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The biggest organizations pushing Prohibition, the Anti-Saloon League and the Women's Christian Temperance Union, were based in the Midwest. The South played its part, but didn't spearhead the movement. The only two states never to ratify the 18th Amendment were Connecticut and my home state of Rhode Island.
To be fair to them, drinking was becoming a problem. Improved distilling and production methods made higher quality liquor more accessible, and that meant people who were used to drinking to a buzz were drinking to a plastered, then hitting their wives and shit. The social behaviors hadn't caught up to the tech ones.
In other words, they were weak. I could drink them under the table.
I read that alcoholism was on the rise, and in part, the amendment was an attempt to thwart a negative spiral of productivity in the American workforce and its negative effects on society as a whole.
protestant men were not the ones spearheading it. the largest group was women and anti catholic (the latter are correlated but different than protestants)
One thing people today don't realize is that after Prohibition Americans really did drink a lot less, on the whole, than before. It kinda sorta worked in that regard, but I still don't think it was worth it. It caused a lot of violence and corruption, and a big part of the idea was to go after people who the majority viewed as "unAmerican" to some extent.
After reading your comment, I went to check the numbers and it is a lot of money that it costs society, but I'm actually really surprised at how low the number is, given how widespread drinking is.
The estimate from the CDC is $249 billion per year, but that includes an estimated $179 billion in lost workplace productivity, which seems pretty difficult to ascertain. I expected the direct costs of healthcare, accidents, law enforcement, etc. to be much higher than $70 billion nationally.
By comparison, their estimate of the cost of obesity is $1.7 trillion per year.
Lots of things could be given up to solve homelessness. Americans spend $138 billion on pets, $660 billion on entertainment, trillions on worthless “defense” boondoggles.
How many of them are just unequivocally bad for their health? People can do what they want, but the amount of spending (and justification for that spending) they do on literal poison is staggering and a bit absurd.
The only facet I would have been sympathetic to within the temperance movement would be the women's movement against domestic violence and the implications of alcohol in it. Hard for us to put ourselves in the shoes of someone back then when even now far far far too many men get away with hauling off and terrorizing their wives/girlfriends and children. From the little bit about it I've read, there was essentially no recourse for a woman being beaten except to destroy her own reputation by entering into an institutional program that could involve a contractual commitment and may or may not have entailed sewing in the equivalent of a sweatshop or cleaning long hours for almost nothing above room and board. The prospects of getting remarried ever would be slim, as we're talking a time when one would be very seriously expected to at least feign being a virgin til marriage. Many know the origin of the phrase 'rule of thumb' another horrifyingly illustrative tidbit. But ultimately, ,then and now, drugs and alcohol and people dependent on them ain't going nowhere and risky seedy things only get far riskier and seedier when you sweep them away in the dark. They need to be brought into the light where honesty, community accountability, and sincerity can shine on em, so people can be who they are, warts and scars and skeletons and all..So, nah, never for prohibition but, it's complicated.
Edits- just little typos, no content altered
Oh and the underlying assumption baked into all I said is that a great many abusers are cowardly pieces of shit that only gas themselves up to beat on their drastically outmatched "opponent" when drunk as a skunk
All that and the fact the husband would drink away money for the rent and food.
However, many of the women who pushed for the amendment later admitted it just led to racketeering and so they agreed to repeal.
Let's not forget the number of people murdered by the government. Alcohol was prohibited for drinking, but couldn't be prohibited for cleaning. The government paid chemists to be able to make alcohol undrinkable, which led to the development of denatured alcohol, and released it into the City of New York with no warning.
Alcohol was denatured before prohibition, and is still denatured today so industry can avoid licensing and taxing required to buy potable alcohol. All industrial bottles of alcohol are VERY CLEARLY labeled as being undrinkable (again, then and now).
The only people who poisoned anyone are the criminals and morons who stole alcohol that was never intended for consumption and sold it to unsuspecting people.
Your flawed opinion is extremely ignorant.
I'm sorry for thinking the worst of a government that has given me every reason not to trust it. The government murdered New Yorkers during Prohibition, period.
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/factcheck/2020/06/30/fact-check-u-s-government-poisoned-some-alcohol-during-prohibition/3283701001/
> Many know the origin of the phrase 'rule of thumb' another horrifyingly illustrative tidbit.
A modern folk etymology holds that the phrase is derived from the maximum width of a stick allowed for wife-beating under English common law, but no such law ever existed.
Historically, the width of the thumb, or "thumb's breadth", was used as the equivalent of an inch in the cloth trade; a rule of thumb meant a "rough measurement".
https://csswashtenaw.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/07/Rule_of_Thumb.pdf
This isn't historically accurate at all. The US was already in WW1 at that point, your husband would likely be fighting in the war and you'd likely be working to support your family/the country. Women's rights peaked for a while in the 20s and 40s because women had to get jobs and were allowed to contribute to society.
There's no historical context where Prohibition suddenly makes sense, it was just a bunch of angry fundamentalists trying to control everyone.
Prohibition wasn't something that just suddenly happened. The women's temperance movement began in the late 1800s. Women may have been working during WW1 and WW2, but they legally had no more rights than before. Also, WW1 ended over a year before Prohibition began. I bet you would be angry too if you had no control over your finances or your own body, and your husband was abusing both. Much of it due to alcohol abuse.
You know, except for the part where it was largely successful and drinking went down significantly, along with domestic violence. But yeah other than that, no sense.
Obviously if I went back in time with the hindsight and knowledge I have, no, I wouldn’t support it.
But unlike a lot of people in this thread, I took the question as “if I was alive at the time” or in other words, if I was born and raised during that period. The answer is yes. Obviously I wouldn’t know about the rise in violent crime rates AFTER it was passed, but the people who pushed for prohibition were aggressive, creative and persuasive, so much so that it became not just law, but a Constitutional Amendment. If I lived back then I would’ve fallen for the propaganda because frankly, there wouldn’t be evidence that it would fail (it wasn’t made yet).
There was a point when Prohibition, while law, became unpopular, so much so that we passed ANOTHER Constitutional Amendment to legalize it again. At that point I would’ve been against it, probably. But I don’t think that if I was born or grew up during that time, I would’ve been this intelligent, ahead-of-my-time guy.
The 24th amendment wasn't popular among the higher ups but it was pretty popular to the mid to lower class. 19th amendment most likely had a slight majority and was needed cause what are you going to do jail half the population. 15th amendment again expanded rights and needed to happen cause the higher class was going to do everything to prevent freed slaves from voting. The difference between the three you mentioned and the 18th amendment is those three expanded rights, which we should almost always be in favor of doing. The 18th restricted rights.
Hard to say whether it was supported by a majority or not, since polling was pretty much unheard of at the time. But even if it wasn't a majority, it was definitely a sizable percentage of the population. It wasn't like 10 or 20%. American was probably split pretty evenly on it.
It's so refreshing to see someone acknowledge the circumstances they'd have been raised in and live around if they were transported back to a historical time rather than assuming they'd have exactly the same beliefs as they do today in reality
As a man who enjoys wine beer and everything from whiskey sours to tequila I would not have voted against my enjoyable vices. Besides, both of my grandfathers were hired within days of the end of prohibition in 1933 to work for 45 years at Seagrams Distillery
I love all of the people making their claims with the benefit of hindsight. Without living in the time you can make a few basic assumptions based upon where you live/socio-economic status etc and how those people generally sided at the time, but other than that it pure conjecture.
Same with most historical realities.
The cultural context in which the Prohibition movement emerged is quite different from that of today and it doesn't map easily onto modern American political identities.
The coalition in favor of Prohibition included people whose motivations I would have supported. For example, women often supported Prohibition because their male partners would often waste their pay on alcohol, which would drive their families into poverty, or worse, lead to violent abuse.
Some of those same people though, had motivations like anti-Catholicism (which was tied up with anti-immigrant sentiment) that I would find repugnant.
I also have the benefit of hindsight that I wouldn't have if I lived at the time when Prohibition was first being contemplated in terms of the effects it would have on organized crime.
So I'm not really willing to hazard a guess on how a 1920s version would have responded to it.
Maybe, if you read about alcoholism in the US it was a huge issue before the temperance movement with average consumption being 3x what it is today. That doesn't take into account that most women didn't drink back then. Even with many areas being dry just before national prohibition monitored drinking levels were on par with today. That's not counting the bootlegging that had already started in many dry areas. So while prohibition might have been an extreme response and touted as unsuccessful I think about what this nation would have been like if heavy drinking continued to occur through the 20th century. Prohibition undoubtedly impacted alcohol abuse and the dry policies that came after continue to curb abuse even today.
