Castellano accepted a share of the DeMeo drug ring even if officially was against the drug.
The only boss that come to mind was Angelo Bruno,do you have infos on other bosses?

Furio, I doubt that any bosses were "morally opposed" to drug trafficking, or any other business that brought in money. But drugs posed a dilemma for them: they knew that some money wasl being kicked upstairs to them from associates who were "secretly" dealing drugs, and they liked the money. But an associate arrested for dealing drubs was a direct threat to them. So they resorted to the usual hypocrisy: they declared death for any associate CAUGHT dealing drugs. That way, what they didn't know wouldn't hurt them.

Considering how conservative a lot of mafia members seem to be I can easily see a few bosses having a moral opposition to drugs. An associate dealing was not a threat to them unless they had a lot of direct contact with them. A member dealing meant a death sentence from the 1950's on. I think that ended the past 20 years or so as more and more up and coming members were using drugs themselves.

Castellano, Gigante (Who according to informants was in charge of killing anyone dealing in drugs.) Then we have that bug in the car where in his own words a boss is saying that anyone dealing drugs needs to be lined up and shot. It was Corallo or Salerno. The recording has been played on here from the youtube channel that had it. A boss actually saying "Line them up and shoot them" is as opposed to it as you can get.

I agree, but also disagree, with that assessment. Because there were, in fact, many old-timers, who were staunchly opposed to dealing narcotics on a moral basis, If only because they feared their own children and grandchildren would be susceptible to the allure of drugs. They also knew that shit 'destroyed' people, and they considered drug dealing "dirty" and beneath them.

Many guys felt that although they were so-called racketeers, as mafiosi, they were 'men of respect' who culled respect from the denizen of their respective neighborhoods. And the very thought of them dealing in that shit was aberrant to them. They considered it to be a 'low class' business that was beneath them, so to speak.

It was one thing to be a bookmaker, policy racketeer, shylock, thief, etc. But drugs? That was another depth altogether, and a line in the sand that many refused to cross.


Those are the 'un-sung' goodfellas that nobody talks about, because fellas like that, many of them anyway, were more reserved in both thought and deed. And nobody advertises that type of stuff in the newspapers. They just lived with, and followed, their own personal set of morals.

Angelo LaPietra. He had men killed who worked for him due to drug use. That is not bullshit either, he really hated drug users to the point he would kill them if he found out they were using or dealing narcotics.

I personally think any made man caught using narcotics should face an automatic death sentence. Same applies to degenerate gamblers.

Accardo, Aiuppa and Alex...from the early 70s onward.

@RushStreet...LaPietra was involved in narcotics since the 1950s...maybe later Accardo and Alex changed his mind. Many victims of the so-called "chop shop wars" were in fact killed because if their involvement in narcotics. So if LaPietra backed the "narcotics faction", he was probably going to end up with a bullet in his head.

Carmine Persico absolutely despised narcotics

NOT true!....He'd kill his general membership if anybody dared get involved dealing (and he did, on several occasions), but just like Profaci before him, Persico allowed a very small contingent of his key men, to deal heavily, from Florida to NY with marijuana, cocaine, and even heroin.

Thats a fact

Federal Bureau of Narcotics (FBN) was an agency of the United States Department of the Treasury from 1930-1968.
90% of the mafiosi had narcotics violations on their record also after 1968.

Thats also not true Hollander...not true at all. ONLY the names put into the FBN "handbook" had narcotics arrests. There were literally thousands more mob guys, many thousands more mob guys, from all over the USA, whose names were never put in the FBN book, because they had absolutely no known ties to the narcotics business in any way, shape, or form.

In fact, to be even more precise, (and you can check this for yourself), many of the names and related profiles of the racket guys who the FBN did include in their book also did NOT have any arrests for narcotics. They were only inserted into the book because they were top mafiosi, "suspected" of dealing in drugs, or because they were friends or associated with men who were known to be in the drug racket.

