your response to that is. Well, he has to watch because, you know, he's got drug factories. They make cocaine in Colombia, and he's no friend of the United States. He's a very bad, very bad guy. and he's got to watch his ass because he makes cocaine

and they send it into the United States of America from Colombia. And they have had this massive buildup of the military, in particular the Navy, in the Caribbean and in many parts of the waters in Latin America and have been bombing, you know, essentially attacking, striking drug boats at sea that they allege are drug traffickers. moving drugs to the United States. We attacked a submarine,

and that was a drug-carrying submarine built specifically for the transportation of massive amounts of drugs, just so you understand. This was not an innocent group of people. I don't know too many people that have submarines. The Trump administration is saying that this is a threat,

that these are narco-terrorists flooding the United States with drugs. And they talk about it in a way that implies that fentanyl is moving on these boats when we know that it is predominantly cocaine. And so it's interesting because we don't really hear the Trump administration talking about cocaine and the specifics of that trade as much as we hear them talk about the fentanyl crisis. So we're kind of conflating two things here.

Samantha Schmidt, Washington Post, Mexico Bureau Chief. Coming up, it's not just the drug itself that's back. A new take on the cocaine aesthetic is back, too. Support for today's show comes from Found. Found has a message for all the small business owners out there. When was the last time you felt like you had your business finances? totally under control. That's what Found is for. Found is a business banking platform that says they can let you effortlessly track expenses, manage invoices, and prepare for taxes all in

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Today explained. This is a hell of a drug. I'm John Glyn Hill. Last time cocaine was king was the 80s, and yeah, you could find the drug at parties, but you could also find it all over the culture. The point is, ladies and gentlemen, that gree, for lack of a better word, is good.

About 150 kilos of their bodies. Let's see, 40 grand, that's about, five million wholesale. Gentlemen, we're looking at about 75 million on the street. 2025 was the year of a new kind of cocaine aesthetic, something called boom boom.

A noted trend forecaster coined the term to describe this revamped updated aesthetic. And writer Amelia Petrarcha wrote about boom, boom, and fashion for the cut earlier this year. It feels very 80s. It's looking like you've spent money for the sake of looking like you spend money. It's very

sort of shameless pursuit of the bag. And I think, you know, the bag can can mean whatever you want it to mean. But yeah, it's about looking rich, feeling rich, feeling like you're moving fast and breaking things. And I think the aesthetic matches, perhaps the energy of the 80s and the drug of choice of that time. Give us some examples of this new Coke. Cane aesthetic. Where are we seeing it? It could be evoked in a restaurant that is dark wood, low-lit, feels like where you would go with your guys after work at the Wall Street. I'm like, work at the bank, I don't know, to, you know, have a cigar or something like that. I think you see it in pinstripe suits and broad shoulders

and sort of garish ties. To me, the sort of enduring boom-boom look is the Rowe or the St. Laurent Lofer that was one of the bestsellers of the year. I think it's like eelskin, it's leathery, it's slick, it's a little bit to sort of steal a phrase from like a party invite, like quote unquote corporate baddie, like you're, you're going to going to an office, but also I think it's a bit of a costume, like you've maybe never actually set out of office in your life. So that's the sort of gist of it.

Yeah, I wonder if there are any examples you can think of, of this sort of cocaine-cheek aesthetic that have come out over the past year. You know, one example I think of, there's this song from the rapper J.T. called Ran Out. And basically, one of the lyrics is, And I was like, oh, wow, she really is talking about that, huh? I think something that the person who coined the term emphasized was that it is not necessarily a politicized term, but I think it is a look that we obviously associate with Trump, that we obviously associate with the right.

There was a New York MAG cover story about the parties that took place in D.C. after Trump won. They are crypto-nerds and influencer girlies and recent Maha converts and gays of all stripes. Plus your standard fair, Rogan Listening Bros. They refer to their political affiliation, almost always, as the movement. Many are hot enough to be extras in the upcoming American Psycho remake. And I think that that cover image was very indicative of Boom Boom, because it was a lot of young people wearing suits, and it slicked back hair, you know, it's embodied the look. But I think we also saw it, you know, being adopted in ways that were subverting it and challenging it.

