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The Miranda Devine Page
Judge for yourself how much Miranda Devine and Brian Watters
know about drug policy.
Table
of Contents
How This Page Came to Be
Miranda Devine's Reference
The Statements Miranda Devine Referenced
How This Page Came to Be
On March 9, 2003, Miranda Devine wrote an op-ed piece about drugs that
appeared in a number of Australian newspapers under the title "It
Pays To Be Tough on Drugs". In her piece, she said:
The naysayers cite America's prohibition of alcohol in the 1920s as the
great failure which proves prohibition of drugs is doomed. But alcohol
use did fall significantly in the US during prohibition, as did cirrhosis.
Suicide rates dropped by 50 per cent, as did alcohol-related arrests,
according to US drug policy resource, the Schaffer Library.
"It was the most lawful period in US history," says Watters, but
prohibition didn't work because, unlike heroin, alcohol was an integral part
of the social fabric.
Frankly, I found these statements to be simply incredible. The fact that the
chairman of the Australian National Council on Drugs, Brian Watters, -- someone
who presumably should have some modest knowledge of the subject -- thinks that
Prohibition was "the most lawful period in US history" is
staggering.
I was most surprised, and somewhat amused, that anyone would seriously claim
that the research in the Schaffer Library of Drug Policy supported the notion
that alcohol prohibition during the 1920s was a success. So, to make a long
story short, I wrote a letter which took issue with that assertion. I asserted
that she was either "woefully ignorant" (i.e., doesn't know anything
about the subject), hadn't read much in the Schaffer Library (we will
demonstrate that below), or -- if she had read very much -- was not telling the
truth.
Miranda Devine took offense to my letter and wrote me an e-mail, demanding a
retraction, and asserting that the information she referenced came from my web
site. She included a link to the page that she had referenced as the source for
her information.
In attempting to write back to her to give her some modest idea of where she
went wrong, I found that there was just so much information to contradict her
statements that it really required much more than an e-mail to convey.
Therefore, I elected to put up a web page where readers could examine the
statements made above and whether they have any basis in fact.
In support of her statements, Ms. Devine referenced the following page:
Chapter
6 - Role of Tobacco and Alcohol in the Drug Legalization Debate.
I was quite well aware of which document she was referencing on my site
when I first saw her op-ed piece. You see, I personally scanned and edited or
completely hand-typed most of the documents on the site, including that one.
The document cited was from "Drug
Legalization: Myths and Misconceptions" by the U.S. Department of
Justice Drug Enforcement Administration. If Ms. Devine had checked the title
alone, the truth about this document should have been immediately apparent. It
is US Government propaganda, not serious research. It is riddled with
inaccuracies, omissions, misleading statements, and outright falsehoods.
I put that document up there because it is government propaganda that is
clearly wrong on nearly everything it says. I felt it was important for people
to be able to read that kind of nonsense in its full text form, and then be able
to compare those statements with the full text of the major research. If someone
manages to do that, I think the conclusions will be pretty obvious.
My web site has been referenced hundreds or thousands of times by journalists
around the world. I lost count long ago. To the best of my knowledge, no person
who ever claimed to be a reputable journalist or researcher has ever referenced
that document as proof of anything but government nonsense. Ms. Devine is the
first to cite it as proof that alcohol prohibition worked.
If Ms. Devine had studied the history of this issue, she would know that the
US Government has had an official policy to lie about drugs and drug policy for
several decades. It started with Harry Anslinger, head of the US Federal Bureau
of Narcotics, from 1930 to the early 1960s. Anslinger knew the drug laws were effectively
unenforceable and, therefore, decided to rely on the Big Lie technique.
See, for example, the statements of Dr. David Musto, in "Marijuana and
Methamphetamine" from "Hooked: Illegal Drugs and How They Got That
Way" available from http://www.historychannel.com
See also the many examples cited in The
Drug Hang Up, America's Fifty-Year Folly especially Chapter 9 - Mephistopheles
and Pot and and Chapter 18- ABA-AMA,
No Match for HJA
See also the descriptions of the origins of the marijuana laws in Chapter 56 - Marijuana
is outlawed, Consumers
Union Report on Licit and Illicit Drugs, 1972 and Whitebread's History
of the Non-Medical Use of Drugs in the United States
See also the description of the use of statistics in the Nixon administration
in 21. The
Movable Epidemic, from Agency
of Fear, by Edward Jay Epstein
That policy continues to this day, as any serious examination of the book Ms.
Devine referenced would immediately show.
As a good example, let's examine each assertion from the passage she chose. I
could cite a ton of information on each point, but let's try to stick with just
some of the research that she would have found if she just looked around my web site a
little.
The Statements Miranda Devine
Referenced
1) "First, use of alcohol
decreased significantly during Prohibition.104 This decrease in turn lead to a
marked decrease in the incidence of cirrhosis of the liver.105 Finally, the
suicide rate also decreased by 50%.107"
from Chapter
Six: The Role of Alcohol and Tobacco in the Drug Legalization Debate from Drug
Legalization: Myths and Misconceptions by The US Dept. of Justice
That statement is, at best, misleading. In truth, nobody really knows exactly
how much alcohol consumption increased or decreased during Prohibition. The
reason was simple enough -- people like Al Capone didn't pay taxes on their
product and thereby report their production to the government. Licensed saloons
became illegal speakeasies, and many common citizens took advantage of the high
sales price of illegal booze by secretly manufacturing booze in their own
bathtubs. That's one of the major problems with all drug prohibitions --
they greatly reduce the ability to make accurate judgments about the problem.
There is no good way to count the number of illegal dealers, or the people who
are secretly making gin in their own bathroom. Therefore, to make such a
judgment, we have to rely on a number of indirect indicators.
By the greatest majority of indicators, the biggest drops in alcohol
consumption and alcohol problems actually came before national prohibition went
into effect. Those drops continued for about the first two years of Prohibition
and then alcohol consumption began to rise. By 1926, most of the problems were worse than they had
been before Prohibition went into effect and there were a number of new problems
-- such as a drinking epidemic among children -- that had not been there
before.
The statement of Andrew Furuseth before Congress in 1926 describes what
happened in the opening years of Prohibition:
When the prohibition amendment
was passed and the Volstead Act was enacted, about three months after that I
came through Portland, Oreg. Now there is a certain district in Portland Oreg.
where there is the so-called employment district--- it is usually amongst the
working people, called the "slave market"--- and I was the most
astonished man you ever saw. Before that I had seen drunkenness there,
dilapidated men, helpless, and in any condition that you do not want to see
human beings. This time, three months after this act was passed there was an
entire change. The men walked around from one place to another looking for
employment, seamen and others. And they were sober. And they looked at the
conditions, and they said, "No, we will wait a little." There was
more independence amongst them than I had ever seen before. That very class
which is the worst and lowest class that we know of amongst the seamen and
workingmen. And I became an ardent advocate of the Volstead Act.
Two years afterwards I came
through the same identical place, staying in Portland for about three days,
and went to the very same place for the purpose of looking at the situation,
and the condition was worse than it had been prior to the passage of the law.
As long as the prohibition legislation was enforced, could be enforced, as
long as the bootlegging element had not been organized, and not get the stuff,
everything looked well. But the moment that they could get it they got it. And
they will find it when nobody else can. They will find it somewhere. If it is
to be bought in the vicinity any where they will find it. And the condition is
worse than it ever was, because the stuff that they drink is worse than ever.
Testimony
of Andrew Furuseth, President of the International Seamen's Union of
America, The
National Prohibition Law, Hearings before the Subcommittee of the Committee on
the Judiciary, United States Senate, Sixty-Ninth Congress, April 5 to 24,
1926"
Charts and Graphs
Deaths
due to Alcohol, Cook County 1910-1926 shows alcohol-related deaths
in Cook County before and during the first few years of Prohibition.
