Prohibition vs. Regulation

I just finished watching the three-part PBS series Prohibition by Ken Burns and Lynn Novick. Prohibition in the United States officially began with the Volstead Act in 1919 and ended with its repeal in 1933 during the Great Depression. The images of the period captured in the PBS documentary were nostalgic, compelling and fresh (many I had never seen before). The video above gives a preview of the series.

The timing of the series, right after the current Great Recession, makes the analogy pretty clearly. One of the interesting points made at the end of Episode 3, made by Daniel Okrent (Last Call: The Rise and Fall of Prohibition), was that under Prohibition it was easier for anyone to get a drink then after Prohibition when drinking was regulated--an interesting history lesson in the importance and benefits of regulation.

Another interesting point made by historian Michael Lerner involved the unintended consequences of heavy-handed legislation. Prohibition was the "grade school, college and graduate school" of organized crime in the US, the effects of which remained long after Prohibition had been repealed.

I also enjoyed to comments of Catherine Gilbert Murdock (Domesticating Drink): "One could argue that it was not simply drink that was domesticated in this decade but men as well" (p. 7).