
100 years ago, prohibition went into effect - vo2maxer
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/01/us/100-years-ago-the-booziest-january-suddenly-dried-up.html
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save_ferris
I recently watched (and highly recommend) Ken Burns’ fantastic documentary
series on prohibition.

I learned so much about that era that wasn’t really covered much in school
(i.e. prohibition gave rise to the first federal income tax, women’s suffrage
was very closely tied to the prohibition movement, bootleggers were delivering
shipments to congressmen at their offices in the capitol, etc.)

It was an incredible look into America’s failed attempt to govern morality. It
reminded a lot of how we see cannabis today.

~~~
Magodo
On a lighter note, HBO's Boardwalk Empire is an excellent period piece as well

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simplicio
I really liked the first season, which gave a wide view of the intersection
between political machines, the wealthy, mobsters, ethnic communities, WWI
veterans, reform groups, etc that made up the prohibition era in a much more
interesting way than a lot of treatments of the time, which tend to focus on
the mobsters to the exclusion of all else.

Sadly after the first season, it pretty quickly degenerated into "all
mobsters, all the time" show. Even the FBI guy joined the mob.

~~~
MrZongle2
That was my take as well. I really liked it as a period piece, but after S1 it
seemed like the showrunners kept some characters merely because they liked the
_actors_. Michael Shannon was wasted in later seasons, IMO.

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scarface74
And the government still didn’t learn and made the same mistakes with the “War
on Drugs”

Less charitably, the War on Drugs has always been about race.

[http://www.drugpolicy.org/issues/race-and-drug-
war](http://www.drugpolicy.org/issues/race-and-drug-war)

If alcohol was thought to be only used by whatever the disliked
race/nationality of the day was it would have never been legalized.

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OliverJones
There's the Iron Law of Prohibition: If a type of substance is outlawed, only
the most potent forms of that substance will be available for sale on the
black market.

During alcohol prohibition, nobody smuggled light beer. They smuggled
overproof gin and rum.

During opioid prohibition (now) incredibly dangerous form of the substance,
such as fentanyl, drive out the less dangerous forms. Of course fentanyl isn't
very dangerous in the hands of a skilled pharmacist / chemist who knows how to
measure and dilute it to make safer doses. But, due to prohibition penalties,
people with those skills don't work with it, leaving the field to clowns who
dilute it with stuff like powdered baby formula.

Oh, and yeah, prohibition means we get to read news about criminals with names
like El Chapo.

Can the world learn from the US's experience with alcohol prohibition? Some
European jurisdictions, viz. Portugal, have shown good success decriminalizing
drugs.

~~~
gnulinux
Same happened to weed. Before the recent burst of weed legalization (i.e.
before California, MA, etc legalized it in 2016) the only "high shelf" weed
you could find in dealers or dispensers were >30% THC weed that was
practically impossible for me to smoke as a light weight. Today we have more
options e.g. 1:1 THC:CBD flowers with ~10% THC which is a lot easier to smoke
for people like me who don't want to get very high.

Imagine trying to drink one bottle of beer after a long day, but all you have
is overproof rum. Prohibition sucks.

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is_this_valid2
>> _America (and a few other places) actually did have a War On Booze, they
just gave up because it 's too socially normalised_

> _They might 've given up because alcohol prohibition increased the crime and
> alcohol poisoning rates; because it was killing more people than it was
> saving._

> _They might 've given up because the state prohibition laws had exceptions
> for religious and medical purposes and so were explicitly unequal ("de jure
> discriminatory")_

They might've repealed the Amendment authorizing alcohol prohibition when they
realized they were unintentionally ensuring tax-free funding for organized
crime. The whole Gangsters vs G-men thing was a direct product of prohibition.

Where US Marshalls (Justice branch) and Secret Service (Executive branch) had
been more or less sufficient, we then needed another new 'bureau' to handle
interstate organized crime headed up by a German guy; amidst Irish Rabbis
(during prohibition)

Where we had had men drinking in saloons and not going home to their families,
we then had men and women drinking in illegal literally underground
speakeasies (on like every other corner of New York) breathing leaded gasoline
(which, apparently, noone ever went to jail for)

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prohibition_(miniseries)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prohibition_\(miniseries\))
episodes: "A Nation of Drunkards", "A Nation of Scofflaws", "A Nation of
Hypocrites"

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is_this_valid2
Sorry - to clarify, it's perfectly acceptable to be Irish and a Rabbi.

Portugal's reduction in drug deaths per million rate is something we could all
aspire to.

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gbronner
The ways around it were unbelievably ingenius: "medicinal" whiskey, boats 3
miles offshore, irish rabbis who distributed sacramental wine to their
"congregations", the concentrated grape extract shipped (with a packet of
yeast) to NYC from California.

It may have been the first law widely mocked and ignored since the anti-
smuggling laws of the 1700s.

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Pete_D
I remember (but can no longer find) an article on the history of mince pies,
which claimed that since foods were exempt from prohibition, people were
making mince pies that were so soaked with brandy that they were around 14%
ABV.

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gbronner
"I love pie" they said as they clinked their plates together

[https://www.chicagoreader.com/chicago/mince-pie-the-real-
ame...](https://www.chicagoreader.com/chicago/mince-pie-the-real-american-
pie/Content?oid=1267308)

Was unaware of that particular deception, but there were so many others...
entire factories that reprocessed "industrial" alcohol to make it drinkable,
pharmacies that dispensed whiskey, etc etc.

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Koremat6666
And it turns out USA has not learned anything from this very expensive lesson.
The war on drugs, anti immigrant policies, war on vaping everything is like a
little replica of this prohibition.

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hirundo
The fact that a constitutional amendment was needed to prohibit alcohol, but
is no longer needed to prohibit a long list of substances, is evidence that
our constitutional protections have been watered down. Such prohibition is a
great stretch to fit within the enumerated powers and should be reserved to
the states by the 9th and 10th amendments. The laboratories of democracy
should be allowed to experiment with chemicals, within their borders, as their
own legislatures see fit.