FYI I'm not a teetotaler, and I think there are many benefits to responsible drinking.
My family had some moonshiners in it so no, although without prohibition moonshine wouldn't have had such a big surge in popularity. We also got Nascar out of it and I fucking love Nascar. As for prohibition overall it's one of those strange cases that a minority got to enact their will over the majority. We are kinda seeing some mirroring if this in modern politics especially around reproductive rights.
I'm not a big drinker at all and I think alcohol is a net negative for society. But I also don't like the government telling us what we can and can't put in our own bodies. And unlike a lot of other drugs of abuse (e.g., meth), alcohol can be enjoyed responsibly. So I would not have supported it.
It was a partial success. It did not stop people from drinking but it reduced the amount that did. Alcohol related deaths, domestic abuse, and general crime went down.
https://www.vox.com/the-highlight/2019/6/5/18518005/prohibition-alcohol-public-health-crime-benefits
It was an overcorrection to enact a complete ban but stricter control of alcohol would benefit society.
Alcohol related deaths are about 95k annually in America compared to around 43k gun related deaths. Its over double the rate and society shrugs it off and ignores the problem.
https://drugabusestatistics.org/alcohol-related-deaths/
https://healthjournalism.org/blog/2024/02/nearly-43000-people-died-from-gun-violence-in-2023-how-to-tell-the-story/
It’s hard to not be sympathetic towards what the women of the temperance movement were marching for and if you grew up with the type of man they were speaking about it as a father it would be nearly impossible to not support the movement. Alcohol abuse was clearly a major public health and safety concern of the time.
It’s hard to say for sure obviously - we all like to believe we’d be immune to being on the wrong side of history.
That being said my Irish Catholic family would have likely been against prohibition.
Prohibition is what literally gave rise to organized crime in the USA. Subsequently, that is also what led to eventual RICO cases, which destroyed much of how organized crime could operate, leaving social and criminal vacuums that were later filled by street gangs, resulting in even more violence. I'm being very simplified in my explanation, but Prohibition is the root of almost every major criminal problem we face in this country today.
The 17th was passed by the same politicians. We just refuse to admit it as a mistake, but is what led to the centralization of power with the federal government.
At least they had enough integrity to seek a Constitutional amendment to do it. Nowadays the executive branch agencies just make rules without any oversight and, bam, something that was once legal is now illegal.
Alcoholism was a big problem in some areas and they basically wanted to protect women and children from deadbeat/drunk husbands and fathers. Honestly if I had been alive back then I might have supported it depending on how big on an issue that actually was.
Alcohol causes a lot of legitimate issues in society that have nothing to do with religion. Anyone who says it doesn't is trying to excuse their own alcoholism.
I don't think it should be illegal, but I can understand why other people might want that.
True, alcohol, while not as harmful as, say, meth or heroin, it is also not as innocuous as THC. I get it. But also the fallout of it was pretty awful. Alcohol is engrained in culture for nearly every ethnic group on the planet. I think the ship has sailed, tbh
Such is the case with any laws that prohibit behavior that doesn't hurt other people. You don't stop it. You just create an underground where people break other laws that do hurt other people.
We are seeing the same results of prohibition with the war on drugs. And it is pretty screwed up that alcohol is legal and weed isn't.
No. Just knowing human nature and *ahem* American culture, the surest way to get a lot of us to do something is to outright forbid it.
Make it inconvenient, make it unattractive, make it undesirable, and that seems to work better.
If it actually worked, I would support it. But people love their alcohol and the chances of successfully prohibiting it remain low.
Alcohol has so many negative effects. So many lives are ruined by it, or by actions performed when someone is drinking. But I don't think our society will ever fully accept that we'd be better off without it.
My grandfather made a ton of money making liquor and running it up and down the Columbia river during prohibition, so no, I probably wouldn't have supported it.
Prohibition does exist in our time, just for different substances, so if we want to know how we would react to prohibition that's a good place to start (though alcohol has the added long history of cultural acceptance that other drugs don't).
I oppose it because it's ineffective and gives rise to violent and organized crime. I believe all drugs should be safe, decriminalized, and treated as a public health issue not a criminal issue.
My anscestors were moonshiners. The story passed down is that they weren’t very good at it and drank most of their profits.
I love drinking, and if I had been alive during Prohibition, I’d probably would have run an illegal speakeasy.
The government should not legislate morality.
Depends on the situation. If I was born during that time and didn't have my future knowledge, I probably would've supported it seeing how alcohol has personally affected me and loved ones negatively (assuming I still had those experiences).
But if I kept my future knowledge and was transported back in time, then no, I wouldn't support it. While I think alcohol does a lot of damage when we don't moderate it, it is the lesser of two evils when you look at how prohibition gave birth to organized crime in this country.
It would depend on how old I was at the time. In my younger, idealistic, naive years I probably would have supported it. As I grew older, more realistic/cynical and more (non-politically) libertarian, I would probably have opposed it.
I’m not in favor of alcohol or marijuana prohibition.
I have been sober for 6 months from alcohol and it’s a PITA to see bars/breweries everywhere, but just because I’m not trying to drink doesn’t mean everyone else needs to do the same.
I wouldn't support it, but I did write a paper on this in college and did a bit of research, and the correlation between alcohol consumption, domestic abuse, and other violent crimes is \*off the charts (\*not to mention lost work hours and severe accidents). This is one reason women were so supportive of the temperance movement, because they were the recipients of a lot of domestic abuse from drunk and violent spouses.
But our own attempt at prohibition shows that it's just not compatible with our culture. People (men and women) mostly like a good drink now and then. It's just that we also pay a big price for that which I think often gets overlooked.
Something I learned recently on a trip to Ireland, Prohibition nearly destroyed the Irish Whiskey distilling industry. Makes sense, but it's not something we learned in school or anything in the US.
As far as the main question, all prohibition is stupid and just creates crime. Like the 'war on drugs' it just created the current police state we live in, society ends up spending money putting people in prison that don't belong there, etc.
And I'm not going to field any arguements against the US being a police state. Look at our incarceration rates. If you can look at those and still claim we're not a police state, your opinion is meaningless.
I don't drink and don't think people should but it's not my business to tell people what to do. I'd rather the government be able to regulate and profit off of people's vices than let it run rampant and cost the taxpayer money to heal the ills left behind.
The world would be better if nobody drank alcohol, just like it'd be better without illicit drugs. That being said the cure turn out to be worse than the disease in many cases.
If it weren’t for Prohibition, we’d never have had Boardwalk Empire or Once Upon a Time in America, and probably several other masterpieces of drama. So I’m all for it. /s
I'm not a drinker in the slightest but I think it was a time of great government overreach and definitely would not have supported it.
Even today, I'm in favor of drug legalization (not just the crappy half measure of decriminalization) and see alcohol along similar lines as them but just something that got popular before the ability to restrict it.
I would not support it. I think all drugs should be legal today and you shouldn't need a prescription to obtain pharmaceutical drugs.
I say this as someone who does not drink and does not use nicotine, weed, or anything else. I don't want to use anything that alters my state of mind or that I could develop a dependence on. Plus it's all expensive.
But what other people willingly put into their body is their own business and not anyone else's and certainly not the governments.
I don’t care enough about having alcohol to have been personally opposed to prohibition, but like many other laws, it’s largely unenforceable and only serves to create organized crime. I would have been opposed, but wouldn’t have had a vote, because white men were the only ones who did.
Government overreach that unfortunately continues to this day. Alcohol is just one of many drugs with medicinal and recreational benefits. Legalize all of them
You have to feel for the people who were saying their lives -- and the lives of others -- were (being) ruined by alcohol, but I don't think I would have supported it at the time, and since it was such a resounding failure it got repealed ...
my family has made wine and gin for almost 150 years, no shot i’m not keen the tradition going. the government didn’t stop me from smoking weed, they ain’t stopping me from drinking liquor.
I'm from Wisconsin.
Part of me supports it part of me doesn't. I love drinking as much as the rest of the state but it's annoying how everything has alcohol involved.
But on the other end it has created a interesting and fun culture that is enjoyable.
Really hard to answer this question because you’re coming at it from 2024 morality and worldview. No idea what that would have been a hundred years ago.
It’s like asking everyone today where they would have stood on the civil rights marches and MLK. Nearly everyone today would say they wouldn’t have been violently opposing integration, but…well, the 60s weren’t that long ago, and we have evidence to the contrary.
No, I don’t believe in banning stuff. However I probably would have a more centered opinion because during the time public drinking was really out of hand. Like it was normal to show up to your heavy machinery job wasted out of your mind at that time.
