Editor’s Note: Today we conclude the series with Amund Tallaksen’s piece entitled, “The Transatlantic Heroin Traffic and the City of New Orleans.” The other posts in this series can be found here, here, and here.
In 1968, the recently formed Louisiana Commission on Law Enforcement and Administration of Criminal Justice concluded that: “there is no longer an organized narcotics syndicate in New Orleans. During the early 1950’s the Mafia left the narcotics business in this area. Since that time, the heroin business in this city has been almost completely taken over by several Negroes who are working independently and in competition with each other.”
Three interrelated events in the early 1950s transformed the patterns of heroin use and addiction in New Orleans: (1) the passage of a very strict drug law by the state legislature in Baton Rouge in 1951; (2) the conscious decision by the New Orleans Mafia to step back from the drug trade, and instead focus on less risky endeavors; and (3) the rise of a new cohort of African American drug dealers who would create interstate smuggling routes to New Orleans from cities like New York and Chicago.