It is evident that, taking the country as a whole, people of wealth,
businessmen and professional men, and their families, and, perhaps, the higher
paid workingmen and their families, are drinking in large numbers in quite
frank disregard of the declared policy of the National Prohibition Act.
The
Present Condition as to Observance and Enforcement from Report
on the Enforcement of the Prohibition Laws of the United States by
the National Commission on Law Observance and Enforcement (Wickersham
Commission Report on Alcohol Prohibition)
The figures published by the Department of Commerce in the Statistical
Abstract of the United States reflect a different picture. The average annual
per capita consumption of hard liquor from 1910-1914, inclusive, was 1.46
proof gallons. "This 5-year period was before the rise of abnormal
conditions coincident to the World War and may be taken as fairly indicative
of the normal rate of drinking that prevailed in the Pre-Prohibition era"
(Rosenbloom, 1935: 51).
The per capita rate for the Prohibition years is computed to be 1.63 proof
gallons. This is 11.64% higher than the Pre-Prohibition rate (Tillitt, 1932:
35). Based on these figures one observer concluded: "And so the drinking
which was, in theory, to have been decreased to the vanishing point by
Prohibition has, in fact, increased" (Tillitt, 1932: 36).
. . . .
Deaths from Alcoholism. In New
York City, from 1900 through 1909, there was an average of 526 deaths annually
attributable to alcoholism. From 1910 through 1917, the average number was
619. It plummeted to 183 for the years 1918 through 1922. Thereafter, the
figure rose, averaging a new high of 639 for the years 1923 through 1927
(Rice, ed., 1930: 122).
Total deaths from alcoholism in the United States show a comparable trend,
with the gradual increase resuming somewhat earlier, about 1922 (Brown, 1932:
61, 77; Feldman, 1927: 397; U.S. Department of Commerce, 1924: 55).
Year |
Deaths from all causes rate per
100,000 |
Deaths from alcoholism rate per
100,000 |
1910 |
1,496.1 |
5.4 |
1911 |
1,418.1 |
4.9 |
1912 |
1,388.8 |
5.3 |
1913 |
1,409.6 |
5.9 |
1914 |
1,364.6 |
4.9 |
1915 |
1,355.0 |
4.4 |
1916 |
1,404.3 |
5.8 |
1917 |
1,425.5 |
5.2 |
1918 |
1,809.1 |
2.7 |
1919 |
1,287.4 |
1.6 |
1920 |
1,306.0 |
1.0 |
1921 |
1,163.9 |
1.8 |
1922 |
1,181.7 |
2.6 |
1923 |
1,230.1 |
3.2 |
1924 |
1,183.5 |
3.2 |
1925 |
1,182.3 |
3.6 |
1926 |
1,222.7 |
3.9 |
1927 |
1,141.9 |
4.0 |
1928 |
1,204.1 |
4.0 |
1929 |
1,192.3 |
3.7 |
The highest death rates from alcoholism occurred during the decade prior to
Prohibition as did the highest death rates from cirrhosis of the liver. These
statistics should be qualified by the observations of Dr. Charles Morris,
Chief Medical Examiner for New York City: "In making out death
certificates (which are basic to Census Reports) private or family physicians
commonly avoid entry of alcoholism as a cause of death whenever possible. This
practice was more prevalent under the National Dry Law than it was in
preprohibition time" (Tillitt, 1932: 114-115).
. . .
The law could not quell the continuing demand for alcoholic products. Thus,
where legal enterprises could no longer supply the demand, an illicit traffic
developed, from the point of manufacture to consumption. The institution of
the speakeasy replaced the institution of the saloon. Estimates of the number
of speakeasies throughout the United States ranged from 200,000 to 500,000
(Lee, 1963: 68).
"The
History of Alcohol Prohibition" from Marihuana:
A Signal of Misunderstanding, The Report of the National Commission on
Marihuana and Drug Abuse, Commissioned by President Richard M. Nixon,
March, 1972
Now, I say that the prohibition
law, the Volstead Act, is not in effect, simply because you can procure, if
you have got the price, almost anything you want to drink at almost any place,
in the better, hotels, in the clubs, in saloons––– not so called to-day.
Only within a couple of weeks I was in one of the larger cities––– in
fact, the largest city of our country––– and I was invited to go to a
club with some gentlemen, and I went there, and there was everything that
represented the old-time barroom, with its bar, with its rail for your feet
and a man mixing drinks, and everything going in first-class shape. I recite
this because it may interest some of the old timers.
Not a very long-distance walk
from that place was another place where they were not so particular who came
in. And as one who has observed things generally, a close student of human
affairs, it struck me that the whole thing was a farce––– that something
had to be done.
Testimony
of James O'Connell, President of the Metal Trades Department of the American
Federation of Labor, The
National Prohibition Law, Hearings before the Subcommittee of the Committee on
the Judiciary, United States Senate, Sixty-Ninth Congress, April 5 to 24,
1926"
You will find that the workingmen of this country, 90 per cent of them, are
either making wines, beer or whisky out of every known vegetable and fruit
that exists. Everyone has his own special concoction. They even make wine out
of parsnips and such stuff.
Testimony
of William J. McSorley, President of the Building Trades Department,
American Federation of Labor, The
National Prohibition Law, Hearings before the Subcommittee of the Committee on
the Judiciary, United States Senate, Sixty-Ninth Congress, April 5 to 24,
1926"
Everywhere we, went there was
plenty of distilled liquor, but seldom real beer. We found that the homes of
the people had been turned into breweries and distilleries which turned out
dangerous decoctions that if drunk to any extent would ruin the health of
those who drank them. When asked why they drank such stuff they said there was
nothing else to be obtained, and they invariably asked when were Members of
Congress going to realize that the manufacture and sale of beer would make for
true temperance. Women as well as men were, interested in such questioning.
Testimony
of William Roberts, Representing the President of the American Federation of
Labor, The
National Prohibition Law, Hearings before the Subcommittee of the Committee on
the Judiciary, United States Senate, Sixty-Ninth Congress, April 5 to 24,
1926"
Drinking by Children Increased
Drinking at an earlier age was also noted, particularly during the first
few years of Prohibition. The superintendents of eight state mental hospitals
reported a larger percentage of young patients during Prohibition (1919-1926)
than formerly. One of the hospitals noted: "During the past year (1926),
an unusually large group of patients who are of high school age were admitted
for alcoholic psychosis" (Brown, 1932:176).
In determining the age at which an alcoholic forms his drinking habit, it
was noted: "The 1920-1923 group were younger than the other groups when
the drink habit was formed" (Pollock, 1942: 113).
AVERAGE AGE AT FORMATION OF DRINK HABIT
Period |
Males |
Females |
1914 |
21.4 |
27.9 |
1920-23 |
20.6 |
25.8 |
1936-37 |
23.9 |
31.7 |
"The
History of Alcohol Prohibition" from Marihuana:
A Signal of Misunderstanding, The Report of the National Commission on Marihuana
and Drug Abuse, Commissioned by President Richard M. Nixon, March, 1972
I have been told that before
prohibition we had a saloon at every corner; since prohibition we have a
distillery in practically every home, and only lately, in one of the exclusive
suburban towns near Newark they have discovered the so-called community
distillery, where all of the people living on one block club together and
contribute to the making of synthetic gin, which is then distributed pro rata
among those that were contributors to that weekly.
I want to say that in my duties
as secretary I come in contact with people of classes all walks of life, but
particularly among the workers in different sections of the State. Thousands
of them that I have been personally acquainted with, that I knew have never
touched hard liquor before prohibition, drink it now and make it in their own
home, and in consequence they not alone pollute their own home but contaminate
their wives and children in that respect.
