Prohibition Era Rackets

Bootlegging is the most obvious. Numbers, extortion... what else was big back then? Pardon my ignorance..

counterfeiting money, stamps, important type documents and items.
union/trade assoc.

ive read recently that there was a lot more heroin trafficking in that era, that most people know of. and a lot of cocaine, hard drugs were a lot more available than once believed.

The Grocery Conspiracy

http://www.gangrule.com/articles/the-grocery-conspiracy

I read that Luciano started running drugs in his younger years when he was delivering hats as a front job.

Prostitution, Gun running

Opium and heroin were widespread in those days (though not as much as they would become later in the 50s-70-s) but not coke. Coke was never used on a large scale back then and it wouldn't be used until the late 70s, and 80s.

I do not know if you mean chopping and snorting and smoking it.But Coke was in almost everything back then. But i do not know about the mob using it as a money maker.

It was used for pharmaceutical purposes until the 1914(?) drug convention which outlawed it along with opium and heroin. It was still used in dentistry and maybe as an anesthetic but not abused on a large scale like in the 80s, and snorting, chopping or IVing are just routes of administrating it, we're still talking about the same substance.
My point being that I doubt the mob, or anybody profited that much on coke because it wasn't abused on a large scale.

Yes , I thank you cos i knew through the years i would see shows saying the it was in many things that you would never think it would be in..

Yes, to the heroin.

Here is a fantastic article on Prohibition in Pittsburgh:


http://newsinteractive.post-gazette.com/prohibition/indexmobile.html

Found this information from an online book Memphis: In Black & White
" police had given up on trying to control the use of cocaine, which was routinely sold in pharmacies in small flat containers called "lids" for 50 cents."
This was in 1909.

i always thought it was mainly alcohol,prostitution,gambling,drug and corruption.