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?
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.
