Editor's note: This article contains profanity that some may find offensive. This is part one of a three part series showing different aspects of life inside Colombia's drug gangs.



A gang member sniffs in a cloud of cocaine dust as he cuts the drug with other substances.



MEDELLIN, Colombia (CNN) -- A young man with tattoos covering one arm rolls hundreds of marijuana joints in the half-light of a shack, perched on a hillside in a Medellin slum.



A 9mm pistol and a .38 revolver lie on his work bench. An old battery-powered radio blares out the salsa music classic, "Todo Tiene Su Final" or "Everything Comes To An End."



"I'm getting calluses on my tongue rolling all these spliffs," he laughs, telling me has enough marijuana for about 1,000 joints. He and his comrades plan to sell them for about 50 cents apiece.



A few doors away, two other gang members have raided their mother's kitchen for soup plates, drinking glasses and a blender.



They've just taken delivery of a kilogram (2.2 pound) brick of pure cocaine. Their job now is to cut it and package it in gram bags to peddle on street corners they control.  Watch as cocaine is cut »



A female gang member shows up with two more bags, one containing powdered caffeine and the other lidocaine, a dental anesthetic used to dilute the pure cocaine.



They mix business with pleasure. Every now and again one of the gang members pulls off the top of the blender and breathes in a cloud of pulverized cocaine.



One of them coughs and keels over in the kitchen. Seconds later, he's back on his feet snorting cocaine off a spoon.



"Breathing that cocaine cloud mellows me out so I need a line to take me back up," he says.



Standing in the background, snorting lines of pure cocaine off a pocketknife is the gang leader, a man in his mid-20s. His cohorts call him "Chief."



He tells me they'll sell the heavily cut cocaine for $1.50 a gram. Higher purity powder goes for about $4 a gram. That's much cheaper than the $50 or $60 a heavily cut gram costs on most U.S. and European streets, according to estimates from the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration.



I agree to conceal Chief's true identity to protect him from the police and rival gangs. As we chat, he dismantles a small caliber pistol.  Watch the gangs in action »



"Around here the only law is the rules of the street," he explains. "The rules don't change; they always will be the rules, here or anywhere else."



A trusted source, who made the introduction for me, tells me Chief is a "total animal living on borrowed time," who has earned so many enemies he cannot risk stepping outside the few hundred square yards of his home turf.



"I'm only human, of course I get afraid," he says. "Afraid my life will end suddenly before I can do anything to get out of this war."



Since the time when undisputed cocaine king Pablo Escobar held sway here, the "northeastern commune" district has forged a fearsome reputation as a recruiting ground for drug cartel hit men and violent gang wars.



Medellin is once again in the grip of a vicious drug war. In January to September this year, city authorities say the murder rate has more than doubled with almost 2,000 killings.



Officials at the Medellin public prosecutor's offices say the vast majority of victims were shot, likely victims of rival drug gangs and cocaine capos.  Watch marijuana joints being rolled by the hundreds »



That makes Medellin as dangerous as Ciudad Juarez, the frontier town dubbed Mexico's most dangerous city as a result of the ongoing cartel war there. Authorities in Juarez say killings are up from last year and are hitting record highs.



Colombian authorities estimate there are around 130 street gangs -- known as "combos" -- in Medellin, totaling some 6,000 members
How many killings have there been? where drug war raging Where did these killings happen What did they sell What does the gang sell? Where is the drug war?
2,000 Medellin Medellin cocaine. cocaine. Medellin
question: How many killings have there been?, answer: 2,000 | question: where drug war raging, answer: Medellin | question: Where did these killings happen, answer: Medellin | question: What did they sell, answer: cocaine. | question: What does the gang sell?, answer: cocaine. | question: Where is the drug war?, answer: Medellin