Key Legislation & Policies
This U.S. President officially declared drug abuse "public enemy number one" in 1971.
Who is Richard Nixon?
This notorious leader of the Medellín Cartel was known as the "King of Cocaine."
Who is Pablo Escobar?
This South American country was the primary target of "Plan Colombia" in the early 2000s.
What is Colombia?
This synthetic opioid is currently the leading cause of overdose deaths in North America.
What is fentanyl?
This school-based program, founded in Los Angeles in 1983, used police officers to teach kids to avoid drugs.
What is D.A.R.E. (Drug Abuse Resistance Education)?
This federal agency was created in 1973 to consolidate anti-drug law enforcement.
What is the DEA (Drug Enforcement Administration)?
This First Lady championed the "Just Say No" campaign during the 1980s.
Who is Nancy Reagan?
This region of Southeast Asia, covering parts of Burma, Laos, and Thailand, was a historic opium hub.
What is the Golden Triangle?
This plant’s leaves are the raw botanical source used to manufacture cocaine.
What is the coca plant?
This critically acclaimed HBO series focused on the drug trade and institutional failure in Baltimore.
What is The Wire?
This 1986 Act created a massive sentencing disparity between crack and powder cocaine.
What is the Anti-Drug Abuse Act?
This Mexican cartel leader, nicknamed "El Chapo," headed the Sinaloa Cartel before his extradition.
Who is Joaquín Guzmán?
This joint U.S.–Bahamas operation launched in 1982 to intercept drug-smuggling boats and planes.
What is Operation OPBAT?
This schedule 1 drug is a chemical derivative of morphine, first synthesized commercially by Bayer in 1898.
What is heroin?
This famous 1980s PSA featured a frying egg accompanied by the phrase, "This is your brain on drugs."
What is the Partnership for a Drug-Free America commercial?
This 1970 act classified drugs into five distinct "schedules" based on medical use and abuse potential.
What is the Controlled Substances Act?
This Panamanian dictator was overthrown and arrested by US forces in 1989 for racketeering and drug smuggling.
Who is Manuel Noriega?
This 1980 mass migration from Cuba was heavily utilized by cartels to smuggle cocaine into Miami.
What is the Mariel Boatlift?
This chemical precursor, often found in cold medicine, became strictly regulated by the Combat Methamphetamine Epidemic Act of 2005.
What is pseudoephedrine?
This 2000 Steven Soderbergh film won four Oscars for exploring the drug trade from multiple interconnected perspectives.
What is Traffic?
This controversial 1994 law scaled up prison populations by incentivizing "truth-in-sentencing" laws.
What is the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act?
This Honduran president was convicted in a U.S. federal court in 2024 for conspiring to import cocaine into the United States.
Who is Juan Orlando Hernández?
This 1985 DEA operation targeted the Guadalajara Cartel following the kidnap and murder of agent Kiki Camarena.
What is Operation Leyenda?
This opioid antagonist medication can instantly reverse an opioid overdose if administered in time.
What is Naloxone (Narcan)?
This prominent journalist died by suicide in 2004 after his "Dark Alliance" series linked the CIA to the 1980s crack epidemic.
Who was Gary Webb?