Testimony
of Henry Hilfers, President, New Jersey State Federation of Labor, The
National Prohibition Law, Hearings before the Subcommittee of the Committee on
the Judiciary, United States Senate, Sixty-Ninth Congress, April 5 to 24,
1926"
"Inability of the prohibition law to enforce prohibition is causing an
increase in the number of young boys and girls who become intoxicated,"
declared Judge H. C. Spicer of the juvenile court at Akron, Ohio, a short time
ago when two boys, aged 15 and 16 years, respectively, were arraigned before
him. "During the past two years," he added " there have been
more intoxicated children brought into court than ever before."
"Statement
by Hon. William Cabell Bruce, The
National Prohibition Law, Hearings before the Subcommittee of the Committee on
the Judiciary, United States Senate, Sixty-Ninth Congress, April 5 to 24,
1926"
Pauline Sabin's concern over
prohibition grew slowly. Initially she favored the Eighteenth Amendment,
explaining later, "I felt I should approve of it because it would help my
two sons. The word-pictures of the agitators carried me away. I thought a
world without liquor would be a beautiful world.""
Gradually, however, intertwined
motherly and political concerns caused her to change her mind. Her first
cautious public criticism of prohibition came in 1926 when she defended
Wadsworth's opposition to the law. By 1928 she had become more outspoken. The
hypocrisy of politicians who would support resolutions for stricter
enforcement and half an hour later be drinking cocktails disturbed her. The
ineffectiveness of the law, the apparent decline of temperate drinking, and
the growing prestige of bootleggers troubled her even more. Mothers, she
explained, had believed that prohibition would eliminate the temptation of
drinking from their children's lives, but found instead that "children
are growing up with a total lack of respect for the Constitution and for the
law.""
In later statements, she elaborated
further on her objections to prohibition. With settlement workers reporting
increasing drunkenness, she worried, "The young see the law broken at
home and upon the street. Can we expect them to be lawful?"" Mrs.
Sabin complained to the House Judiciary Committee: "In preprohibition
days, mothers had little fear in regard to the saloon as far as their children
were concerned. A saloon-keeper's license was revoked if he were caught
selling liquor to minors. Today in any speakeasy in the United States you can
find boys and girls in their teens drinking liquor, and this situation has
become so acute that the mothers of the country feel something must be done to
protect their children.""
Chapter 7
- Hard Times, Hopeful Times from Repealing
National Prohibition by David Kyvig
Organized labor has ever been engaged in promoting temperate drinking and was making great
p rogress until the enactment of the Volstead law. The continuation of such laudable activities now constitute a national crime.
Millions of homes, in the majority of which liquor was never seen, have been turned into breweries and distilleries. The youth of the land is being reared in the atmosphere of disregard for law and lack of confidence in government.
Former law-abiding citizens see nothing wrong in drinking and even in distilling liquor or making home-brew. Men and women who never drank before now seek it openly. The pocket flask may be found in almost every store and is never absent from any meeting, dinner, or dancing party.
Young and old alike do not regard the Volstead law as of sane legislative expression under the eighteenth amendment but as an impression of fanaticism clothed in the form of law
. . .
Beer drinking has been forced to give way to whisky and near whisky and other poisonous concoctions.
The observance of the Volstead law is in its breach and its virtue in disregard for law.
Bribery of officials in so far as the enforcement law is concerned is no longer looked upon as a detestable criminal offense.
. . .
Private morals and personal conduct can not he controlled, much less advanced, by fiat of law. Appeal for a higher morality and improved conduct must be directed to the mind and conscience of the people, not to the fear of government.
Testimony
of Matthew Woll, The
National Prohibition Law, Hearings before the Subcommittee of the
Committee on the Judiciary, United States Senate, Sixty-Ninth Congress,
April 5 to 24, 1926"
" I have gone into no community in the State, and have gone to very few homes in Ohio where I have not been offered home brew or moonshine or liquor which was said to be properly made and bottled in bond.
. . My opinion is, . . . that it has been productive of more intemperance and much more ill health. I think it has resulted in the death of hundreds of men who would be good, valuable citizens to-day if they had not put poisonous hard liquor into their systems."
Testimony
of John T. Frey, President of the Ohio State Federation of Labor, The
National Prohibition Law, Hearings before the Subcommittee of the Committee on
the Judiciary, United States Senate, Sixty-Ninth Congress, April 5 to 24,
1926"
(T)he membership of the New York
State Federation of Labor are of opinion that nothing that has ever transpired
has so set back true temperance in America as the eighteenth amendment and the
Volstead Act.
I have had occasion to travel
quite extensively, not alone in the State of New York but throughout the
United States, and I have seen things in that time that, if they had been seen
prior to prohibition the people of this country would have been dumbfounded.
In New York City, and in the
several cities of the State of New York, I have had occasion to attend parties
such as banquets, dinners, and social gatherings. And I have been invited to
practically all of them, I might say, and I have never seen one yet that you
could call dry.
. . .
But before I come to the
unorganized question, I want to state one thing: In the meetings of our local
unions, if a man appeared before prohibition, if a man dared to appear under
the influence of liquor prior to this legislation, why, he would be
ostracized. He would be a man they would not care to associate with. But what
is the situation now? He is a hero if he comes in.
It is nothing new now to see
them passing the flask around at union meetings, something that was never done
before, and something that would never have been tolerated before prohibition.
But now the question is asked "Where did you get it?" And they will
say "How good is it?" And so forth and so on.
. . .
I have been to places where it
was not an unusual occurrence at all to see a young girl take out her
pocketbook flask of whisky and hand it around to her chums and associates. I
have seen this on more than one occasion. And I belong to an institution in
New York that we organized, and we were in a first-class hotel at a gathering,
and I had occasion to go to the lavatory, the gentlemen's lavatory and I was
astounded to see there three young girls with three men, and they were
drinking out of a flask and handing it around.
Testimony
of John Sullivan, President, NY Federation of Labor The
National Prohibition Law, Hearings before the Subcommittee of the Committee on
the Judiciary, United States Senate, Sixty-Ninth Congress, April 5 to 24,
1926"
I am informed that Mrs. White, who is the manager of the Elizabeth Peabody Settlement
House, situated in Boston, can testify as to the injurious effect which has been brought
about by prohibition upon the poor people of the district in which the Elizabeth Peabody
House is situated. That she has had 15 years' experience in the district---9 years before
prohibition and 6 years since. That she will state that neighborhood dances have had to be
abandoned on account of the hip-pocket flasks filled with liquor brought by boys to these
dances and disseminated by them. She can also testify to the fact that many families
previously in very poor circumstances have become fairly well to do as the result of
having gone into the bootlegging business on a small scale. That conditions throughout the
settlement are worse from the point of view of morals than at any time before prohibition.
. . .
I am informed that she will testify that women who used to suffer from the evils of
drinking in pre-Volstead days are now suffering worse evils as the result of prohibition.
That liquor formerly sold in saloons is now sold direct from the homes in which it is
made. That children who never were curious about alcohol are now familiar with it and the
form of moral looseness that its use leads to. That a number of high schools have
discontinued holding their dances as they have so much trouble with liquor carried by the
boys in hip-pocket flasks that parents and neighbors complain that the well-behaved pupils are being corrupted
And last I request you to subpoena M. B. Wellborn, governor, Federal Reserve Bank,
Atlanta, Ga., requiring his appearance this week before this committee.
