

Prohibition: The History of A Calamity - jkuria
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204226204576600863260993384.html

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jseliger
Daniel Okrent's book (mentioned in the article) is also worth reading; I wrote
a little about it here: [http://jseliger.com/2010/07/18/hypocrisy-as-enabled-
by-wealt...](http://jseliger.com/2010/07/18/hypocrisy-as-enabled-by-wealth-a-
lesson-from-daniel-okrents-last-call) . One upshot of the book: Prohibition
required an unusual confluence of political factors, including racism and
class fear, in order for it to pass.

On a separate note, I wouldn't be surprised if drug prohibition eventually
comes to look as silly as alcohol prohibition. From an intellectual
standpoint, it already does.

~~~
bd_at_rivenhill
It already looks sillier, alcohol prohibition didn't lead to the loss of
thousands of lives and breakdown of civil order in Mexico, didn't fuel a
sustained rebellion in Colombia, and didn't handicap the prosecution of a war
in Afghanistan the way the drug war has.

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guelo
Back then people understood that it was outside the power of federal
government to ban a drug and that it would require a constitutional amendment.
Today, marijuana and a whole host of drugs are banned at the whim of
bureaucrats.

~~~
bd_at_rivenhill
The power of the Federal government was much lower before the Supreme Court
allowed the abuse of the commerce clause to get so far out of hand.

~~~
jacobolus
The power of the Federal Government was a lot lower before the huge “trusts”
of the late-19th century grew in size and strength until they could wantonly
trample the rights of consumers, their own workers, and citizens generally
without any similarly powerful opposing force. It grew still further after the
outsized influence of corporate and financial interests led to a calamitous
worldwide economic collapse (the great depression) and citizens demanded that
their government do something to prevent those imbalances and instabilities.

The US Supreme Court changed its understanding of the commerce clause and
other aspects of government regulation of commerce in the 40s–60s in rejection
of the previous generation’s court whose every decision favored the rich and
powerful and blocked corrective legislative action at every level (for
instance in the famous Lochner v. New York case after which we now refer to
that whole court “era”). The citizenry explicitly (and overwhelmingly) elected
legislators and executives who promised to reign in the power of corporations,
and they replaced the previous justices... that’s how democracy is designed to
work.

Government regulation is a response to real serious abuses of the type almost
everyone is horrified by when they hear the specific examples that prompted
the regulation – false advertising, fraud, miserable working conditions and
the general treatment of workers as replaceable objects (and preserving the
same by viciously breaking up any attempts by workers to organize), the sale
of deadly diseased food, dumping of toxins into drinking water supplies, the
use of market power to block competitors from markets or disrupt their
operation, discrimination based on race, gender, and religion, etc. etc.

To just sum up this history as “the Supreme Court allowed the abuse of the
commerce clause to get so far out of hand” is deeply disingenuous.

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toddmorey
An aside: This may have been discussed before about WSJ, but
/article/SB10001424052970204226204576600863260993384.html has to be one of the
worst URLs I've seen. What system is it that builds those filenames?

~~~
sk5t
Maybe it's CityDesk?

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DanBC
This is a staggering statistic:

"By 1830, the film informs us, the average American male over the age of 15
was consuming the equivalent of 88 bottles of whiskey a year."

That makes prohibition a lot more understandable. Not acceptable! Just easier
to understand why desperate people thought desperate measures were needed.

~~~
ramanujan
Without rigorous original sourcing, I'd take that statistic with a large grain
of salt. Would not be surprised to see it originate from the WCTU, which in
other places claimed that alcohol could set fire to a man's body. The only
really credible way to calculate that would be to backsolve the number of
liters sold from alcohol company revenues at the time, and divide by
population.

~~~
caf
The figure is plausible. Recent figures for Australia's Northern Territory
give 14.6 litres of pure alcohol per year per person aged 15 years and older:
<http://tinyurl.com/5uyyuv5>

This equates to about 50 bottles of whiskey.

~~~
DanBC
As a bit of noodling:
([http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=population+of+US+in+183...](http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=population+of+US+in+1830))
the US had about 12 million people in 1830. Life expectancy is here:
([http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=life+expectancy+in+US+i...](http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=life+expectancy+in+US+in+1830))
If we say that 3 million people were drinking 50 bottles of whiskey each per
year that's 150 million bottles. If each bottle is half a litre that's 75
million litres. It takes about 100 kg grain to make about 80 litres. 75m / 80
* 100 == 93,750,000 kg grain. That's about 90,000 imperial tons of grain. It
takes about 250 labour-hours to produce 100 bushels of wheat.
(<http://www.agclassroom.org/gan/timeline/farm_tech.htm>) That's, uh, my
conversions are failing now.
(<http://www.interstock.ru/0obuch/conversion.pdf>) okay, I give up. I was
trying to see roughly how many people and acres it would take to fuel an 1830
population of 15 year olds at 50 bottles a week.

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InclinedPlane
I wonder if we'll ever see a movie in the future about the failed and
disastrous prohibition of other drugs.

