Prohibition in the United States – a warning from history

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 This Act was repealed in 1933.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.