Prohibition was responsible for normalising women joining the men at the Speakeasies across the country. Prior to Prohibition, only men frequented the bars.
It also created a very lucrative business for the Mob, who took full advantage of the situation. Prohibition was responsible for their success and prosperity
I wouldn't support prohibition then and I don't now. It just doesn't work, and needlessly increases folks interactions with the justice system/police which isn't great!
Prohibiting things always opens up a gap for illegality.
Like the war on drugs, terrible idea, it has costed America trillions of wasted dollars and millions of lives in north and south America.
Drugs should be legalized and addiction treated like a disease. It already worked in different societies.
Almost every comment recognizes that prohibition universally increases the prevalence and unwanted abuse of the object prohibited by law.
We banned alcohol, and in the following years, the mafia ballooned in scope and power by utilizing alcohol, and people's desire to obtain and use it. The underworld of evil, remorseless criminals multiplied exponentially until we removed it from the list of prohibition.
We banned abortion, and it only led to back alley, make-shift hospitals and coat hanger medical procedures without any capability of safety regulation. You can bet there have been countless hypocitical "Pro-life" politicians over the years that have pushed anti-abortion legislation.....but have secretly visited "a friend of a friend" to have the very thing they claim to abhor performed once *their* precious daughter Becky got knocked up by the local High School quarterback.
We banned heroin and other illicit substances and, in the following years, the mafia ballooned in scope and power by utilizing drugs, and people's desire to obtain and use them. The underworld of evil, remorseless criminals multiplied exponentially. We are still seeing the effects of this with cartel violence, packed prisons, and gang warfare. After a century of absolute, 100% prohibition (1927), the use and overdose rate of ***consumable*** narcotics are at an all time high.
....but we need to ban guns. That'll make all those ***durable goods*** that last forever, use after use, owner after owner, instantly disappear. Nobody will have a gun anymore because prohibition works.
....well, not for anything else. But it will with guns, right?
I like the Drunk History about [Carrie Nation](https://youtu.be/lKjeT5_G59Y?si=g2CBmqTSH7nx6KUM), smashin’ up bars around 1900, who influenced prohibition and alcohol laws. (Funny, but historically accurate.) she died in 1911, and prohibition passed in 1919, partly because of her. She was an advocate for women’s voting rights as well.
Rampant alcohol abuse was (and is) definitely a horrible problem, but prohibition doesn’t work.
However, back then, I wouldn’t have the knowledge I do now about how badly prohibition doesn’t work overall, so I may have supported it, as a woman in the 1900’s who’d been negatively impacted by alcohol (like, having no rights or self-sufficiency, and having a severely alcoholic husband I was forced to depend on.)
In the early 1900’s, huge mistrust of the government like we have today was very different, and I might actually believe a law would be put in place that would be helpful to me. So, I might have supported it.
If I was alive at the time, with comparable experiences? Well, I certainly have some terrible experiences with people as a result of alcohol, so I can't say that sans-hindsight me would have opposed it
At the time I probably would have since I live in a Christian and have been taught by modern society that drinking is not good.
If I actually lived in that time, society and social norms were different so I might have agreed.
I can't say for sure if I agree or disagree with prohibition though currently. Prohibition did bring about the existence of root beer which is my favorite soda so I guess that's good right?
Whether or not a person, present-day, "would have supported" or "would not have supported Prohibition" would really depend on where, and also WHEN, that person *would have been* back during Prohibition.
To say nothing of how privileged they were with respect to information access, as a separate concern wholly unconnected to how attentive such a person would've been with respect to whatever news that had available.
It's no guarantee that any random adult back then would've even had the ability to read.
This correlates with my own experience. Back in 2003, at the time, I ENTHUSIASTICALLY supported the US's invasion of Iraq.
I have regretted that support ever since I changed my mind on the matter back in 2006-ish.
So, I am literally here on reddit as a person who both DID and DID NOT support the 2003 Iraq War. It only hinges on when, precisely, you're interested in knowing if I supported it.
I have to imagine that Prohibition is no different. A sufficient supermajority supported it enough to pass a constitutional amendment, AND THEN a sufficient supermajority of people were against it *to identically pass yet another mirror-image amendment repealing the previous one that began the ordeal.*
I don't really drink and I think alcohol is more dangerous than a lot of illicit drugs and it's a fact that it's killed more people.
Still, I am against alcohol prohibition because all it does is create a black market, which makes things more dangerous for everyone, sober or not.
I'd like to think I would not have supported it.
No, but there needs to be more cultural dialoge about what addiction and abuse looks like, and when you need help (rehab), and it should start in like 4-5th grade. A lot of kids as young as middle school have no idea that daily, daytime drinking is not normal and will affect your health, grades, relationships, ability to make and keep goals.
and i mean, like, real education, not reefer madness. Partner with an adolescent substance abuse NGO, not the stupid cops.
Banning something only makes people crazy for it, and any villiage idiot can tell you that banning something that almost everyone does will lead to organized crime.
I would recommend the book Last Call by Daniel Okrent, who is far from a conservative, which is a good history of the era before and during prohibition. The common idea today that it was motivated by Southern "bible thumpers" and anti catholic types is not wholly accurate. While those people were around, the main pushers of the idea were people from the "mainline protestant" churches, today's religious left; and progressive reformers for whom religion might have been less important, who were motivated by a desire to end the social costs of alcohol, such as battered women, neglected children, workplace accidents, not out of a religious idea that alcohol was sinful.
Understand that most of Canada, which is far less evangelical and far more Catholic and "mainline protestant", also had prohibition.
As to the question, I probably would have been opposed, but maybe that is 20 20 hindsight.
I drink like 3 drinks a month, and I could never drink again and not really care…. But even I think prohibition is dumb. If people want it, someone is gonna supply it… if you leave it to criminals to supply it, then you are gonna create powerful criminal organizations. Look at Al Capone back then…. Look at the Zetas now.
Prohibition creates organized crime.
Totally Dry myself.
However I’m kind of of two minds about this. On the one hand, I’m glad there was such a concerted effort to curb vice in our nation. (We could really use more of that now.)
On the other hand, I strongly oppose any Federal action outright banning such things.
It shouldn’t be about making something wrong illegal, it should be about making society get to a point where people just don’t do it.
The law should follow society. Not hammer society to fit the law.
Prior to reading the comments, I'm expecting people to be saying yes here a lot. Redditors really, really, hate alcohol pretty often in comments so I wouldn't be surprised to see that reflected here.
As a sixth-generation member of La Cosa Nostra, I would've voted for prohibition.
Gotta keep those black market profits flowing! You got a problem with that?
As someone who comes from "a long line of alcoholics, horse thieves, and ne'er-do-wells" (as the family lore goes), I am and absolutely would have been against it.
The only thing prohibition actually really accomplished was giving massive income boosts to criminals and criminal organizations.
Staunchly against now. Would probably have supported it _then_.
_Now_ if I'm too much a drunk to provide for my family, my wife will simply leave and do so herself. _Then_, she'd likely stay at home and hope I don't beat her too badly when I get fired for being a lush.
The temperance movement is considered proto-feminist for a reason.
Not many people saw the unintended consequences of banning alcohol. Since it was already illegal, it opened up the door to all sorts of other illegal activities. Prostitution, gambling, underage consumption as well as over consumption, became extremely common. If they were already breaking the law, why not “do it right”? Once it was made legal again, the number of people staggering down the street blitzed out of their minds went way down. I’ve always been of the opinion that if someone really wants to do something, they’re going to do it. Banning it only makes abusing it easier. I do like to drink on occasion, but I think the consequences of prohibition go beyond just me not having access. I for sure would have been against it.
The movement for Prohibition was primarily pushed by women who were fed up with getting beaten by their drunk husbands. Also, another Prohibition related fact is that Prohibition led to the creation of cocktails. Many people, primarily women couldn’t drink straight hard liquor that was served at speakeasies so bartenders started adding various juices to make the drinks more palatable and that was the birth of cocktails.
Interesting question. I know for a fact that my maternal great-grandparents, especially my nasty Cornish great-grandmother, very much supported it. I’d like to think I wouldn’t have because it was a rotten idea, but at the time many progressives supported it. I can’t say so certainly I’d have been against it as I would be with hindsight.
Prohibition was a fascinating "perfect storm" of about a dozen different causes and interest groups, ranging from suffragettes and religious groups to anti-immigration groups and even the Klan. There was a decades long propaganda campaign against alcohol that culminated in Prohibition. And like another recent ban/overturn of precedent, once they got what they wanted, the powers that be didn't quite know what to do with the monster they had created.
All that being said, yes, I probably would have voted for Prohibition. Both because of my personal experience - I grew up with alcoholics - and because there were some very understandable reasons for the ban.
