It is to anyone recognizing the connection between legality and availability.
From the history text, “Shaping of the American Past” Kelley, Prentice Hall 1990
“While on a per capita basis, Americans anually drank the equivalent of 2.6 gallons of pure alcohol in the years 1906 to 1910, by 1934, just after the repeal of prohibition, the figure had dropped to .97 gallons annually. By 1940, it had only risen to 1.56”
The text goes on to say
“During the 1920s, as historian John C. Burnham has shown, arrests for drunkenness dropped sharply, and so did the cost to the public of jailing drunks, since there were far fewer of them. Disease related to alcoholic psychosis also faded. So dramatically, for that matter, did alcoholism decline, that articles on it were no longer to be found in the professional periodicals on American medicine.”
Pldennison;
Thanks for looking that up. It makes me curious as to if the reverse would be true. That is to say, if marijuana were leagalized, would more people smoke it? I’m sure initially some would (just to try it), but I wonder how things would level off. I’m inclined to think there would be about a 20% increase, but that is purely a guess.
Jophiel;
I am not a marijuana grower, but I have known some in the past. It is not simply a matter of throwing some seeds in dirt with a bit of fertilizer. I’m not trying to defend marijuana growing here, but what you said is simply false.
“I think it would be a great idea” Mohandas Ghandi’s answer when asked what he thought of Western civilization
Ok, I was exaggerating a little here. I’m a horticulturalist, so I know that it takes a little more than that to grow certain plants such as controlling light, humidity, soil pH, insect and disease management, proper fertilization, etc etc… However, I think you’re seeing the forest for the trees. My point was that if you grow lousy weed, you smoke lousy weed. Big whoop. If you make your own lousy handgun, you’re going to get seriously wounded. The original question was whether or not a handgun ban would be effective, using the ineffectiveness of the drug ban as an example. My answer was that you can’t really compare home made versions of the two (handguns and marijuana) for the above reasons.
“I guess it is possible for one person to make a difference, although most of the time they probably shouldn’t.”
Lucky, it so happens, as I recently posted in a different thread, that a study by a researcher (whose name escapes me) at UC Berkeley indicates that, in the Netherlands, when law enforcement efforts were abandoned in the 1970s against marijuana, use increased slightly. When it began to be sold openly in coffee shops in the 1980s, usage increased 300%.