Pablo Escobar was a drug smuggler.
Pablo Escobar . His cartel supplied an estimated 80 % of the cocaine smuggled into the United States at the height of his career , turning over US $ 21.9 billion a year in personal income . In the 1970s , he began to work for various contraband smugglers , often kidnapping and holding people for ransom before beginning to distribute powder cocaine himself , as well as establishing the first smuggling routes into the United States in 1975 . His infiltration to the drug market of the U.S. expanded exponentially due to the rising demand for cocaine and , by the 1980s , it was estimated that 70 to 80 tons of cocaine were being shipped from Colombia to the U.S. on a monthly basis .