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Parts of the Islamic world today prohibit alcohol without much fuss. I’m sure there are minor bootlegging operations here and there, but nothing comparable to A
by GloomyBoots 3y ago
Parts of the Islamic world today prohibit alcohol without much fuss. I’m sure there are minor bootlegging operations here and there, but nothing comparable to America during prohibition (my adoptive family’s patriarch was a bootlegger whose sons worked for him, so I’ve been interested in the subject for a long time). Abortion was successfully prohibited in America. The whole back-alley thing is heavily overblown in terms of how common it was.
There are always going to be cultural factors at play. You aren’t going to succeed in banning something if it’s popular enough, like jazz in the Third Reich, or if you just don’t have the power to enforce it.
In terms of harm reduction, a tightly controlled black market can easily be preferable to legalization. Kind of like el Paquete in Cuba.
- e44858 3y agoThe Islamic world just replaces alcohol with khat and opium, which aren’t much better. I wouldn’t call that an example of successful prohibition.
- GloomyBoots 3y agoI don't know how well opiate use correlates to the legality of alcohol. In theory, then, you could depress opiate use by introducing alcohol, but that doesn't mesh with what's going on in America right now, where opiate use is rising without any prohibition on alcohol. Khat's an upper, not really comparable. There are other factors that drive the demand for these drugs, and I think we're in agreement that the demand can and should be addressed in large part by dealing with root causes. But sex, drugs, guns, abortions etc. have all been successfully prohibited. There's little human behavior that hasn't.