Magnus Linton

“Drugs flow as effortlessly through the harbour as through los esteros, but the government and the DEA view drug trafficking as more of a hazard to society when it moves through the poor area, with its dirty waters and seeming chaos, than when it has to do with corporate boardrooms and the main harbour. And for the FARC, it is becoming easier and easier to convince the city’s Afro-Colombian majority that the focus of the war on drugs is not primarily on the flow of drugs, but on what kind of people are involved in it.”
― Magnus Linton, Cocaína: A Book on Those Who Make It

“The story is complicated and contradictory. Sometimes this proclaimed ‘war on drugs’ has followed shifts in military threats; at times it is coloured by religious paranoia; often it is rooted in genuine fear of widespread social misery. But mostly, and sometimes quite unintentionally, it is the result of political strategies that have very little to do with its expressed goal of fighting drugs.”
― Magnus Linton