ALCOHOL PROHIBITION WAS NOT A FAILURE

According to the reasoning of Allan Erickson (March 9 ), our country needs
to abolish all prohibitions against murder, robbery, drunken driving,
spouse and child abuse and slavery.

He claimed all prohibitions have failed, so the prohibition of slavery
brought about by Abraham Lincoln, at the cost of thousands of lives, must
be a failure.

As to alcohol prohibition, he (also Stan White, March 14) needs to do some
historical research. National alcohol prohibition was not a failure. Before
prohibition, Neeley institutes were a chain of prosperous alcohol
rehabilitation establishments. During prohibition, they went out of
business because of a lack of patients. Bellevue Hospital in New York
changed its alcoholic ward into a children's clinic. Drunken driving and
crime decreased nationally despite propaganda about racketeering in large
cities.

Repeal of prohibition was the failure! After repeal, crime and drunkenness
doubled within a decade. According to a Readers Digest report in 1983,
alcohol sales provided $12.2 billion in taxes but cost the nation $89.5
billion in liquor and crime control, health care, not counting family
poverty, spouse and child abuse, highway accidents and death it brings
about. What do you think repeal of illegal drug use would cost the country?

Abraham Lincoln compared prohibition of liquor with prohibition of
slavery. He said, "Whether the world would be benefited by the total and
final banishment of all intoxicating drinks seems to me to not now any
longer be an open question....The liquor traffic is a cancer in society
eating out its vitals and threatening its destruction. It cannot be
regulated; it must be eradicated...."

What do you think he would say about illegal drug traffic today?

Donald A. Nash

Grayson