Did the American Mob need Drugs?

The American Mafia always preached against the drugs but why do that if they needed that level of income to make money and keep up with many of the money making drug dealers out there. Or, could they have stayed away and found other avenues to make money and replace any kind of money that came from drugs? Anthony Casso has said that he made more money from the gasoline scam than anything. Sammy Gravano made a fortune from construction. And Carmine Lombardozzi made a his fortune from Wall Street. I’m sure there are others. It is said that some of the old time bosses truly believed that drugs would be the death of the mafia in America especially because of the strict anti drug laws that were made at the time. But what do you think would have happened to the american mob if they never got heavily involved in drugs like they did?

the mafiosi both in italy and the united states always said they can't be involved in drug and prostitution, they said it even in the ceremony of initiation... but concerning the drug they always were involved since the beginning

I’m guessing that they did, drug trafficking is a huge & never ending money business. Unless countries legalize heroin or cocaine which is nearly impossible, there will always be a market. LCN got deeper into it because the US Government basically legalized some things that they were known for (Loansharking, Gambling, etc.) so they were forced to enter this market even more since their typical bread and butter (Truck hijacking, loansharking) were drying up as the 20th century went on.

I think the American Mafia could see there was too much
Money to pass up.

I think that no matter what the criminal act is, if it is a HUGE money maker, they have to acknowledge it and control it. Even if it is just oversight control, with no direct involvement.
If they don’t, their power was in jeopardy.

Just like the gas tax scam....Carmine knew the problems that were brewing.

they were into drugs on all levels from day one, anything else is a myth..

Agreed. And it will never completely stop.

How could they have absolute control without being directly involved in some way? It seemed as though the people directly involved(the big drug pushers in the 70s and 80s like Frank Matthews) were the ones making the big money while cutting out the Italians. And if not for their involvement with drugs, do you think they would still thrive? Or would there only be a select few who were business minded who would find a way to make big money?

Individual mobsters have specialized in different rackets. And there have been some mobsters who have looked down their nose at certain businesses. But the Mafia and organized crime in general have always been involved in anything that will make money. That's it. And this goes back to year one and before with Luciano, Rothstein, Genovese, Siegel, Buchalter and others working in heroin importation. In the 50s the Bonannos formalized certain drug alliances between Italian/Corsican criminals and American families, including but not limited to New York and Detroit groups.

The important thing to keep in mind, is that as a group, wicked people who do not turn up their nose at murder, at rape, at assault, at pimping, at extortion, are hardly going to have moral objections to being involved in the manufacture, importation, wholesaling, distribution, financing or street level sales of narcotics. They can't afford to do that.

Also people, criminals included, are often hypocrites and liars. IIRC Family Boss Joe Bonanno claimed in his autobiography that so-called "men of honor" didn't deal drugs. He had no comment on his meetings with Italian mobsters to import drugs and divide up territory or the fact that his underboss, Carmine Galente, was one of the biggest heroin importers on the East Coast. Similarly Lucchese Boss Tony Corallo complained about having too many "junk guys" in the Family and threatened to kill them b/c they might bring too much heat. There is no record of Corallo making similar comments when the prior acting boss,Carmine Tramunti earned a lot of money from heroin dealings. There is no record of Corallo going to people in the East Harlem section of his group and telling them to stop importing/selling drugs. And there is certainly no record of Corallo turning down tribute from made men who were also deeply involved in drug trafficking.

If the Italian-American Mafia hadn't gotten involved in drugs during the time that they did another group would have taken the lead.

Mafia has been in drugs since the beginning. Don Vito Cascio Ferro, the Sicilian bigshot who spent some of the early years of the last century in NYC, set up the first drug pipelines from Europe and the Middle East to the East Coast of NYC. For decades, drugs were a relatively small, but highly lucrative, part of the Mob's take. And, as long as the victims were racial minorities, jazz musicians and others that society didn't care about, penalties were relatively small. The law was content to take bribes and look the other way.

The explosion of drug use in the Sixties ruined many young white kids, including sons and daughters of police, judges and politicians. Penalties got very stiff. This created a dilemma for the Dons. The Mob is a pyramid scheme: part of every associate's take gets to the boss. If they allowed drug trafficking, they'd be at the mercy of someone who'd get caught and rat them out in return for a lighter sentence. But if they enforced a ban on drug sales, they'd be cutting themselves off from a big source of income.

So, they reacted with typical Mob hypocrisy: They declared death for anyone caught dealing drugs. But, as long as the drug dealers weren't caught, no problem--what they didn't know wouldn't hurt them. That's where the myth that "Mafia doesn't do drugs" originated.

I agree TB. We have viewed or listened to so many narratives about Mafiosi involved in drug activity (going back to at least Rothstein and his acolytes such as Luciano) that Gambino's or Castellano's prohibition of drug dealing by family members seems naive at best.

I think that at least the modern mobsters prefer another way to made money from drugs like impose a tribute to the drug dealers.
Because today there few mobsters that would risk 20 y and more for selling coke or heroin while can made easly money with gambling,loansharking etc.
The case of Matty Madonna that get 30 y for selling H and dosent speak doesnt exist today,more mobsters prefer his blood family that the other family.

Has there ever been any boss who was truly against drug dealing? Of course they couldn’t kill anybody and everybody who was ever involved but they could still be hugely against the selling of drugs to make money for whatever reason. There are many mobsters who made kingpin money without touching drugs but guys like that weren’t as common as the guys who weren’t as business-minded and chose to sell drugs as their primary source of income.

It has been a myth that was proven wrong mostly. It seems as though that the mafia is not viewed as big drug traffickers in America. When you think about it, they’re not much different from cartels if there main source of income really is drugs. Franzese said that there were guys who were totally against it but of course not everybody.

John Scalish was truly against dealing in narcotics

Would the American mob have almost collapsed without drugs at one point? People make it seem like they are not as dependent on drugs as much as they are on other rackets but I find that hard to believe. The mafia in Italy has no shame in openly trafficking drugs and many of them are massively wealthy and still live in the shadows almost undetected.