Reconsidering whether Prohibition was a failure | Hacker News Reader

Reconsidering whether Prohibition was a failure

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29 pointsjasonhansel50 comments

Are there statistics that compare other countries? I have found in my personal experience that countries that actually have lower minimum drinking ages seem to have better relationships with alcohol.

Attempting to artificially force age 21 as the limit is foolish, creates de-facto criminals, especially in universities, and forces adults who want to try drinking to have to hide it. This isn’t a sane policy.

> I have found in my personal experience that countries that actually have lower minimum drinking ages seem to have better relationships with alcohol.

I believe that's a consequence of those countries having a better relationship with alcohol. That is to say, if a country's alcohol culture is healthier, it supports a lower drinking age. You can't synthesize a better alcohol culture by lowering the drinking age, however.

Lowering the drinking age has been tried in the US before. Michigan's drinking age after the repeal of the 18th Amendment was 21. The state lowered it's drinking age in 1972 from 21 to 18, and then raised it back to 19 in 1978 and then 3 weeks later took it back to 21. The reason for the change was sharp rise in drunk driving and traffic accidents involving teenagers.

It's kind of funny, but I wrote a paper on this in college years ago and I still remember some of the studies I used (I have a good memory). U of M did a study [1] in 1979 on the effects in Michigan, and there was another study in 1990 [2] that studied the effects across the country prior to the National Minimum Drinking Age Act. It's been a long time since I read that study, but I seem to recall that they showed that the people who began drinking at age 18 had a worse relationship with alcohol by age 25, and that that worse relationship continued throughout their entire lives. I fully admit I haven't re-read these studies, though, so what I'm saying here is my memory from about 13 years ago.

Bottom line: Other countries might have a culture that supports a drinking age of 18 or lower, but the United States does not appear to be one of them.

[1]: https://trid.trb.org/view.aspx?id=169206

[2]: http://www.monitoringthefuture.org/pubs/occpapers/occ28.pdf

Most of my friends in the UK were in their mid-20s and had never driven, so that certainly makes it easier to avoid the source of many of the issues.

It’s an interesting reply but your conclusion feels like a stretch to me. Mostly because that’s a very long time ago. Access to information has massively changed since then. I feel like saying America can’t have a good relationship with alcohol is a cop out.

I'm old enough to remember when New Jersey had a drinking age of 18. They lowered it from 21 to 18 in the early 70s (almost certainly a result of "old enough to fight in Vietnam but not old enough to drink" movements). They raised it to 19 in 1980, and to 21 in 1983. I was only 10 then.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/U.S._history_of_alcohol_minimu...

21 seems absolutely crazy to me. Three years into adulthood! Three years into dating and relationships where you can’t have a glass of wine with dinner on a date? Maybe it’s unhealthy but I can’t imagine the first three years of university without going out for a drink in a pub or bar at all. Are people graduating from high school and not able to celebrate with a glass of Champagne? If you don’t go to university are you going to work socials as a full adult having to explain that you can’t drink yet?

Fwiw, you don't have to explain, everyone understands.

> 21 seems absolutely crazy to me. Three years into adulthood! Three years into dating and relationships

Perhaps occasionally the second, but legal adulthood and the beginning of dating aren't things that are all that normally linked.

> Maybe it’s unhealthy but I can’t imagine the first three years of university without going out for a drink in a pub or bar at all.

Neurotoxins are not exactly an essential companion piece to education. Also, there's a pretty big gap between not being able to do something in practice and not being legally allowed to do it. Fake IDs that are sufficient to pass casual review in a drinking establishment are not uncommon for American youth.

> Are people graduating from high school and not able to celebrate with a glass of Champagne?

People are graduating that would t be allowed to do that with a drinking age of 18, too.

> If you don’t go to university are you going to work socials as a full adult having to explain that you can’t drink yet?

No, because everyone understands, and “work socials” with alcohol are a far from universal thing in the US, anyhow.

And you still don’t have to drink at events that serve alcohol, anyhow.

I don't have any issues with 18 as drinking age (that was the legal age where I grew up), but if you can't even imagine a world where alcohol isn't linked to dating and school, and where its possible to celebrate without requiring what is a pretty dangerous drug (lets get real here), there are bigger issues than the age where it's allowed.

It’s not that they can’t imagine it, it’s that they can’t imagine the illegality.

Like I can imagine romance without candlelit dinners, but if you told be that couples dining together was now illegal without a chaperone, then I would act shocked.

Interesting that the Alcohol lobby is only mentioned once and the big industry players not mentioned. Surely their actions were fundamental in orchestrating the pushback?

