Frank Lucas was born on September 9, 1930 in Lenoir Country, North Carolina. As a child, Frank Lucas was not motivated to start a life of crime until KKK members murdered his cousin. His cousin, Obadiah, was only twelve years old and was murdered for the simple fact of “reckless eyeballing” or looking at a white woman. This sparked an angry motivation in Lucas that would be the start of the rest of his life.
By the time Lucas was sixteen he had to flee from North Carolina. Lucas engaged in a fight with a former employer, robbed him, and set fire to his building. On advice of his mother, he fled to Harlem, New York. Once in Harlem Frank Lucas hustled the game of billiards for money and got caught up in petty crime until he met Bumpy.
Ellsworth “Bumpy” Johnson was a very well known heroin dealer in New York. In Harlem, Lucas became Bumpy’s driver. For fifteen years Bumpy took Lucas under his wing, teaching him the ins and outs of the real drug lord business. In a diner, while Lucas and Bumpy were having breakfast, Bumpy had a heart attack, passing away, leaving the industry for Lucas to take over.
Lucas traveled around and came to the realization that to be successful he would have to break the monopoly that the Italian mafia held in New York. He went one step further, when he realized American servicemen were getting their hands on drugs in Vietnam.
Frank Lucas’ success would not have been possible without the well known “Golden Triangle”. The Golden Triangle is one of Asia's two main opium producing areas. It is an area that overlaps the mountains of four countries of Southeast Asia: Myanmar, Laos, Vietnam, and Thailand. It has been one of the most extensive opium producing areas of Asia, and of the world, since the 1950’s.
Opium and morphine were produced in Burma and then transported by horse and donkey caravans along the Thailand-Burma border for conversion to heroin. Most of the finished products where shipped across the border into various towns in...