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Seriously, it, to this day, is the most failed amendment to have ever been passed. They should have known it was completely horrible and wrong and unenforceable. And you know the vast majority of those that supported it were constantly boozing it up ironically enough.
Seriously, it, to this day, is the most failed amendment to have ever been passed. They should have known it was completely horrible and wrong and unenforceable. And you know the vast majority of those that supported it were constantly boozing it up ironically enough.
Prohibition was one of those things. Sometimes, the only way to find out if something will work or not is to try it. There is no doubt that alcohol has created its share of tragedy and than some. Even today, alcohol is responsible for about 10% to 20% of all fatalities in motor vehicle accidents. That is a lot of people if you realize that all accidents combined result in about 40,000 deaths a year. That is just the tip of the iceberg. Police officers can tell you that without drugs and alcohol the crime rate would be vastly lower. Many people die each year from liver disease and stomach cancer. Many of these deaths are directly related to alcohol consumption.
The goal of reducing alcohol consumption is a worthy goal. I do not criticize the Temperance Movement for having that goal at all. What I criticize them for is the means that were used to reduce alcohol consumption. Wiser heads should have prevailed. Because the idea that you were simply going to pass a law that prohibited the production and sale of alcoholic beverages was nonsense. Its easy to make grapes and other fruit ferment and to make wine. Its not that difficult to distill liquor if you have corn and a crude still available. Plus, people have consumed alcohol for thousands of years. While alcohol use has precipitated much tragedy, the decided majority of people who use alcohol do so responsibly and with few ill effects. It must have been very offensive to those who had consumed alcohol responsibly during their lives for government to step in and tell them this would not be allowed anymore. What business was it of a government to tell people whether or not they could drink?
However, the worst feature of Prohibition was the corruption that it created. Because it was an unenforceable law it resulted in things like the bribery of police officers to not enforce the law. Not only police were bribed, but politicians as well. It gave the mafia and organized crime an opportunity to set up shop in the United States. Gangsters like Al Capone could not have prospered without Prohibition. We've never been able to get rid of them since either. The disadvantages of Prohibition outweighed any advantages gained.
We know that cigarette smoking will cause lung cancer and other respiratory diseases. Fortunately, wiser heads have prevailed when it comes to tobacco than prevailed at the time Prohibition was enacted. Despite the health dangers of cigarettes, we have chosen not to try to ban cigarettes. Instead, we heavily regulate them. We prohibit t.v. advertising. We require that warnings be given on cigarette packages. We limit tobacco sales to those over age 21. We spend much time educating people about the health dangers of smoking tobacco. On the whole, its been reasonably effective. Per capita use of cigarettes is about 40% of what it was in the mid-1960's.
We have learned from the failure of Prohibition in the 1920s. We should probably extend that lesson to the sale of illegal drugs in the USA today.
Well it was certainly a gift to organized crime who carved out bootlegging empires and made millions in profits. One wonders just how powerful the Mafia would have become if prohibition was never passed.
Seriously, it, to this day, is the most failed amendment to have ever been passed. They should have known it was completely horrible and wrong and unenforceable. And you know the vast majority of those that supported it were constantly boozing it up ironically enough.
The same politicians who voted for Prohibition were the same ones who had a secret stash of booze in their Washington, DC offices.
Prohibition didn't end because there was an awareness that it was a failure, it ended because the Great Depression created the conditions where the state governments were dearly in need of the revenues that legally taxed alcohol would bring.
Prohibition didn't end because there was an awareness that it was a failure, it ended because the Great Depression created the conditions where the state governments were dearly in need of the revenues that legally taxed alcohol would bring.
Not sure about that. Prohibition did not end at a singular moment in time. Certain types of alcohol were slowly legalized prior to the full repeal.
Woodrow Wilson opposed the 18th Amendment and vetoed the Volstead Act, arguing that it was unenforceable. Ironically, it was arguably Wilson’s suppression of German-American culture and creation of a police state that made Prohibition possible.
The same politicians who voted for Prohibition were the same ones who had a secret stash of booze in their Washington, DC offices.
I am a cigar smoker. That reminds me of the story of President John F. Kennedy, a cigar smoker himself, who sent office staff out to buy as many Cuban cigars as they could in advance of him signing the Cuban embargo bill. It failed at its intended purpose decades ago, but it is still doggedly hung onto by some people.
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