How Long Could Nation Wide Prohibition Have Lasted In America

I've been researching Prohibition, and I have to say, I find it strange that today, Beer is seen as American as apple pie, yet almost 80 years ago it was illegal for over a decade. So my question is, how long could prohibition have lasted in the USA, and what would effects of it be on American Society?

Most people consider it to have been a failure, actually making crime and drinking worse.
 
I believe that prohibition could still be around today if it hadn't been repealed. We've maintained a prohibition on other drugs since the 20s.

I don't think it would be effectively enforced though. The ingredients are cheap and it is easy to make. The only result of prohibition would be to keep it out of supermarkets, make it more expensive, and make it less safe.
 
Prohibition only prohibited the sale of alcohol, so I wouldn't be surprised if entrepreneurs found ways around it like selling fermentation yeast (if that is the right term) and have the customer make his or her own hooch either from grains, grapes or whatever else.

It is also possible the government could crack down on this and make it illegal to sell products for the purpose of making alcohol but with the rise of the internet age, anyone could either order alcohol from other countries like high wormwood Absinthe from Europe in our times or find recipes to make their own. I see prohibition going through a process that marijuana is going through in the United States right now.
 
I believe that prohibition could still be around today if it hadn't been repealed. We've maintained a prohibition on other drugs since the 20s.
There's a big difference here. Alcohol has been a part of American society for as long as it's existed and was consumed in very large amounts by a huge percentage of the population at the start of prohibition. Drugs, on the other hand, tended to be banned before they could become popular outside specific subcultures and sections of society. This meant that resistance to the ban was (initially, at least) far smaller than what one might expect from alcohol prohibition, and it seemed like something that was workable.

For example, until the 1960s, almost nobody smoked pot. During the first forty years of marijuana prohibition, through to the end of the 1940s, pot smokers tended to be demonized as slaves to a substance more addictive than heroin, who would murder and pillage uncontrollably due to the influence of the drug before it eventually killed them. Few ever questioned it, because there were so few people smoking pot at the time, and so many of those users were so alienated from the people in power (middle to upper class white people) that nobody who mattered really had any experience interacting with users. This changed starting in the mid-50s, when casual drug use became more visible in the beatnik culture that formed at the time, followed by the drug explosion of the 1960s. Since it was no longer workable to continue calling pot smokers murderers and psychotics, the story changed. Anyone who got high was now a hippie, a radical leftist, "one of those damn teenagers". The health effects of the drug were greatly exaggerated to justify continued prohibition, even when the science said otherwise. Through associating marijuana use with the radical movement and creating stereotypes of drug users, along with convincing a huge portion of the population that marijuana is far more harmful than it actually is, any notion of legalization went out the window for several decades, despite the fact that prohibition was quickly showing itself as unworkable even by the late 60s. It's only now that almost half of the country has smoked pot that serious legalization attempts are being made, with support for legalization spiking over the last decade to almost 50% of the country.

In other words, prohibition is completely unworkable when a large portion of the population uses the drug in question. Alcohol prohibition was repealed so quickly because it was clear after only a short time that it wasn't working at all. A huge market for illegal alcohol sprung up and use actually rose, after having declined steadily for several years before prohibition was enacted. Too many alcohol users existed and too many of them were regular everyday people (as opposed to members of some particular group or subculture) for prohibition to be a workable solution. With drugs, the situation was radically different, as very few people used drugs when they were initially banned, and people who controlled the power were able to convince the uninformed public that these bans were justified. With this in mind, I find it extremely difficult to believe that alcohol prohibition could have continued into the modern day, though I'm sure it's within the bounds of realism to assume it could go on for a bit longer given the right circumstances.
 
There's a big difference here. Alcohol has been a part of American society for as long as it's existed and was consumed in very large amounts by a huge percentage of the population at the start of prohibition. Drugs, on the other hand, tended to be banned before they could become popular outside specific subcultures and sections of society. This meant that resistance to the ban was (initially, at least) far smaller than what one might expect from alcohol prohibition, and it seemed like something that was workable.

For example, until the 1960s, almost nobody smoked pot. During the first forty years of marijuana prohibition, through to the end of the 1940s, pot smokers tended to be demonized as slaves to a substance more addictive than heroin, who would murder and pillage uncontrollably due to the influence of the drug before it eventually killed them. Few ever questioned it, because there were so few people smoking pot at the time, and so many of those users were so alienated from the people in power (middle to upper class white people) that nobody who mattered really had any experience interacting with users. This changed starting in the mid-50s, when casual drug use became more visible in the beatnik culture that formed at the time, followed by the drug explosion of the 1960s. Since it was no longer workable to continue calling pot smokers murderers and psychotics, the story changed. Anyone who got high was now a hippie, a radical leftist, "one of those damn teenagers". The health effects of the drug were greatly exaggerated to justify continued prohibition, even when the science said otherwise. Through associating marijuana use with the radical movement and creating stereotypes of drug users, along with convincing a huge portion of the population that marijuana is far more harmful than it actually is, any notion of legalization went out the window for several decades, despite the fact that prohibition was quickly showing itself as unworkable even by the late 60s. It's only now that almost half of the country has smoked pot that serious legalization attempts are being made, with support for legalization spiking over the last decade to almost 50% of the country.

