Pablo Escobar was a dealer.
Pablo Emilio Escobar Gaviria ( [ ˈpaβ̞lo eˈmiljo eskoˈβ̞aɾ ɣ̞aˈβ̞iɾja ] ; 1 December 19492 December 1993 ) was a Colombian drug lord and narco-terrorist . 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 .