Narcos Final Essay
William (Drew) LaMotte
HISTLALS 198
The Medellin Cartel was an empire of stunning sweep and unimaginable violence in the
19070’s and 80’s. At its height, it earned as much as $4 billion a year for its members and
controlled 80 percent of the cocaine supply in the United States, leaving tens of thousands of
corpses in its wake and poverty stricken households. The founder of the organization, Pablo
Escobar, and his partners called their business a cartel. Instead of controlling price and supply,
it behaved far more like a criminal syndicate that pumped supply of cocaine into the market
and let the market set the price. It was not only a lethal purveyor of stimulants and mayhem, it
was also an effective business strategy, no different in many ways from a massive corporate