In other words, prohibition is completely unworkable when a large portion of the population uses the drug in question. Alcohol prohibition was repealed so quickly because it was clear after only a short time that it wasn't working at all. A huge market for illegal alcohol sprung up and use actually rose, after having declined steadily for several years before prohibition was enacted. Too many alcohol users existed and too many of them were regular everyday people (as opposed to members of some particular group or subculture) for prohibition to be a workable solution. With drugs, the situation was radically different, as very few people used drugs when they were initially banned, and people who controlled the power were able to convince the uninformed public that these bans were justified. With this in mind, I find it extremely difficult to believe that alcohol prohibition could have continued into the modern day, though I'm sure it's within the bounds of realism to assume it could go on for a bit longer given the right circumstances.

I question your sources on this one. Marijuana was extremely popular when it was made illegal. Hispanics would smoke it at the end of the day like I'd drink a beer after work now. I don't know how popular it was with white people though. I'm sure they had contact with it.

Cocaine, heroin and other opiates were popular with whites for a few generations by the time of prohibition. They even advertised it in newspapers. There is no way that middle and upper class society wasn't aware of it or not using it.
 
I question your sources on this one. Marijuana was extremely popular when it was made illegal. Hispanics would smoke it at the end of the day like I'd drink a beer after work now. I don't know how popular it was with white people though. I'm sure they had contact with it..
Prior to the 1920s, literally almost no whites smoked marijuana, with the few who did being more experimental types. By far, Mexicans were the largest consumers of marijuana in the United States, and they held next to no political power at the time. To give you an idea of exactly how little the average white American knew about marijuana, I've read statistics showing that, at the time marijuana was federally prohibited in 1937, well under 1% of Americans had ever even tried it. I'd give you a source on that, but unfortunately, it was in a book I checked out of the university library months ago and I can't recall the title now.

Cocaine, heroin and other opiates were popular with whites for a few generations by the time of prohibition. They even advertised it in newspapers. There is no way that middle and upper class society wasn't aware of it or not using it.
I will admit your point that whites were more aware of these drugs, but it didn't stop them from being demonized out the ass. By the early part of the 1900s, heroin and cocaine tended to be considered the "street drugs", used mostly by minorities and criminal whites, in the eyes of mainstream America. This did a great job of keeping most middle to upper class white people away from the people who were actually using these drugs, since by the time the Harrison Act of 1914 passed (which made non-prescription opiates and cocaine illegal), most whites who were abusing opiates were doing so with a prescription from their doctor. Many of these drug-using whites initially became addicted to opiates after being prescribed them, and their doctor then continued prescribing the drugs as a form of addiction treatment, which was seen as perfectly acceptable at the time. Meanwhile, people who were addicted to drugs like cocaine and heroin were looked down upon the same as they are today, except perhaps moreso.

In other words, the media and government managed to whip up the populace into an anti-drug fury to the extent that, within one generation, using drugs like opiates and cocaine went from acceptable to a habit that made you a worthless piece of garbage in the eyes of society. If you doubt the ability of society's perceptions to change so quickly, I'll cite the well-known and well-documented case of amphetamine. Through to about 1960, use of both amphetamine and the more powerful methamphetamine were considered totally acceptable by society. All through the 1950s, meth pills were sold as diet aids and "pep pills", and you could buy amphetamine inhalers (marketed as benzedrine) at any drug store without a prescription. Even politicians used the stuff with no stigma or backlash (I've read that during the Suez Crisis, most of the key players were hopped up on benzedrine for energy). Flash forward to ten years later, about 1970. Meth was now an underground drug, sold almost exclusively by bikers, and the demonization of it as a drug that will kill you with one hit had begun. In ten years, it went from an accepted and frequently used part of everyday life to an underground phenomenon that the vast majority of people believed would ruin your life if you tried it even once.

I'll end this with a quote from a 1986 Times Magazine article, accessible here.

After the Civil War, opium use was widely tolerated in the U.S. and even extolled by some leading thinkers. Under the influence of opium, wrote Dr. George Wood, the president of the American Philosophical Society, in 1868, "the intellectual and imaginative faculties are raised to the highest point compatible with individual capacity." Doctors began prescribing opium- based concoctions for every malady from headache to skin rash. Respectable Victorian ladies calmed their babies with narcotic potions, such as Mrs. Winslow's Soothing Syrup and Hooper's Anodyne, the Infant's Friend. Heroin, a morphine derivative, was sold legally at the turn of the century in drugstores and by mail-order catalogs and traveling salesmen.

