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People across the USA might take time out from the economic crisis and its sober comparisons to the Great Depression today to toast the 75th anniversary of the repeal of Prohibition.
Celebrations of the 1933 ratification of the 21st Amendment, which ended the country's dry spell, are planned in San Francisco, Boston, New York, Washington, D.C., and elsewhere.
I have a theory that had the folks who brought you prohibition had limited the restrictions to distilled alcohol and permitted wine and beer (arguably food) to be sold they would have succeeded. Speaking as a guy who has been in police work for nearly 40 years, and having seen what hard liquor will do to people, I think that would have been a good thing.
Funny thing is, Prohibition is still going on in some "dry" counties/towns... mostly in the South, but there a few in New England as well. There are also several archaic "blue" laws still being enforced where you still can't buy alcohol on Sundays and things like that.
One of the major papers I researched and wrote during my MA program was on the subject of the repeal of prohibition. Among the things that I learned was that prohibition itself was incredibly ineffective, changing somewhat the identity of alcohol consumers, but not reducing at all, the total amount of alcohol consumed. It's primary accomplishment was not any increase in general sobriety, rather what it did was to take an immense amount of what used to be state government tax revenues and shifted it into the hands of organized crime. Prohibition was the greatest break that the mob ever received, it was the power maker for them. Another effect of prohibition was to create a new class of criminals who otherwise would never have become involved with the criminal justice system.
I also had to conclude that $ was the major motivation behind the repeal, not the admission of prohibition's stunning failure. It was the depression which persuaded politicians that the lost alcohol tax money needed to be recovered and they wasted no time at all repealing prohibition once the Democrats assumed office in 1933. Had it not been for the depression, no telling how long prohibition would have remained on the books.
It did remain on the books until this very day in many counties, and until the 80s in a few entire states. Of course, the counties get none of the tax revenues, so what did they care?
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