Damian Garcia

DAMIAN GARCIA: THE OPIUM/HASHISH NETWORK...This is a story of Damian Garcia, and the international drug trade in Opium and Hashish, by graduate students in New York City, circa 1972. It is a story of friendship, family, loyalty, and an exceedingly discreet and extremely profitable international drug smuggling business plan. The business plan was a new combination of Opium and Hashish product, the family branded as O/H. The targeted demographics for O/H were graduate students at major university campuses, and nurses and doctors, attorneys, and accountants worldwide. O/H became the professionals' drug of choice. The financial returns vastly exceeded their wildest imaginations, totaling in the mega millions, with significant monies invested in social services helping those in need, professional development, and legitimate international business investments that prospered. Money laundering is the back end of the international drug trade. The combination of both opium and hashish into a high profit, higher quality product, was a true marketing genius for the time. It took the combined brains of graduate students in international business, banking, and law to put into practice what they studied in school. If only their professors knew how talented their students truly were! The mood of the country was fading from the glory of the Woodstock nation of 1969, to the realities of the Vietnam War of 1972. The music was changing, and free love was fading into free infections. America was turning from a nation of peace and love to a nation of hate, violence, and hard drugs. Graduate students were intellectually curious, politically liberal, and anti-most things establishment, and definitely anti-police. They were the perfect consumers for marketing the business model for opium and hashish. O/H became an international enterprise unknown to all but a few. Those that knew would never tell; that was the family code. Damian Garcia was a street-wise New Yorker in spirit and attitude.