ENDURING LEGACY OF PROHIBITION

Rarely in modern times does Washington withdraw from an area of
domestic affairs. December 5 marks the seventy-sixth anniversary of
the 21st Amendment, repealing alcohol prohibition.

One of the most energetic political causes in the late 19th and early
20th century was the "temperance" movement, which aimed to ban
liquor. The movement comprised religious conservatives, nativists who
wanted to crack down on immigrants and minorities, and progressives,
who defined their era by their dedication to preemptive justice and
their ambitious goal to create a new, refined American man through
the force of central planning and federal government power.

The progressive and prohibitionist movements culminated after World
War I, when anti-German propaganda contributed to an American taboo
against beer and when the spectacle of drunken debauchery of U.S.
soldiers on military bases provided the last excuse needed to attempt
the "Noble Experiment" of prohibition.

In 1919, the 18th Amendment and Volstead Act nationally outlawed
alcohol, a drug used by civilizations for millennia. Liquor
violations quickly dominated the criminal justice system. By 1924,
the population of federal prisons had almost doubled. A 1923
congressional study found that state attorneys spent about 44 percent
of their time on prohibition cases. Corruption consumed the legal
system. Prohibition chief Lincoln C. Andrews testified in 1926 that
875 Prohibition Bureau officials had been dismissed for corruption,
bribery and misconduct.

Criminal gangs controlled the illegal booze market. Five thousand
speakeasies were operating in Chicago alone. Violent crime infested
the cities. By the onset of the Great Depression the experiment had
been such a failure that even many of its most vocal proponents had
turned against it. When prohibition ended in 1933, the violent gangs
closed their operations and, despite the increasing poverty of the
Depression era, rates of homicide and other crimes plummeted.

Today, as tens of millions of Americans drink in moderation, we can
hardly imagine that such behavior was federally verboten not too long
ago. When we see the remaining problems associated with alcohol, we
must fight the urge to relive the social experiment of prohibition
that turned our institutions completely rotten and plagued our
streets with bootleggers and shootouts.

Yet much of the prohibitionist legacy remains. Four years after the
21st amendment, Franklin Roosevelt signed the Marihuana Tax Act into
law, prohibiting the drug. Whereas politicians had once respected the
Constitution enough to recognize that it must be legally amended to
federally ban alcohol, the war on other drugs continues without any
constitutional justification.

Today's drug war is much worse than alcohol prohibition was. We have
half a million people in prison, an overwhelmed judicial system,
militarized enforcement, assaults on civil liberties, a foreign
policy distorted by drug-war goals and, according to many economists,
about twice as many homicides as we would expect if drugs were legal.

All the problems with alcohol prohibition persist in relation to
today's illicit drugs, except on a larger scale.

The puritanical mindset behind alcohol prohibition persists. Drinking
ages, open-container laws, state-level alcohol distribution
regulations and DUI laws have become ever more draconian, leading to
overcrowding jails, erosion of individual liberties, cruel disruption
of the lives of the peaceful, and dubious results in actually making
our roads and cities safer. Alcoholic drinks with caffeine may soon
be outlawed by the FDA. Meanwhile, cigarette smokers are being
targeted on the margins. Politicians threaten legislation against
transfats and other allegedly unhealthy foods.

It was a great day when alcohol prohibition was lifted and the
liberty to drink was restored to the American republic. But the
people never fully grasped the significance of prohibition as a
governmental usurpation of individual choice and family and community
life. Alcohol prohibition is over, thank goodness. But the
heavy-handedness of the progressives' greatest social experiment
continues today under the banner of other crusades - with the same
predictable results.

Anthony Gregory is a research analyst at The Independent Institute,
Oakland, Cal.