Lessons from our ban on alcohol

America’s experiments with prohibition have proven to be catastrophic failures that make a mockery of the law, skew police priorities and enrich the black market.

On this day, 104 years ago, the United States began a failed experiment in alcohol prohiition.

“I regard it as the most moral reform of the generation,” declared William Jennings Bryan upon the Senate’s approval of the 18th Amendment. The amendment, later ratified by the states in 1919, was the result of decades of campaigning by the Temperance Movement.

Alcohol use and abuse were blamed for any and all problems in society, from crime to homelessness to the compromising of morality, and prohibition of alcohol was proposed to cure these ills.

Yet, even then, there were plenty of critics of prohibition who understood the limitations of the law.

Rep. Julius Kahn, R-california, foresaw that prohibition would fail to stop people from using alcohol. “You cannot curb intemperance by law,” he said, “but you make sneaks, liars, and hypocrites of men when you attempt to put in force laws of this kind.”

Rep. William Vare, R-pennsylvania, saw prohibition as unenforceable, a perception that was proven correct. Six years into prohibition, Vare told colleagues, “The experience over this period has demonstrated the failure of prohibition under the rigors of the unreasonable,” citing increases in crime, drunkennesss and deaths “unquestionably due almost entirely to the use of poisonous substitutes,” along with congested court systems.

Though it took over a decade of failure, eventually the folly of alcohol prohibition was recognized, and the Eighteenth Amendment was repealed in 1933. At the time, America learned from its mistake of confusing intent with success, moral crusading with sensible lawmaking and the force of law with actual problem solving.

Yet, today, the United States is decades into the latest round of substance prohibition, with the same results as alcohol prohibition. Under prohibition, Americans continue to use drugs made less safe (the fentanyl crisis being the latest example), criminal organizations are made wealthy (cartels and street gangs persist), and law enforcement resources are squandered playing a fruitless game of whack-a-mole. The disproportionate harms of prohibition to poor and minority communities are clear.