Cocaine first became popular in America in the late 19th century. Parke- Davis, the U.S. pharmaceutical company, sold at least 15 products with cocaine, including cigarettes, cheroots, and coca skin salve and face powder. At the time an estimated 1 in 400 Americans used opiates regularly.

But as drug abuse and addiction abounded, the inevitable backlash set in, with a decidedly racist and xenophobic tinge. A 1910 federal survey reported that "cocaine is often the direct incentive to the crime of rape by the Negroes in the South and other sections of the country." Southern sheriffs believed cocaine even rendered blacks impervious to .32-cal. bullets (as a result many police departments switched to .38-cal.). Chinese immigrants were blamed for importing the opium-smoking habit to the U.S. "If the Chinaman cannot get along without his dope," concluded the blue-ribbon citizens' panel, the Committee on the Acquirement of the Drug Habit, in 1903, "we can get along without him." Despite the opposition of U.S. drug companies, the government began to crack down. Many states and Congress passed laws regulating the sale and use of cocaine and opiates; the U.S. banned the import of opium in 1909. By the 1920s, public revulsion against drugs verged on the hysterical. "Drug addiction is more communicable and less curable than leprosy," declared Antidrug Crusader Richmond Hobson in a national radio address in 1928.

So ended the first drug crisis in the U.S. In less than a generation, public attitudes had been transformed. Once widely regarded as a harmless cure-all, cocaine "had become in the American mind the most hated, feared and loathed drug," says Dr. David Musto of Yale, a leading authority on the history of drugs and society.
This doesn't even come close to the situation that alcohol was in, with massive numbers of mainstream white people using it and centuries upon centuries of influence on society. Again, it is easy to ban something that people don't understand, especially when it happens to be used by a minority group that is persecuted anyway (see: Mexicans for marijuana, blacks for cocaine and heroin, Chinese for opium, etc.) Alcohol definitely does not fall into this category, and thus I just can't believe that alcohol prohibition would continue indefinitely in the same way that drug prohibition has. The way society perceived the two were (and still are) really completely different.
 
After dinner gentleman guests at Mount Vernon were given their choice of tobacco or hemp to smoke, both grown by their host, George Washington.

My father told me about a trick he and his friends used to play on the police when he was about 10. They would stand around on the corner smoking, when the cops tried to hassle them for underage smoking they would laugh and show him they were only smoking Q-bibs, an over the counter cough and sore throat remedy (marijuana cigarettes).

White middle class drug use was a lot higher than the goody two shoes (old slang for assholes) who pushed prohibition would admit.
 
Panzer, in the same way that it only took a single generation for opiates and cocaine to go from harmless to almost universally condemned I think alcohol could be the same. Prohibition was about 14 years depending on where you lived. That's a long time.

After prohibition ended the percentage of people who drank didn't reach pre-prohibition levels for decades. This suggests that it was considered taboo, even after it was legal. If prohibition lasted longer the vast majority of the public may have stayed away from alcohol.
 
I question your sources on this one. Marijuana was extremely popular when it was made illegal. Hispanics would smoke it at the end of the day like I'd drink a beer after work now. I don't know how popular it was with white people though. I'm sure they had contact with it.

My brother's father-in-law tells stories of FBI agents smoking pot (at coffee break? lunch?), probably late '30s. He's dead now, so I can't go ask...
 

CalBear

Moderator
Donor
Monthly Donor
That it lasted as long as it did was a miracle.

Without doubt the Temperance Movement was the most spectacular example of good intentions turning to ^%#& in the history of the U.S.

It effectively created ORGANIZED crime in the U.S. on the regional/national level

The current drug war, another spectacular bit of well intended lunacy, is its direct descendant. The drug war has turned the inner cities of America's biggest population centers into hopeless killing grounds and made America one of histories great jailers.

I blame it all on not giving Women the vote as part of the 14th Amendment.
 
I have read sources that show that prohibition was working. There were less cases of men leaving home, abusing wives and children. Church memberships went up. Men went home spent time with their families. No the reason that prohibition was repealed had not as much to do with rise in organized crime or that there was a rise in drinking, (remember, at the end of it there was a depression going on and few spent their meager earnings on booze), most likely the real reason was that there was a whole bunch of untapped taxes that could be collected on alcohol and that was needed to help pay for the New Deal programs to help this country get out of the hard times it was living in.
 

Sachyriel

Banned
If the movement had delayed itself 5 years I think it could have lasted until helicopters were invented, and then it would have been boosted to the point it would hurt the aerospace industries that it's taken off the books.

Alcohol and Helicopters, yeah yeah, what am I talking about?

  • Helicopters are used in OTL to hunt down marijuana grow-ops, could be used to locate illegal stills, bars.
  • Helicopters used to track down suspects in other crimes, which reveal alcohol-related crimes for investigation.
  • Alchohol + Helicopters = Bad skills at flying.
Say some morally righteous group shows up, like MADD but about Helicopters (I HADD an idea, but I forgot it...smoking too much weed...) and continues the fight, with good cause.
 
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