~~~
mstade
I always thought the prohibition amendment was about enforcing a nationwide
ban, but individual states could (and did, no?) prohibit the personal
consumption of alcohol as they saw fit before then? Is this not the same with
other substances, and that's why some states have now legalized weed whereas
others have not, because there's no nationwide law against these substances?

As an outside observer with an interest (but no formal education!) I find U.S.
state/federal laws really confusing, and I'm sure I have all of the above
mixed up. Would love to hear you expand your comment with some examples of how
the constitutional protections are different now compared to then, and as you
say watered down.

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currymj
The states can legalize marijuana, meaning that the state police and courts no
longer prosecute it.

But currently the federal government can still come in and make arrests,
although they typically choose not to enforce the law, because doing so would
be politically unpopular. Plus it's not like there are FBI agents walking the
beat trying to make low-level drug busts.

The most confusing is Washington D.C., a federal territory, which has been
granted limited home rule. They voted in a referendum to legalize and regulate
marijuana, but then were prohibited by Congress from spending any money to
actually draft the necessary regulations. The result is that marijuana is
illegal to buy or sell but legal to possess or use, except in many public
parks which are technically part of the federal National Park system.

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dehrmann
Every time my grandma complains about how things are today, I remind her that
when she was born, alcohol was illegal, cannabis was legal, and the country
was about to elect a president that went onto to illegally detain mostly US
citizens of (mostly) Japanese origin in prison camps and take their property.

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Aloha
The most harmful thing prohibition did was normalize flouting the law, I'd
argue it also introduced in popular American culture the concept that an
individual could judge the law and decide whether it was just or not.

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damnyou
I don't see that normalization as particularly harmful, given that the law is
so often merely a tool of state oppression.

~~~
username90
Why do Americans even think that? Wouldn't it be better to just live in a
country where the law is not used to oppress people?

~~~
jeffdavis
It's a defense-in-depth strategy: a written constitution with enunerated
rights to avoid bad laws; divide power to isolate and extinguish bad laws; and
allow citizens routes to evade enforcement in case we still end up with bad
laws.

Systems always fail. Handle the failures with something better than SIGABRT.

~~~
username90
That thinking might have made sense 300 years ago, but not today.

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jeffdavis
Can you explain?

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onemoresoop
Somewhat related, today flavored electronic cigarettes including mint flavor
were prohibited in the US.

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egberts1
I’m so old as to remembering reading a New York Times newspaper touting the
need for Prohibition on their front page.

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transfire
And we still have draconian laws limiting and baring access to far too many
drugs.

Governents use the bad apples (addicts) to punish/control the rest of us.

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forgotmypw1
this page freezes up my device...

could someone please paste the text?

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casefields
[https://beta.trimread.com/articles/1393](https://beta.trimread.com/articles/1393)

