On December 2, 1993, infamous drug lord Pablo Escobar was shot dead on a rooftop in Medellin, Colombia. Just a few years earlier he was one of the most powerful and richest drug lords in history. Pablo Escobar's disappearance was brought about by a combination of legal and illegal means. A Colombian police unit known as Search Bloc, with the help of specialized American military units, conducted the legal search for Escobar. A vigilante group known as Los Pepes used brutal and illegal tactics to aid the search for Escobar and take revenge for the extreme violence perpetrated by him and the Medellin Cartel. Pablo Escobar had modest beginnings in his criminal career, but his ambition was soon evident. . Escobar was the son of a middle school teacher and a cattle rancher. At a young age he began his first criminal activities by stealing and selling gravestones with his friends. He soon moved on to car thefts, street scams and racketeering. This small band was not big enough for Escobar's ambitions. In 1975 he killed the reigning drug kingpin, Fabio Restrepo, and took over his organization. This gave Escobar his first foothold in the cocaine industry. Within a few years Pablo Escobar became one of the most powerful drug traffickers in the world. Together with a group of friends and collaborators he formed the Medellin cartel. The Medellin Cartel smuggled cocaine into the United States of America. At the height of his power, Pablo Escobar controlled eighty percent of all cocaine shipped to the United States. All his business success has naturally given him a huge amount of money and power. At the height of his power Escobar was declared, by Forbes and Fortune magazines, one of the ten richest... in the middle of the paper... the situation was more intact and he may never have been found by the Search Bloc. After a long search and the deaths of many hundreds of people, Los Pepes, the Americans and the Search Bloc, completed their common goal, the death of Pablo Escobar. When Escobar died in 1993, the amount of cocaine destined for the United States did not change. Just as in almost every situation where a drug kingpin is dethroned, a new boss immediately fills the void. The war on drugs and the search for Escobar cost many people their lives and did not improve the situation in the long term. When there is a business with such huge guaranteed profits, there will always be people who benefit from this business, regardless of whether it is legal or not. The only possible way to effectively combat illicit drug trafficking is to eliminate profits from the business by reducing the demand for drugs.