History Is Up To Its Old Tricks On Prohibition

The best way to look at the centenary of the Prohibition Era is that it’s one of those moments when the gods of history are up to their old tricks. For the 100th anniversary of the passage of the 18th Amendment to the American Constitution that directly outlawed the Demon Rum (and authorized Congress to do so concurrently) lands in the midst of a national tumult to legalize marijuana.What an irony. Recreational marijuana is now legal in the District of Columbia and 10 states, including the largest, California. Those jurisdictions represent more than 80 million people, about 25% of our population. Thirty-three states have legalized a form of the drug for medical purposes. This year between six and nine states, including New York and Illinois, may introduce legislation covering recreational use.In September, a Pew poll showed that the percentage of Americans favoring the legalization of marijuana has soared to 62% from 41% in 2010. Predictably, the greater enthusiasm is coming from the Democrats, 69% of whom currently favor legalization, compared with 45% of Republicans. Whites favoring legalization outnumber blacks, 66% to 56%, and Hispanics at 45%.A hundred years ago, America was hurtling in a different direction. On January 16, 1919, Nebraska became the 36th of the then 48 states to ratify the 18th Amendment. It prohibited the manufacture, transport, sale, import, or export of liquor. It authorized Congress also to pass prohibition. In October, it passed the Volstead Act. Eventually, all states save Connecticut and Rhode Island ratified the amendment.In a chronicle of the era, “Last Call,” Daniel Okrent points out that the 18th was the only amendment that expressly curtailed the rights of American citizens as opposed to limiting the powers of their government. The 13th Amendment forbade buying slaves, but that wasn’t a God-given right. the 18th remains the only amendment ever to be repealed, done away in 1933.Ratification was the triumph of what Mr. Okrent calls as “a mighty alliance of moralists and progressives, suffragists and xenophobes.” With roots in the 19th century, support for Prohibition crossed party lines and regions, uniting progressives with reactionaries. The Women’s Christian Temperance Union operated with a moral fervor similar to that expressed today by the Pro-Life movement.The WCTU can also be seen as an ancestor of today’s #MeToo phenomenon: a national organization of women protesting the alcohol induced abuse — financial and physical — inflicted mainly by men on their spouses and families. Then there was the Anti-Saloon League, headed by a political genius, Wayne Wheeler, whose legislative tactics were a playbook that would later flourish in our era.These are such groups such as, say, the National Rifle Association and both the Pro-Life and Pro- Choice and Climate change lobbies that focus on one issue in leveraging member votes behind individual candidates. Mr. Okrent reckons that Wheeler’s skill was “manipulating majorities through the power of a minority” and the Anti-Saloon League could strike terror in politicians otherwise indifferent to its cause.A rare exception was the election of 1916; Democratic incumbent Woodrow Wilson and Republican challenger Charles Evans Hughes both ignored the Prohibition issue, as did their party platforms. Both parties had “dry” and “wet” factions whom the candidates hoped would cancel out one another. At the state level, though, few office holders could survive such sang froid.The ratification of the 18th came in the waning months of World War I, which spurred government intervention in the economy. The Espionage and Sedition Acts of 1917 and 1918 led to the prosecution of more than 2,000 people for disloyalty in time of war. Plus, 1919 saw inflation at 40%, urban race riots, and the beginning of the “Red Scare.” Influenza was in the process of killing over 500,000 people.The fact that that Irish, Italian and other Catholic immigrants in major cities represented the largest communities of “wets”, that the brewing industry was dominated by Germans, and the distilling business featured a high level of Jewish ownership offered a perfect foil to those who approached the issue from a nativist perspective, in a period when immigration was a major domestic issue.There was also a bit of constitutional bait and switch. The 111- word 18th amendment prohibited “the manufacture, sale, or transportation of intoxicating liquors” within the United States. Many had assumed beer and wine would be exempt. Yet the Volstead Act, whose 67 separate sections took up 25 pages, stated that “the phrase “intoxicating liquor” shall be construed to include … beer, ale, porter and wine.”The impossibility of enforcing national Prohibition has been well documented, and by 1933 the country was ready for constitutional repeal. It would be inaccurate to say, though, that, as a spur to temperance, prohibition was an abject failure. Certainly the movement showed an afterlife. Eighteen states continued a form of prohibition, with the last, Mississippi, persisting until 1966.Mark Moore at Harvard’s Kennedy School has argued that alcohol consumption did decline dramatically during Prohibition. Cirrhosis death rates by 1929 had fallen by two-thirds from the pre-war level. Admissions to state mental hospitals for alcoholic disorders and arrests for public drunkenness also showed dramatic declines. During Prohibition, consumption of alcohol declined by as much as 50%.Prohibition did become the first big government initiative of the 20th century judged by its citizens as overreach. Today, a growing list of governors and legislators, hearkening to Prohibition, see their constituents preferring the risks of marijuana to less crowded criminal courts, more personal responsibility, and the glimmer of tax revenues.In its lead editorial of January 17,1919, The New York Sun attributed the ratification of the 18th Amendment to “the growing belief on the part of millions of temperate citizens, not teetotalers, that the time has come when they ought to surrender something of what they have been accustomed to regard as the rightful liberty of personal choice for the sake of others.”When it comes to the role of personal choice and recreational drugs, today’s Progressives exhibit the opposite belief. Come 2030, we’ll see if today’s liberalizing progressives will be any happier with the results of their grand experiment than were dry progressives with theirs a century ago. Since the notoriously impish gods of history play nothing if not the long game, they may not pipe up on recreational marijuana until 2119.________Mr. Atkinson, a contributing editor of The New York Sun, covers the 20th Century and other beats. Image: Prohibition-era cartoon from the Library of Congress shows of John Barleycorn: “The drawing illustrates a portion of Walt Mason’s satirical poem ‘So Runs the World Away.’ Commenting on the irony of prohibition, Mason contended that although John Barleycorn (an old English name for liquor) was presumed to be the cause of all crime, it wasn’t until liquor was outlawed that crime became rampant.”

History Is Up To Its Old Tricks On Prohibition

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