Tamar Jacoby, usually a reliable observer, outruns her evidence a bit today when she argues, in a Washington Post article supporting the Bush/Senate version of immigration reform, that:
The best analogy is Prohibition: No matter what enforcement resources we threw at that unrealistic ban, we couldn’t make it stick. But realistic regulation of alcohol use is another matter entirely — easily achieved with modest means, such as liquor licenses and import duties.
So, too, with immigration….
The problem with this argument is that Prohibition, in many respects, worked. There is a substantial scholarly literature about it, but most historians agree that it succeeded in reducing alchohol consumption, substantially at first and then less dramatically. Here is one reasonable summary:
The best evidence available to historians shows that consumption of beverage alcohol declined dramatically under prohibition. In the early 1920s, consumption of beverage alcohol was about thirty per cent of the pre-prohibition level. Consumption grew somewhat in the last years of prohibition, as illegal supplies of liquor increased and as a new generation of Americans disregarded the law and rejected the attitude of self-sacrifice that was part of the bedrock of the prohibition movement. Nevertheless, it was a long time after repeal before consumption rates rose to their pre-prohibition levels. In that sense, prohibition “worked.”
And here is an entry from the DEA web site:
A word about prohibition: lots of you hear the argument that alcohol prohibition failed—so why are drugs still illegal? Prohibition did work. Alcohol consumption was reduced by almost 60% and incidents of liver cirrhosis and deaths from this disease dropped dramatically (Scientific American, 1996, by David Musto). Today, alcohol consumption is over three times greater than during the Prohibition years. [David Musto, a child psychiatrist and historian at Yale, has written widely and well on this issue — jsr]
Even Jacob Sullum, a libertarian at Reason who opposes government regulation, acknowledges that one must criticize Prohibition on grounds other than that it did not work.
It’s true that alcohol consumption fell during Prohibition, at least initially. In a 1991 paper, economists Jeffrey Miron and Jeffrey Zwiebel estimated, based on four measures (cirrhosis, alcoholism deaths, arrests for drunkenness, and alcoholic psychoses), that consumption dropped 60 to 80 percent immediately after Prohibition was enacted, then rebounded sharply beginning in 1921. By the end of the decade, consumption was 50 to 70 percent of the pre-Prohibition level according to three measures and slightly higher according to one….
But to decide whether banning booze was a good policy, which is what the DEA seems to be arguing, it’s not enough to know whether it reduced drinking. Assuming, for the sake of argument, that paternalism can be justified on a utilitarian basis, you need to know whether the benefit from fewer alcohol-related problems outweighed the costs associated with prohibition, including the loss of privacy and freedom, black-market violence, official corruption, disrespect for the law, injuries and deaths from illicit alcohol, and the strengthening of organized crime. A consensus developed during Prohibition that, whatever its benefits might be, they were not worth these costs. By that measure, alcohol prohibition in the 1920s and early ‘30s, like drug prohibition today, was a failure, even if it “worked” in the sense that it discouraged drinking.
I suspect that many Americans might be satisfied with an attempt to increase our border security that worked as well as Prohibition did. Even if, like Prohibition, it “worked” much better in the short run, that would at least provide some time to work on the longer term solutions.
Prohibition worked? Even if alcohol consumption was reduced, what business of the government’s was that? The corruption alone was bad enough not to mention the rise of gangs and the unsafe booze that killed thousands.
A commenter who wishes to remain anonymous emailed me the following:
I replied:
Anon. replied:
I replied by suggesting that Anon. consult the work of David Musto, the excellent Yale historian I had mentioned. I could have added, but didn’t, that we view many laws and regulations as “working” that are less successful than Prohibition was in curtailing the use of alcohol.
Tamar Jacoby is one of the most relentless apologists for unlimited immigration that has written on the subject. I certainly don’t accept her as a reliable observer. She doesn’t admit that an Open Borders policy has important drawbacks, both in terms of financial burdens, conflicts, and social cohesion.
Prohibition led to the Kennedy money and the Kennedy Dynasty. That alone means it was a bad idea!
“She doesn’t admit that an Open Borders policy has important drawbacks, both in terms of financial burdens, conflicts, and social cohesion.”
Is she like the lunatics that think we have an open borders policy right now?
Wasn’t Prohibition also successful in stigmatizing drinking (maybe it was the other way around)? If so, we could afford to stigmatize illegal immigration a bit more.
ALCOHOL PROHIBITION INCREASED ALCOHOL USAGE:
The claim that prohibition lowered alcohol consumption is totally false!
Not only did alcohol Prohibition in the 1920s increase usage http://i.imgur.com/Ga1Gs.png it also exacerbated all other related problems while bootleggers, just like many of our present day drug lords, became rich and powerful folk heroes as a result.
“It has made potential drunkards of the youth of the land, not because intoxicating liquor appeals to their taste or disposition, but because it is a forbidden thing, and because it is forbidden makes an irresistible appeal to the unformed and immature.”
— That was part of the testimony of Judge Alfred J Talley, given before the Senate Hearings on Alcohol Prohibition in 1926:
http://www.druglibrary.org/schaffer/HISTORY/e1920/senj1926/judgetalley.htm
And the following paragraphs are from WALTER E. EDGE’s testimony, a Senator from New Jersey:
“Any law that brings in its wake such wide corruption in the public service, increased alcoholic insanity, and deaths, increased arrests for drunkenness, home barrooms, and development among young boys and young women of the use of the flask never heard of before prohibition can not be successfully defended.”.
http://www.druglibrary.org/schaffer/HISTORY/e1920/senj1926/walteredge.htm
And here is Julien Codman’s testimony, who was a member of the Massachusetts bar.
”..it has been a pitiable failure; that it has failed to prevent drinking; that it has failed to decrease crime; that, as a matter of fact, it has increased both; that it has promoted bootlegging and smuggling to an extent never known before”.
http://www.druglibrary.org/schaffer/HISTORY/e1920/senj1926/codman.htm
Here are the main paragraphs from the address of His Eminence, Cardinal Dougherty, the Archbishop of Philadelphia, to the Catholic societies of the Archdiocese on New Year’s Day 1931:
“Having heard the report on behalf of the members of the Total Abstinence Society, it occurs to me to say that when the law prohibiting alcoholic drink was passed, many thought that there would be no further need for our temperance or total-abstinence societies. Hence the practice of giving a pledge against intoxicating liquors to boys and girls at Confirmation was discontinued. There seemed to be no need of it.”
“But, unfortunately. Prohibition has not performed the miracles that were expected. According to experts, such as judges, public officials, social service workers, and others, there is as much, perhaps even more, drunkenness and intemperance today than before the passage of the Volstead Act.”
“When in the past did we see young men and women of respectable families carrying a flask of liquor when going to social events? When did we see young girls, not yet of age, drinking in public, perhaps to excess, cocktails and the strongest kind of intoxicating liquors, and perhaps being overcome by them? That, today, is not an uncommon sight.”