I am informed that Mr. Wellborn, in a letter requested by Congressman Upshaw on March
3, states that when he came to Atlanta 11 years ago with the Federal reserve bank that he
found there many saloons that sold beer exclusively. That these saloons were
well-conducted
and that no drunkenness or excessive drinking resulted from them. That he had been in
Atlanta for 11 years and is satisfied from his own observations that drinking is now
almost universal, not only in Atlanta but in every town in Georgia. That his observations
are not confined strictly to the rich and well-to-do, but that nearly every family has
whisky in their home.
Further
Statement by Walter Edge, The
National Prohibition Law, Hearings before the Subcommittee of the Committee on
the Judiciary, United States Senate, Sixty-Ninth Congress, April 5 to 24,
1926"
2) "Also, alcohol-related
arrests decreased 50%. 106"
Flatly wrong.
The following chart shows the figures for major cities from 1920-25:
Arrests for drunkenness in some of the leading
cities of the United States |
|
1920 |
1921 |
1922 |
1923 |
1924 |
1925 |
Boston |
21,800 |
30,987 |
37,543 |
38,988 |
39,528 |
37,944 |
Providence |
2,567 |
3,778 |
4,830 |
5,127 |
4,819 |
4,197 |
New York |
5,936 |
6,237 |
8,578 |
10,643 |
13,988 |
12,917 |
Buffalo |
7,421 |
8,347 |
8,868 |
12,181 |
11,135 |
16,174 |
Newark |
1,310 |
1,252 |
1,198 |
2,541 |
3,477 |
2,615 |
Philadelphia |
14,313 |
21.850 |
26,299 |
45,226 |
55,766 |
58,617 |
Pittsburgh |
9,577 |
10,371 |
16,554 |
24,651 |
25,401 |
28,568 |
Wilmington, Del. |
295 |
498 |
577 |
707 |
1,003 |
1,011 |
Baltimore |
1,785 |
3,258 |
4,955 |
6,235 |
6,029 |
5,887 |
Washington |
5,415 |
6,375 |
8,368 |
8,128 |
10,854 |
11,168 |
Richmond |
1,563 |
1,953 |
2,752 |
2,959 |
2,826 |
2,596 |
Wilmington, N.C. |
145 |
191 |
179 |
223 |
303 |
220 |
Charleston, S.C. |
508 |
512 |
564 |
582 |
732 |
775 |
Jacksonville |
811 |
995 |
1,543 |
2,348 |
2,251 |
2,900 |
Atlanta |
4,199 |
4,491 |
6,553 |
7,003 |
7,972 |
7,557 |
Birmingham |
927 |
1,117 |
2,000 |
3,652 |
3,972 |
4,962 |
Vicksburg |
42 |
63 |
106 |
137 |
105 |
321 |
New Orleans |
2,399 |
7,079 |
12,511 |
10,173 |
12,788 |
14,171 |
Galveston |
241 |
694 |
905 |
1,108 |
1,391 |
1,259 |
Little Rock |
511 |
853 |
819 |
644 |
771 |
695 |
St. Louis |
1,861 |
993 |
1,930 |
2,376 |
2,551 |
5,092 |
Louisville |
1,016 |
2,495 |
2,018 |
3,812 |
4,748 |
5,229 |
Knoxville |
------ |
------ |
2,753 |
------ |
4,456 |
3,862 |
Cleveland |
2,991 |
5,156 |
16,817 |
18,814 |
19,271 |
23,393 |
Cincinnati |
395 |
603 |
712 |
1,118 |
1,895 |
2.279 |
Chicago |
32,362 |
49,762 |
64,853 |
75,900 |
86 072 |
92,888 |
Detroit |
6,599 |
7,220 |
10,098 |
11,947 |
13,717 |
15,124 |
Minneapolis |
2,363 |
5,243 |
7,268 |
7,289 |
7,676 |
7,435 |
Milwaukee |
516 |
754 |
2,514 |
3,789 |
------ |
6,056 |
Omaha |
2,640 |
3,821 |
5,242 |
4,817 |
4,480 |
5,142 |
Des Moines |
1,364 |
1,949 |
3,533 |
4,489 |
3,032 |
2,395 |
Seattle |
5,753 |
5,797 |
7,066 |
7,974 |
6,756 |
6,377 |
Portland |
2,476 |
2,904 |
3,761 |
3,099 |
3,922 |
3,613 |
Los Angeles |
3,357 |
6,559 |
9,910 |
12,839 |
10,660 |
11,290 |
San Francisco |
1,814 |
3,847 |
7,261 |
7,738 |
7,953 |
8,069 |
Salt Lake City |
659 |
658 |
768 |
868 |
919 |
1,086 |
* Merged in disorderly conduct cases.
from "Statement
by Hon. William Cabell Bruce, The National Prohibition Law, Hearings before the
Subcommittee of the Committee on the Judiciary, United States Senate,
Sixty-Ninth Congress, April 5 to 24, 1926"
The following chart demonstrates the pattern of arrests for intoxication,
intoxication and disorderly conduct, and habitual drunkards in Philadelphia from
1910-1925.
Year |
Intoxication |
Intoxication and Disorderly Conduct |
Intoxicated Drivers |
Habitual Drunkards |
Total Arrests |
1910 |
28,664 |
9,792 |
|
568 |
39,024 |
1911 |
30,455 |
10,806 |
|
466 |
41,727 |
1912 |
34,818 |
11,358 |
|
428 |
46,604 |
1913 |
39,309 |
14,723 |
|
760 |
54,792 |
1914 |
36,481 |
14,306 |
|
702 |
61,489 |
1915 |
33,186 |
10,202 |
|
633 |
44,021 |
1916 |
39,182 |
10,424 |
|
712 |
50,318 |
1917 |
33,584 |
9,456 |
|
562 |
43,602 |
1918 |
25,981 |
8,674 |
|
203 |
34,858 |
1919 |
16,819 |
6,794 |
|
127 |
23,740 |
1920 |
14,313 |
6,097 |
|
33 |
20,443 |
1921 |
21,850 |
5,232 |
494 |
33 |
27,609 |
1922 |
36,299 |
7,925 |
472 |
50 |
44,746 |
1923 |
45,226 |
8,076 |
645 |
177 |
54,124 |
1924 |
47,805 |
6,404 |
683 |
874 |
55,766 |
1925 |
51,461 |
5,522 |
820 |
814 |
58,617 |
extracted from Statement
of William S. Vare, The
National Prohibition Law, Hearings before the Subcommittee of the Committee on
the Judiciary, United States Senate, Sixty-Ninth Congress, April 5 to 24,
1926"
3) " A second reason why
Prohibition was a successful program is due to the fact that it did not --
contrary to popular myth--cause an increase in the crime rate. It is true that
there was an increase in the homicide rate during Prohibition, but this is not
the same as an increase in the overall crime rate. Furthermore, the increase in
homicide occurred predominantly in the African-American community, and
African-Americans at that time were not the people responsible for alcohol
trafficking.108 The drama of Elliot Ness and Al Capone largely was just that,
drama sensationalized by the media of the time."
The references above have already shown that common people who had never been
involved in crime before engaged in criminal activity after alcohol prohibition
started. But there is far more evidence of a Prohibition crime wave than just
those references.
This
chart shows that there were steep increases in both homicides and prisoners
in custody during Prohibition.
Homicide
Rate and Receipt of Prisoners 1910-1987 shows the number of people sent to
prisons also rose during Prohibition. While a good deal of that rise was due to
alcohol prohibition (see the charts linked below) a good deal of it was also due
to prohibition of opiates and cocaine which had occurred just before alcohol
prohibition. For example see this
NY Times article from 1920.
