Today was Repeal Day, the anniversary of the official end of America’s brief experiment with alcohol prohibition. On December 5, 1933, the 21st Amendment to the Constitution was ratified, and it once again became legal in the United States to manufacture and sell alcoholic beverages.
I’ve just finished reading Daniel Okrent’s incredibly well-researched book on the subject, Last Call: The Rise and Fall of Prohibition. The history of alcohol prohibition has unmistakeably strong parallels to our current prohibition on marijuana. And that begs the question, will it come crashing down in much the same way?
The end of alcohol prohibition came much quicker than mostly everyone expected at the time. By amending the Constitution to outlaw the production and distribution of alcohol (or, more specifically, “intoxicating liquors”), many people thought – even right up to the end – that it would be nearly impossible to undo. But just as overwhelming popular support for getting rid of the saloon in the 1910s ushered in huge majorities of dry-voting legislatures across the country, the experience of alcohol prohibition – with organized crime, political corruption, and overzealous enforcement – led to similarly overwhelming support for repeal less than two decades later.
In some ways, marijuana prohibition is quite similar to its ancestor. Each prohibition led to significant levels of organized crime and to corruption among government officials and law enforcement. In each case, the attempts to keep adults from engaging in an activity strictly on moral grounds backfired and led to less moderation and riskier behaviors. And even earnest law enforcement efforts were helpless to do anything to prevent black markets from arising, often leading them to more extreme tactics that often put the citizenry at far more risk than the intoxicating substances themselves.
But there are some major differences. One is that much of the organized crime and corruption caused by the current prohibition is based outside of the United States. The rampant official corruption that accompanied the astronomical profits from bootlegging liquor has its strongest parallel today to the drug trafficking organizations of Mexico, who’ve been able to subvert Mexico’s justice system to an amazing extent. I cringe when I hear people claim that Mexico’s corruption problem is a function of Mexico’s culture. That’s bullshit. As Okrent explains, America’s law enforcement mechanisms were just as corrupted during alcohol prohibition as Mexico’s are today. The problem is the policy, not the people.
Another striking difference about the respective eras is how tame the police abuses were that caused widespread outrage during alcohol prohibition. Part of this stems from the fact that the average alcohol consumer was mostly left alone under the legal framework set forth by the Volstead Act. This is very different from today, where hundreds of thousands of mere marijuana users are arrested every year. The fact that even well-liked celebrities are not immune from its enforcement represents a fairly significant difference between then and now. One example given by Okrent was of a Chicago-area woman who was shot to death because her husband was believed to be a bootlegger. As a result, the Chicago Tribune used the incident to rail against prohibition. In today’s prohibition, wrong-door raids and innocent bystanders being killed are not seen as the extraordinary aberrations they were at that time, and are often completely ignored by our media.
But the main difference – and the one that has allowed marijuana prohibition to continue to such an absurd point – is that unlike alcohol prohibition, there’s no “before” for people to draw comparisons to. With alcohol prohibition, people were able to compare the world of alcohol prohibition to what it was like before it was outlawed. People could see the organized crime, violence, and corruption that existed in 1930 and they knew that all of that didn’t exist in 1918. We don’t have that 20/20 hindsight today. When marijuana was outlawed at the federal level in 1937, very few Americans used it or even knew what it was. The tremendous growth in its popularity occurred entirely within the confines of prohibition, so the negative effects of that policy seem far more “normal”.
So today, we face a battle with some historical parallels, but also some fairly significant differences. Al Smith, the losing Presidential candidate of 1928, was against prohibition. He lost handily to the Republican Herbert Hoover, but the fact that he took that position in the first place shows how different the two prohibitions were from a political standpoint. Not a single U.S. Senator of either party has come out in support of ending marijuana prohibition, and only a handful of House members have. For an issue that polls at over 40% support nationwide (and over 50% along the west coast), this is an extraordinary disconnect between the people and our politicians.
