Prohibition ends!

December 4, 2013 10:58 AM

80 years ago the "Noble Experiment" was repealed by ratification of the 21st Amendment. And everyone kept right on drinking...
posted by Chocolate Pickle (44 comments total)

In discussions of prohibition in the U.S., I've seen it mentioned that drinking really was a much, much larger problem prior to the Volstead Act. We're talking about the majority of an annual salary being wasted in saloons, with concommitent social effects. Because this side of it has been lost behind a picture of hectoring suffragette hens being killjoys, we don't fully appreciate what a real social ill it was, and how prohibition shifted the status quo for alcohol consumpion to a much more tolerable level.

Is this generally accepted as true or is it an apologia for the hens?
posted by fatbird at 11:02 AM on December 4, 2013 [4 favorites]

One of the worst decisions in American history, yeah, but watching the excellent PBS documentary on it did enlighten me to the more noble causes. (For instance, a belief that alcohol was the major cause of violence against women and men being absent from families) So, I can understand why it happened. What I can't understand is why we continue to let prohibition continue today for other substances where we know the policy is just as flawed.
posted by Drinky Die at 11:04 AM on December 4, 2013 [3 favorites]

It seems to me that the bad outweighed the good. It also resulted in massive smuggling, and establishment of criminal gangs (most notoriously in Chicago). At the time it was clearly recognized as being a huge mistake, because it's the only time that a constitutional amendment has been repealed.
posted by Chocolate Pickle at 11:07 AM on December 4, 2013 [1 favorite]

The right-most sign in this picture is, sadly, still very appropriate for today.
posted by jbickers at 11:10 AM on December 4, 2013 [2 favorites]

To throw a more recent news peg onto this story, prohibition isn't really over, is it?

I was listening to NPR on the way into work, and they had three or four pot-related stories in a row, including the one I just linked to, as well as another about a sizeable pot-sales bust at a school, and an older inmate who died at a local prison, who was convicted of pot-related offenses (and an attempted sexual assault). I half expected the announcer to follow all this with, "the news has been brought to you by High Times Magazine. High Times Magazine, for all your righteous bud news."
posted by gern at 11:12 AM on December 4, 2013

Is this generally accepted as true or is it an apologia for the hens?

Wiki: After the prohibition was implemented alcohol continued to be consumed. However, how much compared to pre-Prohibition levels remains unclear. Studies examining the rates of cirrhosis deaths as a proxy for alcohol consumption estimated a decrease in consumption of 10–20%.[4][5][6] One study reviewing city-level drunkenness arrests came to a similar result.[7] And, yet another study examining "mortality, mental health and crime statistics" found that alcohol consumption fell, at first, to approximately 30 percent of its pre-Prohibition level; but, over the next several years, increased to about 60–70 percent of its pre-prohibition level.[8]

Definite drop, but even with increasing enforcement resources consumption was trending back up. The police state tactics just aren't worth it when they are clearly failing. Education, regulation, taxation, and treatment are the best ways to impact drug use.
posted by Drinky Die at 11:17 AM on December 4, 2013 [2 favorites]

I don't know about prohibition-era levels, but recently, the historical food blog Four Pounds Flour tried to drink at colonial American levels, and was amazed at how much that involved.

We were cleaning out my mom's house recently and my brother found an Old Mr. Boston Bartender's Guide from the early 1960s. In the back was a handy guide for holding a cocktail party and the amount of alcohol they suggested for each person was insane. It seems everybody back then was Don Draper.
posted by bondcliff at 11:18 AM on December 4, 2013 [5 favorites]

"....a federal government program that added poison to alcohol to frighten folks from imbibing, according to The Poisoner's Handbook..."

Paraquat?
posted by merelyglib at 11:19 AM on December 4, 2013 [1 favorite]

fatbird, the suffragettes were largely responsible for bringing about prohibition, but amazingly they were also largely responsible for defeating it. They voted a solution to a problem (drunks), learned the law of unintended consequences, and promptly set about repealing it.

The real assholes of prohibition were the WASPs, big surprise.
posted by special agent conrad uno at 11:22 AM on December 4, 2013 [9 favorites]

A toast. May our current failed drug prohibition experiment similarly end.
posted by munchingzombie at 11:22 AM on December 4, 2013 [2 favorites]

Gone bowling; not back, avenge death.
posted by entropicamericana at 11:24 AM on December 4, 2013 [4 favorites]

The real assholes of prohibition were the WASPs, big surprise.