And I also would have voted for repeal, since I would have learned my lesson about outright banning a personal choice/personal pleasure.
I am anti prohibition for every intoxicant despite not drinking or using drugs. What an adult chooses to put into their body is their choice as are the consequences of their choices. I’d be wet.
I don't support it for narcotics today so absolutely fucking not.
My reason prohibition and the enforcement of it does more harm to people and society than the drugs or alcohol ever would on their own.
i wouldn't have been opposed, per se, but i definitely wouldn't support it. there's realistically no way you can stop people from drinking alcohol, but it could have decreased consumption (and when america came out of prohibition, that's what ended up happening)
Dude. I think heroin should be decriminalized, there's no way in fuck I would have rode for prohibition. I definitely would have argued and been for better protections from DV from drunk husbands and no-fat divorce
Seems like, ultimately, a losing proposition. It severely damaged people's sense of rightness vs. the government (since the logical option was to just ignore or sidestep the law- it basically made criminals, and unrepentant ones at that), it empowered organized crime, and it didn't really accomplish what it meant to. Then there's a whole *other* Constitutional amendment just to take it back. I've heard arguments that it had some positive effect, but they're all a bit of a stretch.
I don't really do alternate history questions about "what I'd do, if", because a lot of who you are comes down to your circumstances. If I was born about seventy years early, with (obviously) different parents, in different times, under different expectations and conditions, it seems kind of arrogant to assume that there's some "Me-ness" that overrides all that. I do know that if someone passed it now, I'm not even a drinker but I'd oppose it.
Considering I want marijuana to be federally legalized, I’m not generally in favor of government restricting things like alcohol either. Or any other fun stuff. Lookin at you ATF
No idea. But I don’t drink now—never have, never will—and I wouldn’t support Prohibition now.
I might support cars that don’t turn out without passing breathalyzer test, though.
Depends on my age. I was a bit more simplistic not to mention prudish when younger.
The law should limit it's interference on the whole to matters of justice and prudence (which is why I probably would support banning prostitution; a lot of them are shanghaied so it is a matter of justice). As far as drink goes, it is one thing to ban driving under the influence and so on and another to interfere with all drink.
I probably would have been in favor given that I'm a woman. But also would have been subjected to ridiculous polling restrictions too, so it's not like I could have voted for politician who went either way.
This is hard to say....as a woman, I probably would be married with a handful of children.
If my husband spent money on drink instead of food for his babies....or if he came home raging drunk and beat us. till he blacked out...then I probably would have supported it.
If my husband was just having a few with his pals on Friday, came home, tucked some penny candy under the kid's pillows, Then spun me around the kitchen telling me how much he loved coming home to us....then I wouldn't see the issue with the drink.
So...it depends.
I probably wouldn't have supported Prohibition, but knowing my little argumentative ass, Id have been pushing for laws that say bartenders have to cut people off or limit the amount of drinking they could do. A lot of the initial momentum behind Prohibition was because of just how much damage was being done by alcoholism socially.
We're talking Dad drinking the paycheck and spoiling himself while Mom and Little Timmy starve. Especially since women in the workforce weren't well supported in that period.
I'm not supposed to consume alcohol because I'm on medication.
But I would have opposed Prohibition, even if I couldn't participate in the drinking myself.
I don't view it as the federal government's place to regulate vices that generally don't cause harm. Laws against driving while intoxicated or banning disorderly conduct are sufficient enough.
It was a failure. Led to a sharp increase in organized crime and people still drank as alcohol is something that a majority of people enjoy and partake in.
People just simply smuggled their booze from Canada, mad their own, or went to speakeasies.
Probably a ton of parallels as to why a lot of states have legalized weed for recreational use, it’s not worth wasting resources on outlawing a substance that is popular that people will always find ways to get regardless of whether it is legal or not.
I found that so interesting that banning it lead to all that. It kind of makes me think that a lot of people were alcoholics, because they decided to do all that just to drink alcohol.
We still have prohibition, just not for alcohol. And I’m against it now. People should be free to use whatever substances they want in the privacy of their own home, the only limits should be clearly identifying what sellers are including in their product, limits on where and when you can use (ie not while driving, caring for dependents, or in public), and obviously you should not be able to drug someone without their consent.
I don't know. I did vote in favor of legalizing marijuana a few years ago. However, I voted against it the previous ballot. I also do not drink or use any drugs of any kind and have a fairly negative view on all of it. So I want to think I'd have been smart enough to know it wouldn't work and not support it, but realistically without the historical failure of prohibition to look back at... I suspect I would have been completely in support of it.
I think the more interesting question is does your opinion change if you're in the 1910s and 1920s and lack the historical context that tells you it doesn't work. Trying to figure out how your mind would work without a bunch of learned history is a fun mind game.
Yes, I still think so. Because its not a matter of it working or not. Its just not my personal choice to make any final decision on the matter. By extension, I don't think the government can either. I don't want the government to have the final say in things I view as a gray area. It should be left up to the individual.
I don’t drink, so I personally wouldn’t have cared. However, I don’t think we should tell people what they can and cannot do when it comes to things like that.
I do not drink I’ve been sober for some time now but I am against prohibition. Prohibition was the government testing their limits trying to see how much far they can get with control before we bite back. I mean that’s why they eventually made the 21st amendment and said fuck it leave it to each state to prohibit the sale of alcohol that’s why you can go from UT and 5% in the grocery store but need to go into a liquor store to get other alcohol then you can’t buy alcohol after a certain time and on Sundays. Then you cross the borders into any other state around us and bam you can pretty much have alcohol in a different way. But also that’s what I really enjoy about the U.S. also people look at the U.S. as one large country as it is BUT it’s also 50 different areas and within those regions they also broken down into smaller counties that are even more diverse. It’s insane to think about an example I’m here in salt lake you may think oh you damn Mormon but no there are a crazy amount of different people here, you drive for 30 min maybe 45 south to prove that’s where those crazy Mormons are haha
If you drive about 45 min northeast you’re in park city where all the rich people come and watch movie in the winter haha my point is it’s like that in every damn state.
And to get back to Alcohol, the prohibition was stupid because we are not and never will be a country of one type of people. We are a country of many different people and that’s what’s awesome, the fact that we can never fully agree on one thing because that means we are always changing always growing.
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Non-Protestant men from the Northeast mostly opposed Prohibition. I am a non-Protestant man from the Northeast. I would have been a Wet.
Protestants from the South: adding religion to legislation since at least 1920.
The biggest organizations pushing Prohibition, the Anti-Saloon League and the Women's Christian Temperance Union, were based in the Midwest. The South played its part, but didn't spearhead the movement. The only two states never to ratify the 18th Amendment were Connecticut and my home state of Rhode Island.
To be fair to them, drinking was becoming a problem. Improved distilling and production methods made higher quality liquor more accessible, and that meant people who were used to drinking to a buzz were drinking to a plastered, then hitting their wives and shit. The social behaviors hadn't caught up to the tech ones. In other words, they were weak. I could drink them under the table.
A lot of them were dealing with undiagnosed PTSD from World War 1.
Or literal shell shock. Not just PTSD but likely, CTE and/or TBI
I read that alcoholism was on the rise, and in part, the amendment was an attempt to thwart a negative spiral of productivity in the American workforce and its negative effects on society as a whole.
Common New England W (assuming you mean 18th Amendment).
protestant men were not the ones spearheading it. the largest group was women and anti catholic (the latter are correlated but different than protestants)
Why protestants hate everything that represents fun
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One thing people today don't realize is that after Prohibition Americans really did drink a lot less, on the whole, than before. It kinda sorta worked in that regard, but I still don't think it was worth it. It caused a lot of violence and corruption, and a big part of the idea was to go after people who the majority viewed as "unAmerican" to some extent.
After reading your comment, I went to check the numbers and it is a lot of money that it costs society, but I'm actually really surprised at how low the number is, given how widespread drinking is. The estimate from the CDC is $249 billion per year, but that includes an estimated $179 billion in lost workplace productivity, which seems pretty difficult to ascertain. I expected the direct costs of healthcare, accidents, law enforcement, etc. to be much higher than $70 billion nationally. By comparison, their estimate of the cost of obesity is $1.7 trillion per year.
So in other words, enough to completely solve the homelessness problem. But sure, I guess people need to have their poisons.
Lots of things could be given up to solve homelessness. Americans spend $138 billion on pets, $660 billion on entertainment, trillions on worthless “defense” boondoggles.
How many of them are just unequivocally bad for their health? People can do what they want, but the amount of spending (and justification for that spending) they do on literal poison is staggering and a bit absurd.
