Alcohol How Effective Has the Legal Prohibition

Alcohol

How effective has the legal prohibition of alcohol been in controlling crime? A recent Department of Justice Report (U.S. Department of Justice) said that alcohol was a factor in 40% of all violent crimes and accounted for 40.9% of all traffic fatalities in the U.S.A. In the last decade. But these figures were 34% and 29%, respectively, lower than those of the previous decade. The Report further stated that arrests conducted for driving under the influence of alcohol correspondingly declined and attributed this to the establishment of the legal and uniform drinking age in the early 1980s.

Elucidating, the Report said that, approximately 3 million violent crimes occurred each year in that decade where the offenders were drinking at the time. And although arrests were made in every age group, those made on offenders below 21 notably decreased. The rate of intoxication in fatal accidents, it said, likewise went down in every age group at the time of the enforcement of the minimum drinking age.

The prohibition of alcohol, which began as a movement in the Colonial days of the early 1900s, was not intended to eliminate the ingestion or taking of alcoholic drinks, but only to temper or reform the habit (Rapczynski and Zywocinski 2000). The churches initiated the Movement, and they were later joined by social service and other cause-oriented organizations. At that time, the early settlers were attacked by Indians who were heated up by liquor, described as "strong waters," which they learned from the settlers themselves. In reaction, leaders in Massachusetts and other early colonies banned the sale and giving of this strong drink to the Indians, until they realized the futility of enforcing such laws on them. That early, the colonists - Puritans included - that alcoholic drinks were necessities, but had to be used in moderation. Soon, they also discovered that they could realize tax revenues from these drinks and use these to maintain forts and build schools and churches (Rapczynski and Zywocinski).

But they also disapproved of anyone who drank in excess and even severely punished those who got habitually drunk. They were fined, sentenced to the stocks, whipped or publicly chastised by wearing the scarlet letter "D," which stood for Drunkard. The colonists formulated regulations to control the use of intoxicating drinks, but not to prohibit them entirely. When these regulations proved harsh to those who wanted to drink as much as they pleased or found "necessary," opposing voices began sounding off. Soon, import duties and excise taxes went up on these drinks, so did revenues and smuggling of these. Rum was a popular favorite, especially at funerals, weddings, christenings, town meetings, even at work. The first to seriously work for its prohibition was James Oglethorpe, the founding father of Georgia and also the father of the prohibition of alcohol. He worked hard to eliminate excess use of hard liquor. The Trustees finally moved the British Parliament and King George II to fully enforce the law. The Movement coincided with a great national religious revival that overtook the country at the time, until temperance began to be an integral part of the churches, which viewed drinking as a major hindrance to salvation by leading people to sin. When the prime movers were agreeable about the sinfulness of alcohol, they could not decide on what to do with it, and some of them turned their attention on the manufacturers. The Washingtonian Movement (the forerunner of Alcoholics Anonymous) was organized in 1841, but quickly fell off. The interest on temperance also tapered off until the zeal that once reigned among the movers vanished. They realized that moral encouragement was not strong enough to wean Americans away from alcohol.

While leaders would not touch on the people's own decision to ward off alcohol, political pressure was focused on the destruction and elimination of the liquor business, using legal measures. This trend began even before the Civil War (Rapczynski and Zywocinski), but it stubbornly remained in the books as a most important source of financing for the government. Liquor tax accounted anywhere from half to 2/3 of the entire internal American revenue from 1870 to 1915. The Internal Revenue Act was the imprimatur of alcohol by the government: it gave federal approval and encouraged greater sales of liquor in order to realize more federal income.

