AH CHallenge Prohibition Never Ends

[Tom_B]

What POD is necessary for a United States where:

1] Prohibition never ended

2] Drug laws are more severe including capital punishment for the sale of cocaine and marijuana

3] Bonus points if all forms of contraception are illegal

[Straha]

ouch all dystopias but I can't really think of any PODs....

[Paul Spring]

How's this for a challenge - in 2004 USA, alcoholic beverages are illegal and have been for over 80 years, but most other drugs are perfectly legal in most states.

This might not be too difficult - I remember reading somewhere that anti-drug laws got a lot stronger after prohibition was ended. Perhaps the more moralistic people in the government figured that if they couldn't ban alcohol, they could ban other things.

[Xen]

Easy, America just accepts that alcohol is banned, other than your occaisonal moonshiner, nobody is concerned about beer or anyother alcoholic beverage. The one good thing about this is there will be alot less deaths from DUI's.

[Kuralyov]

Or maybe, everyone in the US emigrates to Canada.

[Diamond]

Or maybe, everyone in the US emigrates to Canada.

I know I would.

[Yankoslavian]

Failure of the repeal of the 18th Amendment? Hmmm, maybe if Hoover and the Fed handled the stock market crash better, loosened credit etc. he would have been re-elected and the US in a better mood. Depression makes you want to drink :D

[David Howery]

Prohibition was one of the most widely ignored laws in the US. What would happen if it never ended? People would continue to get illegal booze and drink anyway. There would be booze cartels bigger than anything the Columbians ever dreamed of......

[Mr_ Bondoc]

Well, one even that could happen to implement the continued existence is the actions of the Supreme Court during the period. Try to imagine, using the "state's rights model" applied to the issue of segregation is applied. The idea is that try to imagine that the Supreme Court rules that due to the 10th Amendment, the state governments are on a case by case basis allowed to create municiplaities (ATL's "wet cities") wherein drinking laws are not to be enforced. The only proviso is that in line with the 18th Amendment, all interstate transport is prohibited. So cities like New York, San Francisco, Los Angeles, San Diego, Chicago, Milwaukee, and Cincinnati are allowed to brew and distribute drinks in their appointed municipalities. Also their is the whole "decriminalization" movement (see Berkeley, California), similar to marijuana distribution could have been applied to alcohol, wherein the main tool of punishment is municpial fines (c.$75) and heavier fines for sale and distribution (c$250). As such, most persons charged simply pay a simple fine rather than face any jail time.

[DominusNovus]

I think I've got a good way to keep prohibition around. Don't give women the right to vote. Once they started voting, all the guys said "I need a drink" and we legalizied alcohol again. :D

[wkwillis]

What POD is necessary for a United States where:

1] Prohibition never ended

2] Drug laws are more severe including capital punishment for the sale of cocaine and marijuana

3] Bonus points if all forms of contraception are illegal

If you got rid of democracy you could maybe do that. But you need a POD involving a large standing army. Try the Germans win WWI and we need a big army to defend us from the Bundestadt Amerika? There are a lot of people in Latin America and with all of Europe and Africa and Asia under German control we would need a large army indeed.