Hey, it’s not like I did the studies myself. I’ll happily defer to real data. Every history I’ve ever read about Prohibition has indicated that it resulted in a sharp decline in alcohol consumption. I would be very hesitant to reach the opposite conclusion on the basis of that Cato report, based as it is on a single study from 1932. But I certainly concede that it’s possible everyone else has got it wrong.
Actually my comment was directed to Apos who wrote,
"Don’t have a cite, but I’m a little suspicious of this, largely because I know how much Americans USED to drink: an unbelievable amount. "
And I really think the change in drinking habits is a sort of false trail that leads of into nowhere as far as the total effect of the prohibition experiment goes. Most analysis seems to me to show that, overall, prohibition led to all sorts of evils like disrespect for law and law enforcers, black markets, an opening for organized crime figures to get into politics and on and on.
You can, with the power of the law, force people to do things or prevent them from doing things. Well, you can try to. But passing a law does not magically change anyone’s beliefs or attitudes. And if you pass a law that forbids something that many people are accustomed to doing, or are determed to do, you may find that it is unenforcable. That is, you may find that all you can do is enforce the law in a very small fraction of cases. During prohibition, was anyone who wanted to drink really prevented from doing so? Today, is anyone who wants to smoke pot really being prevented from doing so? And the laws vs. prostitution and some forms of gambling – how have those laws done at stamping out those practices?
Jim Crow laws put the force of law behind what white people were doing anyway. Did passing those laws cause blacks to magically convert to the idea that they were inferior to whites? I don’t think so! Blacks were forced to obey the laws (just as they would have been forced to go along with segregation even if the laws hadn’t existed), but they were not forced (could not be forced) to accept the idea that they were inferior to whites.
Oops. That’ll teach me. I was SO sure my earlier post didn’t go through that I neglected to check. And, having not saved the earlier post in any way, all I could to was start from scratch. I see now, however, that my earlier post failed to address the point about Jim Crow laws, so perhaps it’s just as well that I tried again.
You can lead a horse to water but you can’t make him not drink.
That’s a very good question, and one overlooked by most popular histories of the Prohibition movement. The movement began at the state level, since (a) it’s easier to change the laws of one state than of the federal government; and (b) nobody believed at the time that the federal government had the constitutional authority to ban liquor, so a federal law would require an enabling constitutional amendment, which is very difficult to pass. (Oh for that vanished era when the federal government recognized limits on its powers!)
After 30 years of agitation, however, prohibitionists had been successful in only 19 states. Then, suddenly, the federal constitutional amendment did pass, with the requisite two thirds majority in each house of Congress, and was ratified within 13 months by the necessary three fourths of all states. What happened? Why the sudden change?
The answer is simple–the United States entered World War I. Going to war makes people all giddy inside. At once prohibitionists had additional arguments–alcohol production “wasted” grain which could be used to feed troops, or shipped to our allies in Europe. In addition, going to war would require clear heads and clear thinking–what kind of slacker would argue for drunkenness during a national emergency? And finally, drinking beer, at least, seemed suspiciously German, so why not ban it once and for all?
The war ended, of course, in November 1918, two months before the ratification process was even complete. But by then the momentum was impossible to stop, and we were saddled with prohibition for another 13 years.
Of no little importance is the power of hypocrisy. Legislators are caught in the same bind today, intelligent persons who study the fact cannot but be struck with the absurdity of the “war on drugs”. Nonetheless, Heaven help the poltician who comes out in favor of legalization, it is tantamount to a political suicide note. Many a politician of that era rose to denounce Demon Rum after fortification with a stiff shot or two.
Legislators passed the laws for Prohibition because their supporters expected them to do so, whatever thier good sense. Further, being for the most part powerful and influential, there was little likelihood these petty laws would hinder thier own libation, common people were drunks, men like themselves were tipplers.
Figure 1 in the monograph “Alcohol Prohibition” by Jeffrey A. Miron, of Boston University, shows per capita alcohol consumption in the United States, 1900-1995.
You can see that per capita alcohol consumption in 1934, the first full year after the end of national prohibition, was less than half the rate of consumption in 1900 or 1910. And inded, that per capita alcohol consumption did not return to its pre-World War I peaks until the early 1970s.
I’ve always been perplexed by figures like this. How do we know this is true? I assume that these figures are derived from surveys (if not, where do they come from?). But how can we rely on survey results when people have an obvious and very powerful incentive to lie? I know that if a survey taker asks me if I’m engaging in an illegal activity, and I am in fact doing it, I am going to be very hesitant to admit it to a stranger.
Of course it doesn’t surprise me that the reported levels of alcohol consumption went down. Nonetheless, I take these figures with the same extra large grain of salt with which I take the results of surveys about drug use, or teen smoking.
No, those figures were not taken from surveys. They were taken from the per unit federal excise tax on alcoholic beverages sold domestically.
Ummmm…that makes even less sense. I would assume federal excise tax collection during Prohibition dropped to zero, but I am quite certain alcohol consumption did not.
Look at the chart. Re-read my previous posts. What years was I talking about?
Early 1970s.
Well that makes a bit more sense. I would still question those numbers though…there was still a black market in illegal liquor after the countywide Prohibition was ended. After all, the driving force behind the ending of Prohibition was states that were desperate for a new source of revenue, but not everyone wanted to pay the taxes. Not to mention, some of the individual states and counties remained “dry” even after Prohibition was ended at the federal level.
