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Why the fall of the Medellin cartel failed to stop the flow of drugs, according to a DEA agent who hunted Escobar

Pablo Escobar made staggering amounts of money by smuggling cocaine to the US. After his death, there was no shortage of traffickers eager to succeed him.

Under the leadership of Pablo Escobar, the Medellin cartel moved immense amounts of drugs and brought in stratospheric profits.

By one measure, they were raking in $420 million a week by the mid-1980s, and by the end of the decade the cartel reportedly supplied 80% of the world's cocaine.

Such prodigious trafficking made Escobar and his organization the target of the Colombian government and its close partner, the US.

The two countries launched a brutal campaign against him, and Escobar responded in kind, leaving Colombia littered with bodies until his own death on December 2, 1993.

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Escobar's legend has grown in the years since. Similarly, the drug trade has continued apace, despite Escobar's demise and the withering away of the Medellin cartel.

The Cali cartel had long been a Medellin rival, but it reached the height of its power after Escobar was killed, eventually controlling 80% of the world's cocaine trade and moving hundreds of tons of it to the US. The Norte de Valle cartel emerged from the remnants of the Cali cartel in the late 1990s.

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