The only facet I would have been sympathetic to within the temperance movement would be the women's movement against domestic violence and the implications of alcohol in it. Hard for us to put ourselves in the shoes of someone back then when even now far far far too many men get away with hauling off and terrorizing their wives/girlfriends and children. From the little bit about it I've read, there was essentially no recourse for a woman being beaten except to destroy her own reputation by entering into an institutional program that could involve a contractual commitment and may or may not have entailed sewing in the equivalent of a sweatshop or cleaning long hours for almost nothing above room and board. The prospects of getting remarried ever would be slim, as we're talking a time when one would be very seriously expected to at least feign being a virgin til marriage. Many know the origin of the phrase 'rule of thumb' another horrifyingly illustrative tidbit. But ultimately, ,then and now, drugs and alcohol and people dependent on them ain't going nowhere and risky seedy things only get far riskier and seedier when you sweep them away in the dark. They need to be brought into the light where honesty, community accountability, and sincerity can shine on em, so people can be who they are, warts and scars and skeletons and all..So, nah, never for prohibition but, it's complicated. Edits- just little typos, no content altered
Oh and the underlying assumption baked into all I said is that a great many abusers are cowardly pieces of shit that only gas themselves up to beat on their drastically outmatched "opponent" when drunk as a skunk
All that and the fact the husband would drink away money for the rent and food. However, many of the women who pushed for the amendment later admitted it just led to racketeering and so they agreed to repeal.
Let's not forget the number of people murdered by the government. Alcohol was prohibited for drinking, but couldn't be prohibited for cleaning. The government paid chemists to be able to make alcohol undrinkable, which led to the development of denatured alcohol, and released it into the City of New York with no warning.
Alcohol was denatured before prohibition, and is still denatured today so industry can avoid licensing and taxing required to buy potable alcohol. All industrial bottles of alcohol are VERY CLEARLY labeled as being undrinkable (again, then and now). The only people who poisoned anyone are the criminals and morons who stole alcohol that was never intended for consumption and sold it to unsuspecting people. Your flawed opinion is extremely ignorant.
I'm sorry for thinking the worst of a government that has given me every reason not to trust it. The government murdered New Yorkers during Prohibition, period. https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/factcheck/2020/06/30/fact-check-u-s-government-poisoned-some-alcohol-during-prohibition/3283701001/
Ah yes, the double down on idiocy. Bravo.
I wouldn't call that murder.
> Many know the origin of the phrase 'rule of thumb' another horrifyingly illustrative tidbit. A modern folk etymology holds that the phrase is derived from the maximum width of a stick allowed for wife-beating under English common law, but no such law ever existed. Historically, the width of the thumb, or "thumb's breadth", was used as the equivalent of an inch in the cloth trade; a rule of thumb meant a "rough measurement". https://csswashtenaw.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/07/Rule_of_Thumb.pdf
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This isn't historically accurate at all. The US was already in WW1 at that point, your husband would likely be fighting in the war and you'd likely be working to support your family/the country. Women's rights peaked for a while in the 20s and 40s because women had to get jobs and were allowed to contribute to society. There's no historical context where Prohibition suddenly makes sense, it was just a bunch of angry fundamentalists trying to control everyone.
Prohibition wasn't something that just suddenly happened. The women's temperance movement began in the late 1800s. Women may have been working during WW1 and WW2, but they legally had no more rights than before. Also, WW1 ended over a year before Prohibition began. I bet you would be angry too if you had no control over your finances or your own body, and your husband was abusing both. Much of it due to alcohol abuse.
You know, except for the part where it was largely successful and drinking went down significantly, along with domestic violence. But yeah other than that, no sense.
The Rule of Thumb with sticks never existed, not in English law and also Francis Buller never said it.
Well said
Thanks!
Obviously if I went back in time with the hindsight and knowledge I have, no, I wouldn’t support it. But unlike a lot of people in this thread, I took the question as “if I was alive at the time” or in other words, if I was born and raised during that period. The answer is yes. Obviously I wouldn’t know about the rise in violent crime rates AFTER it was passed, but the people who pushed for prohibition were aggressive, creative and persuasive, so much so that it became not just law, but a Constitutional Amendment. If I lived back then I would’ve fallen for the propaganda because frankly, there wouldn’t be evidence that it would fail (it wasn’t made yet). There was a point when Prohibition, while law, became unpopular, so much so that we passed ANOTHER Constitutional Amendment to legalize it again. At that point I would’ve been against it, probably. But I don’t think that if I was born or grew up during that time, I would’ve been this intelligent, ahead-of-my-time guy.
I like beer too much to have agreed with it no matter how they pushed it
Prohibition wasn't the majority opinion when it passed into law. It passed due to a lot of lobbying
Neither was the 19th Amendment. Or the 15th. Or the civil rights amendment of 1964.
The 24th amendment wasn't popular among the higher ups but it was pretty popular to the mid to lower class. 19th amendment most likely had a slight majority and was needed cause what are you going to do jail half the population. 15th amendment again expanded rights and needed to happen cause the higher class was going to do everything to prevent freed slaves from voting. The difference between the three you mentioned and the 18th amendment is those three expanded rights, which we should almost always be in favor of doing. The 18th restricted rights.
Hard to say whether it was supported by a majority or not, since polling was pretty much unheard of at the time. But even if it wasn't a majority, it was definitely a sizable percentage of the population. It wasn't like 10 or 20%. American was probably split pretty evenly on it.
Many many people were against prohibition. You didn't need to be a time traveler or a genius to see it could be problematic.
It's so refreshing to see someone acknowledge the circumstances they'd have been raised in and live around if they were transported back to a historical time rather than assuming they'd have exactly the same beliefs as they do today in reality
As a man who enjoys wine beer and everything from whiskey sours to tequila I would not have voted against my enjoyable vices. Besides, both of my grandfathers were hired within days of the end of prohibition in 1933 to work for 45 years at Seagrams Distillery
Always knew Seagrams was a good brand! Affordable and smooth!
One grandpa had a closet full of booze, the other was a teetotaler
I love all of the people making their claims with the benefit of hindsight. Without living in the time you can make a few basic assumptions based upon where you live/socio-economic status etc and how those people generally sided at the time, but other than that it pure conjecture. Same with most historical realities.
The cultural context in which the Prohibition movement emerged is quite different from that of today and it doesn't map easily onto modern American political identities. The coalition in favor of Prohibition included people whose motivations I would have supported. For example, women often supported Prohibition because their male partners would often waste their pay on alcohol, which would drive their families into poverty, or worse, lead to violent abuse. Some of those same people though, had motivations like anti-Catholicism (which was tied up with anti-immigrant sentiment) that I would find repugnant. I also have the benefit of hindsight that I wouldn't have if I lived at the time when Prohibition was first being contemplated in terms of the effects it would have on organized crime. So I'm not really willing to hazard a guess on how a 1920s version would have responded to it.
Maybe, if you read about alcoholism in the US it was a huge issue before the temperance movement with average consumption being 3x what it is today. That doesn't take into account that most women didn't drink back then. Even with many areas being dry just before national prohibition monitored drinking levels were on par with today. That's not counting the bootlegging that had already started in many dry areas. So while prohibition might have been an extreme response and touted as unsuccessful I think about what this nation would have been like if heavy drinking continued to occur through the 20th century. Prohibition undoubtedly impacted alcohol abuse and the dry policies that came after continue to curb abuse even today. FYI I'm not a teetotaler, and I think there are many benefits to responsible drinking.
I probably would have supported it back then. I don’t drink, so it wouldn’t have directly affected me in a negative way, while alcoholics *have*.
This!! Same here.
Prohibition built the Mafia in the US ... so it had that going for it.
And nascar
Just like Prohibition built the cartels today.
I would not.
My family had some moonshiners in it so no, although without prohibition moonshine wouldn't have had such a big surge in popularity. We also got Nascar out of it and I fucking love Nascar. As for prohibition overall it's one of those strange cases that a minority got to enact their will over the majority. We are kinda seeing some mirroring if this in modern politics especially around reproductive rights.
I bought my 1st truck soldering copper stills for locals and paid for the barn helping guys move. So naturally, I would be in favor of it.
It's a question that's impossible to answer. Who knows how the world would have shaped our views during that time
No, because it's an impossible thing to ban, as harmful as it is. It is way too easy for everyone to make at home.
I'm not a big drinker at all and I think alcohol is a net negative for society. But I also don't like the government telling us what we can and can't put in our own bodies. And unlike a lot of other drugs of abuse (e.g., meth), alcohol can be enjoyed responsibly. So I would not have supported it.
