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Chapter 1: How did a quiet farm kid end up in an underground economy?
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Chapter 2: What were the early experiences of Ken Behr in Florida's drug scene?
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Chapter 3: How did Ken transition from small-time dealing to a larger operation?
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Chapter 4: What were the consequences of Ken's actions in the drug trade?
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When I started selling, there was no cartel. There was no Pablo Escobar. There was no Ocho. There was no Guzman in Mexico. It wasn't organized. What brought in organized crime is the war on drugs.
Chapter 5: How did Ken's involvement with federal investigations begin?
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Okay, guys, probably one of the craziest stories you've ever heard. We got Ken Baer here today and author of this book right here, One Step Over the Line. Thanks for coming, man.
Hey, thanks for having me.
Yeah, flew out just for this, so I'm honored. And like I said, one of the craziest stories I think people watching this have heard. I don't know.
Chapter 6: What challenges did Ken face while becoming a federal informant?
You've got a lot of good people on, so we'll see. Yeah, let's hear the Sparknotes version of it real quick.
Yeah, so, you know, I guess the elevator speech or the short version is I was just a farm boy growing up in New Jersey in the 60s, and... living the Norman Rockwell life of just, you know, nothing big happening, you know, a little quiet farm life. And in 1969, my family moved to New Orleans.
So it was, you know, like I say in the book, that was the exact same year of Woodstock, free love, drugs, sex, drugs, and rock and roll was all 1969, that, you know, changing times. And then my father passed away when I was 13.
Chapter 7: What were the mechanics of smuggling operations discussed?
So now I had no father in my life, which... about 70% of the people in jail come from fatherless homes as an example of what happens with young men like that. But my mother decided to move us to Florida, to Hollywood, Florida in 1973 to get away from the drugs. And if she had read the newspaper, she would have read that's like the epicenter of when the drug wars started.
And so I was 16 years old, me and my brother started selling a little bit of weed and everything was happening right then. I mean, you know, really good buds were coming in from Columbia and everybody's getting into smoking weed and South Florida was exploding as a tourism area and people moving there. So it was the right place to start out being a little drug dealer.
Chapter 8: How does Ken view the impact of prohibition on organized crime?
So you weren't getting weed from Mexico?
No, no, the Mexican weed was just, man, I used to smoke that in New Orleans and it just wasn't good. Yeah, it wasn't strong enough. No, it's just the Colombian weed was so much better. And I had no idea when I moved to Florida, like all of a sudden these kids are coming up, these other 12, 13-year-old kids going, man, check out these buds. I didn't know what really buds were in New Orleans.
People weren't into marijuana like they were when I moved to Florida. And now keep in mind, Columbia and Florida are the two most closest ports. The closest port from South America is the tip of Columbia to the tip of Florida. It's 1500 miles. So when they started smuggling drugs from Columbia, marijuana especially, it was the closest place to get into the country. That makes sense logistically.
Yeah, logistically it was the right place to be. You know, growing up as a kid, it was the wrong place to be maybe, but as we'll see as the story goes on, right? Yeah, so it was you and your brother. Yeah, and we were just, like, having fun, you know. Everybody was selling dope. I mean, everybody. And it was everybody I knew.
Even now, years later, I'll go back and see people that I know that I thought were straight. Like, you know, like my friend who plays the guitar in a band or the guy who's a service writer. And they'll tell me stories of moving kilos or working for a Colombian drug cartel. And I go, really? You too? So that's how prevalent it was. But I...
I started building, you know, what it was, was everybody figured when you turned 18, you'd stop because you'd go to college and also you could go from juvie to real prison. Right. The stakes got higher. Yeah. So, and my brother got out, you know, he went to college, everybody went to college and a few of us, including me, just felt like building a bigger drug empire was the, was the career path.
And that's what I did.
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