That is, that other Prohibition ended 80 years ago with the ratification of the 21st Amendment.
In dubious honor of the current, much worse, and much longer, prohibition, it’s time to revisit that still-too-true olden-days bit of wit by Franklin P. Adams:
We like it.
It can’t stop what it’s meant to stop.
We like it.
It’s left a trail of graft and slime,
It don’t prohibit worth a dime,
It’s filled our land with vice and crime.
Nevertheless, we’re for it.
The poem itself was written in equally dubious honor of the wussy work of the Wickersham Commission.
Sometimes, considering all the trouble alcohol has caused, I think the most unfortunate part of prohibition is that it didn’t work. Of course that sentiment is starkly inconsistent with freedomista thought.
My expectation is that it will be much more difficult to legalize drugs. This time the money trail is more complex. As Radley Balko points out in Rise of the Warrior Cop, forfeiture laws have now provided a great incentive for no knock drug raids targeting the small fish in the system. The courts have greatly curtailed applicability of the exclusionary rule, aiding this abusive process. Numbers of SWAT teams are increasing. Once started for whatever justification given, the teams are then often used for drug raids (an aside: this sort of thing is to be expected under Parkinson’s Law http://www.economist.com/node/14116121 ). So now law enforcement has a major interest in keeping a victimless crime illegal. As Balko also notes, since there’s no money to be made in homicide cases, resources predictably will be routed to drug enforcement.
Our efforts in Afghanistan don’t seem to have helped much, either. http://www.cnsnews.com/news/article/ali-meyer/after-12-yrs-us-occupation-afghanistan-sets-record-growing-opium
Yup, follow the money. Why should their main focus be on the rich dealers (most of which are not), when they can “earn” more money busting the many drug users? There’s more of them than there are dealers. That’s where the real money is.
Prohibition didn’t really end- a bigger, more violent gang just took over.
Prohibition, as Kent said, never ended-just the chemistry involved did.