So how will it end? If Rep. Mary Lou Dickerson (D-36) is reading the political climate correctly, it will end right here in Washington this year:
State Representative Mary Lou Dickerson (D-36, Queen Anne and Ballard) wants to go all the way—RIGHT NOW.
According to a bill she intends to pre-file this month for the 2011 legislative session, “We would legalize it, regulate it, and tax it,” she says. “I am serious. We have been wasting scores of millions of dollars on arresting and jailing people who have done nothing more than smoke marijuana recreationally. That has ended up harming people and costing taxpayers tremendously. So it’s a very high cost to individuals and to taxpayers—it’s a wrongheaded policy that simply needs to be changed. People need to stick their neck out and say enough already and people are starting to do that. You will see that we will have a very good sponsor [for a companion bill to legalize marijuana] in the senate, someone who is very well respected. I am dead serious about this.”
Dickerson expects the bill will pass—she was unflinching when faced with my skepticism based on the failure of less aggressive pot bills—because polling this year showed 54 percent support to legalize marijuana in Washington, she says. She’s working with the ACLU and she plans another round of polling before the session begins in January. “If we don’t pass it this year, there’s a possibility we will take our case to the people in the initiative process in 2012,” she says.
We’ll find out if Dickerson’s optimism is warranted. There have been a number of signs recently that do point in this direction. California’s initiative was the first statewide initiative on ending marijuana prohibition that failed not because of general opposition to the idea, but to the specifics of the proposal. We’re now at the point where state legislators are understanding that this is a reality, and that either they regulate it, or an initiative will regulate it for them, perhaps not in a way the legislature would consider ideal.
And that leads to what might end up being the most interesting parallel in how both prohibitions end. What likely accelerated the demise of alcohol prohibition the most was the state of the economy. As the boom of the 1920s led to the Depression of the 1930s, that revenue that had been lost by enacting the 18th Amendment loomed much larger. Today, the parallel is obvious, and the precarious economic situation that Washington state finds itself in may bring about a political sea change on a issue that was once thought untouchable.
I dunno. In a state that banned Four-Loco within a few weeks of some college kids partying too hard? These people (legislators) can’t even figure out that caffeine and alcohol can be mixed manually.
Let’s not forget Senator Jeanette Kohl-Welles of Seattle who has exercised leadership in this area for a long time.
And if this law passes, how long will it take for Governor-in-his-own-mind Boy McKenna to challenge it? I’m guessing microseconds.
@2 I dont see what McKenna could challenge it on. Nothing in the state constitution says marijuana has to be illegal. Also, while Federal law take precedent, and they cannot conflict, the medical marijuana law already conflicts if you use that logic, and in my opinion, there is no conflict, because the US consitution does not require states to have a law that is already addressed by federal law. The legalization law would not prevent federal agents from arresting people (although it would be nice if it could) so therefore where is the conflict?
Some Republicans know its time for legalization. I lean conservative myself, though am mostly moderate, and understand this. The only deaths with marijuana are law enforcement related and the money is needed. When anyone says “We dont recover the costs to society with the taxes on alcohol and tobacco,” remember to reply “we already pay any costs, if any, since people already use it, and there is no evidence legalization would raise use rates. In fact it may lower it, since it would not seem rebellious anymore, as use rates are actually lower in the Netherlands”
A major problem is, U.S. Senators and Congressmen take huge sums of money in “campaign contributions” (bribes) from companies like Corrections Corporation that openly lobby for greater law enforcement against marijuana, and ever increasing sentences for the convicted.
Now that corporate bribery and control of Congress has been “legalized” by the Supreme Court, companies like CCA will continue to hide behind legislation while writing it themselves for consumption and approval (rubber stamping) by Congress, and the general public.
Judicial and Police Pensions are heavily invested in private prison companies, as are the 401k type investment structures promoted to law enforcement personnel.
