WAR ON DRUGS AS EFFECTIVE AS PROHIBITION

People who are familiar with Mobile's history know that the Port City
has seen seamier times, in particular when it comes to the early part
of the 20th century, when local residents worked hard at ignoring Prohibition.

In fact, they actively flouted the law by importing illegal booze
from South America.

Sometimes we talk about Mobile's rum-runners almost fondly, like they
were pirates or outlaws. But at the time, the scandals of our past
were often anything but funny.

Indeed, they remind me very much of today's "war on drugs," which I
believe is destined to fail just as Prohibition failed.

Lately we've all read frighten ing accounts of wars between drug
cartels and the government of Mexico. The carnage is threatening all
of North America -- and it's all because people in the United States
are buying billions of dollars worth of illegal drugs, and the
suppliers want to expand their share of this lucrative business.

After 40 or so years of the U.S. government's war on drugs, no one
claims we are winning -- because we are not. Lives, treasure and the
respect for law are being lost.

There are lessons to be learned from the failure of Prohibition --
across the country in general, and in Mobile in particular.

We know that people have used drugs here, as they have everywhere,
throughout history. The only questions were, did you want them and
could you afford them?

But after World War I, liquor suddenly became illegal, too. The
movement to prohibit the manufacture, sale and possession of alcohol
resulted in nationwide Prohibition, which lasted 13 years.

Alabamians supported Prohibition, and the state had had a statewide
version of it off and on since 1907. But Mobilians did not support it.

Indeed, Mobile in the early 1920s was like Phenix City was in the
1950s with its open gambling and prostitution. With our access to the
Gulf of Mexico, we smuggled liquor from Central America.

The Gulf was a smugglers' paradise; and with all its estuaries, bays
and bayous, the Mobile Bay area was a perfect home for smuggling.
Once ashore, liquor could be shipped by train north to St. Louis and Chicago.

There were fortunes to be made, and many were. However, it is one
thing to ignore Montgomery and another to do the same to Washington.

By 1923, Mobile was under investigation. In November of that year,
the feds arrested dozens of local people, many holding powerful
elected and economic positions.

The sheriff, his predecessor, the chief of police, others in office
and the Boykin brothers (Charles and Frank) were all taken to the
federal building on Royal Street and charged.

U.S. Attorney Aubrey Boyles was behind the round-up. He had the
support of F.I. Thompson, the powerful editor of the Mobile Register,
and others in the town and state.

However, he did not have the support of the majority of Mobilians and
their leaders, or the members of the Mobile Bar Association.

Eventually, the cases came to trial and several important folks were
convicted of various offenses involving illegal booze. As time
passed, though, most won their cases on appeal and went back to doing
what they had been doing, although more quietly.

As for the U.S. attorney, Boyles was later disbarred. Even though he
eventually was reinstated, his life in Mobile was ruined. He left his
hometown in 1933 and died in New York in 1954.

His place as prosecutor in the trials was taken in 1924 by Hugo
Black, an ambitious Birmingham district attorney who was a mem ber of
the Ku Klux Klan, as most Alabama politicians were in the Roaring
Twenties. The Klan supported Prohibition, largely to deny alcohol to blacks.

Hugo Black's work in Mobile so impressed the state's voters that they
elected him to the U.S. Senate in 1928. He went on to serve on the
U.S. Supreme Court from 1937 until his death in 1971.

The sheriff resigned. Frank Boykin was elected to Congress in 1934
and served until 1962.

Prohibition lingered until 1933. Each year, the Coast Guard increased
its enforcement efforts all over the Gulf; and each year, despite
rising violence, the illegal booze got through to thirsty Americans.

Finally, after Franklin Roosevelt's election to the presidency, the
constitutional amendment was rescinded and liquor laws were once
again left to the states.

Perhaps it took the hardships of the Great Depression to bring us to
our senses about Prohibition's failure nearly 80 years ago.

Which brings us back to today. If Prohibition was a failure, what
does that say about the current drug war?

Demand for drugs is high, and people who want them will pay whatever
it costs to buy them.

The profits spawn violence, just as Prohibition spawned violence in
its day. In fact, Prohibition and the war on drugs both are known for
the distinctive weapons used by criminals.

In the 1920s, we saw gangsters using Thompson submachine guns, while
today the weapon of choice is an assault rifle. Both are automatic
weapons, neither requires much skill or training to operate, and both
are ruthlessly lethal.

Each will always be an icon of its era.

As was the case with rum-running, the amount of money involved in the
drug trade, and the power it buys, are astronomical.

The problem with the war on drugs is the same problem the United
States had during Prohibition: Neither conflict can be won. Just as
alcohol was legalized, so at least some drugs must now be.

The most common illegal drug today is marijuana. Why not legalize it
and even let the federal government sell it?

We might have a chance to reduce our national debt with the profits
and taxes collected.

The alternative approach has failed disastrously, as similar efforts
have in the past. So let's be creative, and perhaps we can find a way
to reduce the hold that illegal drugs have on us.

In the end, it's the drug trade -- more than the drugs themselves --
that is tearing North America apart.

Let's abolish the Second Prohibition and see if we can work out this
problem. We sure aren't solving it now.