Speaking of drug policy, let's talk about booze and Prohbition

I got to admit that today has been an interesting day. I luck into an article on drug policy in the Scots' Sunday Herald and notice no mention of alcohol. Then when I (finally) get to the New York Times' Sunday Book Review, I see that they are reviewing a book on New York and Prohibition.

Prohibition was one of the longest, dumbest chapters in the history of 20th-century American folly, and the impulses behind it are still alive today. The architects of this bizarre experiment were as varied as the country in which they lived: faith-based Christian zealots, idealistic social reformers, flat-out bigots, a few solemn feminists and more than a few cynical businessmen who simply wanted their blue-collar workers to show up sober and on time. The movement even included a genuine terrorist organization, the Ku Klux Klan. The generals in this culture war believed, in Michael A. Lerner’s words, that “the prohibition of alcohol and the elimination of the saloon would morally uplift the people of the United States, ultimately creating a healthier citizenry, safer cities and workplaces, and a more efficient society.”

Hmm, one of those supporting Prohibition was my mother's mother's mother who was a member of the Women's Christian Temperance Union. I heard of her through my mother (my great-grandmother lived with my grandmother and my mother and my aunt and helped raised the granddaughters), my grandmother, my aunt, and even my father. Her name was Prudence Livingston Day and I heard nothing to make think her a zealot and certainly not a Klanner. She was a good Democrat and back then Democrats were in opposition to the Klan. Pretty sure she was not a bigot; even if I have been told she did not care much for my grandmother's Irish mother-in-law, but then her own family came from Scotland and so it might have been something tribal. She was a good, rock-ribbed Baptist, though. Baptists have nothing to do with booze. (Well, not supposed to.)

Well, enough family history. Pete Hamill does the reviewing which he informs with his own knowledge of New York's history. Read the review and think how silly and dangerous Prohibition turned out to be and then read the Sunday Herald piece and I think you will see how our silly and dangerous drug policy will not end as did Prohibition.

Hamill ends his review with this paragraph and I suggest we Hoosiers think hard on what he writes:

But Lerner’s book is a serious work, suggesting that there are still lessons to be learned from the 13 years, 10 months and 18 days of a utopian American delusion. There remain a number of Americans today who are filled with similar angry visions, longing to make them into law.