Remember The Waltons? In one episode “John Boy” wants to become a writer but he has to submit a typewritten manuscript. They was just po folks, so he had to borrow a typewriter from two old ladies. They bring one out and dust it off. One of them says, “Our father used this typewriter to write a letter protesting against the 18th Amendment.” The other says, “Was that the one that gave us ladies the vote, sister?” The other says, “No it was Prohibition.” This was what passed for humor on The Waltons.
sorry to continue the highjack, but
I have an alternate explanation. There was a lot more sales than can be figured by the state of the federal excise tax in 1934. Remember that in 1900 or 1910 alcoholic beverages would be sold by the local grocer, the general store, and a few larger legitimate companies. When the 18[sup]th[/sup] ammendment passed, these legitimate businesses ceased all sales of alcohol.
But people still wanted to drink.
Where there is a demand for a product there is money to be made. Those that were willing to break the law could make a killing during the prohibition years by trafficking in alcohol. Black market businesses sprang up all over the place, and the black market operates on the same basic principles as legitimate commerce. Survival of the fittest. The operations that were better organized quickly cornered the market and the Golden Years of Organized Crime were born.
Various syndicates controlled nearly all sales of alcohol in the U.S. Are just going to shrug and give up their largest income producing operation after prohibition is repealed? Of course not. They already had the sources, the smuggling network, the distrubution network, and the retailers in place. They continued to be a powerful force in the newly legitimate alcohol industry for quite a few years.
And the mob doesn’t pay per unit federal excise tax.
As the staff-report Guinastasia linked to above demonstrates, sacramental wine was explicitly exempt from Prohibition.
So, if Prohibition did have people who supported it because they thought it would outlaw sacramental wine and thus hurt the Catholics, those people ended up being disappointed.
Citations? Evidence?
Not universally. My parents’ Episcopalian church in Tennessee uses wine (and the situation is largely reversed in Ireland, while in the UK both denominations use it. Not relevant to the OP I know, but I thought I had to say).
It was just an alternate hypothesis that I thought was pretty intuitive, a way to explain the statistics that were being cited, but here you go anyway.
The Creation of the ATF
I’m just going to offer comment on various assertions throughout the thread that seem interesting:
The cite from the Cato institute, given relies on fair hearsay, a study at one remove, rather than a primary source, government collected figures, as here:
http://www.druglibrary.org/schaffer/History/e1920/consumption.htm
Their figures differ somewhat, but the curve is similar. Still, you can see it’s pulling a fast one, showing us a snip of the ten or so years at the bottom of the curve of the drinking trend over 125 years. That’s right out of “how to lie with statistics,” that is. Shame on the Cato institute, and shame on whoever for being taken in. When you have the big picture, you’ll note drinking went way up after the civil war, came down as the temperance movement gained broad support, eventually leading to a nationwide prohibition on the sale of alcohol, and has only returned to its high levels since the 1970s.
The laws against marijuana and hard drugs and prostitution, and indeed the laws against most things, discourage use, and it’s fairly absurd to argue otherwise. One often hears the assertion “It doesn’t stop anyone who really wants it,” but a moment’s reflection should show you how uninteresting a statement that is.
Let’s talk about “want.” There’s a joke among economists that goes something like this.
"Two economists see a Ferrari. ‘I’ve always wanted one of those,’ says one of them. ‘Obviously not,’ replies the other. "
You know, I’m not saying it’s screamingly funny, but it does illustrate what an empty concept “want” is, at least if it’s not accompanied by putting forth the effort to meet the costs associated with that want. If Burger King dug huge moats around each of their stores, and filled them with flaming gasoline, that wouldn’t stop anyone who wanted a Whopper badly enough they were willing to leap through fire to get one, or parachute in, or tunnel under the barrier, something elaborate like that. Still, you’d have to think there would be relatively few people who want whoppers that badly compared to now, when the cost of a whopper is simply traveling to a Burger King, paying two or three dollars, whatever it is. With all that in mind, you think you’d get real far at a Burger King stockholder’s meeting with “let’s dig moats around our stores, because if people want whoppers, they’ll still get them.” Indeed, you’d probably not get real far with “let’s double the price of our food, because if people want them, they’ll still get them.”
One way marijuana prohibition reduces demand is by increasing price, and here I mean price in strict monetary terms. An eighth of an ounce of it costs 15, 20, 30 50 or more dollars, depending on the quality. Fewer people want it that badly than would want it if it cost 5 dollars an 1/8th. More people want it that badly than would want it if it cost 100 dollars an 1/8th. Another way, and here I’m using “cost” in a broader sense, inconvenience, is the supply is relatively scarce compared to legal intoxicants. Stores line the main thoroughfares of even the smallest cities, boasting of their low prices for beer and wine. Obtaining marijuana or other drugs involves knowing a dealer, and relatively few people want to associate with drug dealers compared with the number of people willing to go to a gas station or convenience store, and drug dealers are a notoriously unreliable lot. You know line in the Lou Reed song, “He’s never early, he’s always late…first thing you learn is that you always got to wait”
Now, I’m not saying that artifically restricting the supply of a commodity through legislation is without costs of its own, that’s obviously false. There will be people willing to meet that new, lower demand because of the huge profits. In fact, that speaks as to another effective avenue of detterance. Don’t impose costs on the suppliers, impose costs on the users. When you see ballot initiatives for diversionary sentencing or decriminalization, what those do is reduce costs on users. If you want to reduce drug use, you want stiff penalties on even casual use. Would you rather be arrested with two or three joints in your pocket in a state like Ohio, where that carries a penalty of one hundred and fifty dollars, or a state like Texas, where that carries a penalty of a year in jail?
So, you can see, yes, Prohibition works. It’s quite effective, in fact, at least when properly conducted. Ten years of alcohol prohibition changed the nation’s drinking habits. You could make an argument that those benefits aren’t worth the costs imposed, and that would be sensible. Saying “Prohibition doesn’t work, because anyone who wants something will still get it” isn’t sensible.