Most people know the drug war from movies. Ken Behr lived it. In this episode of The War Locker Show, Chuck and I sit down with Ken Behr, author of One Step Over the Line: Confessions of a Marijuana Mercenary. Ken walks us through the wild rise of the South Florida smuggling world in the 1970s and 80s — a time when cigarette boats outran the Coast Guard, cocaine moved by the ton, and the line between outlaw and entrepreneur was thinner than anyone wanted to admit. Ken started as a kid moving small bags out of his mom’s house. Over the next two decades he found himself working alongside some of the biggest smugglers in the world, moving massive shipments of marijuana and cocaine through the Caribbean pipeline into the United States. Then the system caught up. Facing a mandatory 25-year federal sentence, Ken was offered a choice most people never have to make: stay loyal to the life… or switch sides. He chose the second option. What followed was a journey into the strange and dangerous world of federal investigations, informants, and the people on both sides of the drug war who understood one uncomfortable truth: When the demand exists, someone will supply it. Topics include: • The real history of South Florida smuggling culture
• Cigarette boats, Learjets, and high-speed drug runs
• How smuggling organizations actually operated
• The moment the DEA came calling
• What it means to “switch teams” in the middle of a federal investigation
• Why prohibition has a way of creating its own criminals

War Locker conversations aren’t sanitized history. They’re stories from people who lived inside the systems most of us only hear about after the headlines fade.

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