Prohibition and its effect

Should drinking alcohol be illegal? Even asking that question today seems absurd, but only 75
years ago it was illegal to drink alcohol in the United States.
Im talking about Prohibition, of course, which lasted from 1920 to 1933. It was a massive social
experiment that failed and is a lesson for us as we think about other victimless crimes like
drugs, gambling, and prostitution.
According to Peter McWilliams in his excellent Aint Nobodys Business If You Do, there were
twelve bad effects of Prohibition:

1. Prohibition created disrespect for the law.

Pullquote: Prohibition goes beyond the bounds of reason in that it attempts to control a mans
appetite by legislation and makes crimes out of things that are not crimes.
Abraham Lincoln

If everyone breaks the law, it is disrespected. Practically everyone broke the law of Prohibition
making everyone criminals. If the law prohibited moderate consumption of something as
pleasurable and harmless as alcohol, what else did it prohibit that was good?
Prohibition encouraged people to see the law as whimsical and unimportant, instead of
something good and protecting. It did nothing to encourage the respect and obedience the law
deserves.

2. Prohibition eroded respect for religion.

Evangelicals were the main force behind Prohibition. They saw alcohol as the devils drink,
hating it so much they explained away their holy books favorable references to it (and still do
today). Instead of ushering in paradise, Prohibition increased alcohol consumption and
immorality, created organized crime and caused massive political corruption. As they so often
are, evangelicals were wrong. They made false promises and did far more harm than good. This
jaded many people towards religion. Of course, to many of us, eroding respect for religion was
one of the few positive effects of Prohibition

3. Prohibition created organized crime.

Prohibition made the gangster not just well paid, but well liked, McWilliams said. It took
significant organization to bootleg the quantities of alcohol people desired. The result was
organized crime, which didnt differentiate between petty crimes like transporting liquor and
real crimes like violence, murder, and theft.
Similarly, organized crime continues today because of the prohibition on gambling, prostitution,
and drugs. Where there is demand, there will be supply.
4. Prohibition permanently corrupted law enforcement, the court system, and politics.

Organized crime was huge, and it had a lot of money and influence. Policeman and politicians
were bribed and blackmailed:
If mobsters couldnt buy or successfully threaten someone in a powerful position, they either
wiped them out or, following more democratic principles, ran a candidate against the
incumbent in the next election. They put money behind their candidate, stuffed the ballot box,
or leaked some scandal about the incumbent just before the election (or all three). The
important thing was winning, and more often than not, someone beholden to organized crime
rose to the position of power.
It created a new class of candidates that were open to the highest bidder. Many court cases
required payoffs to get a fair hearing. In other words, corruption abounded and the people
began distrusting the government.

5. Prohibition overburdened police, courts, and the penal system.

You cant throw everyone in jail yet with Prohibition, even a small percentage of offenders
couldnt be locked away without overburdening the system. In 1923, for instance, the US
District Attorneys spent 44% of their time on Prohibition cases. This takes time away from the
real purpose of police and courts: to protect people and their possessions, not enforce a
religious sects morality.

6. Prohibition harmed people financially, emotionally, and morally.

Hundreds of thousands of people lost their jobs because of Prohibition. People in the alcohol
business had two options: to find lower-paying work or become criminals (that is, staying in
their profession). Because of the rhetoric evangelicals were spouting, it was also hard to find a
decent job coming from the devils work. This encouraged people to break the law just to
support their families.
7. Prohibition caused physical harm.

Pullquote: Marijuana prohibition has done far more harm to far more people than marijuana
ever could.
William F. Buckley, Jr.
Because alcohol was illegal, its purity was not regulated. While fruit, vegetable, and grain
alcohol is usually safe, alcohol made from wood is not but it is difficult to tell the difference
until too late. Over 10,000 people died during Prohibition from drinking wood alcohol. Others
who were not killed went permanently blind or had severe organ damage.
The same happens today with illegal drugs most overdoses are accidental, a result from not
knowing the purity or strength of the drug.
And who knows how many people died because of organized crime, or due to corrupt or
overburdened police. When the police spend much of their time arresting and investigating
crimes that cause no harm to others, the crimes that do cause harm increase and real criminals
are more likely to go free.
8. Prohibition changed the drinking habits of our country for the worse.

Pullquote: Prohibition is better than no liquor at all.

Will Rogers
Instead of going out to drink, people began drinking mostly at home. When they did go out to
drink, it was often to get drunk you couldnt been seen with a bottle, so it was best to finish
it. Hard liquor became popular because it was more concentrated and thus cheaper to smuggle.
To make hard liquor more palatable, cocktails were created.
Ironically, Prohibition also increased the amount people drank. Drinking has never again
returned to pre-Prohibition levels.

9. Prohibition made cigarette smoking a national habit.

Cigarettes were also prohibited in many states, which seemed to make them irresistible. By
1930, cigarettes were legal everywhere and consumption nearly tripled. Smoking became
fashionable and a sign of rebellion. It was also far more harmful and addictive than alcohol.

10. Prohibition prevented the treatment of drinking problems.

Its a lot harder to say you have a problem when it could land you in jail. Legally, you were
either sober or a criminal both occasional drinkers and drunks were lumped into the same
category. You couldnt go to your pastor or counselor for help you might end up in jail.

11. Prohibition caused immorality.

Evangelicals were expecting a New Jerusalem of Sobriety, but what they got was an explosion
of immorality. Men and women began drinking together they were partners in crime, and
they became partners in bed. Unmarried sexual activity increased and the decade became
known as the roaring 20s.

12. Prohibition was phenomenally expensive.

Some estimate the total cost was about a billion dollars in a time when a Ford factory worker
made $5 a day. The government also lost a significant amount of tax revenue because alcohol
sales went underground. This made the price of alcohol artificially inflated, and people spent a
lot for a little liquor.

Dram Shop Law

n. a statute (Dram Shop Act) or case law in 38 states which makes a business which sells
alcoholic drinks or a host who serves liquor to a drinker who is obviously intoxicated or close to
it, strictly liable to anyone injured by the drunken patron or guest. To the contrary, California
recently passed legislation specifically banning such strict liability. It is often hard to prove that
the liquor bought or served was the specific cause of an accident (such as an automobile crash
while driving home), since there is always an intervening cause, namely, the drunk.

Beverage Service

Beverage Services can be broadly defined as the process of preparing,

presenting and serving of beverages to the customers.