Why Prohibition Fails

You can’t legislate morals. We’ve tried in the USA again and again and it has failed every time. Prohibition, which by the way was sold to the US as an anti-German measure, the breweries were all run by those hated Germans during World War I, is the quintessential example of the failure of legislating morals since we can see the life cycle of prohibition. We can see from our vantage point how much of a failure prohibition was. The only lasting thing that came out of it was the Mob, organized crime. Prohibition created way more problems than it solved. And how did we finally solve these problems? We made it legal to drink alcohol again although we got left with the fallout of our stupidity, the Mob and not surprisingly, increased drinking. Prohibition left a legacy of problems and solved none. That is the key thing to remember, people didn't quit drinking just because it was illegal. They actually drank more. Prohibition made nothing better and a lot of things worse.

In Chicago the cost of a shot of whisky was 15 cents before prohibition. During prohibition the gangs charged 75 cents in the speak easys. That extra profit made the gangs rich and powerful. Al Capone's gang was making $60 million a year from bootlegging. It was prohibition that made organized crime rich and powerful. Now, according to the UN, drug smuggling is a $350 billion dollar a year industry. No wonder those Mexican cartels are killing each other like it was a video game. They are fighting over a three hundred billion dollars. Italian journalist Luca Rastello wrote a by turns engrossing, disgusting, and bone-chilling account of the drug market, “I Am the Market” which takes a cold look at the blood-soaked and ridiculously lucrative business of drug trafficking. “What confers such power on a form of agricultural production that is in other respects comparable to others?” Rastello asks. “The answer is as simple as it is embarrassing: the artificial difficulty of access to the market at the retail level. In a word, prohibition.”

This is our ‘War on Drugs.’ What a laugh. War on drugs. Folks, we lost that war and lost big. Dr. Evan Wood of the International Centre for Science in Drug Policy said of a recent study, "These findings add to the growing body of evidence that the war on drugs has failed." Ya think? The only people who want to continue this lost campaign are those making money from it, that is the drug cartels, and the politicians they buy, who make their livings because drugs are illegal, and the busy-bodies who think you must live your life the way they think you should. Just like prohibition created the mob, the war on drugs has created the most powerful and vicious crime mobs in the world. These mobs are so rich and powerful they have destabilized whole countries. Good going people. We are going to be suffering from this stupidity for a long time. The only way to fight the drug cartels is to remove their source of profits, to legalize drugs.

And yet, we in the U.S. still try to legislate morals. We have made sex illegal. By the way, it was also during WWI and was sold to the country as a war restriction to keep all those boys in training camps from getting the clap and affecting our fighting capability. Honest to God. Sex was legal in every state before WWI started. That this has been a complete failure and the only group to profit has been organized crime should be obvious even to an idiot or a politician or preacher, although I repeat myself. You can’t eliminate the oldest profession until you change mankind down to his... um, genetics. The solution, just like all failed prohibitions, is to legalize sex. You cannot legislate YOUR morals for other people and expect them to obey your beliefs. Your personal beliefs, your personal morals aren't the laws of nature, no matter how much you would like them to be.

Yes, drugs are for losers but guess what, they are losers, which is why they are using drugs in the first place and why they are going to use drugs no matter what you think! You cannot pass a law, "Poof, you are now smart!" Doesn't work that way. To keep a fool from his folly is to fill the world with fools! You can’t legislate YOUR morals for other people. They don’t care about YOUR morals and will do as they please thank you very much, just as you do. The reason you have your morals is because that is how you want to live your life. Guess what, druggie losers are the same. They are simply stupid and will remain stupid until they kill themselves with drugs. Sorry, but the truth is the truth. Making it illegal doesn't stop it!

Okay, now I’m going to make some enemies here since in our current society this is the hottest buttons there is but, the exact same logic applies to the debate on abortion. You can’t force someone to believe as you do! This is a religious belief and has all of the same influences that caused Christians to burn witches at the stake. If we make abortions illegal we know that women will still get abortions. Why? Because not forty years ago it was illegal and back alley abortions or trips to Mexico were commonplace. Lots of women took three day ‘vacations’ to Mexico. You cannot legislate your morals onto other people. They don't care what your beliefs are. You won’t stop abortions by outlawing them. I can make a prediction with absolute confidence because this is the way the world works, within days of outlawing abortions the cartels will realize the profit potential and will create a back alley supply of abortions with all of the attendant problems of illegal enterprise and illegal profits that entails. They'll be running Mexican abortionists over the border packed inside the drugs. It is a lose - lose proposition. The women with money will get their abortions because they don’t share your moral view, especially when they have this 'thing' they don’t want. Those women don't care you think of it as the Imago Christi and you think she will go to Hell. She doesn't believe it. You will have to change her morals to keep a woman from getting an abortion, then you won’t need to outlaw the procedure. As for women who won’t be able to afford the underground abortions… Welcome to a whole new class of welfare babies and all of the attendant problems with that! Lose – lose.

If you really want to solve the abortion problem or the drug problem or the pornography problem or the drinking problem, in other words anything you think people shouldn't do, any ‘moral’ problem, you need to change people’s views, their moral compass. Then all of us will be 'saved' and 'good,' at least in your opinion. Until you do that, attempts to force people to believe like you think they should, will be doomed to failure and will create more problems than it solves. Prohibition always has, Aunt Biddy!

Criminalizing immoral behavior has never stopped such behavior. The way to solve these problems is what we are now doing with smoking. Legalize it then work on convincing people it is bad for them and bad for society and it will gradually disappear as the holdouts die off from their bad habits. It takes longer but there aren't any cigarette cartels waging war on innocent people murdering them by the scores. And we 'good' people who don't smoke, drink or whatever get to smugly see all those 'bad' people paying those sin taxes for the rest of us and we get to feel morally superior.

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