Why did the US government think prohibition was a good idea?

Why did the US government think prohibition was a good idea?

Attached: 1A046286-E8BC-41BE-89D2-937F11BA8C5B.jpg (270x261, 39K)

They listened to women

because it worked
alcoholism declined

me on the right

me in the back slightly concerned about the state of the economy

Silly females

Fundies are retarded. It is known.

muh christian morality

Reports of alcoholism declined at least

And yet crime skyrocketed.

USA used to have Russia level alcoholism
we can deal with gangsters, but a drunkard population can achieve nothing

Because its the third top killer of Americans each year not including alcohol related deaths like falling,suicides etc. And was and still is a large cause of domestic abuse

Do most people here think prohibition was a good thing!?

uh huh

Me in the manhole.

Because Wayne Wheeler, the first of the great American political operatives, brilliantly built a coalition n support of it, and brilliantly leveraged the power of single-issue voters to swing congressional elections in favor of the dry candidate, of whatever party, whatever his stand on any other issues.

Also helpful, some states were granting women the vote in Congressional elections in advance of the Constitutional amendment requiring them to do so -- and women voters were strongly dry.

There were some amazingly unlikely alliances to pass Prohibition, and some amazingly sketchy maneuvers -- for example, Congress refused to allow the Constitutionally required 10-year census, which would have counted many new (and wet) immigrant voters concentrated in cities, shifting some Congressional seats from dry rural states to wet urban areas.

Not to mention the U.S censuses literally started to have a section for "alcoholism" on "causes of death"

Because saloons were gathering centers and political strongholds for immigrants and Catholic populations the WASPs didn't trust.

Combined with women voters and good old fashioned Protestant self denial, Prohibition had plenty of support.

The idea that it was about public health might have had some traction, but it was overrated. It was more about the poverty, violence and crime that came with widespread drunkenness.

On the other hand, that shit was always an urban issue, and everyone had to pay for it. Nothing changes.

They didn't, and still don't, understand basic fucking economics.

There had been a long tradition of anti-alcohol crusades dating back about a hundred years. Alcohol (gin and whiskey especially) contributed to social problems like domestic abuse and disease.

It wasn’t just the introduction of nation-wide organized crime to the U.S., Prohibition also brought about the corruption of the police, courts and politicians that plagues us to this day and it furthermore set the stage for the Drug War, that has only magnified the problems.

And people still got booze back then just like people today are still getting drugs.

Alcoholism and substance abuse could have and should have been addressed thru social means, not a Constitutional Amendment expanding police powers and government authority.

Attached: b9ee34df89aed1ed2263ddca1db9cca4.jpg (736x1157, 189K)

lobbyists are one hell of a drug

>Because saloons were gathering centers and political strongholds for immigrants and Catholic populations the WASPs didn't trust.

Gee, it's almost as if ethno-religious heterogeneity results in massive social tensions that lead to negative political outcomes

Attached: 1472239922329.gif (320x240, 2.12M)

It's mostly just protestants, lad.

>why would the descendants of a country's founding population get outraged at the growing political strength of ethnically/religiously alien immigrants? and why would this outrage cause them to act out politically?

Attached: 1259828604770.jpg (200x207, 36K)

>decriminalize everything
>no more crime

>And people still got booze back then just like people today are still getting drugs.
>People still kill, rob, and rape other people, so why even bother prosecuting it?

>criminalize everything
>crime skyrockets

>Implying that a vast amount of killing and robbing isn't to obtain illegal drugs

Do you have any idea how much of the US homicide rate is related to narcotics in some way?

Sweet fuck no. It was a fucking disaster for civil liberties, increased organized crime and decreased trust in the government and police due to them becoming increasingly corrupt because o the influence of said organized crime.

Based retards

They allowed women to vote and women immediately voted to ban fun. Add some christ tards into the mix and you have a majority.

There's a little scene in Boardwalk Empire that kinda encapsulates everything about why Prohibition ever became a thing.
Politicians cynically threw their support behind it because it guaranteed them the women's vote. That's it.

>allow women to vote
>society immediately nosedives
Everytime

>prohibition was an utter failure that did nothing
I’m so sick of this fucking board. Prohibition was just as much about breaking the contemporary drinking culture/saloon economy. People just don’t fucking understand what a big deal they were back in the day. There was no aspect of life which wasn’t permeated by whiskey drinking alcoholics.

