Prohibition then and now

From Reason TV, we have “Prohibition Vogue: Why we can’t stop talking about “The Noble Experiment.”

The Ken Burns documentary on prohibition airing tomorrow comes at a time when we have clearly made the case that prohibition is a bad idea whether it’s alcohol back then or drugs now.

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13 Responses to Prohibition then and now

  1. Francis says:

    “The Noble Experiment”? Prohibition was (and is) about as noble an experiment as Tuskegee. Hmmm, anyone see any other parallels?

  2. Hope says:

    Lives lost. Liberty lost. Widespread criminal activity. Big bucks. Corruption.

  3. Hope says:

    And poison.

  4. claygooding says:

    I think the willingness of our government to use propaganda on it’s own people to build up the house of cards that prohibition has become is the worst,,now when something comes up that really needs our support and cooperation,,who are they going to ask?

  5. Hope says:

    Sorry, Francis. I was finding parallels with the then prohibition of alcohol and today’s prohibition of drugs. I hope you didn’t mean more parallels with the evils of the Tuskegee experiment.

    • Francis says:

      Actually, yeah I was referring to the fact that the subjects / victims of the Tuskegee experiment were poor African-American men, the same group that is disproportionately victimized (targeted?) by modern prohibition.

  6. Duncan20903 says:

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    Well the problem as I see it is that the arguments against prohibition depend on logic, intelligent thinking, and good sense. That’s why we’re not making any headway. That’s no way to get the brain dead to support our agenda.

    How about if we promise to never give any Socialist Security payments to anyone but people who are on “the list”? I think that’s an idea that everyone can get behind. Sure we’ll need to sweeten the pot from there. This is intended as a starting point. Perhaps we could hire a panel of elite brain dead idiots to come up with a list of ideas? Focus groups can help a lot especially when the other side of the table doesn’t speak the same language.

  7. JDV says:

    Who is that guy holding a revolver to his head while tipping a beer mug?

  8. muggles says:

    I am glad that this is a Ken Burns film because he brings tremendous credibilty and viwer interest to the most important issue of prohibition.

  9. Hope says:

    Francis, I thought about that. Of course, the Tuskegee incident involved all black men.

    In the “Noble Experiment”, there were a variety of races targeted, and with drug prohibition, we know it was all about race from the very beginning, but the insane freakishness of the drug warrior, while focusing on the black and brown skin people, has allowed for the persecution of both sexes, young, old, everything in between, and a considerable hunk of other races as well. But of course, the racism element that began the drug war is still quite important and quite obvious.

  10. Scott says:

    Prohibition is generally believed to be better than nothing (e.g. letting heroin be easily accessible). Even too many of the people who consider prohibition a failure show no passion in having it repealed.

    There is a false assumption that prohibition works enough to be worth it.

    There is another false assumption that the U.S. Constitution allows such a prohibition to be law.

    One major focus in my commenting efforts is to challenge both of those assumptions.

  11. Ethan says:

    Check out the New York Post’s take on this miniseries, which is content to blast today’s “nanny state” as a liberal update of alcohol prohibition while not actually mentioning the drug war at all, since as we all know, the Post’s “conservative” audience loves that particular form of nannyism. Truly a masterful bit of Murdochian propaganda.

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