Stephen
Kershnar
Lessons from Prohibition
Dunkirk-Fredonia Observer
December
1, 2019
I
recently rewatched Ken Burns’ fascinating documentary on prohibition.
Prohibition was a 1920-1933 nationwide ban on production, importation,
transportation, and sale of alcohol. The Eighteenth Amendment to the
Constitution and the Volstead Act that filled it out didn’t ban alcohol
possession and consumption. One of the interesting questions about it is whether
Prohibition worked.
One
1991 study by Harvard’s Jeffrey Miron and Stanford’s Jeffrey Ziebel found that
during Prohibition, per capita alcohol usage initially decreased to 30% of the
pre-prohibition level. They argue that alcohol use later bounced back to only 60-70%
of its pre-prohibition level. A 2017 study by several Simon Frasier University economists
found that in the six years following prohibition (1934-1939), the end of
Prohibition caused as many as 27,000 additional infants to die. On the other
hand, Ludwig von Mises Institute economist Mark Thornton argues that per capita
alcohol usage dropped precipitously before Prohibition and that if Prohibition
had continued past 1933, it likely would have would have reached pre-prohibition
level.
On
health and crime, the studies are again mixed. One study found that death rates
from cirrhosis of the liver, considered a proxy measure for alcohol consumption,
declined by 10-20%. Another study found that alcoholism-related deaths,
alcoholic psychosis admissions, and arrests for public drunkenness declined
when Prohibition and related cultural changes went into effect. Again, however,
it is unclear whether this resulted from forces that preceded Prohibition.
Thornton argues that cirrhosis deaths bottomed out during World War I and then
rebounded.
There
is some evidence that Prohibition caused a significant increase in serious
crime (for example, assault, burglary, murder, and robbery). This can be seen
in the dramatic decline in these crimes once Prohibition was lifted. On the
other hand, Harvard’s Mark H. Moore argues that violent crime didn’t
dramatically increase during Prohibition. University of California at Chico’s Kenneth
Rose argues that the statistics from the period are so poor that no conclusion
regarding Prohibition’s effect on crime is warranted.
During
Prohibition, the US. Government was despicable.
Writing in Slate, Deborah Blume notes
that federal officials wanted to prevent industrial alcohols from being stolen
by bootleggers and resold for consumption. To prevent this, they mixed it with
a deadly poison. New York City medical examiners told them not to because the
alcohol would be resold and end up killing people. It certainly did. The
poisoning program killed at least 10,000 Americans. If another government had
done this, it would have meant war.
American
people’s liberty should not depend whether the latest scheme to improve
people’s lives works. It is wrong for a do-gooder to use a gun or physical
violence to prevent her fun-loving neighbor from being promiscuous, drinking
whiskey, overeating, or smoking even if the prevention would make the neighbor’s
life go better. It is even worse if the do-gooder were to prevent her neighbor
from having such fun so that the do-gooder could shield her precious children
from these recreational activities or make sense of her husband’s or son’s senseless
death. If this is true for individuals, it is true for collections of individuals.
The moral character of violence and coercion doesn’t change merely because more
people are involved. Nor does it change when do-gooders act through the government
rather wielding guns themselves.
Unsurprisingly,
do-gooders such as the Anti-Saloon League supported changing the Constitution
to allow for federal income taxes. The Sixteenth Amendment’s passage made the
Eighteenth Amendment’s passage more likely because it reduced government’s
dependence on alcohol-related taxes. The Women’s Christian Temperance Union wanted
to prohibit polygamy, prostitution, and tobacco. It also widely promoted
educational material that included outrageous lies about alcohol. When it comes
to improving adults and protecting children, a do-gooder’s work is never done.
What
is interesting is how with time this lesson has been lost. CNN reports that in 2017,
70,000 Americans died from overdose. Despite a federal prohibition on the
unauthorized sale and consumption of opioids, 48,000 of these overdose deaths
were from opioids. This catastrophe is taken as evidence that more police
officers and specialized courts are needed as are more and harsher prison
sentences. This despite the fact that unauthorized opioid distribution and
possession are already felonies. With the federal prohibition on these drugs
working so disastrously, one wonders why anyone would want more of the same.
Without
the Eighteenth Amendment, Prohibition would have been unconstitutional. The
federal government was not merely regulating interstate commerce when it banned
alcohol production and sale within a state. Nor was the ban a necessary and
proper means by which the federal government executed one of its other constitutional
powers (see Article I Section 8). As a result, without the Eighteenth
Amendment, the people would have the right to use alcohol. The right to
regulate it, if there were such a right, would be held by the states. Unlike
alcohol prohibition, federal drug prohibition is now considered constitutional.
Some of the judges deciding such cases and police officers enforcing such laws
even took an oath to uphold the Constitution.
Santayana
famously said, “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it. Most
Americans still can’t legally buy or use marijuana. Writing for The Washington Post, Christopher
Ingraham points out that in 2016 there were almost as many marijuana users as
cigarette smokers (55 versus 59 million). Surgeon General C. Everett Koop called
for a cigarette-free society. Transportation Secretary Elizabeth Dole thought
that the national drinking age could reasonably be set at 24. The Centers for
Disease Control recently proposed prohibiting certain flavored vape products in
order to, you guessed it, protect the children. Thirteen Democratic candidates
want to criminalize and confiscate people’s AR-15 rifles, despite the fact that
Americans own 5-10 million of them.
Prohibition
is a warning from the past. We should heed it.
