The cocaine comeback

Today, Explained

Vox

News, Daily News, Politics

4.4 • 9.5K Ratings

🗓️ 30 December 2025

⏱️ 25 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

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

Transcript

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0:00.0	Let President Trump tell it, and America has a problem.
0:07.3	A drug problem to be specific.
0:10.6	We're formerly classifying fentanyl as a weapon of mass destruction.
0:15.0	The administration thinks fentanyl is so widespread that they're calling it a WMD and bombing
0:19.9	boats in the Caribbean.
0:26.2	But for all the press it gets, fentanyl isn't the fastest growing illegal drug around the world.
0:28.5	That would be cocaine.
0:29.3	Cocaine.
0:31.2	Oh, I would just do cocaine.
0:32.8	That was really, yeah. Yeah, so not just, yeah.
0:34.7	That's down and dirty, right?
0:37.7	The down and dirty might make you think of discos in the 70s or 1980s penthouse parties,
0:42.5	but this resurgence is rooted in modernity.
0:45.7	The Coke games changed.
0:47.7	I'm John Gwyn Hill, in for the usual suspects,
0:50.6	and up next on Today, explained, where the cocaine comeback came from.
1:02.5	This is Today Explained.
1:07.5	I'm Samantha Schmidt and I'm the Washington Post's Mexico City Bureau Chief.
1:11.7	Okay, I want to start by getting a rough sense of scale.
1:16.0	How big is the global cocaine trade right now?
1:20.2	It basically year after year is breaking records.
1:24.0	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.
	...

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