OK thanks for the nuance NYM. but narcotics still was/is one of the top money makers for the Mafia/Cosa Nostra.

Hollander, I do agree with you that nowadays, the mob, especially the various Mafias in Italy and Sicily, as well as other criminal organizations in other countries like France, Spain, The Netherlands, Germany, etc., do heavily engage in various forms of drug trafficking. By the ton, no less.

The Mob in the USA, because of the current lack of so many other previously lucrative illicit rackets, has also turned more and more to drug trafficking. Because there is little else by which they can turn an illegal buck with.

But most of the "traditional" Cosa Nostra membership, from the 1920s, all the way up through the early 2000s era, didn't need or want involvement in drugs.

Today? In the year 2023?...Whatever is left of the mob, and certainly their blood brothers back in the homeland, do view drugs as a primary source of income for the reasons I enumerated above.

Angelo became wiser with age. Thats all there is to it in my opinion.

Thats right, especially when he inherited the position of the late Torello as representative for one of the Outfit's four factions, aka the Cicero/Chinatown/South Side faction (with Ferriola beneath him), which means he received income from every possible racket, and he obviously didnt need income from narcotics which was still considered as unwatned "heat" at the time by the top bosses such as Accardo, Aiuppa, Alex and Cerone. In fact this was a selfish decision made by the bosses who in turn received income from every racket, while the rest of soldiers and associates lived like everyday bums.

Imagine if the Outfit's bosses listened to high level members like Chuck Nicoletti...i think today we were going to look at the biggest narcotics cartel under the jurisdiction of America's Cosa Nostra.

John Scalish
John LaRocca
James Lanza
Carlos Marcello ?

One of his earliest arrests was in March 1938, an undercover drug agent posing as a dealer bought twenty-three pounds of marijuana from Carlos. Carlos Marcello and the New Orleans Mafia did have a history of selling drugs in (black) neighborhoods.

What about the Grand Hotel des Palmes meeting in '57? Drugs weren't off limits until the enactment of the draconian penalties of the Rockefeller laws in the early Seventies. Those laws, although not federal, impacted the narcotics trade of the Five Families in New York significantly.

I believe in the 70s and 80s the Americans led the Sicilians deal. Although their influence was limited because they were/are seperate organizations.

I think we need to decide if we are talking about bosses in the United States, or in other countries.

Drugs are sold in all neighborhoods. The myth of outsiders dealing to minorities exclusively is used as an excuse for crime in their neighborhoods or any problems they have. Blacks deal to Whites, to Blacks, to anyone. White dealers deal to any race. Most dealers stick to their own areas and deal to their own people. Carlos Marcello selling marijuana in 1938 does not mean he still was doing it in 1960.

With the massive push for the legalization of marijuana I'm not sure that counts. I actually remember growing up blacks would brag about selling crack to white people, like it was some sort of triumph. But Jace excellent point, everyone who deals sells to everyone.

The thing is drugs was a business like hookers and gambling no boss would object it on a moral ground only when they thought it was dangerous maybe.

Tony ducks ?

I disagree (and I have first hand knowledge about that)

He did say on the tapes made members who deal in junk ''gotta be killed'' because they attract too much attention from the authorities.

Of course you do. I'm sorry but I'd rather take the word of people who've actually taken the oath.

Quite a few guys got killed for violating this rule. Some bosses looked the other way, but some certainly didn't.

Now you are trying to twist it around, he was angry about drugs in general, you also could hear how angry he was about drugs, he said that ALL! -----ALL! Hollender--drug dealers should be lined up and shot. He never said 'associates."

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You're sorry? For what? Don't be sorry Giacalone. Why should you be sorry? By all means, you're free to believe whoever you need to, or whatever you need to, if that helps you get through the night. Like the guy once said, "That's what makes horse races. Everybody bets on a different horse."

But keep in mind, that's also why most bettors lose their shirts and why bookmakers make so much money.

Like I said the first time around, I disagree.