"The first major American drug dealer was probably Arnold Rothstein
... [COHEN, R., 1999, p. 131] ... In the mid-nineteenth century, when
the government started to ban certain narcotics, drugs were smuggled
in from Europe and the Far East. But it was a slapdash affair -- not a
business. Rothstein changed all that. He saw Repeal coming and knew
drugs could fill the void left by alcohol ... So in the late [19] twenties
Rothstein retooled a mechanism he had built to carry booze. It would
now carry, among other things, heroin and cocaine ... [It became] a
blueprint for smuggling drugs into America."