there. Chinese triad gangs eventually came to play a major role in the illicit heroin trade. The French Connection route started in the 1930s. Heroin trafficking was virtually eliminated in the U.S. during World War II because of temporary trade disruptions caused by the war. Japan's war with China had cut the normal distribution routes for heroin and the war had generally disrupted the movement of opium. After World War II, the Mafia took advantage of the weakness of the postwar Italian government and set up heroin labs in Sicily. The Mafia took advantage of Sicily's location along the historic route opium took westward into Europe and the United States. [ 86 ] Large-scale international heroin production effectively ended in China with the victory of the communists in the civil war in the late 1940s. [ citation needed ] The elimination of Chinese production happened at the same time that Sicily's role in the trade developed. Although it remained legal in some countries until after World War II, health risks, addiction, and widespread recreational use led most western countries to declare heroin a controlled substance by the latter half of the 20th century. In late 1960s and early 1970s, the CIA supported anti-Communist Chinese Nationalists settled near the Sino -Burmese border and Hmong tribesmen in Laos . This helped the development of the Golden Triangle opium production region, which supplied about one-third of heroin consumed in US after the 1973 American withdrawal from Vietnam. As of 1999, Burma, the heartland