More on Prohibition I and Prohibition II

Radley Balko’s excellent article at Fox News: Criminalization Doesn’t Curb Booze, Drug Use

The great journalist H.L. Mencken was a fierce critic of alcohol prohibition. He wrote in 1925:

“Five years of Prohibition have had, at least, this one benign effect:æthey have completely disposed of all the favorite arguments of the Prohibitionists. None of the great boons and usufructs that were to follow the passage of the Eighteenth Amendment has come to pass. There is not less drunkenness in the Republic, but more. There is not less crime, but more. There is not less insanity, but more. The cost of government is not smaller, but vastly greater. Respect for law has not increased, but diminished.”

Mencken was right, which is why Prohibition was repealed in 1933

In the rest of the article, he blasts politicians’ love of prohibition, whether alcohol, drugs, or tobacco.