Fast forward ten years and sure people are sitting around over a wine or beer but every single fucking saloon is shuttered and sold.

More like why does the US government still think prohibition is a good idea?

as populations moved from the farm to the city (and it was major numbers), them god fearing hicks in the rural areas wanted to punish the growing urban areas with their old timey religion

also, America was pretty drunk

It was still a stupid idea. Alcohol was a fact of life prior to Prohibition. It was permanently moralized, and the idea of a Nanny State policing private behavior was legitimized. Combine this with Wilson's trampling the 1st Amendment in the name of wartime security, America was in a shitty place.

Check out the order of the amendments, friend.

>Fast forward ten years and sure people are sitting around over a wine or beer but every single fucking saloon is shuttered and sold.


Not quite.

Some number, of course, became speak-easies. SOme converted to non-alcohol based businesses, which were not as profitable but carried on until Prohibition ended. You'll see pictures of the "first legal beer" being poured in this or that city, and you'll notice it is being poured in a saloon, that is still in place, with the beertaps all ready to go.

Prohibition beat the shit out of saloon culture, and it never really recovered. But it's an overstatemnet to say it wiped out the saloons -- they were too freaking popular and useful for that to happen.

>the idea of a Nanny State policing private behavior was legitimized.

Was it? Prohibition ultimately failed and was repealed, the only Amendment that ever was repealed. It may have legitimized the idea of the nanny state at the time, but as an example after the fact, it is a powerful argument against it.

hardcore alcoholism was a major problem prior to prohibition, along with the domestic violence that comes hand in hand with it

speak easies exploded during prohibition and opened a whole new can of worms with organized crime, but after it was all said and done alcohol consumption went down to more tolerable levels

Postmillenial Pietist (Calvinist, Puritan, Baptist) moral issue which became a front for greater political issues. As said before, the pietists represented the (generally Republican but later progressive wings of the Democratic party) forces of the old Whigs, abolitionist, religious, WASPy, and nativist sentiments while the “drinking” populations were usually Catholic or German Lutheran (not Scandinavian) immigrants. Thise groups originally comprised a more Classical Liberal Democratic party (free trade, anti imperialism, sound money, and civil liberties) which was compromised in reconstruction with pietist Agrarians from the south and silver supporting populist elements from the west which formed a progressive wing that unseated the types of presidencies like Cleveland (I think) and gave the world Wilsons instead. Basically the tide of WWI and the progressive movement created an ideologically one party state in the USA that was only dismantled through the return to normalcy and the confusion of the depression (Though the New Deal came close to restoring a consensus)

Good post

Women infiltrated to gubmint and feels uber alles.

If we could cleanly eliminate alcohol the nation/world would legitimately be a better, if not more boring, place. This is fact.

Phrobition was actually a good idea and it did work incredibly. Phrobition not working is one of the greatest historical memes/great lies.

Afaik violent crime actually went down considerably.

They were high on Jesus

Isn't organized violent crime ala Valentine Days Massacre more dangerous to the society than drunk people punching each other?

The murder rate stayed approximately the same.

Organized crime breeds more violence, more systemic violence to boot, which is harder to root out.

Clearly it didn’t during phrobition. You know alcohol kills far more people than murder btw?

The main pushers of prohibition were w*men who happened to also be suffragettes.

Universal suffrage was the worst thing to ever happen to this nation.

Alcoholics died during Prohibition too, in fact, I suspect more people died from drink during the Prohibition because they had to binge and on inferior alcohol

>>women voted to ban fun
That's not the fault of women exactly, but suffragettes first and foremost. They were anti-fun the movement and the ideology and were the absolutely worst people for politicians to appeal to.

I'd rather have hardcore alcoholism everywhere then what we got as a consequence of prohibition. The cure was a million times worse then the disease.

Rockefeller didn’t want people using ethanol as fuel so he put petroleum in it and banned alcohol sales. Look into it

Define better. I for one do not consider safety to be the highest single concern.

There were government agents poisoning alcohol supplies even. It was some really bad business.

