Prohibition

I don’t know why it is that religious groups (with good intentions) seem always to speak out on banning, forbidding, outlawing, and prohibiting things.  It seems to me that religion should speak more of encouragement than suppression, more of tolerance than intolerance, more of blessings than suppressions.  Be that as it may,  religious groups in the early 1800’s  considered alcohol (specifically drunkenness) a threat to the nation and pushed for Prohibition.  

The first temperance legislation occurred in Massachusetts in 1838, “Prohibiting the sale of spirits in less than 15-gallon quantities." Congress responded to these religious demands in 1920 by ratifying the 18th Amendment, prohibiting the manufacture, transportation and sale of intoxicating liquors (though not the consumption or private possession of such).  Prohibition was called “the noble experiment” by President Herbert Hoover, who wrote in 1928, “Our country has deliberately undertaken a great social and economic experiment, noble in motive and far-reaching in purpose.”  The New York World newspaper in 1931 took a different view:

Prohibition is an awful flop.

We like it.

It can’t stop what it’s meant to stop.

We like it.

It’s left a trail of graft and slime,

It’s filled our land with vice and crime,

It don’t prohibit worth a dime,

Nevertheless we’re for it. 

Annapolis Royal, Nova Scotia

Prohibition didn’t stop what it was intended to stop.  Prohibition opened the door to bootlegging, gambling, prostitution,  gangs with “tommy guns”, Alphonse Capone, and the Mafia. Crime and disorder reached unprecedented levels  during the 1920’s—despite the fact that the Amendment was intended to do just the opposite.  Even Al Capone said, “Prohibition has made nothing but trouble,” and he made $60 million annually because of it!  

Prohibition is “the action of forbidding something, especially by law.”  Sometimes the “forbidding” creates “nothing but trouble.”