The following charts show elements of increased crime that were the direct
result of alcohol prohibition:
Arrests under the Volstead Act
Convictions
and Acquittals Under the Volstead Act
Autos
and Boats Seized under the Volstead Act
Agents
Injured and Killed Under the Volstead Act
Liquor
and Beer Seized Under the Volstead Act
Casualties
per 1,000 Arrests Under the Volstead Act
Total Arrests in Philadelphia 1910-1925
TOTAL ARRESTS |
1910 |
82,017 |
1911 |
87,557 |
1912 |
96,084 |
1913 |
103,673 |
1914 |
100,629 |
1915 |
91,237 |
1916 |
95,783 |
1917 |
96,041 |
1918 |
94,037 |
1919 |
75,618 |
1920 |
73,015 |
1921 |
83,136 |
1922 |
99,601 |
1923 |
115,399 |
1924 |
130,759 |
1925 |
137,263 |
Statement
of William S. Vare, The
National Prohibition Law, Hearings before the Subcommittee of the Committee on
the Judiciary, United States Senate, Sixty-Ninth Congress, April 5 to 24,
1926"
4) "It was the most lawful
period in US history," says
Watters, but prohibition didn't work because, unlike heroin, alcohol was an
integral part of the social fabric.
He stresses his views are his own and not shared by all ANCD members. But
at age 67, as the son of an alcoholic and after a lifetime of helping addicts,
he figures he knows what he's talking about.
This quote comes directly from Miranda Devine's op-ed piece,
"It
Pays To Be Tough on Drugs".
First, let me point out that Watters statement contradicts itself. If
Prohibition was "the most lawful period in US history" how is it that
it didn't work?
Alcohol as
integral part of the social fabric
I also find it interesting when someone argues that "prohibition didn't
work because, unlike heroin, alcohol was an integral part of the social
fabric." Just to give this issue some perspective, let's consider that, in
the US, alcohol typically kills around 100,000 people per year, while heroin
kills only a couple of thousand. On any scale of measurement of problems to
society, alcohol wins hands down over heroin -- always has, always will. If
heroin was killing 100,000 people per year, would Brian Watters then consider
that heroin was an integral part of the social fabric and, therefore, worthy of
legalization?
But, in making such a statement, Mr. Watters inadvertently reveals the true
historical reasons for drug prohibitions. What are those reasons?
It is obvious that protecting public health and safety really isn't the
purpose of drug prohibition laws. If it was, then the toughest penalties would
be on alcohol and tobacco which, combined, kill more people in the US every year
than all the people killed by all the illegal drugs combined in about the last
century. If prohibition laws were really to protect public health and safety
then a good cigar should get you five years in prison.
It really isn't about morality, either. The prohibitionists talk about the
degradation that comes to the lives of those addicted to illegal drugs. Heroin
addiction is not pretty but in truth, it isn't any more degrading to be a heroin
addict than an alcohol addict. Both addictions are a disgusting way to live and
likely to cause massive problems in your life. Again, if morality was really the
issue, then there would have to be tough penalties against alcohol.
So what's the issue? The issue really comes down to racism and prejudice. The
drugs that are legal have always been the preferred drugs of the ruling class --
usually composed of Anglo-Saxon white males. It doesn't really have anything to
do with which drugs are more dangerous -- the exemption of alcohol and tobacco
from all the drug laws make that point obvious. It is because some people we
don't like use those other drugs to get the same intoxication the ruling class
gets from alcohol.
Professor Charles Whitebread relates that idea in a most humorous and
effective manner in his short
history of the marijuana laws.
My interest is in criminal prohibitions and, for my purposes, as a criminal
law scholar, we could have used any prohibition -- alcohol prohibition, the
prohibition against gambling that exists still in many states. How about the
prohibition in England from 1840 to 1880 against the drinking of gin? Not
drinking, just gin -- got it? We could have used any of these prohibitions. We
didn't. We chose the marijuana prohibition because the story had never been
told -- and it is an amazing story.
We could have used any of these prohibitions. We could have used the
alcohol prohibition. The reason we didn't is because so much good stuff has
been written about it. And are you aware of this? That every single -- you
know how fashionable it is to think that scholars can never agree? -- Don't
you believe that -- Every single person who has ever written seriously about
the national alcohol prohibition agrees on why it collapsed. Why?
Because it violated that iron law of Prohibitions. What is the iron law of
Prohibitions? Prohibitions are always enacted by US, to govern the conduct of
THEM. Do you have me? Take the alcohol prohibition. Every single person who
has ever written about it agrees on why it collapsed.
Large numbers of people supported the idea of prohibition who were not
themselves, opposed to drinking. Do you have me? What? The right answer to
that one is Huh? Want to hear it again?
Large numbers of people supported the idea of prohibition who were not
themselves, opposed to drinking. Want to see it?
Let me give you an example, 1919. You are a Republican in upstate New York.
Whether you drink, or you don't, you are for the alcohol prohibition because
it will close the licensed saloons in the City of New York which you view to
be the corrupt patronage and power base of the Democratic Party in New York.
So almost every Republican in New York was in favor of national alcohol
prohibition. And, as soon as it passed, what do you think they said?
"Well, what do you know? Success. Let's have a drink." That's what
they thought, "let's have a drink." "Let's drink to this."
A great success, you see.
Do you understand me? Huge numbers of people in this country were in favor
of national alcohol prohibition who were not themselves opposed to drinking.
I just want to go back to the prohibition against the drinking of gin. How
could a country prohibit just the drinking of gin, not the drinking of
anything else for forty years? Answer: The rich people drank whiskey and the
poor people drank what? -- gin. Do you see it?
Let's try the gambling prohibition. You know when I came to Virginia, this
was a very lively issue, the gambling prohibition. By the way, I think it's a
lively issue in California. Are you ready for it?
Have you ever seen the rhetoric that goes around the gambling prohibition?
You know what it is. Look, we have had a good time. We have been together
yesterday, we have been together today, I have known a lot of you guys for
ages. How about after the talk, we have a minute or two, let's go on up to
your room and we will play a little nickel, dime, quarter poker. Want to play
some poker this afternoon? Why not? It's a nice thing to do.
Would we be outraged if the California State Police came barreling through
the door and arrested us for violation of California's prohibition on
gambling? Of course we would. Because, who is not supposed to gamble? Oh, you
know who is not supposed to gamble -- them poor people, that's who. My God,
they will spend the milk money. They don't know how to control it. They can't
handle it. But us? We know what we are doing.
That's it. Every criminal prohibition has that same touch to it, doesn't
it? It is enacted by US and it always regulates the conduct of THEM. And so,
if you understand that is the name of the game, you don't have to ask me, or
any of the other people which prohibitions will be abolished and which ones
won't because you will always know. The iron law of prohibitions -- all of
them -- is that they are passed by an identifiable US to control the conduct
of an identifiable THEM.
We can see this issue over and over in the reasons for the original passage
of these laws. For example, the first laws against opium in the US were really
attempts to discriminate against Chinese immigrants who smoked opium. (Chapter 6
- Opium
smoking is outlawed, Consumers
Union Report on Licit and Illicit Drugs, 1972) Cocaine was outlawed
largely because of fears that superhuman Negro Cocaine Fiends would go on a
violent rampage and rape white women and shoot white men. ("Negro
Cocaine Fiends, New Southern Menace", NY Times, Feb. 8, 1914) Marijuana
was outlawed because "All Mexicans are crazy and marijuana is what makes
them crazy." History
of the Non-Medical Use of Drugs in the US, by Professor Charles Whitebread.
The truth is that Watters is a little light on the history of both subjects.
For a good summary of that history, I always recommend The
Consumers Union Report on Licit and Illicit Drugs I have
recommended it myself to Mr. Watters before, but he apparently never took time
to read it.
Was Prohibition really "the most lawful period in US history"? If
it wasn't, then it seems obvious that Brian Watters doesn't know what he is
talking about. And what does it say about Australian drug policy if the chairman
of the Australian National Council on Drugs doesn't know what he is talking
about?
