Prohibition was SUCCESSFUL, says DEA


Rewriting history to serve political objectives
This one got stuck in my in box for a while with Katrina.

According to the DEA, Prohibition was a good idea. I only wish I was kidding.

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. Alcohol use is legal, except for kids under 21, and it causes major problems, especially in drunk driving accidents.

See?

Fortunately, people aren't standing still for this 1984-style revision of history.

This is from Drug War Rant.

Just for the sake of argument, however, let's take a moment and ignore all the violence, corruption, subsidization of criminal elements, uncontrolled dangerous/poisonous substances, collateral damage, increased exposure to youth, etc., etc.

Even if you ignore all that, the DEA's argument is specious.

First, because they're picking and choosing their numbers. If you read the Agitator's links, you'll see just how much they're fudging (read "lying").

Second, because a numbers game of "use" is useless. When prohibitionists tout the importance of, and supposed reason for, prohibition, they usually talk about the dangers and destruction caused by drugs/drug addicts. But when they use the numbers game, they're actually talking about all drug use regardless of abuse/danger.

And this is from Hit and Run.

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.

It's hard to take prohibitionists seriously when they act as if the policy they favor carries no costs. But by pining for the days of Al Capone and methanol-tainted rotgut, at least the DEA is being consistent.

And this is one of the rebuttal links provided by Radley Balko at the Agitator.

The most notable of those consequences has been labeled the "Iron Law of Prohibition" by Richard Cowan.[9] That law states that the more intense the law enforcement, the more potent the prohibited substance becomes. When drugs or alcoholic beverages are prohibited, they will become more potent, will have greater variability in potency, will be adulterated with unknown or dangerous substances, and will not be produced and consumed under normal market constraints. [10] The Iron Law undermines the prohibitionist case and reduces or outweighs the benefits ascribed to a decrease in consumption.

Sean Cox in response to a ACSBlog entry had this to say.

So then, what they're saying then, (and what you implicitly think is a thought worth citing) is that the purpose of making a law is to reduce the number of criminals? Forgive me for think that the point was to protect society from dangerous or harmful behavior or to create conventions which facilitate social development. A reduction in actual drinking sounds like it would achieve the later goal.

If I assume, however, that the later goal is misguided and real success of a law is measured by the inverse of the number of criminals it creates, then perhaps we ought to get rid of speed limits, because last time I was on the road, it seemed that at least a good 60% of people ignored those, so they obviously aren't successful, and perhaps we ought to loosen stop sign regulations so that people aren't legally required to make a full stop. Such ridiculous regulation falls far short of success, because there are lots of people who occassionally don't make a full stop.

Of course if I take that reasoning as far as it goes, what we have recommended is anarchy, because who wants government anyway, it just creates criminals. If there was no government, then there would be no criminals and we'd all feel much safer knowing the world was crime free.

Personally I'd rather have 40% better speed limit compliance and 60% less alcohol consumption. In comparison, prohibition sounds successful indeed.

The DEA.org has a pretty good cost/benefit analysis that you might want to take a look at.

Yesterday alcohol, today cocaine, tomorrow sugar?

— NeoWayland

Posted: Thu - September 8, 2005 at 07:02 PM  Tag


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