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.
There is some validity to Giacomo's post regarding Detroit bringing in Heroin, but I think his dates are wrong. See the attached newspaper clippings from 1959 that reports on testimony from Charles Siragusa, from the Bureau of Narcotics,to a Senate Rackets Committee. Siragusa claims that Detroit and St. Louis had the largest pipeline of H into the US for a period of time, begining in 1949-1950. Siragusa also claims Detroit and St Louis were selling into NY. The article claims the key figures were Raffaele Quasarano (Detroit), Salvatore Vitale (Italy), Tony Giordano (St Louis), Tony Lopiparo (St Louis) and Ralph "Shorty" Caleca (St. Louis).
