Drogen im Visier

NEW YORK CITY, N.Y.- Wall Street cocaine on $100 bill. NEW YORK CITY, N.Y.- Wall Street cocaine on $100 bill.

MIAMI, FLA.- Interview with "Dog" - a Crew Boss.

MIAMI, FLA.- Bags of molly laid out on the table.

MEXICO- A solider shows hows the opium gum is harvested.

MEXICO- A bag of Heroin & little baggies of black tar heroin at a street dealers house.

New Orleans, LA, USA: A dealer with a wad of cash and a bag of weed.

MEXICO- An Opium bulb oozes out opium gum, which is used to make heroin.

New York City, NY, USA: A handful of molly crystals.

Bags filled with drugs.

New York City, NY, USA: Nick and Ed across the river from New York City. (Photo Credit: National Geographic Channels/Tom Jenner)

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Welcome to the $300 billion industry of Drugs, Inc., where traffickers pocket huge profits, addicts become chained in a vicious cycle and law enforces wage war across diverse battlefields - farmers' fields, shady labs, urban street corners and suburban schools. How does this business work? Can it be stopped or should it be regulated? What impact does it have on those it touches? National Geographic Channel presents a hard-hitting new series, Drugs, Inc.,which provides a 360º view of frequently abused drugs: cocaine, methamphetamine, heroin and marijuana. Each episode mixes broad context and first-person perspectives from traffickers, dealers, users, law enforcement and medical professionals who take viewers to the core of this lucrative business. The series follows each drug's production cycle, its supply line into our communities and its effects on the human body.

Krokodil hit Georgia harder than any other country because the government was so efficient at getting rid of heroin. Only extremely trusted customers can get codeine from pharmacies in Tbilisi these days, and they sell only to trusted cooks known to make Krokodil cleanly --or at least, as cleanly as possible.

Vrae Valley, Peru: Dynamite that is used to explode the Cocaine trafficking airfields.

Some Krokodil users can't get their hands on codeine but they're so hooked they're willing to cross borders to get even just one hit. These users traveled from Ukraine to Armenia to buy cheap codeine and rent a safe house to cook. It's not a sustainable habit to maintain, but for now they're satisfied.

Codeine regulation is such a problem in Ukraine that it has spurred ordinary people, sick of corrupt cops protecting pharmacies while their friends and relatives fell prey to Krokodil, to take the law into their own hands. Self-appointed drug control groups mount surveillance operations; send in undercover members wired for video to make buys; then raid pharmacies suspected of selling codeine illegally, confiscating any codeine-based pills they find.

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Weltweit hat der Handel mit harten Drogen Hochkonjunktur, und die Gründe dafür liegen auf der Hand: In keiner anderen Branche werden größere Summen umgesetzt, und nirgendwo sonst sind die Gewinnmargen so exorbitant hoch wie im Drogengeschäft - ganz egal, ob es sich um Heroin, Kokain, LSD, Amphetamine oder Cannabis handelt.