During prohibition, enterprising young criminals were often using industrial alcohol, attempting to make industrial wood alcohol safe to drink. Often, they were mistaken. The product on the market was unsafe, unregulated and resulted in many unnecessary deaths.
The Cato Institute has an interesting study on prohibition that points to several conclusions which relate directly to this conversation.
http://www.cato.org/sites/cato.org/files/pubs/pdf/pa157.pdf
Although consumption of alcohol fell at the beginning of Prohibition, it subsequently increased. Alcohol became more dangerous to consume; crime increased and became "organized"; the court and prison systems were stretched to the breaking point; and corruption of public officials was rampant. No measurable gains were made in productivity or reduced absenteeism. Prohibition removed a significant source of tax revenue and greatly increased government spending. It led many drinkers to switch to opium, marijuana, patent medicines, cocaine, and other dangeroussubstances that they would have been unlikely to encounter in the absence of Prohibition.
First, that when you ban substances, people will turn to other, often more dangerous substitutes in its stead. During prohibition, when alcohol was banned, people didn't just start drinking poison, they turned to other easily obtainable drugs, like opium.
The forbidden fruit syndrome was also part of it. During prohibition, alcohol consumption dropped initially, but quickly rose above the pre-prohibition consumption levels. During prohibition rates for consumption AND alcoholism rose. Alcoholism, to over 3x its pre-prohibition levels.
The lost tax dollars to government were combined with dramatic increase in the cost of enforcement of the new laws:
The resources devoted to enforcement of Prohibition increased along with consumption. Heightened enforcementdid not curtail consumption. The annual budget of the Bureau of Prohibition went from $4.4 million to $13.4 milion
during the 1920s, while Coast Guard spending on Prohibition averaged over $13 million per year.[8] To those amounts
should be added the expenditures of state and local governments.
Prohibition had pervasive (and perverse) effects on every aspect of alcohol production, distribution, and consumption. Changing the rules from those of the free market to those of Prohibition broke the link that prohibitionists had assumed between consumption and social evil. The rule changes also caused unintended consequences to enter the equation.
The article mentions something called the Iron Law of Prohibition, which basically asserts that "
the more intense the law enforcement, the more potent the prohibited substance becomes." In other words, if we end the prohibition, drugs would become less potent and safer.
When drugsor 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.
Statistically, production of beer was almost a lost art, and the crappy beer we Americans drank for decades was a direct result. Why? Because beer wasn't strong enough. During prohibition, almost all production of alcohol focused on distilled liquors and fortified wines.
Patterns of consumption changed during Prohibition. It could be argued that Prohibition increased the demand foralcohol among three groups. It heightened the attractiveness of alcohol to the young by making it a glamour productassociated with excitement and intrigue. The high prices and profits during Prohibition enticed sellers to try to markettheir products to nondrinkers--undoubtedly, with some success. Finally, many old-stock Americans and recentimmigrants were unwilling to be told that they could not drink. According to Lee, "Men were drinking defiantly, witha sense of high purpose, a kind of dedicated drinking that you don't see much of today."[19]Prohibition may actually have increased drinking and intemperance by increasing the availability of alcohol. One NewJersey businessman claimed that there were 10 times more places one could get a drink during Prohibition than therehad been before.[20] It is not surprising that, given their hidden locations and small size, speakeasies outnumberedsaloons. Lee found that there were twice as many speak easies in Rochester, New York, as saloons closed byProhibition. That was more or less true throughout the country.
Another setback for prohibitionists was their loss of control over the location of drinking establishments. UntilProhibition, prohibitionists had used local ordinances, taxes, licensing laws and regulations, and local-option laws toprevent or discourage the sale of alcohol in the center city, near churches and schools, on Sundays and election days,and in their neighborhoods. Prohibition eliminated those political tools and led to the establishment of speak easies inbusiness districts, middle-class neighborhoods, and other locations that were formerly dry, or gave the ap pearance ofbeing dry.
It's a long read, but worth the time if you really want to understand why, in spite of all of the money, time and energy we spend, we are losing the "war on drugs."