Considering the emergence of 'PR' during the same period, alcohol would have remained well supported.

Much as with drugs, total prohibition is not the answer for adult problems, but a balance of education, taxes and regulation should work to reduce the harm, particularly in home and public violence.

I only assume the industry players have been extremely successful in in-graining the attitude that alcohol is a God-given right and social necessity social harm be damned.

Eh, you're underestimating the attraction of vice. Trying to say it's the industry that says alcohol is a right completely neglects the enormous black markets for illegal drugs that don't have rights for.

Education only goes so far, as DARE shows you must tell the truth and not embellish it or people neglect your whole message.

Push taxes too high and you create a black market too.

DARE is a failure. As is the entire war on drugs in America.

> DARE is a failure.

Studies of DARE have shown it's a success at producing more positive images of law enforcement among children exposed to it (they've also shown it has no effect on its nominal goal of reducing drug abuse, but do you think it keeps going because no one cares that it's a failure at it's real goal or because it's real goal was never the nominal goal in the first place?)

GP was making a similar criticism of DARE, in a more oblique way. (They're saying DARE was both comprised of falsehoods and a failure.)

It's completely unsurprising that a social movement mirroring the attitude and values of the 1920s anti-saloon league would rediscover temperance as a cause they want to advance. There's always, in all societies, some group that wants to "fix" social ills by banning things and controlling people. These groups, when they get their way, do more harm than good.

Would you see the regulations regarding tabaccomor gambling as efforts that did more harm than good ?

I think there are efforts that are ill placed, and others that counter balance natural harmful tendencies or other efforts from groups benefiting from harmful behavior. I wouldn’t label all banning and efforts to shape a society as useless or counter productive.

Some other examples:

- seat belt laws

- speed limits

- traffic lights

- car and airplane safety standards

- clean air and water regulations

Those are industrial equipment operational safety precautions, not a prohibition of cars and planes

Were tobacco and gambling blanket banned like alcohol was on a national level?

Total prohibition is a failure; however, jurisdictions in which alcohol is more expensive and less convenient do experience lower rates of alcohol-related issues. I’m sorry I don’t have a citation for this.

Interesting to hear. I've heard the opposite in that in dry counties in the US the incidence of alcohol related driving accidents is 3x that of wet counties. A quick look at the Wikipedia[0] article corroborates this.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dry_county#Traveling_to_purcha...

A lack of healthy drinking culture and social norms leads to extreme, dangerous behavior. The same can be said for other ills of our society.

I think it's more: if you have to drive farther to drink or buy alcohol and people drunk drive at the same background rate, you simply get more drunk miles driven and proportionately higher incident rates.

The causality could go

Dry County -> Lots of Drink Driving (Unhealthy relationship with alcohol)

Or it could be

Lots of Drink Driving (Unhealthy relationship with alcohol) -> Dry County

You’d need to do historical research to see if the bad relationship preceded the alcohol ban. A first pass would be historical murder rates seeing as drunkenness leads to violence, which leads to deaths.

Or it could go:

Dry county -> social drinkers must drive to the bar in the next county over, or even several counties over -> drunk drivers from the dry county spend more time and distance on roads than they would otherwise -> higher instance of drunk driving related accidents in the dry county.

For any substance, the market should be controlled and the access to the substance should be hard, but easier than going to an illegal dealer.

The philosophical argument here is "To what extent is it the government's job to regulate substances?" The author seems to think that if it causes harm, it should be under the government's purview to curtail. The second-to-last paragraph demonstrates this position. We already have laws about driving while intoxicated and public drunkenness (among others such as carrying a firearm while intoxicated) which preserve individual freedom while punishing externalities.

The author's suggestion that we once again need to start molding what is "acceptable" leisure is simply backwards. Western liberalism is fairly good at solving these problems.

I'm sure you can think of some substances that the government should control. Almost everybody accepts the prescription system where medications are only available with a doctor's permission.

After that it's just arguing which substances should be controlled and which should not, and to what degree.

The problem is not so much whether it's the government's job to regulate it, but that it is primarily treated as a criminal issue, and thus is 'solved' through police enforcement. In other countries people see it more as a health issue, this leads to completely different approaches and policies. What would happen if we treated e.g. education primarily as a criminal issue?

"The philosophical argument here "

It's not a 'philosophical argument' - it's a very practical argument.

Alcohol is regulated pretty much everywhere, even where ages are lower, there is definitely a social contract around it.

