Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
I had a great aunt who lived in Chicago most of her life. I'm not sure, but I think she must have been born about maybe 1915 or so. I never asked her about the prohibition days, but she used to tell me about how heavy the mob influence was in the city, even into the 50's and 60's. Mainly protection rackets against small businesses. By the time I was a young adult in the 1980's and working in Chicago, there was very little mob left.
There was some out in the burbs, involved with sports betting, but virtually none in the city. There was of course a ton of activity among black and Hispanic gangs. The Italian gangsters just gradually faded away. I was a contract computer programmer, so I had a ton of interaction with small business people, and I never heard of anyone being threatened by protection rackets.
I've always wondered whether if drugs were legalized, we would see the same transformation in the black and Hispanic communities as happened with Italians.
Everything partly worked, according to how one skews the point of view -- even the Holocaust and the Vietnam war. Which is why there are such discussion in this forum.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Angorlee
But what about all the people who couldn't get booze and therefore stayed home with their families and maybe bought some food with that booze money to feed their kids.
For every person who stayed at home with his family instead of drinking, there was another one who squandered more than necessary of his family budget buying liquor which was grossly overpriced because of the nature of the illicit marketing.
I had to check that this was not the Great Debates forum before commenting.
The parallels between the prohibition of the 20's and the current Prohibition is striking. Their efforts did not curb use of alcohol and today's efforts have not curbed the use of Marijuana and other drugs. Nor is it likely to start anytime soon.
I believe we should simply stop the prohibition of the currently illegal drugs and have them sold, after suitable quality control, at any place that sells hard liquor. I realize there can be much greater health effects of Heroin, Cocaine and Crystal Meth but I think those damages are much less than the damage to the entire society of the prohibition.
I don't know about the distribution of drinking habits today, but you are correct about alcohol consumption shifting during Prohibition. I did a paper on the repeal of Prohibition in college and I recall that my research turned up the fact that during Prohibition total alcohol consumed was nearly the same as it was before Prohibition, but the bootleg prices meant that affordability became a major factor. Rich people actually drank more during Prohibition than they had before, the poor drank less because the cost had become beyond their reach.
Since my parents raised my sibs and myself in a Country Club, in that environment, and my dad is still a member of one, I can attest to the truth of this.
My grandparents on one side were also members. All of these clubs were shamefully restricted. They were and, places where WASP Republicans could imbibe with others of their kind. Imbibe freely, I might add.
It worked so well that the US repealed the Amendment and passed another amendment legalizing alcohol.
I suppose individually some people may have chosen not to drink, but enough wanted to that the amendment
passed.
Bit complicated. In the US a Constitutional Amendment is apart of the constitution itself and no amendment to the constitution had ever been repealed (in fact there is no repeal process in the constitution). Amending the consitution is rather a hard task.
The people who banned alcohol were not just content with a law which could be easily overturned they wanted an amendment which can not be overturned either by the SupremeCourt or passing a new law via Congress and President.
So the passed an amendment that banned it and a law(thevostock act) that defined what an alcoholic beverage was. At the end what they did was redefine what beverages the amendment covered to allow low alcohol beverages then passed the21st amendment which repealed the 18th.
This is the only amendment that overturns another amendmentand to this day has been thought of as a reason to try to leave social issues out the constitution. Also the 21st admenment was approved via an alternate process(the state conventions) vs. state legislatures. The only adminment to do so. They did this to get around the dry politicans in the state legislatures.
Bit complicated indeed. The adendment was repealed by the passage of the subsequent amendment. You are splitting hairs there.
Ah no just pointing out that an admenment to the consitution is a major thing. To pass the 18th it took: a 2/3's majority in both houses of Congress to proposse it and 3/4 of the state legislatures to ratify it. The wets put an 7 year limit thinking that it would never pass in that time, but it passed in record time about 2 years.
The repeal passed even faster!
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.
Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.