Alcohol Prohibition - Should we bring it back?

Travis said:
That so many people went to so much trouble to get booze during prohibition has always mystified me since I've always hated the taste and smell of all beer/booze. Especially beer. The mere smell of it causes intense nausea and this sucks because it means I have to avoid things like ballparks.
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Interesting. Do you use any other drugs? Or do they all cause a reaction like this?

I've certainly met people that never acquired the taste for booze (my dad for instance) but I don't know anyone allergic to it.
 
About 20 years ago, I worked with a man who had been 16 when prohibition ended. He said it made booze much harder for him to obtain. When it was illegal for everyone, he could buy from any bootlegger around. When it was legal for adults, he had to manage to get to another county to find a liquor store that didn't check ID's and would sell to an underage teen.

Applying this to drug prohibition, it might well be easier to prevent teens from getting drugs if they were legal for adults.
 
Beth said:
About 20 years ago, I worked with a man who had been 16 when prohibition ended. He said it made booze much harder for him to obtain. When it was illegal for everyone, he could buy from any bootlegger around. When it was legal for adults, he had to manage to get to another county to find a liquor store that didn't check ID's and would sell to an underage teen.

Applying this to drug prohibition, it might well be easier to prevent teens from getting drugs if they were legal for adults.
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This is a good point. Before I turned 21 it was easier for me to get certain drugs than to get alcohol. To get the drugs, I just needed to call a dealer, to get alcohol I needed to find someone old enough to buy it and willing to do so.
 
dtugg said:
This is a good point. Before I turned 21 it was easier for me to get certain drugs than to get alcohol. To get the drugs, I just needed to call a dealer, to get alcohol I needed to find someone old enough to buy it and willing to do so.
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I never had that problem. The same people who were happy to sell me drugs, would also happily buy me a pint of vodka to go with; assuming they were old enough.
 
Right now, we don't have liquor store owners shooting other liquor store owners over turf. Same with alcohol makers and distributors. We don't see pharmacists shooting each other either.

So, yes, let's bring back prohibition. We could use the entertainment.
 
luchog said:
I never had that problem. The same people who were happy to sell me drugs, would also happily buy me a pint of vodka to go with; assuming they were old enough.
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I grew up in a "football town" and got bumped to Varsity in the 9th grade. Regular season I could get a 5th of whatever every Friday, a handle when we beat a big rival, cases or kegs after a win in the playoffs. According to kids who are there now, (I have friends that have kids who are playing varsity.)
a state championship is worth free (cheap to middling) booze for life.

As far as bringing back prohibition, we already have the mafia and gangs, why create more?
 
NewtonTrino said:
So some of the problems:
- causes public corruption
- tainted liquor
- causes disrespect for law in general
- only lawful citizen effects, everyone else can get the stuff easily so it's not effective
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Yeah. Along with the US, Finland is one of the few western nations to try prohibition, and we got all those problems too. We also had booze barons who made money hand over fist by smuggling in cheap booze (mostly pure alcohol) from Sweden and Estonia.

good side:
- less people drinking overall (?)
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No. The numbers from our prohibition period don't exist, but the nation actually consumed way more alcohol per capita after prohibition than before. It also steered consumption heavily towards the strong stuff (probably because smuggling pure alcohol is so much easier than smuggling beer or wine).
 
People took the wrong lesson from prohibition's "failure". It didn't work early on because it was underenforced because of restrictions on the weapons & tactics the police could use. After those were lifted and the police were allowed to catch up to the 20th century like the criminals already had, the repeal of prohibition was an ironic delayed reaction that took place after it had started working.

The meaning of this isn't that you can't control drug use; it's that if you're going to do so, you need to actually try, not just write some words in a law book and sit back. It's the same as with not only other drugs, but also some other laws that are only routinely broken because they either can't be enforced or just aren't being enforced by choice (due to laziness, squeamishness, or whatever else), such as automotive "speeding" and immigration from Mexico. It's also the same with military action: give them the equipment the mission calls for and the freedom to use it, and they can succeed; tie their hands and you're setting them up for failure.
 
Compared to drugs, illicit liquor is remarkably difficult to manufacture, transport, and hide. It's bulky, requires an almost-industrial scale manufacturing capability to produce in any quantity, and can only be transported in rather bulky containers.
Yet the bootleggers managed without much trouble.
Again, the law did not address the actual problem...Demand.

Sure, it would be possible to set up a police state and spend many billions to prohibit liquor....(much as we have done with drugs....) Would the vast expense of all this law enforcement, arrests, prosecutions, and incarcerations be worth it?

Is it cheaper just to exercise reasonable controls (age, licencing, etc.) and treat abuse as a public-health problem rather than a crime? Would the results overall be any different?
 
dtugg said:
This is a good point. Before I turned 21 it was easier for me to get certain drugs than to get alcohol. To get the drugs, I just needed to call a dealer, to get alcohol I needed to find someone old enough to buy it and willing to do so.
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agreed. My friends and I in college would talk about that a lot, how it was easier to score drugs than alcohol.
 
