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Alcohol Prohibition in the U.S., which lasted from 1920 to 1933, shows that the drug war’s harmful effects were foreseeable and that the real motive behind it has more often been powerful people’s political self-interest than a genuine interest in reducing the harms of drug addiction.
During Prohibition, organized gangs took over the alcohol trade from legitimate companies. Violent crime dramatically increased, and Americans started consuming more dangerous drinks because smuggling stronger liquor was more profitable for the gangs. This all follows from a simple economic principle: when any good or service becomes illegal, trade in it moves from the legal market—where the legal system can fairly regulate it—to the black market, where the only form of regulation is violence.
Prohibition was widely seen as a failure by the time it ended. And yet, just a few years later, politicians and law enforcement officers—most of all Harry Anslinger—launched the war on drugs anyway. While it’s tempting to assume that early drug warriors like Anslinger simply didn’t expect drug prohibition to cause so much harm, in reality, they absolutely knew what they were getting into: they had just seen Prohibition fail to achieve its goals. While Anslinger certainly believed that drugs were harmful, his primary motivations for launching the drug war were his desire for personal power and his extreme racist beliefs. (The war on drugs drew unprecedented funding to his Bureau of Narcotics, and it gave him an excuse to persecute racial minority groups and activists.) Over the last century, politicians and law enforcement agents have continued to follow Anslinger’s playbook, using the war on drugs to their personal political advantage while suppressing the research that proves what they’ve already known since Prohibition: criminalizing drugs causes much more violence, suffering, and addiction than it heals.
Alcohol Prohibition Quotes in Chasing the Scream
The Chasing the Scream quotes below all refer to the symbol of Alcohol Prohibition. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
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Chapter 15
Quotes
Just as when all legal routes to alcohol were cut off, beer disappeared and whisky won, when all legal routes to opiates are cut off, Oxy disappears, and heroin prevails. This isn’t a law of nature, and it isn’t caused by the drug—it is caused by the drug policy we have chosen. After the end of alcohol prohibition, White Lightning vanished—who’s even heard of it now?—and beer went back to being America’s favorite alcoholic drink. There are heroin addicts all across the United States today who would have stayed happily on Oxy if there had been a legal route to it.
This is worth repeating, because it is so striking, and we hear it so rarely, despite all the evidence. The war on drugs makes it almost impossible for drug users to get milder forms of their drug—and it pushes them inexorably toward harder drugs.
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Alcohol Prohibition Symbol Timeline in Chasing the Scream
The timeline below shows where the symbol Alcohol Prohibition appears in Chasing the Scream. The colored dots and icons indicate which themes are associated with that appearance.
Chapter 1: The Black Hand
When Anslinger took over the Federal Bureau of Narcotics, the old Department of Prohibition, he had a tiny office and virtually no power. He used the Bureau to pursue...
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...saw European cities reduced to rubble and starving people reduced to political violence. Later, during Prohibition, Anslinger worked in the Bahamas, fighting a war on alcohol smugglers. Then, Anslinger married into...
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Chapter 4: The Bullet at the Birth
During Prohibition, Rothstein got into the alcohol business. He soon expanded into drugs, shipping heroin in bulk...
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Chapter 5: Souls of Mischief
...“extreme culture of violence” that surrounds it would vanish. Indeed, a Harvard study shows that Prohibition and the criminalization of drugs coincided with the U.S.’s greatest ever spikes in violence. Similarly,...
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Chapter 10: Marisela’s Long March
...son says, the cartels would lose much of their power. This reminds Hari of how Prohibition backfired—something that even Harry Anslinger recognized. Two years after Marisela’s death, the police killed Sergio...
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Chapter 15: Snowfall and Strengthening
...doses, to stay satisfied. But the real reason is “the iron law of prohibition.” During Prohibition, Americans switched from beer to liquor, which was more widely available because it was more...
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Chapter 17: The Man in the Well
...and regulated stores—rather than adulterated drugs from dangerous criminal gangs. Just like the end of Prohibition in the 1930s U.S., drug legalization would dramatically reduce crime and violence. Kushlick calls legalization...
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On the other hand, the available evidence strongly suggests that in the U.S., Prohibition decreased both casual drinking and serious alcoholism by 10 to 20 percent. Put simply, many...
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Next, the evidence is less conclusive about whether legalization will reduce drug addiction. Alcohol Prohibition in the U.S. suggests that it won’t, while Portugal’s experience suggests that it will. In...
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Conclusion: If You Are Alone
Almost a century ago, even Harry Anslinger concluded that alcohol Prohibition was a mistake. Today, Billie Holiday’s godson—who works with heroin addicts at a San Francisco...
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