Original Narcos: The Secret History of the First War on Drugs

Decades before the rise of Pablo Escobar and almost a century before El Chapo found notoriety, the world’s biggest drug traffickers did not hail from Latin America, but from England, Canada, and China. It was the Roaring Twenties and they were the original narcos — criminals who thrived when drugs like cocaine and heroin were made illegal during the height of the jazz age. To the press and the public, they were known as “Cocaine Kings” or “Opium Kings,” or the all-encompassing “Dope Kings”. Some had more luck than others.

Original Narcos explores the lives of these villains, as well as the detectives who tried to shut down a global trade in a world without instant communications and monitoring technology. This book lays out the true, mysterious story of the early drug lords, including the legendary Brilliant Chang and his gang, May Roberts, otherwise known as the White Queen of Limehouse, and her supplier, the Montreal-based international man of mystery Max Faber, as well as his associate, the French anarchist Laurent Deleglise. Together, they formed one of the world’s first drug cartels.

Drawing on previously secret police and intelligence reports, this book contains stark revelations about Richard Cadbury Butler, a member of the illustrious Cadbury’s chocolate family, who got mixed up in the drug trade, as well as the former American journalist Johannes Steel, who was once celebrated for standing up to Hitler but who was later unmasked as a Soviet spy. Cadbury Butler’s case was successfully covered up at the time, while Steel’s was the first drugs case to be investigated by MI5 and MI6, as it was linked to the English nobility.