There are huge sums of money invested in keeping marijuana illegal, and a huge political apparatus in place to make sure it remains so, no matter what the cost to the social fabric. Private prisons, the darling of the right wing anti government teabagger types, are BIG money. Unregulated, and utterly corrupt by their very nature. They should be banned outright at the Federal level.
Cops will do anything for a bust.
Consequences, the law and general common sense be damned. Anything goes, Shoot a sleeping baby? Perfectly acceptable. Drop a grenade into the wrong house? No problem. Randomly execute people on the street? Whoops, our bad. Still within guidelines though, so go back in your house, theres nothing to see here, and whats that smell emanating from your basement?
Hey Lee–
Marijuana doesn’t impair your judgment, right??
Marijuana is very good!
It is helpful in dealing with the cyclist issue we discussed last week.
@6
What’s your point? Are you arguing that alcohol should be illegal? Alcohol causes far more car accidents than marijuana. It that sufficient reason to ban its sale to adults? Would that yield the best policy?
As I’ve said before, you can come here and make intelligent arguments and be part of the conversation, or you can keep pretending that we’re arguing things we’re not and be the butt of our jokes.
Which is it?
@ 7
I think he prefers being the butt of our jokes.
Uneducated, ignorant, obtuse, bigoted pathological liars should be ridiculed at every opportunity.
You can’t fix stupid. So lets make fun of it instead.
@6
And by the way, I’ve never once said that marijuana doesn’t impair your judgement. And I don’t recall having any discussion with you about cyclists.
That’s the reason that SJ is no longer allowed to comment in my threads and I have no problems doing the same with you. You do that shit again, and your comment will be deleted. That rule isn’t just for SJ, it’s for everyone.
@8
Exactly.
@8
What’s even sadder is that in this particular incident, all they said was that the man tested positive for marijuana. That might just mean that the man had THC in his system. If so, it’s possible that he hadn’t smoked pot in like a week before the accident, and likelier still that he wasn’t under the influence at all when the accident happened. Misleading stories like that show up all the time the media, especially foreign media.
we will end the drug war when pot smokers come out of the closet and create a huge you tube database of professionals, moms, dads, soccer coaches saying yes I smoke, it’s nice, it’s nothing more than wwhiskey, in fact I don’t like whiskey,
leading to pressure on legislators and public officials and others to stop lying to the public when they (a) support the drug laws but (b) smoke themselves. Or know their kids do. Or their neighbors.
You can’t win a political battle if the troops and citizens to be benefitted are all in hiding.
What percent of our state legislature do you think has smoked pot as adults?
25%?
50%?
The ones who have, who do not step forward for supporting total legalization, are moral cowards.
Until they do we can’t have a real conversation to show the swing voters pot is no big deal as they will always be swayed by the scare stories.
It’s similar to gay rights. Once 80% of all Americans know someone who’s gay, that nice neighbor at the PTA, then Americans support basic equality (say not being fired for being gay) for gays…..if gays never came out of the closet, most Americans would only have information from the right wing message machine making them scared of gays, and they would continue to view gays as “ohter” “Scary” and “abnormal.” It’s only when pot smokers come out of the closet that we can win the basic message war which is to show that pot smokers are fine, normal, responsible, etc.
BTW having a bunch of long haired hippies at hempfest leading the public relations campaign or being its public face doesn’t help. We need some boring looking Republican legislator from Chehalis maybe an insurance salesman to get on camera and tell us its normal, and certainly better than drinking whiskey.
The logic arguments as at @7, the facts, the evidence, none of that works. What works is familiarity on a neighbor to neighbor level; that is the only thing that drowns out the scare machine of the cops and right wingers.
11. Lee spews:
WTF!
How did you possibly conclude all this from the news story??
Sounds like you are determined to defend the negative impact of pot at all turns Lee.
Sheeeeeeesh.
A very KLOWNlike response.
