cocaine cowboy

English

Noun

cocaine cowboy (plural cocaine cowboys)

1. (slang) A cocaine smuggler or dealer whose activities are likely to lead them into violent confrontations.
   • 1986, Steven Wisotsky, Breaking the Impasse in the War on Drugs, page 110:

     It has shown up repeatedly in cocaine cowboy shootouts in public places and in the execution of whole families, including infants.

   • 1991, North American International Business, Vol. 4, Iss. 1-6, p. 55:

     The country's leaders worry that the lack of economic incentives will turn more of its citizens into cocaine cowboys.

   • 2004, Chuck Pfarrer, Warrior Soul: The Memoir Of A Navy Seal, page 118:

     Shoulder to shoulder were cocaine cowboys, thousand-dollar-a-night call girls, arms merchants, DEA agents, spies, squint-eyed bankers, and beribboned Panamanian military thugs.

   • 2011, Danny Rolling, Sondra London, The Making of a Serial Killer, page 117:

     It was in Kansas City that he first smoked cocaine, and came close becoming either a cocaine cowboy or a bucket of fishbait as a result.

   • 2021, John Annerino, Dead in Their Tracks: Crossing America's Desert Borderlands, page 33:

     They can ride a bus 150 miles south to Culiacán, Sinaloa, make a manda (religious promise) to narcosantón Jesús Malverde, the patron saint of drug dealers, and become cocaine cowboys.