It should first be noted that by 1923, authors were already noting that
Prohibition was treated with "widespread disregard". "Chapter
XXXVII - Prohibition" from The American Government By Frederic J.
Haskin, 1923. If the prohibition law itself was treated with widespread
disregard, then it is unlikely that it had any beneficial effect on other crime.
We have already seen above that homicides, prisoners, Volstead Act
prosecutions, illegal production of alcohol by ordinary citizens, arrests for
drunkenness, and a host of other crimes increased dramatically during
Prohibition. But that is far from the end of the story.
Here are just a few more of the references already in the online library that
are at issue with Mr. Watters' statement. You be the judge.
Women's
Organization for National Prohibition Reform
Women's Organization for National Prohibition Reform was founded, stating in
its declaration of principles that Prohibition was "wrong in
principle" and "disastrous in consequences in the hypocrisy, the
corruption, the tragic loss of life and the appalling increase of crime which
has attended the abortive attempt to enforce it"
"The
History of Alcohol Prohibition" from Marihuana:
A Signal of Misunderstanding, The Report of the National Commission on Marihuana
and Drug Abuse, Commissioned by President Richard M. Nixon, March, 1972
Police Corruption
"As to corruption it is sufficient to refer to the reported decisions
of the courts during the past decade in all parts of the country, which reveal
a succession of prosecutions for conspiracies, sometimes involving the police,
prosecuting and administrative organizations of whole communities; to the
flagrant corruption disclosed in connection with diversions of industrial
alcohol and unlawful production of beer; to the record of federal prohibition
administration as to which cases of corruption have been continuous and
corruption has appeared in services which in the past had been above
suspicion; to the records of state police organizations; to the revelations as
to police corruption in every type of municipality, large and small,
throughout the decade; to the conditions as to prosecution revealed in surveys
of criminal justice in many parts of the land; to the evidence of connection
between corrupt local politics and gangs and the organized unlawful liquor
traffic, and of systematic collection of tribute from that traffic for corrupt
political purposes. There have been other eras of corruption. Indeed, such
eras are likely to follow wars. Also there was much corruption in connection
with the regulation of the liquor traffic before prohibition. But the present
regime of corruption in connection with the liquor traffic is operating in a
new and larger field and is more extensive.
. . .
But of even more significance is the margin of profit in smuggling liquor,
in diversion of industrial alcohol, in illicit distilling and brewing, in
bootlegging, and in the manufacture and sale of products of which the bulk
goes into illicit or doubtfully lawful making of liquor. This profit makes
possible systematic and organized violation of the National Prohibition Act on
a large scale and offers rewards on a par with the most important legitimate
industries. It makes lavish expenditure in corruption possible. It puts heavy
temptation in the way of everyone engaged in enforcement or administration of
the law. It affords a financial basis for organized crime.
The operation of the National Prohibition Act has also thrown a greatly
increased burden upon the federal penal institutions which seems bound to
increase with any effective increase in enforcement. The reports of the
Department of Justice show that the total federal long term prison population,
i. e., prisoners serving sentences of more than a year, has risen from not
more than 5,268 on June 30, 1921 to 14,115 on June 30, 1930. The number of
long term prisoners confined in the five leading federal institutions on June
30, 1930 for violation of the National Prohibition Act and other national
liquor laws was 4,296 out of a total of 12,332. The percentage of long term
violators of the National Prohibition Act and other national liquor laws to
total federal prisoners confined in the five leading federal institutions on
June 30, 1930 was therefore something over one-third. This constituted by far
the largest class of long term federal prisoners so confined, the next largest
classes being made up of those sentenced for violation of the Dyer Act (the
National Motor Vehicle Theft Act) and the Narcotic Acts, the percentage of
whom on June 30, 1930 were, respectively, 13.2% and 22% of the total.
Bad
Features of the Present Situation and Difficulties in the Way of Enforcement
from Report
on the Enforcement of the Prohibition Laws of the United States by the
National Commission on Law Observance and Enforcement (Wickersham Commission
Report on Alcohol Prohibition)
The early experience of the Prohibition era gave the government a taste of
what was to come. In the three months before the 18th Amendment became
effective, liquor worth half a million dollars was stolen from Government
warehouses. By midsummer of 1920, federal courts in Chicago were overwhelmed
with some 600 pending liquor violation trials (Sinclair, 1962: 176-177).
Within three years, 30 prohibition agents were killed in service.
Other statistics demonstrated the increasing volume of the bootleg trade.
In 1921, 95,933 illicit distilleries, stills, still works and fermentors were
seized. in 1925, the total jumped to 172,537 and up to 282,122 in 1930. In
connection with these seizures, 34,175 persons were arrested in 1921; by 1925,
the number had risen to 62,747 and to a high in 1928 of 75,307 (Internal
Revenue, Service, 1921, 1966, 1970: 95, 6, 73). Concurrently, convictions for
liquor offenses in federal courts rose from 35,000 in 1923 to 61,383 in 1932.
"The
History of Alcohol Prohibition" from Marihuana:
A Signal of Misunderstanding, The Report of the National Commission on Marihuana
and Drug Abuse, Commissioned by President Richard M. Nixon, March, 1972
One of the most imposing
promises made by the friends of prohibition before the eighteenth amendment
was that by abolishing drink crime would be decreased to a minimum. That
promise has not been fulfilled. Crime has increased in such amazing proportion
that it has become the dominant consideration of most of the State and
municipal governments of the Nation. A national crime commission of
distinguished men from every section of the country, has been formed, and a
bill is now pending in the New York Legislature which has to do with the
appointment of a joint committee, to be joined by citizens to determine the
came and possible remedies to reduce the tremendous wave of crime that is
sweeping not only the country but New York as well.
I need not quote statistics to
this committee, I am sure, to demonstrate that this is the most lawless
country on the face of the earth. I go a step further. I assert that
prohibition is one of the largest contributing factors to that disgraceful
condition, by reason of the conceded, failure or inability of Federal and
State authorities to enforce the law; it has created a disrespect for law
which, starting with prohibition, has gone all along the line.
Statement
of Judge Alfred J. Talley, Judge of the Court of General Sessions of the
State of New York, The
National Prohibition Law, Hearings before the Subcommittee of the Committee on
the Judiciary, United States Senate, Sixty-Ninth Congress, April 5 to 24,
1926"
"Federal judges have told me, and their names I can supply if required, that the whole
atmosphere of the Federal Building was one of pollution, that the air of corruption had
even descended into the civil parts of the court, and reports were made to the senior
United States judge of attempts to bribe jurymen even in the toilets of the building."
Testimony
of Hon. Emory R. Buckner, United States Attorney, Southern District of New York,
"The National Prohibition Law, Hearings before the Subcommittee of the
Committee on the Judiciary, United States Senate, Sixty-Ninth Congress, April 5
to 24, 1926"
The corrupt prohibition agent or policeman is just as much a part of the
bootleg industry as the bootlegger himself. Last year it took two Pullman cars
to transfer to Atlanta the convicted policemen and prohibition agents
corralled in a single round-up in Ohio. In May, 1925, a special grand jury in
Morris County, N. J., was reported in the press as returning at one time 28
indictments against county officers and others for violations of the Volstead
Act. About the same time, the Rev. Marna S. Poulson, superintendent of the New
Jersey Anti -Saloon League, was reported in the New York Times as saying, in
an address at a prohibition rally at Atlantic City, "I don't know of
anyone who can make a dollar go further than policemen and dry agents. By
frugality, after a year in the service, they acquire automobiles and
diamonds."
