Yes, indeed, Hoodlum--we thought that drugs were off-limits for Mafia because that was the fiction they created. Reality: Mob was dealing drugs from Day One. Don Vito Cascio Ferro, the Sicilian pezzanovante who spent 1900-1904 in NYC and New Orleans, helped set up the first drug pipelines to the US. Drug trafficking was small-scale and local; and as long as sales were to minorities, musicians, immigrants and others society didn't care about, The Law was happy to be paid to look the other way, But the profits were too tempting to ignore, which is why, by the late Fifties, drugs started to become big business.

Today's Dons are just as hypocritical: They say they'll kill anyone caught dealing drugs. But, if the dealers are kicking good money upstairs, and they aren't caught, well, what the Dons don't know won't hurt them.