It’s widely believed that the legal prohibition of alcohol in the United States began in 1919 and ended in 1933. Neither of these statements is strictly true. The prohibition of alcohol on a state-wide basis and the campaign to get it banned nation-wide began in the 1850s but was interrupted by the American Civil War. Several States ‘went dry’ in the last two decades of the 19th century, but true National Prohibition did indeed start with the passage of the Volstead Act in 1919. This Act was repealed in 1933. However, the lasting legacy of National Prohibition is that the minimum age for purchasing alcohol is 21 years, but the voting age is 18. Thus we still have ‘partial prohibition’ in that outside of the Islamic world the United States is the only country to ban a category of adults (18 to 20 year-olds) from buying alcohol. It remains to be seen whether the Scots follow suit!

In what way was national Prohibition a disaster? Well, firstly, if the point of banning something is to stop it happening – it didn’t! Millions of Americans continued to buy and drink alcohol. The attempt to legally suppress the mass market failed completely. However, for such large-scale flouting of the law to happen required the corruption of public officials on a massive scale. Police officers, court officials, Judges and Congressmen all had to be bribed to turn a ‘blind eye’. ‘Organised crime’ in the United States was therefore a product of National Prohibition.

The murder rate increased fivefold as rival gangsters battled it out in turf wars – the St Valentine’s Day Massacre is just one of the more famous examples. The Klu Klux Klan were supporters of Prohibition and many a gun battle took place between them and the Mob over the delivery of alcohol!

Less well known is that Prohibition led to a huge increase in the trafficking of women for prostitution. Prohibition separated men from women. Women drinkers preferred to get together in one another’s homes. Men preferred to visit illegal bars – ‘Speakeasy’s’ - where they met women trafficked for prostitution by the organised criminals who ran the Speakeasy’s. This in turn led to an increased incidence of sexually transmitted diseases – a very serious matter in a society that had yet to discover penicillin.

When you look at the attempts by the alcophobes of our latter-day Neo-Prohibitionist movement to restrict alcohol sales you have to wonder what the end-game is.  If in their secret hearts they really hanker after the good-old-days of Prohibition, they, and we, would be well advised to look at what really happened the last time government attempted to socially engineer the sober society.

text-align:justify;">Hardly a day goes by without another assault on the alcohol retailing industry from health campaigners or the media. Recently health campaigners have concentrated on the issue of minimum pricing as providing a silver bullet for the perceived problems of our drinking culture. A Channel 4 News piece recently typified the simplistic approach of tabloid television to our industry. Filmed against the bleak backdrop of the northeast of England the Channel 4 report recited the neo-prohibitionist myth that it’s the availability of alcohol that makes people drink it, and cheap beer from supermarkets was particularly singled out as the cause of 'pre-loading' by young drinkers before going on a night out. The simple solution? Minimum pricing to push up cost and thus reduce consumption!

It's as if our journalists have forgotten that in the northeast we have large-scale intergenerational unemployment with thousands of men standing idle. The shipyards on the Tyne have closed, the steel works at Redcar are gone and hundreds of businesses in the supply chains to these industries have closed. Unemployment and the poverty, marital breakdown and personal demoralisation this leads to have far more to do with alcoholism than how the retail distribution system markets boxes of beer. This Channel 4 piece is but one example of how our sector is scape-goated for the failure of politicians to deal effectively with intractable social problems outside of our control. Poverty and unemployment has always been a main driver of alcohol abuse. The best way to tackle binge drinking amongst young people in the Northeast, and elsewhere, is to provide apprenticeships and other teaching and learning opportunities that provide practical steps to work for young people.