In the 1860s, the softened voice of prohibitionists was joined by the women power wave, called the Women's National Christian Temperance Union. The Union held that women should be freed from the disasters which liquor brought about in their homes. But soon, European migrants settled in America and populated the towns and cities, forming an industrial society among them. Many had a long tradition on moderation, which led them to become a prohibition force: immigrants against native-born Americans, political machines against a home government, and liberals against conservatives (Rapczynski and Zywocinski). A difference came again in 1896 when a Protestant clergyman in Ohio, Dr. Howard Russell, put up the Anti-Saloon League and pledged to work really hard for the legal drive against the use of alcohol. In 1880, Kansas incorporated a prohibition into its Constitution. Georgia, Oklahoma, Mississippi, North Carolina, Tennessee and West Virginia did the same. When the prohibition threat grew, brewers pumped money into the states especially during elections and into chambers of commerce and also paid to learn about the strategy of the prohibition movement, whose power began to show itself around 1913. By 1914, prohibitionists gained many seats in Congress. During the War, the monumental Eighteenth Amendment was introduced, prohibiting the manufacture, sale or transport of intoxicating liquors. The effective leadership of the prohibitionists rallied behind it and the ban already being observed in 26 states then and the Amendment was ratified. This resulted in cutting down drinking among workers, but in 1933, the Twenty-first Amendment repealed this prohibition. Reasons advanced consist in the perceived failure of the prohibition and the Great Depression that began in 1929 and which required badly needed additional revenue. The general public even blamed the prohibition as the cause of the depression.

The collision continues to the present. A strict law was enacted in California in 1994 that revoked a license when the licensee was caught selling alcohol to minutes thrice in a three-year period (Ryan and Mosher 2000). But law enforcers, policy activists and local policy makers took undue advantage of it to close down outlets. In 1998, SB 1696 replaced it, and since then, there have been more attempts to derail it.

Meanwhile, the minimum drinking age was fixed by law at 21 in the early 80s, and it was reported that such laws reduced traffic fatalities, among drivers between 18 and 20, by 13% and saved roughly 20,043 lives since 1975 (National Highway Traffic Safety Administration). A nationwide survey held in 2000 revealed that approximately 9.7 million persons 12-20 years old reported drinking before the survey, 6.6 million of whom were binge drinkers and 2.1 million were heavy drinkers (NHTSA).

Controlled or moderate drinking was perceived as nothing more than a moralized middle category between abstention and alcohol drinking at both extremes (Room). The terms "controlled" and "moderate" mean nothing outside a clinical setting, which recognized a "predisposing X factor" as determining a propensity for liquor and presumed that people without it could never turn into alcoholics (Room). The trend soon showed that the difference between the "moderate" and the "hard" drinkers lied only in their behavioral patterns over time. This belief explained alcoholics as having so far lost control over their drinking that their major social roles inside and outside the home are damaged. The controlled or moderate drinker, on the other hand, limits his or her drinking to a small number on occasion and falls short of intoxication.

Advocates of the alcoholism movement felt that there should be a non-moral distinction between the alcoholic and the social drinker, one that does not paint the person in moral terms and neither blames nor credits. The idea that alcoholism is caused by a gene relieves the hearts of families of alcoholics as to the latter's moral form. For over half a century, these advocates have struggled to draw the contrast between these types of drinkers (Room).

Drinkers have strong advocates too, especially among those younger than 21 (Reber 2001). These opponents have a spokesman, Attorney General Jim Doyle of Wisconsin, who believed that the minimum legal age for drinking should be reduced from 21 to 19, on the grounds that 18-20-year-olds can pay taxes, adopt a child, get drafted into the military and own firearms. Not only did it make sense to Doyle that these youngsters should also be allowed to drink, but that they cannot be restrained from drinking in secret anyway.

Despite claims of dwindling alcohol-related violent crimes incidence and alcohol-linked traffic fatalities, many still believe that the legal policy against alcoholism has been intolerable and failed. There is hardly any significant evidence that fixing a minimum age has helped, and there exists proof to the contrary that the restraint has, in fact, caused significant harm (Watulak 1997). He suggested that laws controlling drinking are self-defeating if their objective is to instill responsible drinking. For one thing, he said that underage drinking has, in fact, gone up since these laws were introduced and enforced (Watulak). Making it more difficult for those below 21 to acquire alcoholic drinks instead encourages binge drinking. In Europe, drinks are mere part of other activities. But in the United States, the law against them because it makes drinking "an event in and of itself."