Well, as I was telling Miffy if they can't control their drinking long enough to stay industrious then we'll just have to take it away from them - they're not like us, they can't be trusted - some of them even use it in those ghastly mumbo jumbo churches they have - totally antidemocratic if you ask me. I mean if they could be trusted with drink then we wouldn't be having this conversation, don't you think? I don;t think it's their fault per say but some races are just more drink-prone and bone idle, if we have to do this to whip them into shape then we must or they'll start running rough over the whole THING, I mean really.
posted by The Whelk at 11:33 AM on December 4, 2013 [6 favorites]

There was also Jake walk, from Jamaican Ginger Extract, after they started adding tri-ortho-cresyl phosphate to it. Not sure if it was government mandated.
posted by Marie Mon Dieu at 11:34 AM on December 4, 2013 [1 favorite]

As a local note, Canada had prohibition only as a brief measure during and after wartime, so much of prohibition that existed was municipal--which the wet blankets in Vancouver wasted no time in passing and letting it run from 1917 to 1921.

[Plug here for Forbidden Vancouver, who give amazing walking tours through the pee-smelliest parts of Gastown. I can point to the exact spot in Chinatown where William Lyon Mackenzie King stood and said "this opium factory needs to go!"]
posted by fatbird at 11:44 AM on December 4, 2013 [2 favorites]

It's convenient that the amendments for prohibition and repeal align so nicely with former and current drinking ages in the US.
posted by ckape at 11:47 AM on December 4, 2013 [3 favorites]

bondcliff, how much WAS suggested for each person? A fifth?
posted by Carillon at 11:48 AM on December 4, 2013

Drinky Die: What I can't understand is why we continue to let prohibition continue today for other substances where we know the policy is just as flawed.

Lobbyists for competing substances, and misplaced moral discomfort.
posted by filthy light thief at 11:50 AM on December 4, 2013 [2 favorites]

bondcliff, how much WAS suggested for each person? A fifth?

Something like that. I don't remember exactly. I just remember it seeming like a lot. But maybe I'm just a lightweight, who knows.
posted by bondcliff at 11:53 AM on December 4, 2013

fatbird: In discussions of prohibition in the U.S., I've seen it mentioned that drinking really was a much, much larger problem prior to the Volstead Act.

I've heard that in [some places], there were 300 bars per mile, but I can't find any online citations to back up my hazy memories of this figure. I only found a mention of 300 bars in 2 square miles in the Zizkov neighborhood in Prague.
posted by filthy light thief at 11:53 AM on December 4, 2013

Carillon: bondcliff, how much WAS suggested for each person? A fifth?

There was a tremendous amount of drinking. Three-martini lunches were the norm (for ad execs, at least).
posted by filthy light thief at 11:55 AM on December 4, 2013

drinking really was a much, much larger problem prior to the Volstead Act. We're talking about the majority of an annual salary being wasted in saloons, with concommitent social effects.

I wonder how many of the people who wasted their salary in saloons before prohibition died from drinking government-poisoned alcohol during prohibition.

That would certainly keep them from spending money on liquor, with concomitant social effects.
posted by yohko at 11:58 AM on December 4, 2013

I've often wondered if a comparison could be drawn between the denaturing of alcohol during prohibition and the addition of acetaminophen to opioids today. I'm imagine that efficacy is the primary reason, but why then would a narcotic be scheduled differently than narcotic/APAP.
posted by exit at 11:59 AM on December 4, 2013 [3 favorites]

Not that I want to play mother hen here, but was there anywhere in this discussion an analysis of why these primarily working class men were drinking themselves unconscious several nights a week? I mean, like, for example, their working conditions were so hideously miserable that the only light at the end of the tunnel was the chance to get so hammered they could forget for a couple of hours they had to return to that same hellhole the next day?
posted by La Cieca at 12:14 PM on December 4, 2013 [8 favorites]

I work at home. I have five bottles of single malt in the larder and have only a few drams a week. I am now inspired to have a dram with my noon lunch. That can't affect my work, can it?
posted by Ber at 12:16 PM on December 4, 2013

Lobbyists for competing substances, and misplaced moral discomfort.

It's quite easy to see how Prohibition came about because you can see the attitudes present even on Metafilter any time threads about Certain Substances come up. The crazy paranoia simply migrates to whichever substance is convenient at the time. It used to be pot, later coke and crack, now its speed. Eventually it will be something else. Every single time you find otherwise rational people who have completely bought the "but this substance is TOTALLY AND COMPLETELY different and worse!"

