Behind The White Line | Ep 1 | A plan is hatched
5/20/202620 min
In episode one of Behind the White Line, Richard Baker gets suited and booted to attend the swanky Birdcage at Flemington, where racegoers make a beeline for the toilets to ‘rack up’. As the world’s highest users of cocaine per capita, Australia has become the number one target of Mexican cartels and crime syndicates. With a billion-dollar shipment headed Down Under, the US Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) hatches a brazen plan with local cops from the small city of Perth, Western Australia, called Operation Beech.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Clips
Transcript preview
First 90 secondsSpeaker 1· Soundbite0:00
Behind The White Line is brought to you by Crime Stoppers WA. Know something about drug supply in your community? Report it anonymously. Search Crime Stoppers WA.
Richard Baker· Host0:09
[upbeat music] So we're at one of the biggest days racing in Australia here. It's about 3:00 in the afternoon. Just been for a piss and, uh, it's time to rack up. The lines are coming out. The boys are two to a cubicle, three to a cubicle. It's, um, yeah, snapshot of Australia right now. No judgment here. They're having a great time. But, um, yeah, every one of those lines has a little story behind it. [upbeat music] I doubt any of the party crowd at Derby Day would think of their nostrils as the endpoint of a global criminal supply chain. Same for the lawyers, politicians, teachers, journos, bankers, tradies, even school mums meeting for wines and lines. Most users in Australia see cocaine as a harmless weekend treat. As a country, we're in the middle of a serious binge. Coke's always been around, sure, but never this normalized.
Speaker 3· Soundbite1:16
What is that first line of cocaine like? It is like salvation. It is like freedom. It is like strength. It is like every good feeling in that world.
Richard Baker· Host1:23
About 150 million lines were snorted in Australia over the past 12 months. That's five tons of cocaine.