PROHIBITION'S PROBLEMS

Remember Alcohol Dec. 3, Letter

Life with legalized drugs is bad, but life with prohibition is even worse.

The writer could have made his case even stronger by reminding us
that national prohibition of alcohol was accompanied by reduced death
rates from alcoholism and cirrhosis of the liver (See Dr. Clark
Warburton's 1932 book The Economic Results of Prohibition).

So what were Americans thinking when they ended national Prohibition?
Consider this, from the 1930 resolution of the Women's Organization
for National Prohibition Reform: "... National Prohibition, wrong in
principle, has been equally disastrous in consequences in the
hypocrisy, the corruption, the tragic loss of life and the appalling
increase of crime which have attended the abortive attempt to enforce
it; in the shocking effect it has had upon the youth of the nation;
in the impairment of constitutional guarantees of individual rights;
in the weakening of the sense of solidarity between the citizen and
the government, which is the only sure basis of a country's strength."

Those women knew life was better and safer with legal alcohol than
life with illegal alcohol because they'd lived it both ways. They
learned that driving a popular drug underground causes more societal
damage than it prevents.

Priscilla M. Chase, Palm Harbor