The Best Episodes of Drugs, Inc.
Last Updated: Feb 1, 2019
How does the drug trade work? Can it be stopped or should it be regulated? And what are the personal costs? Those are just some of the questions answered in this miniseries, a comprehensive look at society's most abused drugs: cocaine, methamphetamine, heroin and marijuana. First-person perspectives from traffickers, dealers, users, law enforcement and medical professionals detail how the drugs are processed and moved onto the streets, and the effects they have on the human body.
#1 - Cartel City: Arizona
Season 4 - Episode 9
Phoenix, Arizona is the de facto wholesale drug capital of America.
8.29
#2 - Wasted In Seattle
Season 4 - Episode 8
Seattle attracts gangsters and dealers with its liberal laws and high demand for drugs.
8.22
#3 - Coke Kings and Queens
Season 3 - Episode 10
Cocaine and marijuana drug fueled 24-hour lifestyle for Londoners.
8.16
#4 - Hallucinogens
Season 2 - Episode 4
Deep in the Amazon, Rob—a former Wall Street broker turned healer—has created a free clinic of sorts, administering the highly potent narcotic ayahuasca to trauma patients.
8.16
#5 - The Drug Makers
Season 4 - Episode 11
See the underground world of drugs through the eyes of its makers. A former British gangster serves as guide into this illicit underworld, visiting a secret hash-making location nestled in the mountains. Check out growers in Holland who are leading a horticultural revolution in high-grade cannabis. Follow a batch of raw opium from an Afghan poppy field to an Iranian heroin lab. Follow the supply chain of cocaine through the eyes of Colombian peasant farmers producing the drug in a paste.
8.14
#6 - High in Houston
Season 4 - Episode 4
In the Fifth Ward, a drug hub of Huston, Tex., see firsthand how drugs are dominating the area's economy and populous. We'll talk to a major crack cocaine dealer, a Hispanic street gang member, addicts, a pimp who claims to rule the streets and a full-patch member of the Aryan Brotherhood of Texas white supremacist prison gang. Learn about a prescription cough remedy that abusers call lean named because if you take enough of it, you lean or fall over.
8.12
#7 - Drug Kings of New York
Season 3 - Episode 4
As America's largest city, New York is a distribution hub for narcotics.
8.08
#8 - Stashville: Tennessee
Season 4 - Episode 10
Music and drugs go hand in hand in Nashville.
8.06
#9 - Rocky Mountain High
Season 4 - Episode 5
Denver's legalization of recreational use of marijuana in January 2014,could be the downfall of the city's gang-banger dealers who have seen falling profits since medical marijuana became legal in 2001.
8.05
#10 - Jamaican Gangs, Guns and Ganja
Season 4 - Episode 2
Kingston, Jamaica, is under the control of sophisticated and warring drug gangs who manage drug trafficking and distribution at all levels.
7.98
#11 - Hollywood High
Season 3 - Episode 7
Heroin, cocaine and prescription pills in plentiful supply makes Los Angeles one of the biggest drug distribution hubs in the U.S.
7.98
#12 - Memphis Mayhem
Season 5 - Episode 5
In Memphis, Tenn., drug habits are changing. Along Elvis Presley Blvd., addicts are switching to heroin as supplies of cocaine dry up following a successful kingpin takedown. Now, dealers with pockets stuffed full of cash are attracting deadly stick-up crews who roam the streets looking for easy targets. Ride alongside Memphis cops as they find themselves confronted by paranoid and trigger-happy dealers as they try to stop a heroin epidemic from engulfing the city.
7.92
#13 - Miami Vices
Season 4 - Episode 6
Miami has been used to traffic drugs into the United States from Latin America.