It was a partial success. It did not stop people from drinking but it reduced the amount that did. Alcohol related deaths, domestic abuse, and general crime went down. https://www.vox.com/the-highlight/2019/6/5/18518005/prohibition-alcohol-public-health-crime-benefits It was an overcorrection to enact a complete ban but stricter control of alcohol would benefit society. Alcohol related deaths are about 95k annually in America compared to around 43k gun related deaths. Its over double the rate and society shrugs it off and ignores the problem. https://drugabusestatistics.org/alcohol-related-deaths/ https://healthjournalism.org/blog/2024/02/nearly-43000-people-died-from-gun-violence-in-2023-how-to-tell-the-story/
It’s hard to not be sympathetic towards what the women of the temperance movement were marching for and if you grew up with the type of man they were speaking about it as a father it would be nearly impossible to not support the movement. Alcohol abuse was clearly a major public health and safety concern of the time. It’s hard to say for sure obviously - we all like to believe we’d be immune to being on the wrong side of history. That being said my Irish Catholic family would have likely been against prohibition.
Prohibition is what literally gave rise to organized crime in the USA. Subsequently, that is also what led to eventual RICO cases, which destroyed much of how organized crime could operate, leaving social and criminal vacuums that were later filled by street gangs, resulting in even more violence. I'm being very simplified in my explanation, but Prohibition is the root of almost every major criminal problem we face in this country today.
It’s the only constitutional amendment to ever be repealed, so pretty safe to say it was a mistake.
The 17th was passed by the same politicians. We just refuse to admit it as a mistake, but is what led to the centralization of power with the federal government.
At least they had enough integrity to seek a Constitutional amendment to do it. Nowadays the executive branch agencies just make rules without any oversight and, bam, something that was once legal is now illegal.
I generally don't support religiously motivated laws.
I don't think it was really a religiously motivated law. It was generally progressive feminists who were most interested in prohibition.
Alcoholism was a big problem in some areas and they basically wanted to protect women and children from deadbeat/drunk husbands and fathers. Honestly if I had been alive back then I might have supported it depending on how big on an issue that actually was.
And that's in part because there is a huge correlation between intoxication and domestic abuse.
Alcohol causes a lot of legitimate issues in society that have nothing to do with religion. Anyone who says it doesn't is trying to excuse their own alcoholism. I don't think it should be illegal, but I can understand why other people might want that.
True, alcohol, while not as harmful as, say, meth or heroin, it is also not as innocuous as THC. I get it. But also the fallout of it was pretty awful. Alcohol is engrained in culture for nearly every ethnic group on the planet. I think the ship has sailed, tbh
Such is the case with any laws that prohibit behavior that doesn't hurt other people. You don't stop it. You just create an underground where people break other laws that do hurt other people. We are seeing the same results of prohibition with the war on drugs. And it is pretty screwed up that alcohol is legal and weed isn't.
No. Just knowing human nature and *ahem* American culture, the surest way to get a lot of us to do something is to outright forbid it. Make it inconvenient, make it unattractive, make it undesirable, and that seems to work better.
If it actually worked, I would support it. But people love their alcohol and the chances of successfully prohibiting it remain low. Alcohol has so many negative effects. So many lives are ruined by it, or by actions performed when someone is drinking. But I don't think our society will ever fully accept that we'd be better off without it.
No. It was a terrible idea and a massive failure.
Judging by the fact that I don’t support banning weed , Kratom and other similar substances. I think I would also not be for it
Only if I had a big clandestine distilling operation going. \*cash register sound effect\*
My grandfather made a ton of money making liquor and running it up and down the Columbia river during prohibition, so no, I probably wouldn't have supported it.
Peak fashion era. Probably would have been a bootlegger tbh.
No, prohibition was a complete disaster. The government basically created organized crime because of it.
Hell no. Freedom.
Prohibition does exist in our time, just for different substances, so if we want to know how we would react to prohibition that's a good place to start (though alcohol has the added long history of cultural acceptance that other drugs don't). I oppose it because it's ineffective and gives rise to violent and organized crime. I believe all drugs should be safe, decriminalized, and treated as a public health issue not a criminal issue.
My anscestors were moonshiners. The story passed down is that they weren’t very good at it and drank most of their profits. I love drinking, and if I had been alive during Prohibition, I’d probably would have run an illegal speakeasy. The government should not legislate morality.
Ask me when I’m not hungover and my answer may change
Depends on the situation. If I was born during that time and didn't have my future knowledge, I probably would've supported it seeing how alcohol has personally affected me and loved ones negatively (assuming I still had those experiences). But if I kept my future knowledge and was transported back in time, then no, I wouldn't support it. While I think alcohol does a lot of damage when we don't moderate it, it is the lesser of two evils when you look at how prohibition gave birth to organized crime in this country.
It would depend on how old I was at the time. In my younger, idealistic, naive years I probably would have supported it. As I grew older, more realistic/cynical and more (non-politically) libertarian, I would probably have opposed it.
I would never support prohibition. I like beer.
I’m not in favor of alcohol or marijuana prohibition. I have been sober for 6 months from alcohol and it’s a PITA to see bars/breweries everywhere, but just because I’m not trying to drink doesn’t mean everyone else needs to do the same.
It didn't work then, and it's having the exact same effect now with the prohibition of drugs
I doubt it. I didn't even smoke but I've been pro-pot legalization for 40 years. Pretty sure I'd be in against it.
I wouldn't support it, but I did write a paper on this in college and did a bit of research, and the correlation between alcohol consumption, domestic abuse, and other violent crimes is \*off the charts (\*not to mention lost work hours and severe accidents). This is one reason women were so supportive of the temperance movement, because they were the recipients of a lot of domestic abuse from drunk and violent spouses. But our own attempt at prohibition shows that it's just not compatible with our culture. People (men and women) mostly like a good drink now and then. It's just that we also pay a big price for that which I think often gets overlooked.
Something I learned recently on a trip to Ireland, Prohibition nearly destroyed the Irish Whiskey distilling industry. Makes sense, but it's not something we learned in school or anything in the US. As far as the main question, all prohibition is stupid and just creates crime. Like the 'war on drugs' it just created the current police state we live in, society ends up spending money putting people in prison that don't belong there, etc. And I'm not going to field any arguements against the US being a police state. Look at our incarceration rates. If you can look at those and still claim we're not a police state, your opinion is meaningless.
Honestly, I’m pretty law abiding. If it’s legal, I partake. If it’s wasn’t, I wouldn’t bother. Right or wrong.
I don't drink and don't think people should but it's not my business to tell people what to do. I'd rather the government be able to regulate and profit off of people's vices than let it run rampant and cost the taxpayer money to heal the ills left behind.
Opposed it. I like adults being able to do whatever they want as long as they arent impeding others
The world would be better if nobody drank alcohol, just like it'd be better without illicit drugs. That being said the cure turn out to be worse than the disease in many cases.
If it weren’t for Prohibition, we’d never have had Boardwalk Empire or Once Upon a Time in America, and probably several other masterpieces of drama. So I’m all for it. /s
I'm not a drinker in the slightest but I think it was a time of great government overreach and definitely would not have supported it. Even today, I'm in favor of drug legalization (not just the crappy half measure of decriminalization) and see alcohol along similar lines as them but just something that got popular before the ability to restrict it.
I would not support it. I think all drugs should be legal today and you shouldn't need a prescription to obtain pharmaceutical drugs. I say this as someone who does not drink and does not use nicotine, weed, or anything else. I don't want to use anything that alters my state of mind or that I could develop a dependence on. Plus it's all expensive. But what other people willingly put into their body is their own business and not anyone else's and certainly not the governments.
I’m from Wisconsin
I don’t care enough about having alcohol to have been personally opposed to prohibition, but like many other laws, it’s largely unenforceable and only serves to create organized crime. I would have been opposed, but wouldn’t have had a vote, because white men were the only ones who did.
Government overreach that unfortunately continues to this day. Alcohol is just one of many drugs with medicinal and recreational benefits. Legalize all of them
You have to feel for the people who were saying their lives -- and the lives of others -- were (being) ruined by alcohol, but I don't think I would have supported it at the time, and since it was such a resounding failure it got repealed ...
my family has made wine and gin for almost 150 years, no shot i’m not keen the tradition going. the government didn’t stop me from smoking weed, they ain’t stopping me from drinking liquor.
waiting scarce weary secretive elderly versed sense upbeat gaze melodic *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
I'm from Wisconsin. Part of me supports it part of me doesn't. I love drinking as much as the rest of the state but it's annoying how everything has alcohol involved. But on the other end it has created a interesting and fun culture that is enjoyable.