If we had made all the currently illegal substances legal and made currently legal substances (antibiotics) much more difficult to obtain with criminal penalties for misuse we'd all be much better off today.
posted by Justinian at 12:23 PM on December 4, 2013 [3 favorites]

special agent conrad uno: "
The real assholes of prohibition were the WASPs, big surprise."

I think you're underestimating the lobbying power of the Mafioso (Italian, Jewish, and so forth).
posted by IAmBroom at 12:29 PM on December 4, 2013

fatbird, the suffragettes were largely responsible for bringing about prohibition, but amazingly they were also largely responsible for defeating it. They voted a solution to a problem (drunks), learned the law of unintended consequences, and promptly set about repealing it.

The real assholes of prohibition were the WASPs, big surprise.
posted by special agent conrad uno at 11:22 AM on December 4 [6 favorites +] [!]

This is untrue. A record number of women registered in '28 expressly so they could vote for Herbert Hoover, the dry candidate, over Al Smith, the wet candidate: "Women were credited or blamed for the fact that Smith got a majority in only five Southern and one border state, and even lost New York, while the Democratic candidate for Governor, won." According to a Gallup poll in '36, 57% of women reported they had voted for Roosevelt in the 1932 election (the wet candidate) vs. 63% of men.
posted by Luminiferous Ether at 1:06 PM on December 4, 2013 [2 favorites]

I am now inspired to have a dram with my noon lunch. That can't affect my work, can it?

Sure, and probably in a positive way.
posted by Greg_Ace at 1:14 PM on December 4, 2013 [2 favorites]

>> I am now inspired to have a dram with my noon lunch. That can't affect my work, can it?

> Sure, and probably in a positive way.

Yup.
posted by Tom-B at 1:19 PM on December 4, 2013

Repeal day is December 5th.

So you have a day to prepare, for tomorrow's celebration, unless you want to count down to midnight and celebrate that way.

Need drinks? Start here. I like the Grasshopper for its not so serious cocktailness, and the fact that it might have won a cocktail championship held during prohibition.

Want to end the current prohibition we are in? Start here.
posted by mrzarquon at 1:21 PM on December 4, 2013 [2 favorites]

was there anywhere in this discussion an analysis of why these primarily working class men were drinking themselves unconscious several nights a week? I mean, like, for example, their working conditions were so hideously miserable that the only light at the end of the tunnel was the chance to get so hammered they could forget for a couple of hours they had to return to that same hellhole the next day?

Anecdotal, I know--but this is exactly what I did when I was working 60 and 72 hour weeks doing factory labor. It's like doing time, but you get to go home and drink for the few hours you have before it's time to go to bed so you can wake up for another 12-hour day.
posted by TrialByMedia at 1:47 PM on December 4, 2013 [1 favorite]

> Not that I want to play mother hen here, but was there anywhere in this discussion an analysis of why these primarily working class men were drinking themselves unconscious several nights a week? I mean, like, for example, their working conditions were so hideously miserable that the only light at the end of the tunnel was the chance to get so hammered they could forget for a couple of hours they had to return to that same hellhole the next day?

Highly reductionistic, but:

Drinking was a cultural practice at the time, but most people were drinking things like light beers or cordials, not heavy spirits. Introduce distilled alcohol, and no concept of alcoholism, therapy, or moderation, lack of a weekend, vacation, or stress relief, and it becomes very easy to climb into a bottle.

Add in the civil war releasing generations of men into society with PTSD, chronic pain, and no care system to enable them to cope. Remeber that abuse can travel through the family, so children of abusive parents can become abusive, not to mention genetic predisposition to alcoholism. That starts the seeds of Prohibition in the 1870s, fast forward to post WW1 America, another generation of men returning from a war, and it gets worse.

Think of it as the introduction of a new bacterial agent into a society without the immunity to take care of it, or even to know how to respond to it at all (the idea of substance abuse in the age of the empowered individual pulling themselves up from their bootstraps?), and you get a plague. And we still suck at it (see our current prohibitions, bans on things like needle exchanges, punishing victims of addiction instead of treating them, etc).
posted by mrzarquon at 2:10 PM on December 4, 2013 [2 favorites]

filthy light thief: "There was a tremendous amount of drinking. Three-martini lunches were the norm (for ad execs, at least)."