It was, moreover, emphasized that the very fear of getting caught drove these under-aged people to take alcohol in distant places where the laws against it are not enforced or are not too strict. These are places where the threat of injury is also higher. And because those are distant places, the youngsters must drive farther and take more risk while pretending not to have drunk. And the alcohol law also deters free communication within the family, which is forced into merely stating that it is illegal for their children under 21 to drink, instead of intelligently opening the subject with these children.

The alcohol law not only proves to have become a disastrous failure, but also interferes with family life by encouraging disrespect for the rule of law in general. An 18-year-old bartender cannot develop respect for the lawmakers if he or she cannot take his own product. Neither can a 20-year-old who shares his or her 21-year-old brother or sister's beer (Watulak). Crossing the limits of the law makes it easier to break it and commit greater crimes. If a young man or woman violates the law every Saturday night, how can he or she easily justify the avoidance of other wrong actions merely on legal grounds? This age of prohibition that puts up an "absurd" and "unenforceable" law that prohibits young people from drinking only induces infraction of that law. What is worse, it paints the majority of Americans today as technically criminals (Watulak).

This law, furthermore, transgresses the American principle that every man shall be entitled to equality before the law and to be judged on individual merits, not by group terminologies or limitations. It underscores a strong message that discrimination is a good thing, and this goes against the very principle upon which America was founded. It is a presumption that young people cannot drink responsibly.

A newspaper reader sent in his comments along similar lines (Abbe 2002), stressing that children and other young people should be adequately informed by their school that alcohol is not good for the body. He maintained that airlines should be stopped from serving alcohol, the military basis should be restrained from condoning it, and sports programs should stop endorsing it. In his opinion, anyone who has ever been drunk knows that liquor does not make anyone healthier, more able and happier. Whether a social, economic, clinical or moral question, alcohol should be avoided and everyone will be better off without it, more peaceful, more intellect and happier (Abbe).

The national prohibition of alcohol - the so-called "noble experiment" -- from 1920 to 1933 was undertaken to reduce crime and corruption, solve society's problems, minimize taxes burdening prisons and poor houses, and improve the overall health of Americans (Thornton 1991). But the consequences of this experiment deliver the clear message of its failure on all grounds.

While the Prohibition managed to reduce the consumption of alcohol, it strongly increased afterwards. It became more pernicious and dangers and crime increased and became "organized." It led the courts and prison systems to stretch to breaking point and corruption among public officials to further spread. It has failed to prove that it discouraged and reduced absenteeism. All it managed to do was decrease government revenue and increased government spending (Thornton), and succeeded only in driving youngsters to drugs, such as opium, marijuana, cocaine and other harmful substances. And because economists and social scientists supported the stand of prohibitionists, their case became seven much stronger.

Prohibitionists contend that alcohol control will benefit the drinker and society by reducing alcohol intake. but, first, the claimed decrease was not that significant. It was found that sold alcohol fell 20% in prewar years 1911-14 and 1927-30, but prohibition was unable to decimate it. Second, consumption even went up after dropping for a while. There may have been a decline since 1910 up to the depression of 1921, but it lifted again in 1922 (Thornton), even outdoing pre-prohibition levels. Alcoholic drinks continued to be illicitly manufactured and distributed despite vigorous action against them.

Third, those resources intended for the enforcement of prohibition actually increased alongside consumption, but the strongest prohibition did not stop consumption. The Bureau of Prohibition increased its budget from $4.4 to $13.4 in the 20s and the Coast Guard spent $13 million yearly in addition to other expenses of state and local governments. And fourth, even a decrease in quantity consumption did not make prohibition a success. Lessening consumption did not necessarily make society better off. The overall social consequences of prohibition must be considered along with reduced alcohol use.