Where to Buy Drugs in Palermo - revealed
The high price of social deprivation.
An article in the invaluable Giornale di Sicilia tells us where exactly and when you can buy drugs on the streets of Palermo. I translate and quote:
“In the heart of the historic centre, among the alleys that tell centuries of history, drug dealing is intertwined (and continues even today) with the daily life of the markets and the comings and goings of tourists who crowd them daily. From the hundreds of pages of the police reports it emerges that, in the streets of Ballarò and in particular in Piazza del Carmine, hashish, marijuana, cocaine and heroin are available at any hour of the day or night. The pushers move between the stalls and warehouses while the lookouts guard the entrances of via Giovanni Grasso and via Porta di Castro.”
The Ballarò market is indeed a tourist attraction, and it is a not a market in the usual sense of the word: the stalls line the narrow streets, and it is something of maze of alleyways, which is one reason why though the police know this is going on, they cannot really do anything to stop it. Trying to chase down drug dealers through these twisting and crowded streets, which the malefactors know intimately, and which are full of hiding places, would be futile. The same goes for Spaccanapoli in Naples and the seedier parts of Catania. (It may once have held true in Rome, too.)
There is no doubt in my mind, or anyone else’s for that matter, that the drug trade is the main cash cow of the Mafia. This brings in the dirty money, which is then recycled through outwardly legitimate business such as construction. The unchecked drug trade means that many of the entrepreneurs of a place like Palermo are people used to working outside and around the law. The results are plain to see. Legalise, regulate, tax all drugs, and treat them like alcohol and tobacco - but until that is done, get used to criminals dominating your local economy.
But drug dealing is not an activity that can be understood without a context. Drug dealers need drug users, clearly, and given that drugs are so expensive, the demand must be pretty high. Why? Well, one reason may be that living in a badly run, inefficient and corrupt society dominated by criminals and their collaborators, where opportunities for legitimate social advancement are few, may be enough to drive you to drugs. In other words, in a city dominated by drug dealers, you will have the right conditions for widespread drug taking, given the social deprivation that drug dealers cause. A circular argument, I know, but it is a thought.
The other thing is that social mores have broken down in Sicily (and many other places besides), which goes hand in hand with widespread drug abuse. Consider this - again translated and quoted from the Giornale di Sicilia:
“Brawl with injuries, during the night, at the Mob nightclub in Villagrazia di Carini, in the province of Palermo. The carabinieri, called by the manager, did not find any of the young people involved in the fight upon their arrival. It seemed all over, when three young people with stab wounds showed up at the emergency room of the Vincenzo Cervello hospital in Palermo. A fourth went to the emergency room of Villa Sofia, also in Palermo, after stopping by the territorial emergency point in Carini. The three who went to Cervello are 38 years old, 32 years old and 30 years old and live in the Sicilian capital in the Zen and Brancaccio neighbourhoods. A twenty-five-year-old went to Villa Sofia, with five friends and relatives in tow, one of whom broke the window of the emergency room with a punch. Among the injured is apparently a relative of the victim of the attempted murder that took place in front of the Rotoli cemetery, in Palermo, which occurred last December, when Antonino Fragali was wounded by gunshots. An episode for which Francesco Lupo was arrested, but the two people who accompanied him by car to the site of the ambush have yet to be identified.”
An update mentions that the chap who broke the window with a punch in the emergency room then turned up an hour later in the same place with an injured hand. Nice one.
For the sheer hell of the Rotoli cemetery, scene of the attempted murder, do look here, where the photographs are more eloquent than anything I could ever write.
The Zen and Brancaccio neighbourhoods are notorious Mafia areas, by the way. So, one wonders who these four were. Reading between the lines, the fight was three on one, as the injured parties went to different emergency rooms. More may have been involved, but did not need hospital treatment. What were the two sides fighting about? Drugs? Girls? Some imagined slight? But they probably were not Mafiosi as real Mafiosi would not have gone to a public hospital, but would have gone to a trusted doctor who would keep the matter quiet. But one thing is clear: violence often spirals out of control in Palermo.
The other thing one notices from the Sicilian news outlets are the frequent reports of car accidents, which again is a symptoms of social irresponsibility, and something even more disturbing, tales of child abuse, which indicate a breakdown in family life. Again, from the same source:
“Four years of abuse by the father, a long odyssey within the home. The 38-year-old man, who is separated from his wife, ended up in prison on Wednesday, accused of having sexually exploited his daughter from 2020 to 2024. In Trabia, where the events took place and the protagonists live, the community is stunned. Since yesterday, when the Giornale di Sicilia broke the news, the town has been traumatised. The girl, who is now 13 years old…”
That sounds terrible, and everyone is shocked and horrified by the secrets that now come tumbling out. It is a far cry from the idyllic picture that we have of southern Italian family life. Social deprivation exacts a high toll, and children, such as this poor girl, nine when her ordeal started, pay the highest cost.