Much has been written about the narcotics trade through the years, and anything I say here is but a bleep in its vast and sordid history on the world stage, narcotics, in all its various forms, has seemingly been around forever. The narcotics trade across the world is an incalculable multi-zillion-dollar underworld industry. NOTHING can match its allure and unbelievably quick profits.
Unfortunately, that allure has also brought a lot of misery to our populace the world over. A misery that few other substances or products have ever matched. The variety of narcotics and other illegal substances available is almost breathtaking in its scope.
Marijuana that is grown in the fields of Colombia, Mexico, Jamaica, Australia, the United States, and a variety of other countries and locales has been a staple since the beginning. The “training wheels,” so to speak.
Hashish grown in the fields and mountains of Nepal, Morocco, Turkey, and Iran to name but a few of its origin points.
Barbiturates and opioids, stimulants, hallucinogens, and more are manufactured in laboratories the world over. These drugs have changed in popularity over time. But for every era, there is always a “new” inventive substance to addict people.
In the 1970s it was the Rorer-714 quaaludes as a popular downer, black beauties as a powerful stimulant, and the well-known yellow jackets, and so on.
During the Hippie era, the craze were the psychedelics such as acid. Today it is the synthetic narcotic pill oxycotin and all its various spinoffs.
Heroin, morphine, and opium is grown across the world in such countries as Turkey, China, Thailand, Iran, Iraq, Mexico, Colombia, Argentina to name but a few. These narcotics, of course, have the most deadly of reputations…and for good reason.
Its addictive qualities have “captured” the souls of untold millions of unfortunates who have fallen victim to its deadly grip through the ages.
Cocaine has also always been a highly sort after drug since at least the late 1800s. But since the early 1970s, it has seen a tremendous resurgence across the world. In the last fifty years, it has arguably become the drug of choice.
Whether its the lower class drug user, the solidly middle-class blue and white-collar workers, or the so-called high class “beautiful people,” its false allure as a “safer” powder to casually enjoy has helped it to explode in popularity. And South America’s drug merchants and Cocaine kings have made sure to capitalize on it.
A extra dangerous spin-off product from cocaine has been crack, which is a smokeable form of the drug and even more addictive than cocaine itself. here is just no end to the diabolical minds of drug merchants. “Where there is a will there is a way,” as they say, and when there’s big money involved there is always a will!
There are a host of other illicit products that have been marketed for many decades.
Collectively, whether they are natural or man-made substances, the drug business taken as a whole is a medley of varied and very profitable sub-industries that has become the scourge of mankind the world over!
And it knows no boundaries or ethnicities. Every country of the world has its drug problems. Every country has its own drug merchants and traffickers. And every country has a segment of its people who “indulge” in various drugs and narcotics.
It will always be that way.
That fact pretty much guarantees that there will also always be men willing to risk it all and traffic drugs to make the millions that potentially await them.
The United States is no different. In fact, in some ways, because we are a wealthy country our drug problem has been far worse because of greater access to money in which to indulge people’s curiosities and habits.
There is no end to people willing to engage in drug dealing because of the enormous profits involved.
But Cosa Nostra has been at the forefront of certain types of narcotics trafficking for many decades. And although the Mafia generally goes where the money is, Italian organized crime mostly traffics and deals in heroin, cocaine, and marijuana. Occasionally you will come across “connected guys” who dabble in other drugs, but primarily the three I mentioned have traditionally been their bailiwick.
Dealing in “Junk”
Among the first recognized major Mafia-connected narcotics rings operating in America was a massive multi-state heroin and opium smuggling ring nabbed in 1937 down in Texas and Louisiana with direct ties to their Mafia headquarters based in New York City.
The Federal Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs (FBN), which was the precursor of today’s Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), had been tracking the ring’s movements for several years.