I recently heard Bill Maher say that all it will take to move approval for legalization from 44% to over 50% is for a few politicians to step forward aggressively, and I think he’s right. Legalization polls at 44% with no one speaking up for it. A few more Mary Lou Dickerson’s and America is having a different conversation. Good on her!!
“the attempts to keep adults from engaging in an activity strictly on moral grounds backfired”
But that’s why Republicans want huge massively intrusive Federal government, moral control. I mean the CURRENT religious zealot Republicans, not the old business Nixon Republicans. Hell, Nixon didn’t want the government banning gay marriage, not because he so loved gays, but philosophically he thought the Federal government shouldn’t be deciding who gets married, that was too intrusive and none of their business.
The current Republicans (religious) belief that the full power of the Federal government should be used to control our morals and religious values. The government powers must be used to control what positions we have sex in, with who, who we can marry, what drugs we take, what religions are considered real religions, when/if we can end our own lifes, etc. They want no regulation control on business, but absolute control over our bodies/genitals/life by Federal law.
@14 As for the %, it won’t matter if the powers at be don’t want it for political reason. Ending don’t ask don’t tell has like 73% approval among Democrats, and 60% approval among Republicans, even the majority of the military doesn’t give a tin shit. Yet something like this with CLEARLY majority support in the public is talked about as a “hotly debated issue”.
@6
If he tested positive, all that proves is that he smoked sometime in the last 6 weeks. It doesn’t prove he was high at the time.
@6 OMG! Marijuana use MIGHT have led to a fatal accident! If we only find 75,000 MORE of these marijuana can be shown to be AS BAD as a currently legal product (liquor). So…you’re saying right now that pot is 75,000 times SAFER? And that’s why it should be illegal? Er…what? Alcohol is orders of magnitude more damaging physically, leads to order of magnitude more deaths, vastly more violence. And lets not even compare cancer effects between marijuana and “legal” tobacco products. There simply is NO logical scientific reason for it to be illegal, only magical/superstitious reasons. None.
It’s not PERFECT (re: Rome) but THOUSANDS of times safer than selling bottles of vodka, kegs of beer, and cartoons of cigarettes. No question, no debate.
@13
How did you possibly conclude all this from the news story??
By reading it.
The article said that he “tested positive”. That means little more than what it means when someone tests positive in a pre-employment screening. It means that they have THC in their system. People can have THC in their system for weeks after using marijuana.
Second, pot does impair your driving in some ways, but making you drive faster is not one of them. So if this person was speeding, it’s unlikely (although not impossible) that he was under the influence of marijuana at the time.
Sounds like you are determined to defend the negative impact of pot at all turns Lee.
I’m not “defending” anything. I’m just pointing out facts. I’ve said – and I’ll continue to say – that marijuana can impair a driver. But that does not mean that the article you linked demonstrates what you think it does.
Gee, wasn’t it the week before Halloween that a drunk lady drover her car through a bunch of predestrians here in Seattle?
I guess we should go back to prohibition, huh?
@19
Good point. And strangely enough, that incident happened right in front of the Cannabis Defense Coalition office along 1st Ave – about 2 hours after the meeting with Jeanne Kohl-Welles and Nick Licata. When I got home and saw it on the news, I was worried that the folks who’d been run over were folks who’d attended our meeting, but they were concertgoers next door at Showbox SoDo.
My $.02: I strongly urge folks at Sensible WA to wait until 2012.
Cyn, your post shows that (as usual) you know nothing other than to do what your masters tell you to do – scare, smear, distort, and lie. Hate to break this to you, but messy wrecks like that are far more common in Italy than they anywhere else in Europe or North America. Why? Like Germans (and Americans, for that matter), Italians love driving fast. Unlike Germans though, Italians don’t drive all that sensibly, and their highway and traffic-enforcement infrastructures aren’t as good. Sadly, this is just another case of DWI (Driving While Italian). Whether dude was actively smoking while he was driving or hadn’t hit the bong in a month is irrelevant.