Bikewer said:
Compared to drugs, illicit liquor is remarkably difficult to manufacture, transport, and hide. It's bulky, requires an almost-industrial scale manufacturing capability to produce in any quantity
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Not really. It isn't that tough to manufacture drinks made through fermentation for your own consumption (provided you're not looking to get smashed daily); it's a lot of busywork, but you can do it without turning your house into a brewery. Small moonshine workshops that kept their owner-operators supplied used to be not uncommon in rural Finland (even during the time they were illegal).
 
timhau said:
Yeah. Along with the US, Finland is one of the few western nations to try prohibition, and we got all those problems too. We also had booze barons who made money hand over fist by smuggling in cheap booze (mostly pure alcohol) from Sweden and Estonia.



No. The numbers from our prohibition period don't exist, but the nation actually consumed way more alcohol per capita after prohibition than before. It also steered consumption heavily towards the strong stuff (probably because smuggling pure alcohol is so much easier than smuggling beer or wine).
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Similarly, drug prohibition steers users toward harder drugs like cocaine or meth rather than pot. Less bulky to smuggle and less likely to be detected by odor. Usage is less likely to be detected in random urine tests as well.
 
Delvo said:
People took the wrong lesson from prohibition's "failure". It didn't work early on because it was underenforced because of restrictions on the weapons & tactics the police could use. After those were lifted and the police were allowed to catch up to the 20th century like the criminals already had, the repeal of prohibition was an ironic delayed reaction that took place after it had started working.

The meaning of this isn't that you can't control drug use; it's that if you're going to do so, you need to actually try, not just write some words in a law book and sit back. It's the same as with not only other drugs, but also some other laws that are only routinely broken because they either can't be enforced or just aren't being enforced by choice (due to laziness, squeamishness, or whatever else), such as automotive "speeding" and immigration from Mexico. It's also the same with military action: give them the equipment the mission calls for and the freedom to use it, and they can succeed; tie their hands and you're setting them up for failure.
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Fascinating. This is the type of response I was hoping for in this thread.

So are you of the opinion that we should bring it back? Or are you just saying that it could have worked better? Do you have any proof that the problems were as you described them above?
 
Saying that it didn't work because it wasn't properply enforced is correct, but it isn't the whole story. I didn't take the wrong lesson from it, thanks. I took from it that it failed for various reasons, and lack of enforcement was only one. It was significant, but I don't know that it was the main reason.

I'm thinking how many people there are here now, compared to 1920, and I'm thinking anyone who tried to tell Americans it was against the law to have a beer would find himself lynched. That's just my 'umble opinion, though. But I don't see it happening, or being workable if it did happen.

From a legal standpoint, what a nightmare. Where you gonna house all these lawbreakers?
 
slingblade said:
Saying that it didn't work because it wasn't properply enforced is correct, but it isn't the whole story. I didn't take the wrong lesson from it, thanks. I took from it that it failed for various reasons, and lack of enforcement was only one. It was significant, but I don't know that it was the main reason.

I'm thinking how many people there are here now, compared to 1920, and I'm thinking anyone who tried to tell Americans it was against the law to have a beer would find himself lynched. That's just my 'umble opinion, though. But I don't see it happening, or being workable if it did happen.

From a legal standpoint, what a nightmare. Where you gonna house all these lawbreakers?
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I think you're right. I'm curious why the same thing doesn't apply for the rest of our rights though.
 
What about the economic impact of shutting down the industry?

We're talking about everything from farming, R&D, manufacturing, distributing, advertising and sales. From Walmart all the way down to that little Mom & Pop store on the corner. There would be a side-effect on the Sports, Entertainment and Restaurant industries. Where would all those jobs (especially the low-skill and part-time) go?

And that's only the domestic economy.*
It's and interesting intellectual exercise and can make for an great conversation and debate, but it'll never happen for practical reasons.




*(Side note: That's IMHO where the pro-legalization folks usually go wrong trying to make an analogy between alcohol and legalized drugs - there's a worldwide legal economy for booze)
 
Delvo seems to be saying that if the police didn't have to worry about all those pesky constitutional rights getting in the way, they could be much more effective at their jobs. It might be true, but do we really want that?
 
Mr.D said:
*(Side note: That's IMHO where the pro-legalization folks usually go wrong trying to make an analogy between alcohol and legalized drugs - there's a worldwide legal economy for booze)
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There's already a worldwide economy for these other drugs as well. For example there are hundreds of grow stores in BC that would probably go out of business if grow ups were legit larger commercial farms.

And of course the billions in drug cartel profits are going somewhere as well...

I'm not really sure where the analogy breaks down, they are slightly different but there isn't much different between booze and pot really.
 
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