Three martinis and I'd be face down in my lunch. I'm a drinker but I can't deal with more than one drink every 45 minutes to an hour which is why I drink beer generally. Mixed drinks just go down too fast.
posted by octothorpe at 2:16 PM on December 4, 2013

My grandmother was born in 1911, so she grew up through prohibition. Her father was an alcoholic. (As was my grandfather's father. Both of them drank all the way through prohibition, both in NYC.) What I remember her saying about it was that her father taught her that to drink good Scotch, because you'd know it was smuggled and not made in a bathtub. So even after prohibition, that was her preferred drink, on the rare occasion when she did drink.

And the PBS documentary is fantastic!
posted by epersonae at 4:48 PM on December 4, 2013

The real assholes of prohibition were the WASPs, big surprise.

How so? I mean, as opposed to such supporters of Prohibition as, say, the NAACP? More assholey than the Irish and Italian mobsters, supporters of the law for their own ends?
posted by IndigoJones at 6:12 PM on December 4, 2013

I went to the American Spirits: The Rise and Fall of Prohibition exhibition at the Minnesota History Center over the weekend. Quite well done and informative. According to the exhibit, by 1830 everyone over the age of 15 was drinking an average of 90 bottles of 80 proof liquor annually or about 4 shots a day. Starting with hard cider at breakfast on the farm and twice-daily grog breaks for city workers and the upper class drinking away the evenings at clubs and hotels. Not to mention Lydia Pinkham's Vegetable Compound for female complaints which was almost 21% alcohol in a 14oz bottle. So, drinking a substantial amount in multiple forms. Here is a summary of the exhibit sections. The exhibit has several more stops. I will say it looked like way more fun to be a flapper than a suffragette or temperance worker.
posted by Nosey Mrs. Rat at 6:29 PM on December 4, 2013 [1 favorite]

All these reports about early alcoholic consumption are a bit deceptive. This was in the days when there weren't any high-tech water supplies, and drinking random water could kill you. People drank alcoholic beverages instead of water because it was safer -- the alcohol was a sterilizing agent. Things like hard cider, and beer, were important for healthy living. That applied to kids, too; they could die from untreated water just as easily as anyone else.

The fact that it made you feel good was a nice side effect, but it wasn't really the point.

It's been claimed that the early development of beer (3000+ years ago) was what made it possible for towns to appear and prosper. Otherwise that many people living in such close proximity would all die of plague.

Modern chlorination of water supplies only dates to about 1895.
posted by Chocolate Pickle at 6:58 PM on December 4, 2013 [1 favorite]

It's always a sign that something really, really wrong-headed and wicked is being proposed when it's given a high-sounding, cod-righteous name. You know: "Noble Experiment", "Patriot Act", "Final Solution"...
posted by Decani at 10:46 PM on December 4, 2013 [2 favorites]

Chocolate Pickle: All these reports about early alcoholic consumption are a bit deceptive. This was in the days when there weren't any high-tech water supplies, and drinking random water could kill you. People drank alcoholic beverages instead of water because it was safer -- the alcohol was a sterilizing agent. Things like hard cider, and beer, were important for healthy living. That applied to kids, too; they could die from untreated water just as easily as anyone else.

This has always made me wonder about societies where drinking wasn't the norm, i.e. much of the Muslim world. Did they just die more, have other means of controlling waterborne diseases, drink other liquids, or is this a myth?
posted by tavegyl at 10:50 PM on December 4, 2013

This is untrue. A record number of women registered in '28 expressly so they could vote for Herbert Hoover, the dry candidate, over Al Smith, the wet candidate: "Women were credited or blamed for the fact that Smith got a majority in only five Southern and one border state, and even lost New York, while the Democratic candidate for Governor, won."

But what about this?

The repeal movement also attracted a substantial portion of women, defying the assumption that recently enfranchised female voters would automatically vote as a bloc on this issue.[9] They became pivotal in the effort to repeal, as many "had come to the painful conclusion that the destructiveness of alcohol was now embodied in Prohibition itself."[10] By then, women had become even more politically powerful due to ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment in support of women's suffrage.[11] Activist Pauline Sabin argued that repeal would protect families from the corruption, violent crime, and underground drinking that resulted from Prohibition. On May 28, 1929, Sabin founded the Women's Organization for National Prohibition Reform (WONPR), which attracted many former Prohibitionists to its ranks.[12] By the time repeal was finally passed in 1933 the WONPR's membership was estimated at 1.5 million.

Ok I'm going to do some math here.
1.5 million WONPR. '32 presidential elections: 37 million voters. That is a 1 in 24 ratio.