Since the organization of the prohibition service to February 1, 1926, 875
persons have been separated from the Prohibition Unit mostly for official
faithlessness or downright rascality. Nor does the total that I have given
include delinquents not dismissed but only allowed to resign. Neither has the
Coast Guard, that nursing mother of brave and devoted men, military as its
discipline is, by any means escaped the contamination of prohibition. Since
the duty was assigned to it of preventing the smuggling of liquor from the sea
into the United States, 7 temporary warrant officers, 11 permanent enlisted
men, and 25 temporary enlisted men have been convicted of yielding, in one
form or another, to the seductions of money or liquor in connection with
prohibition work. I am unable to say how many members of the force have been
arrested but not convicted. On December 10, 1925, a United Press dispatch
reported that the entire crews of two Coast Guard patrol boats which had been
assigned to patrol duty off the coast of Florida had been court-martialed for
conniving with bootleggers. On March 8, 1926, a dispatch to the New York Times
from Providence, R. I., announced that Capt. Eli Sprague, who had been for 12
years the commander of the New Shoreham (Block Island) Coast Guard station,
and had shared in the rescue of more than 500 persons, had been held for trial
on two secret conspiracy indictments. On or about February 18, 1926, the
Washington Daily News reported that Boatswain's Mate Joseph Libby, who had
walked barefoot through ice and snow to obtain succor for his comrades whom he
had left unconscious from extreme cold on patrol boat 126, had been
dishonorably discharged from the Coast Guard for bootlegging.
In view of what I have said, it is not surprising that Dr. Horace Taft,
head master of the Taft School at Watertown and brother of Chief Justice Taft,
should have said a few days ago at a law-enforcement meeting at Yale,
"The United States is threatened with the rotting of her moral
foundations and of her political and social structure as a direct result of
prohibition."
"Statement
by Hon. William Cabell Bruce, The National Prohibition Law, Hearings before the
Subcommittee of the Committee on the Judiciary, United States Senate,
Sixty-Ninth Congress, April 5 to 24, 1926"
That the law is unenforceable;
that it has created more crime than there ever was prior to prohibition; that
the morals of our Nation are worse by far than prior to prohibition; that it
has forcibly illustrated that you can not change habits of centuries by laws
without creating contempt for that particular law and also for all laws in
general; that the average working man feels that the Volstead Act only
benefits two classes–––
1. The fanatic who wants to
reform and regulate everything by law.
2. The second beneficiary is
the bootlegger.
. . .
The Volstead Act has been the
direct result of creating more crime in the State of New Jersey than there
ever has been before.
It has endangered the life and
limb of those using the public streets, through autos being operated by
drunken drivers; it may be that there were just as many auto drivers that
drank before prohibition, but what they drank did not affect their ability to
run an automobile with safety. To-day one or two drinks create a menace to
life and limb to those who use our streets and highways.
Statistics have shown that
drivers of automobiles arrested for drunkenness have increased 100 per cent in
the last few years. Some one may ask where do they get it?
If some one would ask the
question: Where can't you get it? It would be more difficult to answer.
Testimony
of Henry Hilfers, President, New Jersey State Federation of Labor, The
National Prohibition Law, Hearings before the Subcommittee of the Committee on
the Judiciary, United States Senate, Sixty-Ninth Congress, April 5 to 24,
1926"
Nothing is and nothing could be
more certain, from all the evidence, than that prohibition is an unqualified
failure and a colossal calamity to the Nation.
Whatever promotes drunkenness
and drug addiction and all forms of intemperance also promotes crime of every
kind.
We have the unimpeachable
evidence of our senses that certainly more than half the crimes and
misdemeanors perpetrated throughout the land and sensationally featured and
headlined in the newspapers are crimes which are the result of prohibition.
Prohibition is a double-headed
hydra of lawlessness, for we have on the one hand the crimes that infract the
law of prohibition, and crimes that result from alcohol and drug intemperance
that follow in the wake Of prohibition; and on the other hand we have the
crimes of attempted enforcement of prohibition and the crimes of punishment,
which are no less crimes because they have the sanction of expediency of
prohibition law enforcement.
Testimony
of Hiram Maxim, Inventor of the Maxim Machine Gun, The
National Prohibition Law, Hearings before the Subcommittee of the Committee on
the Judiciary, United States Senate, Sixty-Ninth Congress, April 5 to 24,
1926"
Finally, let's examine the primary assertion of Ms. Devine's column -- the
idea that "it pays to be tough on drugs." Just looking at the
information compiled above, we can readily see that it did not pay to be tough
on alcohol. Quite the contrary, in fact.
But how about the other drugs? Surely, the laws against those make more sense
than trying to prohibit alcohol -- don't they? Not really. You could get a quick
answer if you just went to the Rand Corporation's analysis of the
cost-effectiveness of various strategies to control drugs. They found that
interdiction and law enforcement were the least cost-effective of all the
available strategies. But that's on a different web site, so let's not even
count that one.
One of the best places to start such a discussion is with what I consider to
be probably the best single overall review of the subject ever written, the
Consumers Union Report on Licit and Illicit Drugs. It gives a good overview of
what happened before and after the drug prohibition laws were passed in the
United States.
Prior to 1906, there weren't any national drug laws in the US.
There were some local laws that were motivated by racism rather than any real
concern for public health and safety. For example, opium smoking was outlawed in
San Francisco in 1875. They didn't outlaw all forms of opium, just smoking
opium, because that custom was peculiar to the Chinese. It was an attempt to
punish the Chinese immigrants who were competing with whites for jobs. (Chapter
6 - Opium
smoking is outlawed, The
Consumers Union Report on Licit and Illicit Drugs)
There were no laws on drug quality, no age restrictions on buyers, and
no licensing of sellers. There weren't even any laws requiring drug makers to
list the contents on the label. Many people were taking concoctions of perhaps
fifty percent morphine with no real knowledge of what it was. It was, as one
historian noted, "a dope fiend's paradise." However, even under those
extreme conditions, it was not considered a major social problem.
Nevertheless, there was very little popular support for a law banning these
substances. "Powerful organizations for the suppression ... of alcoholic
stimulants exist throughout the land," 25
the 1881 article in the Catholic World noted, but there were no similar
anti-opiate organizations.
The reason for this lack of demand for opiate prohibition was quite simple:
the drugs were not viewed as a menace to society and, as we shall demonstrate
in subsequent chapters, they were not in fact a menace.
Chapter 1 - Nineteenth
Century America - "a dope fiends paradise" from The
Consumers Union Report on Licit and Illicit Drugs, by Edward M. Brecher and
the Editors of Consumer Reports Magazine, 1972
But it obviously wasn't a good idea for these drugs to be sold even without
any labeling of the contents or controls on purity so the Pure Food and Drugs
Act was passed in 1906. This was a regulatory law, not a criminal prohibition of
drugs. It established the Food and Drug Administration and gave it the power to
regulate foods and drugs. In addition:
The 1906 act required that medicines containing opiates and certain other
drugs must say so on their labels. 2
Later amendments to the act also required that the quantity of each drug be
truly stated on the label, and that the drugs meet official standards of
identity and purity. Thus, for a time the act actually served to safeguard
addicts.
The efforts leading to the 1906 act, the act itself and subsequent
amendments, and educational campaigns urging families not to use patent
medicines containing opiates, no doubt helped curb the making of new addicts.
Indeed, there is evidence of a modest decline in opiate addiction from the
peak in the 1890s until 1914. 3
Chapter 7 - The
Pure Food and Drugs Act of 1906, The
Consumers Union Report on Licit and Illicit Drugs,
The opiates and cocaine were not prohibited on a national level until 1914
with the passage of the Harrison Narcotics Tax Act. The purpose of the
proponents of the bill was to institute a national prohibition on these drugs.