I think, you know, some examples that I gave in the piece were Dochi and Chapel Rhone, both wore suits around the same time that I published it, both felt like subversive takes on gender. and I think especially Chapel Roan like very obviously like taking the look of like a lawyer or one could say a Republican and making it their own making it queer making it feel like drag I'm your dream girl's dream girl

there was a sense of humor to it there was a wink to it and so it you know I think in the piece I ask like what are you saying by wearing stuff like this? Are you saying that all you care about is cash, basically, cash is king? Or are you saying something deeper than that? Yeah, you know, the 80s in 2025 have another thing in common.

And you touched on that, Donald Trump. Does he have anything to do with the resurgence of this aesthetic? Yeah, I think at the very top of the year, we were sort of asking, what is this next year going to look like? How is Trump going to affect aesthetics? And I think there was definitely a sense that his sort of gilded toilet, bad suit look, you know, had seeped its way into fashion, into culture.

But I don't think Boom Boom really took hold in the way that Norm Corr took hold that, like, it was, I think, you know, in the age of TikTok, A new TikTok trend every five seconds, there's not these, like, sort of over big sweeping trends anymore. I think it, I really saw it pop up in very more subtle ways, sort of trickle. I don't think it was, oh my God, the 80s are everywhere. It was more like, huh, where did you get that?

Like, that seems like it, you know, it's a reference to something that has layers to it. Yeah, trends are so different. different now because of the internet, because of the TikTok of it all, you know, I remember Cottage Corps. And these things stick around, but they can, like, be in these small pockets. Do you think Boom Boom is going to stick around for the rest of this presidency, kind of in this small pocket kind of way? Definitely. I mean, I can see, I don't think it's like, it's so simple as, like, people see Trump. So they want to dress like Trump. Like, that's, I don't, I don't think that's it. I think it's just, it's sort of in the ether.

And people are grabbing it and, you know, interpreting it in their own various ways. If we're talking about high fashion and the runways, I certainly saw it like, you know, you see 80's color palettes. You see 80's shoulders. You see, you know, the sort of power look for sure. But fashion moves very quickly. I don't really see the sort of wolf of wall street. street look really having much longer of a life but maybe that's my optimistic maybe I'm projecting I certainly don't really want to see it but that's just me why I'm curious I mean I think I think

that like I said there's certainly ways to subvert the look that are interesting but to me at its core it represents something a bit rotten like it's about just sort of of shameless capitalistic impulses and not having a regard for anything other than you know making as much fun as you possibly can and I just you know obviously I understand that the impulse to look like you're rich and that you're a bit dangerous that you're a bit um sleazy like i'm obviously as drawn to gilded things as the next person but i don't really want to be associated with those ideas necessarily i i want my to think a little bit uh harder about what i wear and why i'm wearing it and i think i don't know that it's funny

i guess i think it was maybe seen as a bit ironic or um wink wink or oh look at this thing that I'm trying on and isn't that a bit like bad maybe and it's just like no that's it's just we I think we can leave that behind yeah you know I think it's interesting because I think one thing we have to acknowledge about the 80s is that this Coke era of the past was not all glitz and glamour it gave us the crack cocaine

epidemic and this amped up war on drugs yeah is do you think maybe that's part of the darkness you see there? Yeah there like I said, can be nuanced to it. It's not, I don't want to say, this is all bad. I just think with fashion, nuance gets lost pretty quickly. And yeah, it's definitely dark. It's definitely a bit twisted.

That's the appeal, and you can do interesting things with it. But personally, I think, I don't know, I look forward to sunnier days. Amelia Petrarcha is a freelance writer based in Brooklyn. Today's show was produced by Kelly Wessinger, edited by Jolie Myers, fact-checked by Laura Bullard, and engineered by Patrick Boyd. And hey, we've got a show coming up about student loans. The Trump admin is about to crack down on people who are behind on payment. Is that you? Are you falling behind or worried that you might?

Give us a call and leave a message. 844-453-44-48. I'm John Glyn Hill. You can catch me every Sunday in this very feed. The name of the show is Explain It to me. We're off for the next two days to celebrate the new year, but we will be back on Friday. This is today, Explained.

Thank you.