2 ms·

The effects of prohibition are not always easy to predict, or even know in hindsight. Many of the things people think they know about prohibition are incorrect

• virmundi 10y ago
  The analysis in that article showed little to no thought about side effects. Sure, the mobs existed before hand, both Irish and Italian. However, they were initial police forces for the ghettos. What prohibition did is give them a cash infusion, which in turned allowed them to expand. The same is true in modern times with various cartels. As to the benefits, look at cigarettes. We haven't banded them. Instead we've pushed the idea that they are terrible for you. We've put up graphic ads of organs. We've had olympians with mouth cancer talk through machine. As a result the consumption of that product is down. Do we want to have the hamfisted power of the state come down by law on people or do we want people to self-select and improve? Prohibition gets you the former; indoctrination and propaganda get you the later.
• _greim_ 10y ago
  Published in 1989, near the height of America's anti-drug fervor. The article also undermines itself by acknowledging organized crime became "more visible and lurid during Prohibition," and then hand-waving past it with the bland truism that "it existed before and after". Well of course it did. While I agree history lessons are often applied overly-simplistically, I'm inclined to disregard as extremely biased the intended conclusion of the article, which is that we should double down on drug enforcement.