memes

Whitey Bulger: protected by the FBI for decades while being the biggest heroin importer in the northeast

Freeway Ricky Ross: supplied by the CIA with coke from the Contras, in a relationship mediated by a DEA informant

Golden Triangle heroin trade: controlled by the CIA for decades after the Korean War, arming and protecting manufacturers and traffickers, with heroin flown on CIA planes

The French Connection: French gangsters were protected by the CIA and allowed to import heroin to their primary market, the US, in exchange for keeping the port of Marseille out of the control of French communists

La Corporacion: the biggest Bolivian cocaine cartel, the "GM of cocaine", started with the cooperation and protection of the CIA according to a DEA agent whose investigations into them were repeatedly thwarted by the State Dept and CIA

Ronald Stark: the world's biggest manufacturer and supplier of LSD for a period after its criminalization, sole supplier of late-period Brotherhood of Eternal Love, threw parties at the US embassy in Brussels, sent letters using their letterhead, and when he was finally arrested in Italy, the judge in his case accused the CIA of protecting him

That's mad. The US would never promote illegal drug trade.

They were naturally. Opium is historically a tool of colonial oppressers. Asian opium dens were only a thing after the British Empire brought it to their communities. Gary Web famously shot himself in the head twice after exposing the CIA as the one offloading crack into the streets of the San Francisco Bay Area kick-starting the crack epidemic. Drugs like crack, opium, and other highly addictive drugs help maintain control and division among the exploited population. Pain killers and fentanyl are the new Crack Cocaine of our time. Even if they were not making a direct profit off the opium trade at the time, it did them no good to stop it. It only supported their efforts of looting and plundering.

failed

implies they tried lol