Word: cocas
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After Mike Smolyansky, 40, and Edward Puccosi, 43, emigrated from the Soviet Union, one of the things they missed most was kefir. A cultured-milk product similar to yogurt but slightly effervescent, kefir (pronounced kuh-fear in Russian) is more popular in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe than Coca-Cola is in America. So two years ago, the men, now in Chicago, set up a company called Lifeway to make and distribute kefir...
...tracks and betting parlors. His large California real estate holdings include a $20 million home and a 157-acre site on the highest spot in Beverly Hills, where he is building a mansion. He continues to run Merv Griffin Enterprises, the TV production firm that he sold to Coca-Cola in 1986 for a reported $250 million. All told, the chairman of Griffin Co., which manages the business ventures that he still owns, is worth something like $600 million, making him one of America's richest individuals...
...asking for the question. Jeopardy's success funded Griffin's other investments, including Wheel of Fortune, the most profitable syndicated show ever, with estimated revenues of more than $100 million a year. The two shows were the trophy properties in Griffin's sale of his production company to Coca-Cola...
That spirit found a new expression in the late 1970s when the cocaine business came to town. The coca plant, from which the substance is derived, grows best not in Colombia but in Bolivia and Peru, where the leaves are made into a rough paste. But turning the paste into the white powder that foreigners consume in such prodigious quantities requires laboratory facilities and technical skills. Medellin had them, as well as convenient proximity to the huge U.S. market and a work force willing to take risks. "There has always been an entrepreneurial spirit in this city," says Jaramillo. "These...
While drug-related violence once touched mostly those in the business, no one is safe today. Basuco, a crude, habit-forming derivative of coca paste, was introduced into the local market by the cartel in 1984, when it had excess low-grade Colombian coca paste on its hands. Now there are thousands of addicts in the city, many of them knife-wielding street criminals who will kill for the price of a fix, less than a dollar. "Ten years ago you could stroll the city streets after dark," recalls Gomez. "That's suicidal...