Let's look at the ALL POWERFUL NRA
5 million NRA. 2012 presidential elections: 126 million voters. That is a 1 in 25 ratio.

So, to put it in perspective, the pro-repeal suffragettes had more power than the NRA does today.
posted by special agent conrad uno at 11:06 PM on December 4, 2013

Chocolate Pickle: "It's been claimed that the early development of beer (3000+ years ago) was what made it possible for towns to appear and prosper. Otherwise that many people living in such close proximity would all die of plague.

Modern chlorination of water supplies only dates to about 1895."

It's been claimed, but it's also been claimed that medieval people ate highly spiced food to cover the taste of tainted meat (so unrealistic on many levels that it's laughable, but for the record a friend of mine chased that myth back to one particular "historian"'s publication in the 1950s).

It's bullshit. Beer /preserves/ calories - the single most important aspect of food. Mice can't eat it. Once hops became popular, mold wasn't much of a problem. And, regardless of what the word "beer" conjures in our modern minds, "small beer" - barely-fermented - won't get you drunk. I survived on it one hot summer day spent outside, just to prove the point - never got as drunk as I feel after one modern 12-oz American beer.

Careful studies of one abbey, where the monks lived extraordinarily austere lives, showed that roughly 25% of their caloric intake came from their beer. 25%. That's huge. And drunkenness wasn't tolerated at all, by Abbey rules.

tavegyl: "This has always made me wonder about societies where drinking wasn't the norm, i.e. much of the Muslim world. Did they just die more, have other means of controlling waterborne diseases, drink other liquids, or is this a myth?"

And there you have the last nail in the coffin, for me. It's bullshit.

Also, I've actually studied medieval lives, unlike some of the academics who publish on the topic (not pulling punches here; I've attended academic paper presentations that were little better than Reader's Digest articles on Powerpoint). Spoiler: they drank water! (Especially the poor - the wealthier you were the less you were forced to resort to mere water.) So, there's no truth to the idea that the masses were abstaining from water in the first place.

Doesn't matter if the beer came in irradiated pouched with sterile straws, if you also drink the well water.
posted by IAmBroom at 8:06 AM on December 5, 2013

special agent conrad uno: "So, to put it in perspective, the pro-repeal suffragettes had more power than the NRA does today."

No, they had more direct votes. Power = influence. I'd wager a helluva lot more people read and are influenced positively by NRA propaganda than were by the WONPR.

Still, you're still probably right that the WONPR was not the biggest reason behind the repeal.

Happy Repeal Day, everybody!
posted by IAmBroom at 8:09 AM on December 5, 2013

(so unrealistic on many levels that it's laughable, but for the record a friend of mine chased that myth back to one particular "historian"'s publication in the 1950s).

Yes, thank you, no idea how that myth took hold - people went out and fought and died on the chance that there might be pepper at the other end - you're not putting that on rotten meat.
posted by The Whelk at 8:30 AM on December 5, 2013

Regarding this:
This was in the days when there weren't any high-tech water supplies, and drinking random water could kill you. People drank alcoholic beverages instead of water because it was safer...

That's overstated. It might explain the consumption of beer, wine and cider. But it does not explain spirits, which are hardly a replacement for water. And it was spirits that were the initial focus of the Temperance movement.

The American Spirits show is based largely on Dan Okrent's outstanding book, "Last Call: The Rise and Fall of Prohibition."

I helped promote the show when it opened at Philadelphia's National Constitution Center and had a few beers with Dan for this column, in which he observed that Prohibition (at least in cities) wasn't such a bad thing for drinkers: "It was much easier to get a drink during Prohibition than after Prohibition. During Prohibition, you could get alcohol 24 hours a day, seven days a week. You could sell anything you want and pay no taxes... The truth is, the arrival of appeal meant it was actually harder to get a drink."

Indeed, Prohibition was not aimed simply at alcohol. It was aimed at saloons, which by the early 1900s had become truly dangerous places in American cities. (It was called the Anti-Saloon League for a reason.)

When the 18th Amendment was repealed, the states focused their regulatory efforts on the operation of drinking establishments. Check out the language in Pennsylvania's liquor code (written in 1933, and still enforced): This act shall be deemed an exercise of the police power of the Commonwealth for the protection of the public welfare, health, peace and morals of the people of the Commonwealth and to prohibit forever the open saloon, and all of the provisions of this act shall be liberally construed for the accomplishment of this purpose.
posted by sixpack at 9:00 AM on December 5, 2013 [2 favorites]