Cocaine (benzoylmethylecgonine) (INN) is a crystalline tropane alkaloid that is obtained from the leaves of the coca plant. The name comes from "coca" and the alkaloid suffix -ine, forming cocaine. It is a stimulant, an appetite suppressant, and a topical anesthetic. Biologically, cocaine acts as a serotonin–norepinephrine–dopamine reuptake inhibitor, also known as a triple reuptake inhibitor (TRI). It is addictive because of its effect on the mesolimbic reward pathway.

Unlike most molecules, cocaine has pockets with both high hydrophilic and lipophilic efficiency, violating the rule of hydrophilic-lipophilic balance. This causes it to cross the blood–brain barrier far better than other psychoactive chemicals.

It is illegal to possess, grow, or distribute cocaine for non-medicinal and non-government-sanctioned purposes in almost all countries. Still it is used extensively throughout the world.

Cocaine is a powerful nervous system stimulant. Its effects can last from 15–30 minutes to an hour, depending on the route of administration.

Eric Patrick Clapton, CBE, (born 30 March 1945) is an English guitarist and singer-songwriter. Clapton is the only three-time inductee to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame: once as a solo artist, and separately as a member of The Yardbirds and Cream. Clapton has been referred to as one of the most important and influential guitarists of all time. Clapton ranked second in Rolling Stone magazine's list of the "100 Greatest Guitarists of All Time" and fourth in Gibson's Top 50 Guitarists of All Time.

In the mid 1960s, Clapton departed from the Yardbirds to play blues with John Mayall & the Bluesbreakers. In his one-year stay with Mayall, Clapton gained the nickname "Slowhand". Immediately after leaving Mayall, Clapton formed Cream, a power trio with drummer Ginger Baker and bassist Jack Bruce in which Clapton played sustained blues improvisations and "arty, blues-based psychedelic pop." For most of the 1970s, Clapton's output bore the influence of the mellow style of J.J. Cale and the reggae of Bob Marley. His version of Marley's "I Shot the Sheriff" helped reggae reach a mass market. Two of his most popular recordings were "Layla", recorded by Derek and the Dominos, another band he formed and Robert Johnson's "Crossroads", recorded by Cream. A recipient of seventeen Grammy Awards, in 2004 Clapton was awarded a CBE for services to music. In 1998, Clapton, a recovering alcoholic and drug addict, founded the Crossroads Centre on Antigua, a medical facility for recovering substance abusers.

Pablo Emilio Escobar Gaviria (December 1, 1949 – December 2, 1993) was a Colombian drug lord. He was an elusive cocaine trafficker and a rich and successful criminal. In 1986, he had a short-lived career in Colombian politics.

Escobar was born in the village of Rionegro in Antioquia, Colombia, the third of seven children to Abel de Jesus Escobar, a farmer, and Hemilda Gaviria, an elementary school teacher. As a teenager on the streets of Medellin, he would begin his criminal career, allegedly stealing gravestones and sanding them down for resale to smugglers. His brother, Roberto Escobar, denies this, claiming that the gravestones came from cemetery owners whose clients had stopped paying for site care and that they had a relative who had a legitimate monuments business. He studied for a short time at the University of Antioquia.

Pablo was involved in many criminal activities — running petty street scams, selling contraband cigarettes and fake lottery tickets, and stealing cars. In the early 1970s, he was a thief and bodyguard, and he made a quick $100,000 on the side kidnapping and ransoming a Medellín executive before entering the drug trade. His next step on the ladder was to become a millionaire by working for the multi-millionaire contraband smuggler Alvaro Prieto. Pablo's childhood ambition was to become a millionaire by the time he was 22.

Griselda Blanco (born February 15, 1943) is a former drug lord for the Medellín Cartel, and was a pioneer in the Miami-based cocaine drug trade and underworld during the 1970s and early 1980s.

Blanco was born on 15 February 1943 on the north coast of Colombia, and moved to Medellín when she was three years old. In the film Cocaine Cowboys II: Hustlin' with the Godmother, Blanco's former lover, Charles Cosby, recounts how Griselda, at age 11, allegedly kidnapped, tried to ransom, and eventually shot a child from the upscale flatland neighborhood near her hillside slum neighborhood. By her preteens, she had become a pickpocket, and at the age of 14 she ran away from her physically abusive mother and resorted to prostitution for a few years in Medellín, until age 20. She married her first husband, Carlos Trujillo at that time, and bore him three sons: Dixon, Uber, and Osvaldo.

In the mid-1970s, Blanco and her second husband, Alberto Bravo, emigrated to the United States, settling in Queens, New York. They established a sizable cocaine business there, and in April 1975, Blanco was indicted on federal drug conspiracy charges along with 30 of her subordinates, at that time the biggest cocaine case in history. She fled to Colombia before she could be arrested, but in the late 1970s she returned to Miami.

Stacey Dooley (born 9 March 1987) is a British television personality who rose to fame in 2009 after appearing in a number of BBC Three documentaries highlighting child labour issues in developing countries.

Originally hailing from Luton, where she once worked as a shop assistant, Dooley was approached to appear in a series of proposed cutting edge documentaries for the BBC.

While taking part in the real-life series Blood, Sweat and T-shirts, she was presented as a typical fashion-obsessed consumer. However, during her appearance Dooley was shown to develop a strong interest in the nature of third world labour laws, and subsequently had her own show, Stacey Dooley Investigates, greenlit in August 2009.

The two-part special was shown on BBC Three throughout August and September 2009. It also aired in Australia on ABC2 from 2 June 2010.

In October 2010, BBC Three aired a further two programmes, the first on former child soldiers in the Democratic Republic of Congo and the second on sex trafficking and 'underage sexual slavery' in Cambodia. Radio Times commented on the series, "She sees the joyless expressions of girls parading before men in a bar in Phnom Penh - one girl clutches a cuddly toy. It seems a hopeless situation, especially when we learn that the children are being betrayed by their own families. But spirited, empathetic Stacey won't be thwarted, and sees a way out via a charity that gives [the children] a new purpose in life."