~~~
lmkg
In the future?

<http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0181865/>

~~~
InclinedPlane
Yes, also The Wire, and The Corner, all quite excellent. But they are
narratives, typically fictionalized. They are not non-fiction documentaries.
They do not take on the issue head on, they do not discuss the statistics of
the problem, etc. They come close, but a full head-on confrontation of the
issue is still too taboo to be done by the mainstream press or entertainment
industry.

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w1ntermute
If anyone's interested in Prohibition-era America, I would strongly recommend
checking out HBO's _Boardwalk Empire_ series for a masterful televised
reenactment of that period in history.

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Hisoka
A society with so many ppl that rely so much on alcohol is just a symptom of
even bigger problem. Give people a sense of purpose, or better community ties,
and the need for "drugs" decreases

~~~
irahul
> A society with so many ppl that rely so much on alcohol is just a symptom of
> even bigger problem.

It's common for people who don't drink to assume alcohol is a big problem -
it's not.

> Give people a sense of purpose, or better community ties, and the need for
> "drugs" decreases

People with sense of purpose, and better community ties, indulge in social
drinking all too often. Never been to an entrepreneur's meetup which is in a
bar? Never seen a family and friends getting drunk?

~~~
armandososa
* My grandfather was an alcoholic and caused lots of damage to my dad's infancy.

* Teenagers are amazingly stupid already. They are stupid and dangerous when driving under the influence of alcohol. A very dear friend of mine was killed by a drunk driver.

* Drunk girls are raped by drunk stupid men all the time. My cousin got pregnant at 14 because of this.

When you don't drink is when you can really see how big of a problem alcohol
really is. Starting with social drinking, which means that some people are
absolutely incapable of have social bonding or plain fun without any alcohol.
Pathetic.

~~~
burgerbrain
* Neglectful parents are a very important problem.

* Drunk driving is a very important problem.

* Rape is a very important problem.

* And people demonizing me (a drinker) for crimes that _I_ do not commit... _is a very important problem_.

Put those pieces of shit in jail for the crimes they commit and let mature
people (the _vast_ majority of society) be.

PS: Approximately 80% of all drunk drivers are adults (21 and older, I'll give
you 20 as teenagers). So you should probably stop blaming teenagers so much
too... Source:
[http://www.oas.samhsa.gov/NSDUH/2k10NSDUH/2k10Results.htm#Fi...](http://www.oas.samhsa.gov/NSDUH/2k10NSDUH/2k10Results.htm#Fig3-5)

~~~
abdulhaq
The issue is not whether you or any number of people can 'handle' X (whatever
X is), the issue is, Is X, when it and its consequences are considered in
their entirety, a net positive or not? Also, stating that alcohol has a
pernicious effect on society doesn't imply that one is demonising drinkers at
all. Some might do that, but it is not implied in the statement.

In the UK something like 90% of crime is alcohol related, most A&E admissions
are alcohol related, etc. As someone who used to drink (i.e. take alcohol) and
now doesn't, I feel qualified to agree with armandososa that for many it's not
until you stop drinking that you really become sensitive to many of its
negative effects such as those he/she mentioned.

Edit: in case it's not absolutely clear, I am sure you are a good person
whether you drink or not. That does not mean that widespread use of alcohol is
good for society.

~~~
burgerbrain
Fair enough. I often just feel attacked in topics such as this, some people
are not so careful to avoid demonising drinkers in general.

Anyway, I think my point distilled is that although alcohol may be very
commonly involved in crime that doesn't mean that crime is actually very
common.

And for what it's worth (not much, since this isn't my field of study ;), I'd
say that alcohol probably never caused rape. You have to be pretty damn fucked
up in the first place to rape somebody, normal people will never do it no
matter how much alcohol you put in them.

~~~
philwelch
At the very least, having sex with someone who's passed out and unable to
consent is rape; those rapes, at the very least, could not be committed
without some type of drug to cause the person to pass out, and alcohol is the
most legal and most widely used drug that has that effect.

I'm quite inclined to think that rape is far more common than you think. Most
rapists are perfectly "normal" people in their everyday lives.

~~~
burgerbrain
Rapists are, by definition, not normal. The untrained layman might not be able
to pick them out, just like sociopaths often manage to slip under the radar in
day to day affairs, but they are fundamentally a different sort of animal.

~~~
philwelch
I'm not sure what definition of "rapist" or "normal" you're using, but the
typical rapist is probably closer to "selfish asshole on a first date" than
"masked man hiding in the bushes". And selfish assholes are frankly very
common.

