List of Famous Drug Lords

Eduardo Arellano Félix is a Mexican drug trafficker, brother of Benjamín, Ramón, Javier and sister Enedina, all drug traffickers. The Arellano-Félix Organization, also known as the Tijuana Cartel, has been responsible for numerous murders and the smuggling of thousands of tons of marijuana, cocaine, heroin and methamphetamine for more than a decade. The DEA believes that the Arellano-Félix brothers were responsible for the numerous smuggling tunnels that were found in January 2006.

Francisco Rafael Arellano Félix was a Mexican drug lord and former leader of the Tijuana Cartel, a drug trafficking organization. He was the oldest of seven brothers and headed the criminal organization early in the 1990s alongside them. Through his brother Benjamín, Francisco Rafael joined the Tijuana Cartel in 1989 following the arrest of Miguel Ángel Félix Gallardo, one of the most prominent drug czars in Mexico during the 1980s. When the Arellano Félix took control of the organization in the early 1990s, tensions with the rival Sinaloa Cartel prompted violent attacks and slayings from both fronts.

Miguel Ángel Rodríguez Orejuela is a Colombian drug lord, formerly one of the leaders of the Cali Cartel, based in the city of Cali. He is the younger brother of Gilberto Rodríguez Orejuela. He married Miss Colombia 1974, Marta Lucía Echeverry.

Marcos Arturo Beltrán Leyva was an organized crime figure and the leader of the Mexican drug trafficking organization known as the Beltrán-Leyva Cartel, which he and his brothers Carlos, Alfredo and Héctor founded. His cartel was responsible for cocaine, marijuana, heroin and methamphetamine production, transportation and wholesaling. It controlled numerous drug trafficking corridors into the United States and was responsible for human smuggling, money laundering, extortion, kidnapping, murder, contract killing, torture, gun-running and other acts of violence against men, women, and children in Mexico. The organization was connected with the assassinations of numerous Mexican law enforcement officials.

José Santacruz Londoño, also known as Chepe Santacruz, was a Colombian drug lord. Along with Gilberto Rodríguez Orejuela and Miguel Rodríguez Orejuela, Santacruz was a leader of the Cali Cartel.

Pedro Avilés Pérez, also known as "El León de la Sierra", was a Mexican drug lord in the state of Sinaloa beginning in the late 1960s.

Manuel Antonio Noriega Moreno was a Panamanian politician and military officer who was the de facto ruler of Panama from 1983 to 1989. An authoritarian ruler who amassed a personal fortune through drug trafficking operations, he had longstanding ties to United States intelligence agencies before the U.S. invasion of Panama removed him from power.

William Leonard Pickard is one of two people convicted in the largest lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD) manufacturing case in history. In 2000, while moving their LSD laboratory across Kansas, Pickard and Clyde Apperson were pulled over while driving a Ryder rental truck and a follow car. The laboratory had been stored near a renovated Atlas-E missile silo near Wamego, Kansas. Gordon Todd Skinner, one of the men intimately involved in the case but not charged due to his cooperation, owned the property where the laboratory equipment was stored.

Khun Sa was a Shan drug lord. Before he assumed the name "Khun Sa" in 1976, he was known primarily by his Chinese name, Zhang Qifu (張奇夫). He was born in Hpa Hpeung village, in the Loi Maw ward of Mongyai, Northern Shan State, Burma.

Edgar Valdez Villarreal, also known as La Barbie, is a Mexican-American former drug lord and formerly a high-ranking lieutenant of the now disbanded Beltrán Leyva Cartel. Valdez is currently serving a 49 year prison sentence at USP Coleman II in Florida.