For And Against Prohibition

For And Against Prohibition
B.P. Terpstra

I oppose Prohibition in my kitchen. But – there is often a but - I’m also against professional libertarians and drunks making stuff up. Were American Prohibitionists really complete failures? You see, when a questioner proposes a few laws to curb drug addiction, your hysterical libertarian will unthinkingly scream, “Prohibition failed!” Or cry like a baby.

Critical thinkers armed with primary sources, by way of contrast, beg to differ. And we’ve known this for decades: Prohibition was far more moderate and successful than what some libertarians imagine. It wasn’t pure socialism or pure lassie-faire romanticism. On the one hand, mainstream commercial manufactures and distributors shut shop. On the other hand, personal production and consumption was openly allowed.
The results were mixed. But it wasn’t a complete failure as made-for-HBO shows and libertarian propagandists would have you believe. In 1989, for example, Mark H. Moore, a professor of criminal justice at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government advanced an evidence-based position. In truth, “alcohol consumption declined dramatically during Prohibition. Cirrhosis death rates for men were 29.5 per 100,000 in 1911 and 10.7 in 1929. Admissions to state mental hospitals for alcoholic psychosis declined from 10.1 per 100,000 in 1919 to 4.7 in 1928.”
What’s more, Moore noted, arrests for public drunkenness “and disorderly conduct declined 50 percent between 1916 and 1922. For the population as a whole, the best estimates are that consumption of alcohol declined by 30 percent to 50 percent.”
A complete failure? As well, this idea that crime exploded is a fiction. There were no historically significant crime explosions, but in any case, criminal gangs existed before and after Prohibition. “The real lesson of Prohibition is that the society can, indeed, make a dent in the consumption of drugs through laws,” concluded Moore.
Here’s my unvarnished position: I know many well-meaning libertarians really believe this stuff. Prohibition, they feel, was a complete failure; therefore it must have been bad. Of course, some are just trying to justify their own drug use and divert us away from facts too. Still, feelings are not the same as facts. And would we say that the war against shoplifting is a complete failure because some kids still shoplift?
But let’s not bring Lindsay Lohan into this. As a teenager, I believed some of this anti-Prohibition nonsense, until I grew up and learned to love primary sources. I’ve changed. Philosophically speaking too, I also accept that a prohibition against Prohibition is as coherent as judging conservatives for judging.
History is being rewritten by all sides, alas. Claiming that the so-called war on drugs is a failure, columnist Paul Howes of the Herald Sun hoisted his white flag. People he claimed “see the lessons of the US Prohibition 90 years ago being forgotten.” But, had they learned the real lessons of Prohibition if they were ignoring declining death rates?
Also, ignoring big-picture medical records, Chris Middendorp a community worker and writer, opined in The Age, “It is always worth recalling that when America made alcohol illegal through prohibition in 1919, they created powerful crime figures such as Al Capone, and people started drinking seriously dangerous moonshine, more potent than wine or beer.” Actually, alcohol wasn’t made completely illegal. Besides, there were bigger criminals before and after Prohibition, making Middendorp’s position demonstrably false, period.

Another howler: “The prohibition of illicit drugs has been as big a failure as alcohol prohibition was in the USA in the 1920s and 1930s,” declared alleged expert Alex Wodak, over at The Punch, without a shred of evidence.

Funnily enough, many anti-Prohibition arguments appear to have been concocted by tricky distillers, and passed off as fact by today’s libertarian drunkards. That said, the New York Times-bestselling author Ann Coulter also sees how “Prohibition is one of the strongest arguments against legalizing marijuana.” But what killed it? “The reason Prohibition failed was that alcohol had become a respectable libation, it was part of the social fabric in high society and low. Once the genie is out of the bottle (so to speak), it's hard to put it back” in.
Another problem: It’s hard to “accidently” smoke a joint, but it’s easy to accidentally sell alcohol. Even well-intentioned people would be caught up in the politics of anti-beer Prohibition today. From perfume to medicine, and even rotting fruit, this would be a headache for businesses.
To distort one American experience, without providing context isn’t science though. From Prince Edward Island, Canada, to remote Australian Aboriginal communities, movements against excess span centuries, continents and motivations, with sometimes positive, sometimes negative results.
Perhaps the Prohibition-never-works movement is just another form of fundamentalism. But, why do I support drinking? Well, because alcohol’s positive medicinal and cultural benefits arguably offset any negatives, in my region. I can’t say the same about LSD and smack.