During the late 40s, 50s, who exactly was the biggest guy in drugs in CN? Bonnano and Galante? Luchesse and Ormento? Apparently Gambino was moving shit for Lucky, But Genovese had his own supply and distribution? Did it all come thru the docks, and if so, was this Anastasia's domain? OR is this only true of the Brooklyn docks? Or maybe there was no real primacy of one group? Any thoughts?

great question

As each family had a crew or 2 knee deep in this business

Of your list , Ormento is one guy that had more influence that many today don't

Quite recoginize . He was the source for the Ls and worked very very closely w

Genovese , they all grew up together

Later on though the Bonnanos had no choice but to stay deep in drugs

The others it was less core tho Luchesse even in the 80s sold tons of dope , a lot

Of leftovers from then Ormento reign

Every families stay in the biz so is difficult to say what was the most strongest.

Luciano with don vizzini of villabate send H in the Us hidden in the candies;Bonanno had Galante and strong ties with the sicilian and all the families buy the H by the Corsicans with the French Connection.

Why would Gambino be selling heroin for Luciano? Seems strange given Carlo's family ties.

Read some where Carlo brother Paulo was the dope man. And of course conte. Lil al book said the dean of dope was Joe peck and a stable of brothers selling dope right into gotti days. They were indicted with genovese and chin. Wonder what chin was thinking in the 80tys when he would bump into all the luchese dope guys on prince st way after him and big Paul made there deal you die rule.

And chin let Barney and some old guys a pass after fish cafaro bought a kilo or 2 of them in 86 87 wearing a whire. He had them dead to rights but they got off on a technicality. They bumped to actk g boss few years later.

Cause Lucky was just outta jail and sent to italy,so he was disconnected from the new york streets. Costello was playing too many away games,lansky was doing his own thing, so was joey a, and vito had his own army, plus his own italian connections so he didnt really need luciano. Luchesse was close to lucky and gambino and luchesse were family, plus gambinos in anastasias family, and anastasia is closer to lucky than his own boss. There were complex family relationships during this period.
Its interesting,another myth i just thought of, Lucky at the Cuba meeting trying to take the boss of bosses title, also in his book he says he wanted to ban narcotics, Isay bullshit, I think he wanted the Boss of bosses title, which I actually think the other bosses could care less about, cause he was never coming back. But I think Lucky tried to take charge of allthe dope, and the other bosses were very resistant, they were used to thier independence and were not about to shuck it for the sake of honoring lucky, so they ratted him out and sent him back to italy. Aso in The strenght of the wolf, it says bugsy might have been hit for trying to take over the west coast dope trade, think about that for a second, any thoughts?

Bonanno family lost its seat due to Narc....

Interesting question

From 1930's to the 1950's the Detroit family was bigger than the rest of the families in drugs. When it comes to New York City. The Lucchese family was the biggest in drugs. The Bureau of Narcotics got a lot of informants from that family alone. By the mid 1950's Vito Genovese and Joe Bonanno were the two biggest in drugs. Joe played it smart and allowed Galante and Evola crews to handle the distribution of the drugs, from Canada to Florida, and New York to California. Vito was playing it smart till he became boss of the Genovese and let his guard down, I still believe he was set up on an informants lies, but he did not restrict who dealt in drugs and who didn't, just made sure he got his cut from the profit.

Great point, I alluded to this in another post, describing the relationship between Profaci and Zerilli, and how this goes overlooked a lot during the time period. You got Profaci, Zerilli, Bonnano and Maggadinno, all family ties. Four commission-level figures, and you got Detroit moving massive amounts of dope. I stated previously Joe Adonis was paid by ford motors for labor peace and it was suggested by AlfaRomero that he was a major drug capo; I also bring up the point that they had the Detroit don speak at the Commision meeting challenging the New York Don for a reason, They were huge in drugs, and a power in their own right. And this was a major block of power for Profaci on the Commision.

Something else I realized, Costello had a lot of gambling, lot of income with his business with Lansky and Luciano, and this funded his political protection. I'm thinking in order to compete Adonis and Luchesse moved a lotta drugs to make their political payoffs. The Luchesses seem to be the biggest in New York cause of distribution, they actually had markets like Pleaseant ave to move drugs. Genovese later had his nightclub network, Bonnano had the middleman position on this side of the Atlantic, taking from the Sicilians and facilitating deals with the Americas through Montreal. The Gambinos seemed to be agents of Luciano and maybe Luchesse, as Luciano really couldn't trust Genovese at this time, and probably couldn't really trust Costello with something that Blue-Collar... Thoughts??

The Lucchese family was heavily involved in the French connection. After that netwerk was busted in the early 1970s the Bonannos and Gambinos took over with their Pizza connection rackets until the mid 1980s. It seems that of the New York families the Bonannos, Gambinos and Luccheses have been the most involved in the drug trade. They had crews that were specialized in the importation and disitribution of narcotics. The Luccheses had John Ormento and Vincent Papa while the Bonannos had Carmine Galante and Montreal, and the Gambinos had the 'Cherry Hill Gambinos'.

In the King of Godfathers it is said that Fat Tony Salerno despised the Bonannos because of their involvement in drugs. He apparently said that the Bonannos had a crew of 80 guys that were into drugs only.

their were two joe beck's, both H guys.. paolo was carlo's H guy..true.a real malandrino also..that rule was for the cops to hear..nonsense..paul was taking conte's money, like the 3 monkey's

if they would have killed everyone involved in the drug biz ,there would be no more italians left in the mob.and a few suicide's for the guy left with nobody to kill them selves.