Alcohol consumption per capita was halved so likely the number of people who died to alcoholism was reduced considerably. Infact I think there is a statistic about that.

It was less accessible to people who drank casually. People more addicted to alcohol would try to find the way to get their fix, and they had to reach out for what was available, which almost certainly was of lesser quality, if not outright dangerous

Attached: 1486961451600.jpg (800x626, 27K)

Do you have any sources for that?

No, I don't, not from the top of my head. Do you think it didn't happen?

Less death and physical harm. Less social ill due to alcoholism i.e. domestic problems. More people in control (and responsible) of their actions, instead of letting a drug decide things for them.

>I for one do not consider safety to be the highest single concern.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Anyway my main point was that the on paper appeal of a dry nation should be obvious when you get over the cultural baggage. It's not a grand mystery.

>hardcore alcoholism was a major problem prior to prohibition, along with the domestic violence that comes hand in hand with it

Except that was bullshit. It wasn't a clamp down on public intoxication or domestic abuse. Those were crimes already. It wasn't enough to criminalize the negative effects of alcoholism, the consumption of alcohol itself was ultimately criminalized. The state, in effect said there was no such thing as moderation and everyone had to lose their rights.

Don't let the repeal fool you. There are still dry towns and counties all over this country for exactly the same reasons that drove the Prohibition coalition.

Also, if you hate Tipper Gore butting into your musical choices, gun grabbers or the people who try to ban video games, congratulations, you would have been against Prohibition, too. State regulation of private behavior is alive and well, even if Prohibition itself was repealed. The idea was never discredited, only the enforcement.

Statistics show that liver cirrochis and psychosis decreased significantly so yes it seems like the number of people dying to alcoholism decreased significantly. Acute alcoholism apparently had some increase due to the reasons you mention, but we can agree that chronic alcoholism is the more fatal one for alcoholics.

Is there such a difference between chronic and acute alcoholism. I would think they are tightly related

Acute alcoholism is just basically binge drinking. Chronic one is the more fatal one.

I know the difference between the two. I don't see how chronic alcoholism declined. Addicted people will find a way to get drunk. I dont think Prohibition lasted long enough to prevent large swathes of society from picking up drinking

Read this guys post firstlyThen understand that death and suffering are inevitable and while safety is a concern, it cannot be the single most important concern and still have a society worth living in.

Chronic alcoholism did decline statistically. It’s not really surprising, as making things more difficult to get greatly reduces their usage, as people are inherently lazy.

Moral relativist please go

No and fuck you.

You forgot to mention that prostitution is also still illegal because of prohibitionist thinking.

Change women to suffragettes in the post you're replying to and he is absolutely correct.

Just go

No, I like it here, this board is slower then /v/ and marginally less retarded as well.

> >And people still got booze back then just like people today are still getting drugs.
>People still kill, rob, and rape other people, so why even bother prosecuting it?

People also fart and burp in public places, should we have a Constitutional Amendment banning that with jack-booted cops enforcing the law?

>Fast forward ten years and sure people are sitting around over a wine or beer but every single fucking saloon is shuttered and sold.

Detroit had more speakeasies during Prohibition then it had bars before.

Just like the Drug War today, all Prohibition did was drive drinking underground where there were zero government controls.

Attached: speakeasy detroit.jpg (1600x900, 186K)

>Prohibition beat the shit out of saloon culture, and it never really recovered.

Nonsense, there are bars everywhere today and people go to them all the time.

During the NFL season, my buddies and I meet up every Sunday to watch the Lions at a local bar and it’s packed, as well as on Friday and Saturday nights and everyday during the week around lunch time. My one buddy is on a pool league and shoots every Thursday night and they frequently have an informal tournament every Sunday. And I'm talking about 50+ year old married guys with kids.

Attached: bars in Warren MI.png (944x465, 684K)

Not the guy you are responding to, but saloons!=bars

>hardcore alcoholism was a major problem prior to prohibition

I challenge this claim, as there was little scientific research into the issue at the time, with most “evidence” coming from the same prohibitionists who wanted to ban booze, published by a media that had little if any fact-checking going and where most newspapers were the journalistic equivalent of the National Inquirer, printing lurid tales of drunken debauchery happening on American streets.