But they knew that an outright national prohibition law would be considered
unconstitutional, so they didn't prohibit it, they just taxed it and worked the
prohibition through the tax system. ( see Whitebread's History
of the Non-Medical Use of Drugs in the United States )
On its face, moreover, the Harrison bill did not appear to be a prohibition
law at all. . . . 4
The law specifically provided that manufacturers, importers, pharmacists, and
physicians prescribing narcotics should be licensed to do so, at a moderate
fee. . . . Far from appearing to be a prohibition law, the Harrison Narcotic
Act on its face was merely a law for the orderly marketing of opium, morphine,
heroin, and other drugs. . . it is unlikely that a single legislator realized
in 1914 that the law Congress was passing would later be decreed a prohibition
law.
. . .
The effects of this policy were almost immediately visible. On May 15,
1915, just six weeks after the effective date of the Harrison Act, an
editorial in the New York Medical Journal declared:
As was expected ... the immediate effects of the Harrison antinarcotic
law were seen in the flocking of drug habitues to hospitals and sanatoriums.
Sporadic crimes of violence were reported too, due usual1y to desperate
efforts by addicts to obtain drugs, but occasionally to a delirious state
induced by sudden withdrawal....
The really serious results of this legislation, however, will only appear
gradually and will not always be recognized as such. These will be the
failures of promising careers, the disrupting of happy families, the
commission of crimes which will never be traced to their real cause, and the
influx into hospitals to the mentally disordered of many who would otherwise
live socially competent lives. 8
Six months later an editorial in American Medicine reported:
Narcotic drug addiction is one of the gravest and most important
questions confronting the medical profession today. Instead of improving
conditions the laws recently passed have made the problem more complex.
Honest medical men have found such handicaps and dangers to themselves and
their reputations in these laws . . . that they have simply decided to have
as little to do as possible with drug addicts or their needs. . . . The
druggists are in the same position and for similar reasons many of them have
discontinued entirely the sale of narcotic drugs. [The addict] is denied the
medical care he urgently needs, open, above-board sources from which he
formerly obtained his drug supply are closed to him, and he is driven to the
underworld where lie can get his drug, but of course, surreptitiously and in
violation of the law....
Abuses in the sale of narcotic drugs are increasing. . . . A particular
sinister sequence . . . is the character of the places to which [addicts]
are forced to go to get their drugs and the type of people with whom they
are obliged to mix. The most depraved criminals are often the dispensers of
these habit-forming drugs. The moral dangers, as well as the effect on the
self-respect of the addict, call for no comment. One has only to think of
the stress under which the addict lives, and to recall his lack of funds, to
realize the extent to which these . . . afflicted individuals are under the
control of the worst elements of society. In respect to female habitues the
conditions are worse, if possible. Houses of ill fame are usually their
sources of supply, and one has only to think of what repeated visitations to
such places mean to countless good women and girls unblemished in most
instances except for an unfortunate addiction to some narcotic drug-to
appreciate the terrible menace. 9
In 1918, after three years of the Harrison Act and its devastating
effects, the secretary of the treasury appointed a committee to look into the
problem. . . . Among its findings 10
were the following:
- Opium and other narcotic drugs (including cocaine, which Congress had
erroneously labeled as a narcotic in 1914) were being used by about a
million people. (This was almost certainly an overestimate; see Chapter
9.)
- The "underground" traffic in narcotic drugs was about equal to
the legitimate medical traffic.
- The "dope peddlers" appeared to have established a national
organization, smuggling the drugs in through seaports or across the
Canadian or Mexican borders-especially the Canadian border.
- The wrongful use of narcotic drugs had increased since passage of the
Harrison Act. Twenty cities, including New York and San Francisco, had
reported such increases. (The increase no doubt resulted from the
migration of addicts into cities where black markets flourished.)
To stem this apparently rising tide, the 1918 committee, like countless
committees since, called for sterner law enforcement. it also recommended more
state laws patterned after the Harrison Act. 11
Congress responded by tightening up the Harrison Act. In 1924, for example,
a law was enacted prohibiting the importation of heroin altogether, even for
medicinal use. . . . In 1925, Dr. Lawrence Kolb reported on a study of both
morphine and heroin addiction: "If there is any difference in the
deteriorating effects of morphine and heroin on addicts, it is too slight to
be determined clinically." 12
President Johnson's Committee on Law Enforcement and Administration of justice
came to the same conclusion in 1967: "While it is somewhat more
rapid in its action, heroin does not differ in any significant pharmacological
effect from morphine." 13
The 1924 ban on heroin did not deter the conversion of morphine addicts to
heroin. On the contrary, heroin ousted morphine almost completely from the
black market after the law was passed.
An editorial in the Illinois Medical Journal for June 1926, after
eleven years of federal law enforcement, concluded:
The Harrison Narcotic law should never have been placed upon the Statute
books of the United States. It is to be granted that the well-meaning
blunderers who put it there had in mind only the idea of making it
impossible for addicts to secure their supply of "dope" and to
prevent unprincipled people from making fortunes, and fattening upon the
infirmities of their fellow men.
As is the case with most prohibitive laws, however, this one fell far
short of the mark. So far, in fact, that instead of stopping the traffic,
those who deal in dope now make double their money from the poor
unfortunates upon whom they prey. . . .
The doctor who needs narcotics used in reason to cure and allay human
misery finds himself in a pit of trouble. The lawbreaker is in clover. . . .
It is costing the United States more to support bootleggers of both
narcotics and alcoholics than there is good coming from the farcical laws
now on the statute books.
As to the Harrison Narcotic law, it is as with prohibition [of alcohol]
legislation. People are beginning to ask, "Who did that, anyway?" 14
Chapter 8 - The
Harrison Narcotic Act (1914),
The
Consumers Union Report on Licit and Illicit Drugs
I could certainly go on with references that show that the drug laws never
did make any sense, and it is doubtful if they have ever produced any measurable
benefits. Certainly, the overwhelming weight of the evidence is that the
prohibition laws do more harm than good. A good place to start reading the
evidence is at Major
Studies of Drugs and Drug Policy. Start with The
Consumers Union Report on Licit and Illicit Drugs.
What kinds of bad effects does this policy produce? One major bad effect is
that it makes it easier for kids to get drugs, and even encourages their use.
Historically speaking, the biggest single cause of drug epidemics among US
children is anti-drug campaigns. See, for example, the references above on the
problems with children drinking during alcohol prohibition. See also:
Chapter 30 - Popularizing
the barbiturates as "thrill pills"
Chapter 38 - How
speed was popularized
Chapter 44 - How
to launch a nationwide drug menace
Chapter 50 - How
LSD was popularized, 1962-1969
Chapter 51 - How
the hazards of LSD were augmented, 1962-1969
from The
Consumers Union Report on Licit and Illicit Drugs
That is hardly the end of the evidence on the subject, of course. There is a
ton of stuff I could reference here in the Schaffer Library already, and there
are several cabinets full of additional research at my local university research
libraries that I haven't begun to put on the net. But, if you read the books
referenced above, they will give you a good summary of what you would learn if
you read all the other thousands of documents, and more.
And just to show what a fair guy I am, I will make an open invitation to
Miranda Devine, Brian Watters, and anyone they want to get to help them. If they
will send me any research that they think tells the story better than what I
have linked above, I promise that I will post it here, unedited, in all its
glory, so that interested readers can read the full evidence from both sides of
the story.
So, you be the judge. Did Miranda Devine really blow it, or what? Does Brian
Watters,
chairman of the Australian National Council on Drugs, have any kind of clue what
he is talking about? If you want to comment, send me an e-mail at cliff_schaffer@yahoo.com.
I will forward your comments to Miranda so she can read them herself.
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