Bronx I had a question. With all these guys involved in drugs, was it visible in their neighborhoods? Did it influence the people, addictions, violence, crime etc. or was it strictly done outside their neighborhoods?

they stricly work together to get vito out of the way. carlo gambino realized he wouldn't be boss of bosses with vito trying to so they had someone drop a dime on the meeting and bam vito was out of carlo gambinos way.

i think the Bonnano

CB, it was Gambino and Lucchese tying to force Joe Profaci to retire, Joe Bonanno, Joe Zerilli, and Joe Cerrito knew what was happening as bosses, Frank Costello of the Genovese advised both Black and Funzi in his family about it, even though he was retired.

DPC, there was no boss of bosses, the other bosses wanted Vito out of the way cause of the fiasco in 57, and his throwing his weight around as a boss, plus he might have decided to hit Gambino, but then he would also have to have hit Lucchese after that, and I don't think Vito would have gone that far since him and Tommy went way back.

Based on what? The sheer size difference alone would have made the NY families bigger operators in the drug racket than Detroit.

The purple gang was the biggest manufacturer of Narcotics in the U.S. during the 1920s through their downfall in the early 1930s. They had pipelines to the west, south, east, and Canada. The Detroit family took over the operations and became powerful in the drug trade as many mobsters from around the county got their material or drugs from Detroit. The BoN kept good tabs and reports, not to mention that about 34 percent of their busts came from the state of Michigan during the 30's and 40s, plus another 19 percent connected to that state.

No one family has controlled it completely ever, some have been more powerful than others at times. Wasn't Galante taken out for trying to control the dope trade? Or was it some underlying causes we aren't aware of.

Thanks for mentioning me. My thoughts are that New York was huge in narcotics because the two largest families had the Manhattan and Brooklyn harbor unions. Due to the sheer volume of freight moving through those two ports, freight that could not all be checked and examined because there was simply too much of it, and due to the regular shipping lines that regularly arrived from Europe, and due to New York's proximity to Europe, it made the New York City harbors the easiest and most logical place for massive amounts of heroin to enter the United States.

And I think it still does.

When it came to the big cash cows, like narcotics, Atlantic City, the Garment District, and other things the bosses split up evenly amongst one another....there was no big boss over everything.

The peace was kept by keeping all egos in check and splitting the loot evenly.

Galante got whacked because he tried to deviate from that formula.

Joe Bonanno also might have tried to deviate from that.

Masseria and Maranzano went down because all of the lieutenants got together and got tired of their greed. The money was flowing to the top and that would not stand. Subsequent to the downfall of the two would be boss of all bosses, a new arrangement was forged whereby peace would be kept by dividing the big money at the top. That's what I believe.

But for the sake of discussion, who was the "defacto" King for the sake of speculation?

It would have to be three to five kings.

One or two in the United States dominating America Cosa Nostra.

One in Sicily dominating that point in Heroin's transit.

Someone in Turkey who was preeminent over that poppy growing industry there.

Someone in Marseilles France dominating L'Unione Corse.

Each king over each territory dominated a specific point in heroin's transit across the globe.

So while Lucky Luciano might have been the most powerful boss from the United States, because he was in absentia and had to defer to the Sicilian Mafia, he wasn't king in the USA or in Italy either. King in the sense of being the top guy.

here we go again, the detroit mafia basically formed from a drug gang

just because you have more people doesn't mean that they're more influential

Do you mean traffickers of narcotics? Obviously heroin was the drug at the time and it came ready for sale into the U.S.

The reason I would tend to assume the NY families were bigger traffickers was because New York has always been the biggest market.

It may be after the period you're talking about but a 1957 study by the NYPD found 3 in 5 (60%) Lucchese members had been arrested for narcotics, 1 in 2 (50%) Genovese members had been arrested for narcotics, 1 in 3 (33%) Colombo members had been arrested for narcotics, 1 in 3 (33%) Bonanno members had been arrested for narcotics, and 1 in 5 (20%) Gambino members had been arrested for narcotics. That's a lot of people, especially considering the size of the families at the time.



You mean with you trolling? I know. When will it stop?

Here is a something that I wonder.......WHO was the first made member to be whacked for being involved with drugs?.....Meaning, where did this fictitious rule of drugs=death start?

Who was the first to get punished for it?

I don't know which gangster was the first to be whacked for selling drugs, but it would have to be someone after 1951.

I am of the belief that it was the 1951 Boggs Act which prompted the Commission to outlaw renegade drug dealing and declare dope to be the exclusive territory of Commission Bosses only. Meaning, if you weren't on the Commission, you were not part of the Mafia drug empire, even if you were a Boss.

Each Commission Boss represented a city in the transit point of international narcotics trafficking and/or a unique entry point for narcotics into the United States, the profits of which were then split evenly by commission bosses. I believe these bosses worked together in some cases to move the same exact dope through different cities, like a conveyor belt.

Some bosses were in control of not just a transit point, but an entry point, such as Manhattan or Brooklyn harbor, Miami, or the Canadian and Mexican borders.

This is what I thought the board was for, I asked this question thinking New York was always tops, and then Giacomo came with the detroit knowledge, and I felt like I learned something...
To me, its a key thing overlooked when understanding the commision politics of the time period.If Detroit was the biggest in one of the if not THE biggest moneymaker, and they are allied to Profaci, and he is allied with Bonnano, and He is allied with Maggadino, and detroit is close to families in St. Louis, ect...
Like taking all this into consideration, WHO WAS ACTUALLY THE STRONGEST BOSS IN THE 30S-40S? Can we really say Lucky? Is it Costello? Or the Brooklyn click of Profaci, Bonnano, Mangano?