7.91
#14 - Boston Benzo Buzz
Season 5 - Episode 10
Dominican drug networks tied directly to the Mexican cartel are distributing countless amounts of narcotics in the historic city of Boston, fueling a widespread epidemic that law enforcement and emergency services can hardly contain. The Dominican drug organizations are increasingly using Puerto Rican dealers as their middlemen to flood the city with heroin. The epidemic touches all communities, making Boston one of the leading cities for heroin distribution.
7.91
#15 - Hurricane Blow
Season 3 - Episode 5
New Orleans drug trade booms in the era following the Hurricane Katrina devastation.
7.89
#16 - Cokeland
Season 5 - Episode 2
After being rocked by a corruption scandal and a budget deficit in the range of 58 million dollars, the city's police department's staffing and morale are in bad shape. National Geographic follows an elite team of detectives who are trying to establish some control over the free for all drug market. Using their access to the dealers, users, and gang members at the heart of the problem NGC gives us a inside look at the drug infested city.
7.87
#17 - Dope-landia
Season 5 - Episode 4
Portland's progressive attitudes have made it a mecca for America's homeless and they're helping fund the deadliest drug market in the Pacific Northwest. Here, pushers prey on the young, handing them free sample bags of narcotics to turn them into new customers. With thousands of Portland's youths succumbing to heroin's powerful allure, local police have made it their No. 1 priority to disrupt the flow into the city by smashing the local distribution networks.
7.86
#18 - Going to Extremes
Season 4 - Episode 12
The sale of drugs accounts for billions of dollars in illegal commerce across the globe, bringing untold wealth to a select few. But these men and women who live lavish lifestyles off the sale of drugs rarely associate themselves with the ugly underbelly where their products hit the streets with users. These stories show that wherever people use be it an island paradise or a cold city street they can get lost in the shuffle. This episode will go deep into the stories of the users.
7.83
#19 - Hash
Season 2 - Episode 2
A former British gangster serves as guide into this illicit underworld, visiting a secret hash-making location nestled in the mountains.
7.82
#20 - Marijuana
Season 1 - Episode 4
Cannabis is the most widely used illicit drug on the planet. To many, it's an evil weed, but to some, it's a sacred herb, even a lifesaver. For decades the global supply was controlled by criminals, but now a quasi-legal industry worth billions of dollars is booming. Visit growers who are leading a horticultural revolution, hear from users consuming for medicinal purposes, go inside the "Green Rush" of medical marijuana in cities across the U.S. and the violent marijuana cartels in Mexico.
7.78
#21 - Designer Drugs
Season 2 - Episode 7
For a few dollars, users can access dozens of compounds that mimic cocaine, ecstasy or marijuana. Sold as “Bath Salts” or “Spice,” these drugs are entirely legal.
7.78
#22 - High Stakes Vegas
Season 3 - Episode 1
Dealers, gangs and the Mexican cartel traffickers make millions from Las Vegas tourists' demand for illegal drugs.
7.77
#23 - San Francisco Meth Zombies
Season 4 - Episode 1
San Francisco, Calif. the epicenter of the 1960s' psychedelic revolution is notorious for drugs. But in the new millennium, the city, especially the gay community, is struggling to recover from a meth epidemic. The enabler of this situation is the Asian cartel, which has been poisoning San Francisco with high quality meth for almost 25 years but the Mexican cartels are intent on taking over. Nat Geo goes inside one of the worst drug ghettos in America the heart of the drug trade.
7.77
#24 - Euro Coke
Season 7 - Episode 14
Cocaine is Europe-bound and which means a white-knuckle ride along the Amazon, to the docks of Ghana and Nigeria and all the way to Amsterdam.
7.76
#25 - Snitch Cities
Season 5 - Episode 6
Minneapolis and St. Paul the Twin Cities of Minnesota are home to some of the purest heroin anywhere in the United States. Here, mobile drug dealers have taken to their cars and check in and out of cheap hotels every few days to make themselves harder to track down. The police are now turning to confidential informants to hunt down the dealers and then need to flip the dealers on their suppliers to get closer to the cartels.
7.75