The Importance of the French Connection
Introduction: There have been many successes in law enforcement, and it is important to study them so as to learn what is effective in protecting our communities. I chronicled several such successes (as well as the failures of reform efforts) in my book. One such success was made into a very popular book and movie, The French Connection.
The French Connection(an excerpt from my book): “Lucky Luciano was a mafia boss in 1930’s America, who dabbled in many forms of illegal activity, not the least of which was heroin trafficking. Luciano was ultimately sentenced to a decades long prison sentence for prostitution and extortion in 1936. After assisting the United States military with Allied efforts in Italy around 1942, his sentence was commuted and he was deported to his home country of Italy. Not changing his spots, Luciano used his American drug connections and went from distributing heroin in the United States to setting up a massive European heroin importation conglomerate known as the infamous “French Connection.” For the next several decades, the French Connection grew to distribute an estimated 95% of the world’s heroin. However, after a focused effort by American drug enforcement including partnerships with French counterparts, over one thousand pounds of heroin was intercepted, several clandestine heroin labs in France were dismantled, and the drug enforcement endeavor culminated with the arrest of over 3,000 members of French drug trafficking organization in 1972 (only 57 were arrested the year before). To what end, one might ask-just how did this law enforcement effort impact America? In 1973, on the east coast of the United States, the price of heroin doubled. In fact, the heroin that was available in 1973 was only 2 to 3 percent pure, which made detoxification much easier. And what was the impact of reducing both the amount and purity of heroin? Heroin deaths dropped, the percentage of people in 1973 arrested with heroin in their system went down, admissions to methadone clinics decreased, and most importantly, crime rates dropped dramatically.”[1]
The Book: The French Connection is outlined in a book by Jeffrey B. Stamm titled, On Dope – Drug Enforcement and the First Policeman. I cannot recommend that book enough. Stamm makes a most persuasive case for drug enforcement, all supported by facts and common sense. I will likely do a book review as a blog post, but want to recommend Jeff’s book every chance I get.
Brian Surber, Injustice for All: The (Familiar) Fallacies of Criminal Justice Reform, (True Blue Publishing, LLC,, 2021), p. 128.