Average Americans were reading these stories and thinking; “Damn, I don’t want that kinda stuff happening in MY town! We better close down the corner saloon before it starts!”

Attached: hearst_newspaper_1050x700.jpg (1050x700, 302K)

>serious statistics keeping and respectable journalism only came into existence after 1985
pls go

>Alcohol consumption per capita was halved

Oh bullshit. When you pass a law that says people will go to prison for drinking booze, how many people do you think are going to admit to drinking booze?..

The Drug War has done nothing to prevent people from doing drugs, as even the most straight-laced person knows somebody who could get them drugs if they wanted.

Attached: Pablo.jpg (1280x853, 138K)

Drug war restricts supply. People can still buy drugs but think about how much worse things would be if you could buy coke and heroin as easily as you could buy a beer.

>Not the guy you are responding to, but saloons!=bars

Yes, saloons are in fact bars. Regardless of which term you use, both are places that sell booze and provide a place to hang out and drink it.

Attached: bar.jpg (1000x667, 543K)

Me in the manhole holding the funnel to help you drink it.

> think about how much worse things would be if you could buy coke and heroin as easily as you could buy a beer.

Why would it be worse? I'm guessing you don’t smoke crack but if it were legalized tomorrow, would you run out and buy a rock?

Of course if you wanted crack, you already know somebody who knows somebody else who could get you some, so the Drug War isn't doing jack shit to stop illegal drugs.

Because people don’t avoid drugs (or booze) because they’re illegal, they don’t do drugs because they don’t want to do drugs.

Attached: crack-costs-too-much.jpg (300x222, 39K)

Really? Cuz Portugal decriminalized all drug use and saw their drug abuse rates half. Prohibition is proven time and time again to increase demand and this is always met by large crime cartels who push it on people who would never otherwise have that put onto them. Same reason banning assault rifles wouldn't fix any of the issues that this action would hope to and rather would exacerbate them.

Ok, since we are being needlessly pedantic here:

>saloon culture != bar culture

I don't know what methology did they use, but I am fairly certain that they did count for that possible error. Furthermore, drug usage has infact gone up in countries like portugal and colorado since they legalised drugs, so not very surprisingly people don't do things which are illegal.

Demonstratably wrong. We can show this empirically or rationally, whichever way you want.

Accessibility increases demand, making heroin safe cheap and available in every bodega will certainly increase demand.
>Really? Cuz Portugal decriminalized all drug use and saw their drug abuse rates half
Correct me if I'm wrong but decriminalization doesn't mean legalization. Can you buy heroin and coke with a pack of cigarettes and a beer from a convenience store in Portugal?

What sort of drugs were being used more? Weed? That's hardly a problem. Furthermore, what makes you think that this an actual increase in use and not people being more willing admit to said use when there is no legal stigma anymore?

>Accessibility increases demand, making heroin safe cheap and available in every bodega will certainly increase demand.

And yet we're somehow not a nation of alcoholics and tobacco use continues to decline, despite both being freely available in every bodega.

Attached: 4a6f1e825f4ae2d88505aa15ca371b6c.jpg (720x960, 111K)

Every drug with the exception of heroin. We know that there is an actual increase in drug usage, as ER visits related to drugs have increased in colorado since legalisation. Also weed is actually quite bad, infact I'd say it's one of the worst drugs.

Where are you getting these numbers from?

Diseases caused by alcohol and tobacco are some of the leading causes of death in the west. Furthermore both are extremely regulated.

They’re the same thing; a place to hang out and drink.

That bars today have flat-screen tvs, digital jukeboxes and keno games doesn’t change the fact.

Attached: sportsbar.jpg (3264x2448, 1.42M)

>>ER visits related to drugs have increased in colorado since legalisation.
Can't blame that on cannabis legalization then because colorado did not legalize cocaine for example.
>>Also weed is actually quite bad, infact I'd say it's one of the worst drugs.
Oh noes, they might eat all the potato chips. Shut up idiot, reefer madness was a stupid propaganda film.

>And yet we're somehow not a nation of alcoholics and tobacco use continues to decline, despite both being freely available in every bodega.
Cool. Now compare how common alcoholism is in the United states to parts of the world where buying and selling alcohol gets you the death penalty.