The cocaine trade of the 70s and 80s had an indelible impact on contemporary Miami. Smugglers and distributors forever changed a once sleepy retirement community into one of the world’s most glamorous hot spots, the epicenter of a $20 billion annual business fed by Colombia’s Medellin cartel. By the early 80s, Miami’s tripled homicide rate had made it the murder capital of the country, for which a Time cover story dubbed the city “Paradise Lost.” With COCAINE COWBOYS, filmmaker Billy Corben – whose first feature Raw Deal: A Question Of Consent, caused a sensation at the 2001 Sundance Film Festival – paints a dazzling portrait of a cultural explosion that still echoes as Hollywood myth, evidenced by the latest manifestation, NBC/Universal’s Miami Vice, opening July 28th. Composer of the original “Miami Vice” theme, Jan Hammer, provides the score.

In 1991, Charles Cosby was selling ounces of cocaine on the inner-city streets of Oakland, California. Bringing in a couple grand a week, he was living the new American Dream.

Then he wrote a fan letter to “Cocaine Godmother” Griselda Blanco – immortalized in rakontur’s Cocaine Cowboys – who was serving time at a nearby federal prison. Six months later, he was a multi-millionaire.

Charles was not only running Blanco’s $40 million a year cocaine business, he was also her lover. When she recruited him to participate in a prison break that involved the kidnapping of JFK Jr., Charles knew he was in over his head.

Also known as “The Black Widow,” for her propensity to permanently dispose of her men when she’s done with them (or when they betray her), Griselda would stop at nothing to ensure that Charles was faithful to her. And he would learn that lesson the hard way.

This is the story of a kid from the streets who (literally) gets in bed with a Colombian queenpin. It’s New Jack City meets Scarface – only the truth!.