If you want to understand drug trade and cartel operations in the US, you need to understand the Israeli and jewish-Russian side of the business
>From the book "When Victims Rule", chapter "23. DRUGS" ( source: https://archive.is/wDemW ):
"Little known – and little publicized – in America, in recent years the Jewish "Russian mafia," and Orthodox religious and Israeli business networks with deep links to drug cartels, have been instrumental in maintaining the United States drug problem. Many of these criminals are particularly pious Jews, and a number of Orthodox Jewish religious institutions have been used for the laundering of literally hundreds of millions of dollars in drug money in (particularly) New York City. (Money laundering here refers to the task of getting huge sums of money that were paid for drugs, originally in small bills, into a form of assets that has the appearance of legality.) In 1994 Israeli journalist Ben Kapit exposed this story of Jewish culpability and corruption in America's growing drug problem; he wrote in Hebrew, to an Israeli audience, in the newspaper Ma'ariv.
American Jews and Israelis dominate the jewelry and precious stones and metals trade in Manhattan, mostly located in the 47th Street area. "75-80% of the active traders on the street are Jews," said Kapit, "A large part of them are very pious Orthodox Jews, mainly Hassids. There is also a respectable representation of Jews from Iran and Syria, usually also very pious … the place is also the biggest launderer for drug money in the United States." [KAPIT, p. 2]
Daily transactions of huge sums of money – including interstate and international – is part of the diamond business (as is backroom secrecy, based on "personal acquaintance and trust," [KAPIT, p. 2]; boxes, large packages, and armored trucks come and go regularly under heavy security. All this provides a convenient front for the laundering of massive amounts of drug money, most of it in $10 and $20 bills. "One of the most popularly successful ways to launder money," notes Kapit, "is through Jewish religious institutions, such as yeshivas and synagogues. Since the majority of the 47th Street gold and diamond merchants are religious Jews, the process is made easier." [KAPIT, p. 4]
"Today," noted Newsweek in 1977, "the Japanese give diamond engagement rings nearly as often as American, and wealthy Arabs who once eschewed diamonds for the more colorful stones, have become insatiable diamond buyers … Little wonder, then, that tampering robberies and even murders have come to haunt the business, not only along West 47th Street in New York – where the mostly Jewish dealers see an 'Israeli mafia' behind the murder last month of one of their numbers – but the world's other diamond centers as well." [ATLAS, p. 95] "The robberies that plague the diamond districts of New York and Tel Aviv," notes David Koskoff, "are almost always perpetrated by people from within the diamond community." [KOSKOFF, p. 191] In 1990, the Jerusalem Post, paraphrasing the Los Angeles County Sheriff, Sherman Block (also Jewish), noted that "Los Angeles' small but potent 'Israeli mafia’ has spread across America, graduating in the last two decades from extorting poor Jews – often concentration camp survivors – to major drug-dealing and fraud schemes against the rich … Cocaine is the favored product of the mafia's drug dealing, and their clients tend to be affluent people who demand the highest quality." [DERFNER, 9-9-90, ONLINE]
U.S. Federal agents have identified, says Kapit, what it calls "the Cocaine Triangle. Its sides are: Colombian drug barons, Israeli-Jewish money launderers, and Jewish-Russian mafiosos … You need only look at the list of arrests and indictments of the past three years in order to grasp the enormous scope of Israeli involvement in the field." [KAPIT, p. 3] There are numerous murky criminal interfaces between these Israeli drug dealers, the so-called "Russian" mafia, and some of the most pious Jewish Orthodox religious circles. The link between Israeli weapons dealing and South American underworld organizations is also deep. In 1988, for example, an Israeli paramilitary training company called "Spearhead," directed by a former senior army officer, Yair Klein, was hired to train members of a drug cartel in Colombia. Klein was eventually fined all of $13,000 by Israeli authorities for "exporting defense know-how not covered in his permit." [HIRSCHBERG, p. 13] In 1990 the Jewish Week reported that "three United States officials were in Israel … investigating possible Israeli connections to the Colombian drug cartel" and that earlier NBC had reported that "Israeli reserve officers…. [were providing] military training to drug-cartel gunmen." [GOLBERG, A, p. 51]"