Young Germans don't just go around getting wasted at 16 'because they can' - there are still social norms, in addition to real laws.

I interpret a lot of discussion around here to be very academic, more contemplative of issues such as liberty, freedom of expression etc. - but my own personal experience relating to this is more applied: I've heard numerous stories about my family members way back a couple of generations and how alcohol was fairly intertwined in all of this. My family was relatively average. These things can be a huge social malaise.

For example 'heavy/problem drinkers' account for most alcohol sales. [1]

Basically, the alcohol industry might not exist without alcoholics.

The top 10% of drinkers average 80 (!!!) drinks a week [2]. On average. That's just a crazy amount of alcohol for an average, and that's the top 10%, not the top 1%.

The problem is similar to that of other drugs: for most people it's probably not going to be a problem, but for enough of society, it will be a problem to the point wherein it affects the community ... ergo ... regulation and social norms of some kind are unavoidable.

"The author's suggestion that we once again need to start molding what is "acceptable" leisure is simply backwards. Western liberalism is fairly good at solving these problems."

100% of 'Liberal Western Democracies' regulate alcohol in a meaningful way.

Even in Germany: "Selling or serving spirits or food products, containing more than insignificant quantities of spirits, to a young person over the age of 14 but under the age of 18 years" - 2000 Euro fine for retailers. [3]

The author provides a different angle on prohibition and I think the very vague conclusions of 'finding middle ground' are reasonable.

[1] https://www.theguardian.com/society/2016/jan/22/problem-drin...

[2] https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2014/09/25/think...

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alcohol_laws_in_Germany

Alcohol taxes, proposals to imprison people for drinking (see the same author's article about said program in https://www.vox.com/2016/2/9/10955138/alcohol-247-sobriety-p...), all ways of spreading more suffering and incarceration among low income, vulnerable communities, while hardly affecting privileged communities at all. Alcoholism is a disease and should not be treated with incarceration.

> Alcoholism is a disease

While this is true, it’s also a disease that impacts certain communities and demographics differently than others. Its a disease which therefore can be mediated by changing social environment and norms. So while I also don’t support incarceration of alcoholics, it’s not unreasonable to consider legal and political interventions to improve public health.

Alcoholism can be a disease, but that involves a very different beast than what most people call alcoholism.

I'm not sure it is a helpful framing. I would certainly argue that the model promulgated by AA is very unhelpful, although it has polluted the popular consciousness heavily. In the USA at least. Other countries have more reasonable relationships with alcohol.

Unlike most diseases, alcoholism has direct and often violent effects on second parties. Sure, “think of the children” is a cliche, but it exists for a reason.

Second, you equate prison and taxes, and declare both to be morally unsound. It’s a neat rhetorical trick, but like my math instructor used to say: “show your work.” As far as I know, taxes work.

Additionally you assume that alcoholism (even treated as a disease) is the target of these policies. What about the cost of alcohol on non-addicts? The social drinker that misjudged their state and crashed a car? The kid who fucks up his liver because he took Tylenol to treat his hangover?

Even if a tax won’t deter an alcoholic it might work for the rest of society.

> Second, you equate prison and taxes,

hardly?

> and declare both to be morally unsound.

hardly?

> It’s a neat rhetorical trick, but like my math instructor used to say:

like my english instructor would say, "did you even read the book?"

> The social drinker that misjudged their state and crashed a car?

they'd be incarcerated for drunk driving, not drinking in and of itself.

> The kid who fucks up his liver because he took Tylenol to treat his hangover?

you can screw up your liver taking too many tylenols without alcohol, and a privileged high school kid isn't not going to drink at some party because taxes made it cost a few dollars more. alcohol taxes are only going to impact low income people in any meaningful way. if the theory is, well these damn poor people just keep drinking too much and can't control themselves, the alcohol is not the reason for that, the poverty is. Address poverty, not punishing people for being poor.

edit: if I may add some tangible detail, in my extended family are some extremely impoverished, extremely diseased alcoholics. What these people need urgently, right now, is medical care and addiction rehabilitation services. Like, several weeks in a quality in-patient facility would be great, such a thing costs tens of thousands of dollars and is available only to the very privileged. Medical care and quality rehabilitation services are not generally available to impoverished people in the US. An alcohol tax would quite directly mean they simply would have even less money to buy food, which would directly impact the health of their 16 year old son, and incarcerating them would also destroy whatever financial ability they have left to survive. It's pretty offensive to read about proposals just to tax and punish people negatively affected by alcohol without even a consideration for the rehabilitation and medical services they desparately need and are denied by the US system of health care. Address the health care and poverty first. Going straight to punishment is cruel and out of touch.

