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Pablo Escobar was arrested for the first time for drug trafficking. By 1978 Carlos Lehder had consolidated a network of cocaine trafficking both with us and Colombian citizens, and by the early 1980s two organizations, based in the cities of Medellin and Cali, controlled most cocaine exports (Camacho and López 2001). Since the early 1980s the Medellin traffickers began to employ increasingly violent methods. This violence was the result of three interrelated factors: (1) the inability of Medellin traffickers to successfully penetrate the political establishment, (2) the government's decision to confront traffickers by approving an extradition treaty with the United States, and (3) the relative centralization and internal coherence of Medellin traffickers under the leadership of Pablo Escobar.

Escobar was elected to represent Medellin in the Lower Chamber of Congress. Escobar's election generated a strong negative reaction among a wide range of political elites, who opposed the public presence of a trafficker in Congress and successfully pushed for Escobar's loss of political immunity and expulsion from Congress in 1983 (Camacho and López 2001). These events motivated Escobar to react violently against political "oligarchs", who in turn publicly declared war on traffickers by approving an extradition treaty with the us that included narcotics offences. As a reaction to this policy, traffickers led by Escobar created the group "Los Extraditables," responsible for initiating the period of "narco-terrorism" by engaging in strategic violence against the state, targeting high level politicians and carrying out terrorist attacks against the civilian population in an effort to push the government to refrain from making extradition effective

sign of Escobar's war against the state was the assassination of the Minister of Justice Rodrigo Lara Bonilla in 1984, and, as of 1990, the violence of Medellin traffickers had claimed the lives of some 500 police officers in Medellin, hundreds of civilians in terrorist attacks in Bogota and Medellin, and prominent politicians, including presidential candidate Luis Carlos Galá

And Pablo Escobar was hunted down and killed by the Colombian police after a long series of battles.

Younger lieutenants realized that the large organizations had been more vulnerable to attack by US and Colombian authorities. They formed smaller, more controllable groups and began compartmentalizing their responsibilities. One group simply smuggles the drugs from Colombia to Mexico. Another group controls the jungle labs. Yet another deals with transportation of coca base from the fields to the labs. There are well known links between the Colombian Marxists guerilla groups and the cocaine trade. Guerillas protect the fields and the labs in remote zones of Colombia in exchange for a large tax that the traffickers pay to the organization.