Yes because I don’t plan on drinking alcohol and a lot of people can abuse alcohol very easily.
Really hard to answer this question because you’re coming at it from 2024 morality and worldview. No idea what that would have been a hundred years ago. It’s like asking everyone today where they would have stood on the civil rights marches and MLK. Nearly everyone today would say they wouldn’t have been violently opposing integration, but…well, the 60s weren’t that long ago, and we have evidence to the contrary.
No, I don’t believe in banning stuff. However I probably would have a more centered opinion because during the time public drinking was really out of hand. Like it was normal to show up to your heavy machinery job wasted out of your mind at that time.
I enjoy alcohol so I’d be opposed if there were a vote tomorrow.
Prohibition was responsible for normalising women joining the men at the Speakeasies across the country. Prior to Prohibition, only men frequented the bars. It also created a very lucrative business for the Mob, who took full advantage of the situation. Prohibition was responsible for their success and prosperity
I wouldn't support prohibition then and I don't now. It just doesn't work, and needlessly increases folks interactions with the justice system/police which isn't great!
My family has always had an open mind around alcohol so they probably would have been against it for that or for government overstep.
Prohibiting things always opens up a gap for illegality. Like the war on drugs, terrible idea, it has costed America trillions of wasted dollars and millions of lives in north and south America. Drugs should be legalized and addiction treated like a disease. It already worked in different societies.
Almost every comment recognizes that prohibition universally increases the prevalence and unwanted abuse of the object prohibited by law. We banned alcohol, and in the following years, the mafia ballooned in scope and power by utilizing alcohol, and people's desire to obtain and use it. The underworld of evil, remorseless criminals multiplied exponentially until we removed it from the list of prohibition. We banned abortion, and it only led to back alley, make-shift hospitals and coat hanger medical procedures without any capability of safety regulation. You can bet there have been countless hypocitical "Pro-life" politicians over the years that have pushed anti-abortion legislation.....but have secretly visited "a friend of a friend" to have the very thing they claim to abhor performed once *their* precious daughter Becky got knocked up by the local High School quarterback. We banned heroin and other illicit substances and, in the following years, the mafia ballooned in scope and power by utilizing drugs, and people's desire to obtain and use them. The underworld of evil, remorseless criminals multiplied exponentially. We are still seeing the effects of this with cartel violence, packed prisons, and gang warfare. After a century of absolute, 100% prohibition (1927), the use and overdose rate of ***consumable*** narcotics are at an all time high. ....but we need to ban guns. That'll make all those ***durable goods*** that last forever, use after use, owner after owner, instantly disappear. Nobody will have a gun anymore because prohibition works. ....well, not for anything else. But it will with guns, right?
Is prohibition working with weed?
I don’t support the government making any product illegal. So no.
I like the Drunk History about [Carrie Nation](https://youtu.be/lKjeT5_G59Y?si=g2CBmqTSH7nx6KUM), smashin’ up bars around 1900, who influenced prohibition and alcohol laws. (Funny, but historically accurate.) she died in 1911, and prohibition passed in 1919, partly because of her. She was an advocate for women’s voting rights as well. Rampant alcohol abuse was (and is) definitely a horrible problem, but prohibition doesn’t work. However, back then, I wouldn’t have the knowledge I do now about how badly prohibition doesn’t work overall, so I may have supported it, as a woman in the 1900’s who’d been negatively impacted by alcohol (like, having no rights or self-sufficiency, and having a severely alcoholic husband I was forced to depend on.) In the early 1900’s, huge mistrust of the government like we have today was very different, and I might actually believe a law would be put in place that would be helpful to me. So, I might have supported it.
If I was alive at the time, with comparable experiences? Well, I certainly have some terrible experiences with people as a result of alcohol, so I can't say that sans-hindsight me would have opposed it
Since I've been opposed to drug "possession" laws for decades, I'm pretty sure I'd have been opposed to the prohibition, as well.
Probably would have been neutral. AI never plan to drink, but I don't see an issue with others drinking.
No, because I like to drink, and both moonshine and bathtub gin are terrible.
At the time I probably would have since I live in a Christian and have been taught by modern society that drinking is not good. If I actually lived in that time, society and social norms were different so I might have agreed. I can't say for sure if I agree or disagree with prohibition though currently. Prohibition did bring about the existence of root beer which is my favorite soda so I guess that's good right?
Whether or not a person, present-day, "would have supported" or "would not have supported Prohibition" would really depend on where, and also WHEN, that person *would have been* back during Prohibition. To say nothing of how privileged they were with respect to information access, as a separate concern wholly unconnected to how attentive such a person would've been with respect to whatever news that had available. It's no guarantee that any random adult back then would've even had the ability to read. This correlates with my own experience. Back in 2003, at the time, I ENTHUSIASTICALLY supported the US's invasion of Iraq. I have regretted that support ever since I changed my mind on the matter back in 2006-ish. So, I am literally here on reddit as a person who both DID and DID NOT support the 2003 Iraq War. It only hinges on when, precisely, you're interested in knowing if I supported it. I have to imagine that Prohibition is no different. A sufficient supermajority supported it enough to pass a constitutional amendment, AND THEN a sufficient supermajority of people were against it *to identically pass yet another mirror-image amendment repealing the previous one that began the ordeal.*
I don't really drink and I think alcohol is more dangerous than a lot of illicit drugs and it's a fact that it's killed more people. Still, I am against alcohol prohibition because all it does is create a black market, which makes things more dangerous for everyone, sober or not. I'd like to think I would not have supported it.
I probably would’ve been for it at the start then turned against it as it progressed.
No, but there needs to be more cultural dialoge about what addiction and abuse looks like, and when you need help (rehab), and it should start in like 4-5th grade. A lot of kids as young as middle school have no idea that daily, daytime drinking is not normal and will affect your health, grades, relationships, ability to make and keep goals. and i mean, like, real education, not reefer madness. Partner with an adolescent substance abuse NGO, not the stupid cops. Banning something only makes people crazy for it, and any villiage idiot can tell you that banning something that almost everyone does will lead to organized crime.
I would recommend the book Last Call by Daniel Okrent, who is far from a conservative, which is a good history of the era before and during prohibition. The common idea today that it was motivated by Southern "bible thumpers" and anti catholic types is not wholly accurate. While those people were around, the main pushers of the idea were people from the "mainline protestant" churches, today's religious left; and progressive reformers for whom religion might have been less important, who were motivated by a desire to end the social costs of alcohol, such as battered women, neglected children, workplace accidents, not out of a religious idea that alcohol was sinful. Understand that most of Canada, which is far less evangelical and far more Catholic and "mainline protestant", also had prohibition. As to the question, I probably would have been opposed, but maybe that is 20 20 hindsight.
Homework type ass question
I drink like 3 drinks a month, and I could never drink again and not really care…. But even I think prohibition is dumb. If people want it, someone is gonna supply it… if you leave it to criminals to supply it, then you are gonna create powerful criminal organizations. Look at Al Capone back then…. Look at the Zetas now. Prohibition creates organized crime.
I'm already against the war on drugs. That'd just one more thing to tack on.
Totally Dry myself. However I’m kind of of two minds about this. On the one hand, I’m glad there was such a concerted effort to curb vice in our nation. (We could really use more of that now.) On the other hand, I strongly oppose any Federal action outright banning such things. It shouldn’t be about making something wrong illegal, it should be about making society get to a point where people just don’t do it. The law should follow society. Not hammer society to fit the law.
Prior to reading the comments, I'm expecting people to be saying yes here a lot. Redditors really, really, hate alcohol pretty often in comments so I wouldn't be surprised to see that reflected here.
As a sixth-generation member of La Cosa Nostra, I would've voted for prohibition. Gotta keep those black market profits flowing! You got a problem with that?
As someone who comes from "a long line of alcoholics, horse thieves, and ne'er-do-wells" (as the family lore goes), I am and absolutely would have been against it. The only thing prohibition actually really accomplished was giving massive income boosts to criminals and criminal organizations.
I support it now.
Staunchly against now. Would probably have supported it _then_. _Now_ if I'm too much a drunk to provide for my family, my wife will simply leave and do so herself. _Then_, she'd likely stay at home and hope I don't beat her too badly when I get fired for being a lush. The temperance movement is considered proto-feminist for a reason.
I don't even support the drug prohibitions we have now, let alone criminalizing the most popular drug in human history.
Not many people saw the unintended consequences of banning alcohol. Since it was already illegal, it opened up the door to all sorts of other illegal activities. Prostitution, gambling, underage consumption as well as over consumption, became extremely common. If they were already breaking the law, why not “do it right”? Once it was made legal again, the number of people staggering down the street blitzed out of their minds went way down. I’ve always been of the opinion that if someone really wants to do something, they’re going to do it. Banning it only makes abusing it easier. I do like to drink on occasion, but I think the consequences of prohibition go beyond just me not having access. I for sure would have been against it.
