![]() ![]() He specifically avoided them to get his business going. He was the first person to traffic in pills, and he was way ahead of the curve.īut he didn't start with opioids, correct? People didn't call them that yet-they called them prescription drugs-but LeRoux somehow sensed an opportunity to do two things that Americans love to do and will spend a lot of money doing: pills and online shopping. The numbers for people using cocaine were down and opioids were coming in. ![]() In 2004 had a stroke of genius, which was somehow realizing that Americans were getting tired of cocaine. Is that what made LeRoux different from any other big-time drug kingpin? You also compared him to Marlon Brando in Apocalypse Now, with anti-aircraft emplacements on all sides of his place in Manila. You describe him as wanting to be Pablo Escobar plus Russian arms dealer Viktor Bout plus Jeff Bezos. He went way beyond what we normally thought of as a drug dealer. LeRoux was a pioneering criminal-just extraordinary. I took a quick right turn and found out everything I could. One of my contacts told me about this very strange but powerful figure that he had been investigating. I was in Afghanistan, writing about the world heroin trade and how it finances war and terrorism the Taliban, as far as I can tell, is 90 percent funded by heroin. ![]() How did you get onto the story of Paul LeRoux? ![]()
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