The truth is that if you make a law for the betterment of general society, it’s poor people who you want to target simply because there are more of them.

Trying to coral rich people with far greater resources to circumvent laws just leads to laws that are more oppressive and far reaching to yield the same effects.

> Sure, “think of the children” is a cliche, but it exists for a reason.

Yes, and the reason it exists is that it's a thought-terminating rhetorical technique that has proven effective at getting people to support government actions without critical thinking about whether there is even a plausible argument that the action serves he nominal goal.

Not wrong. If we take tobacco laws, with the cancer side effects, frequently going "omg don't expose the children to it!".

Really, the reason people pushed to ban smoking is because its fucking annoying and little more. "Think of the children and cancer" was just an easier way to get the point through.

> If we take tobacco laws, with the cancer side effects, frequently going "omg don't expose the children to it!".

Indoor tobacco bans in public spaces were pushed largely by labor groups as a workplace health and safety issue.

Something must be done. This is something. We must do this!

It's perceived as a failure because it was a failure.

If anything, the US is still too restrictive when it comes to alcohol policy. I hope we see the drinking age lowered back to 18, and remove most geographic and time restrictions on the purchase of alcohol. (i.e. Dry counties, purchasing on Sundays)

It's funny, I don't see too many people championing the war on drugs as a public policy success.

The USA is weird. There are still policies that have been shown to work elsewhere, which aren’t enforced in the USA, like taxation and ad bans, while policies with questionable success rate are (like high drinking age and consumption in a public place).

Though I drink occasionally, I support the rights of locals to decide whether to allow Sunday sales or to be a dry county. (I personally prefer no local restrictions and would vote against them, but would still defend the local communities to decide their relationship with alcohol sales.)

I am in 100% agreement with you.

A higher drinking age has been shown to lower drunk driving fatalities.

https://www.webmd.com/parenting/news/20080702/age-21-drinkin...

There are a number of red flags with that article:

* It uses the words "strong" and "tough" a lot - which really means nothing but sure sounds good.

* It endorses taking away the driver's license of someone caught with a fake id - without paying any thought to what that does to their life. Some kid that takes an Uber to a bar and is caught with a fake id on Saturday now can't drive to his job on Monday. This is messed up and almost certainly impacts lower income populations more than higher income ones.

* The article specifically cites a "news release". The whole article is a summary of a press release of a study.

* The study was conducted by Pacific Institute for Research and Evaluation (PIRE), which describes itself as: "PIRE was founded as a 501(c)(3) organization in San Francisco, CA, in 1974, when a group of allied scientists were among the first to recognize the dangers inherent in the emergence of widespread drug use. PIRE developed and disseminated some of the earliest prevention strategies."

This seems like a low quality article summarizing a press release from an organization with a clear bias. I can't speak to the quality of the study itself (although, due to how PIRE describes its founding, I'm suspicious), but the article isn't worth citing.

Drunk driving fatalities is only a part of the whole picture though.

For instance liver disease deaths were decreasing until 2008 [1] Would/was lowering the drinking age have an impact ? I don’t know, but I just think there are wide and long term effects on these decisions, and judging by a single metric would not be fair.

[1] https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/to-your-health/wp/2018/0...

We often forget context: alcoholism was an utterly rampant social malaise. It was everywhere, and affected everyone.

Consider Winston Churchill used to drink 12 ounces of hard booze a day.

Underneath the House of Commons / Parliament in Canada, the used to be the 'bar' where people would go and get wasted every day - and a lot of official government business would happen! Canada's 'George Washington' - Sir John A MacDonald would drink 12 ounces-ish a day as well. Literally the first Prime Minster would disappear on several day binge benders and show up to Parliament so wasted he could hardly speak. Again: head of a nation. [1]

The Prohibition movement was strongly associated with those leading the Feminist movements at the time, it was a matter of social justice, because drunk men were a serious problem in their potential violence, infidelity, absenteeism etc.

"The Prohibition amendment prohibiting the sale, manufacture and transportation of alcohol would not have passed without the persistence of the women involved in the temperance movement starting in the 19th century. " [2]

So I think we have to historically contextualize the issue a little bit differently that we would otherwise, now that we have alcoholism mostly under control, better public health, and I think a little more ability to handle such problems.

It was a different time, with different problems.

[1] https://nationalpost.com/news/canada/everyone-knows-john-a-m...

[2] http://prohibition.themobmuseum.org/the-history/how-prohibit...

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