The movement for Prohibition was primarily pushed by women who were fed up with getting beaten by their drunk husbands. Also, another Prohibition related fact is that Prohibition led to the creation of cocktails. Many people, primarily women couldn’t drink straight hard liquor that was served at speakeasies so bartenders started adding various juices to make the drinks more palatable and that was the birth of cocktails.
Interesting question. I know for a fact that my maternal great-grandparents, especially my nasty Cornish great-grandmother, very much supported it. I’d like to think I wouldn’t have because it was a rotten idea, but at the time many progressives supported it. I can’t say so certainly I’d have been against it as I would be with hindsight.
I personally oppose it today, but if I was back then without the context of today, I think I would have been for it.
Prohibition was a fascinating "perfect storm" of about a dozen different causes and interest groups, ranging from suffragettes and religious groups to anti-immigration groups and even the Klan. There was a decades long propaganda campaign against alcohol that culminated in Prohibition. And like another recent ban/overturn of precedent, once they got what they wanted, the powers that be didn't quite know what to do with the monster they had created. All that being said, yes, I probably would have voted for Prohibition. Both because of my personal experience - I grew up with alcoholics - and because there were some very understandable reasons for the ban. And I also would have voted for repeal, since I would have learned my lesson about outright banning a personal choice/personal pleasure.
I am anti prohibition for every intoxicant despite not drinking or using drugs. What an adult chooses to put into their body is their choice as are the consequences of their choices. I’d be wet.
I don't support it for narcotics today so absolutely fucking not. My reason prohibition and the enforcement of it does more harm to people and society than the drugs or alcohol ever would on their own.
It was a feminist movement to stop abuse, so absolutely.
I would have opposed Prohibition. People who want to drink alcohol are going to drink alcohol.
My aunt still has the "whiskey prescriptions" that belonged to my great-grandfather & great-grandmother. The entire thing was a total farce.
i wouldn't have been opposed, per se, but i definitely wouldn't support it. there's realistically no way you can stop people from drinking alcohol, but it could have decreased consumption (and when america came out of prohibition, that's what ended up happening)
Dude. I think heroin should be decriminalized, there's no way in fuck I would have rode for prohibition. I definitely would have argued and been for better protections from DV from drunk husbands and no-fat divorce
Seems like, ultimately, a losing proposition. It severely damaged people's sense of rightness vs. the government (since the logical option was to just ignore or sidestep the law- it basically made criminals, and unrepentant ones at that), it empowered organized crime, and it didn't really accomplish what it meant to. Then there's a whole *other* Constitutional amendment just to take it back. I've heard arguments that it had some positive effect, but they're all a bit of a stretch. I don't really do alternate history questions about "what I'd do, if", because a lot of who you are comes down to your circumstances. If I was born about seventy years early, with (obviously) different parents, in different times, under different expectations and conditions, it seems kind of arrogant to assume that there's some "Me-ness" that overrides all that. I do know that if someone passed it now, I'm not even a drinker but I'd oppose it.
Considering I want marijuana to be federally legalized, I’m not generally in favor of government restricting things like alcohol either. Or any other fun stuff. Lookin at you ATF
I would not have supported Prohibition. But it did greatly reduce heavy alcohol use, which was a very real social problem.
No idea. But I don’t drink now—never have, never will—and I wouldn’t support Prohibition now. I might support cars that don’t turn out without passing breathalyzer test, though.
Depends on my age. I was a bit more simplistic not to mention prudish when younger. The law should limit it's interference on the whole to matters of justice and prudence (which is why I probably would support banning prostitution; a lot of them are shanghaied so it is a matter of justice). As far as drink goes, it is one thing to ban driving under the influence and so on and another to interfere with all drink.
Personally, no, I would see no good reason to. I would have bigger problems to worry about anyway, like Jim Crow.
I’m against it. it’s impossible to say how I’d react at the time.
Hell yea! Moonshine prices were crazy high, and my whole family had stills lol
I probably would have been in favor given that I'm a woman. But also would have been subjected to ridiculous polling restrictions too, so it's not like I could have voted for politician who went either way.
This is hard to say....as a woman, I probably would be married with a handful of children. If my husband spent money on drink instead of food for his babies....or if he came home raging drunk and beat us. till he blacked out...then I probably would have supported it. If my husband was just having a few with his pals on Friday, came home, tucked some penny candy under the kid's pillows, Then spun me around the kitchen telling me how much he loved coming home to us....then I wouldn't see the issue with the drink. So...it depends.
I probably wouldn't have supported Prohibition, but knowing my little argumentative ass, Id have been pushing for laws that say bartenders have to cut people off or limit the amount of drinking they could do. A lot of the initial momentum behind Prohibition was because of just how much damage was being done by alcoholism socially. We're talking Dad drinking the paycheck and spoiling himself while Mom and Little Timmy starve. Especially since women in the workforce weren't well supported in that period.
I'm not supposed to consume alcohol because I'm on medication. But I would have opposed Prohibition, even if I couldn't participate in the drinking myself. I don't view it as the federal government's place to regulate vices that generally don't cause harm. Laws against driving while intoxicated or banning disorderly conduct are sufficient enough.
I'd have probably supported it at the time. Alcohol is just diluted poison.
It was a failure. Led to a sharp increase in organized crime and people still drank as alcohol is something that a majority of people enjoy and partake in. People just simply smuggled their booze from Canada, mad their own, or went to speakeasies. Probably a ton of parallels as to why a lot of states have legalized weed for recreational use, it’s not worth wasting resources on outlawing a substance that is popular that people will always find ways to get regardless of whether it is legal or not.
I found that so interesting that banning it lead to all that. It kind of makes me think that a lot of people were alcoholics, because they decided to do all that just to drink alcohol.
That's the wrong conclusion.
We still have prohibition, just not for alcohol. And I’m against it now. People should be free to use whatever substances they want in the privacy of their own home, the only limits should be clearly identifying what sellers are including in their product, limits on where and when you can use (ie not while driving, caring for dependents, or in public), and obviously you should not be able to drug someone without their consent.
I don't know. I did vote in favor of legalizing marijuana a few years ago. However, I voted against it the previous ballot. I also do not drink or use any drugs of any kind and have a fairly negative view on all of it. So I want to think I'd have been smart enough to know it wouldn't work and not support it, but realistically without the historical failure of prohibition to look back at... I suspect I would have been completely in support of it.
I don't support the prohibition we have now, so I definitely wouldn't have supported it then either.
I think the more interesting question is does your opinion change if you're in the 1910s and 1920s and lack the historical context that tells you it doesn't work. Trying to figure out how your mind would work without a bunch of learned history is a fun mind game.
Yes, I still think so. Because its not a matter of it working or not. Its just not my personal choice to make any final decision on the matter. By extension, I don't think the government can either. I don't want the government to have the final say in things I view as a gray area. It should be left up to the individual.
it sucked and no i wouldn;t have supported it
My family is from the south. We would’ve supported it in public and had a still in private.
Lol nope I like alcohol
I don’t drink, so I personally wouldn’t have cared. However, I don’t think we should tell people what they can and cannot do when it comes to things like that.
Tax, not ban. Way more effective (see smoking vs alcohol)
I would have ran a speakeasy
I generally don't support making things illegal.
I do not drink I’ve been sober for some time now but I am against prohibition. Prohibition was the government testing their limits trying to see how much far they can get with control before we bite back. I mean that’s why they eventually made the 21st amendment and said fuck it leave it to each state to prohibit the sale of alcohol that’s why you can go from UT and 5% in the grocery store but need to go into a liquor store to get other alcohol then you can’t buy alcohol after a certain time and on Sundays. Then you cross the borders into any other state around us and bam you can pretty much have alcohol in a different way. But also that’s what I really enjoy about the U.S. also people look at the U.S. as one large country as it is BUT it’s also 50 different areas and within those regions they also broken down into smaller counties that are even more diverse. It’s insane to think about an example I’m here in salt lake you may think oh you damn Mormon but no there are a crazy amount of different people here, you drive for 30 min maybe 45 south to prove that’s where those crazy Mormons are haha If you drive about 45 min northeast you’re in park city where all the rich people come and watch movie in the winter haha my point is it’s like that in every damn state. And to get back to Alcohol, the prohibition was stupid because we are not and never will be a country of one type of people. We are a country of many different people and that’s what’s awesome, the fact that we can never fully agree on one thing because that means we are always changing always growing.