Next Big Book Thing: #Opinion How Drugs Get into the United States by Coral Russell

This video is a graphic representation of how drugs are smuggled into the U.S. On the Juarez border alone it's an estimated forty to sixty billion dollar business. No one really knows or has exact numbers because of the nature of this illegal business or black market. The only issue I have with the video is others claim the majority of drugs in the US, ninety percent, comes from Mexico.

On the El Paso side, which doesn't have the violence that Mexico does, it's at least a multi-million dollar business because the drugs and money have to sit and wait for distribution. El Paso makes large drug seizures of three hundred thousand pounds or more but it is still a drop in the bucket compared to the overall amount that makes it into the U.S. And that interested me more than anything else. I've never used drugs, no really I haven't, and I don't plan to start anytime soon.

I didn't feel I had anything to add to a character that was using drugs. And what if the characters weren't hard-core drug users but instead businessmen and women. The amount of money involved is staggering and someone has to control it. A business and an illegal business still run on the same basic principles. Only with the illegal business the specter of death hangs in the air.