Did FDR Fuck Up By Ending Prohibition?

but other wise -- FDR did the right thing.

Thanks for the catch - I corrected it.

That should count for something.













It was a good thing, and it's time for the decriminalization of drugs.

An absurd remnant of our puritanical victorian sociology.

As are the laws against drugs - marijuana especially.

...and various sexual behaviors.

...and abortion.

...and gay marriage.

The list could go on but I tire of the nonsense.

Based on your avatar?

Grew up in western NY State.

I moved here in the 1980s from Ithaca. In Newton now.

Very civilized state.

I grew up a little farther west in a suburb of Rochester - Penfield. But - I had a cousin who lived in Ithica for years. He just retired to Florida.

I have to admit to not having spent a lot of time in Newton but I do hear it's nice. However - I used to go to a tea shop in Newtonville.

I live in Milford. Been here about 12 years or so.

How the hell can someone sane go to a cry in your beer AA meeting? Personally I drank for years and about 4 or 5 years ago I quit. I decided I didn't want to do it anymore and once I actually set the bottle down I went though a couple days of high anxiety but that was all. I'm around people who drink often but that doesn't make me want to have a drink, makes me not want too actually. Now I can see how alcohol changes the personality of anyone I've been around when they are drinking. The more the drink the more the change.

Anyways no AA for me

I realize I'm a little off topic with this

I've had the good luck to study both Jewish and Hindu theology at different times in my life. In both, I learned that (almost) everyone wants to find God, but different people need to do it in different ways. For some, it's through faith and worship. For some, it's through study. For some, it's through physical activity. And so forth.

Same with becoming substance-independent, perhaps?

I guess I was lucky that I didn't have a lot of problems with it.
Stopping the puffing of the weed has a totally different grip on me though. I'm having a time with it but I can see that the day is coming soon where I'll conquer that too. Its starting to make me paranoid for some reason and I don't like that feeling.

Since the rise of hybrid strains grown to emphasize the THC cannabinoid at the expense of CBD cannabinoid, some people report feelings of paranoia because the THC percentage is too much for a particular person's body chemistry.

I definitely inhaled when I was younger, tho not to the extent that I smoked every day or anything like that. It was most definitely always around, however, and I could smoke anytime I wanted. I stopped weed "cold turkey" and had no physiological reaction at all, or even a psychological reaction. It just wasn't part of my life anymore because I wasn't around others who smoked, either, after a move. afaik, cannabis is not physiologically habit-forming, but anything that gives pleasure can be psychologically habit forming.

To break any habit, I've read it's helpful to put yourself in a situation that excludes the everyday triggers that remind you of doing something. Even better - substitute another rewarding activity.

the woman in this video is sort of... like a normal person, I suppose. but the video is interesting b/c it does demonstrate a problem with the loss of CBD to mitigate some of the possible negative responses to THC without it. Both CBD and THC have health-positive attributes, tho. The emphasis on THC, spurred by Reagan-era war on drugs tactics, seems to be another way that prohibition has potential negative effects, however.

https://

Not everyone has the same amount of will power tho. My uncle really needed AA. I never liked how alcohol changed my friends so always avoided it. Of course seeing what it did to many of my relatives was also a deterrent.

I don't care if I ever have a drink. Have never had a problem with having alcohol around...I have some great Belgian beer in my refridge that's been there for years...I keep it around for friends who show up and I'll have one if they want one, but don't care that it's there, otherwise.

however, chocolate is another issue entirely...

Alcohol is a problem for some people. The founder of AA, interestingly, found his problem with alcohol was most effectively dealt with when he used LSD. This is something the "official" literature of AA doesn't like to mention, but that's the reality. Others have also found that LSD or other hallucinogenics, in a controlled setting, have helped alcoholics "reset" their brain to help them deal with the cravings of addiction. (I wonder if it also works for chocolate...)

http://www.nature.com/news/lsd-helps-to-treat-alcoholism-1.10200

Sometimes I think I'm still trying to find my way home from my last trip.


heres a link to something close to that
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-17666589

and the attitude that this is not something to be taken flippantly. recreational use is so very different than medicinal use, it seems to me.

I read an article about ibogaine here on DU a few days ago.

It's really a shame that some drugs and plants still retain the stigma of the "rebellion" of the 1960s. Even more shameful that our govt. retains its attitude about these same things. It's almost impossible to penetrate the layers of prejudice about some things.

...and let's not even get started on AA's oxymoronic 10th Tradition...

That said, AA helps A LOT of people waaaaaaaaaay more than any prohibition ever could.

The President doesn't have a formal say in amendments to the Constitution.

He ran on a platform of repealing Prohibition, among other things.

(Remember when Presidents were driving forces!)

The entire Democratic Party was in opposition to Prohibition at the time. The GOP was behind the curve, and they paid dearly for that position.

FDR got the nomination because of support from the wets, many of whom were northern German and Irish immigrants. The wets were opposed by religious white southerners, who voted for Democrats at the time because Republicans were still the party of Lincoln, and women who didn't want their husbands going out to bars to drink up the rent money.

The triumph of the "wets" over the "drys" was part of the beginning of a re-alignment of the Democratic Party that was completed with the Civil Rights Act during Johnson's term. FDR caught flack from Southern Democrats because his New Deal programs were applied to both whites and blacks. Southern Democrats at the time didn't like it that blacks weren't discriminated against. IOW, the current Southern Republican is the heir of the Southern Democrat at the time of FDR.



Fiorello LaGuardia was an important figure at the time - he opposed alcohol prohibition and funded a study on marijuana that showed prohibition of that substance was based upon nothing but lies. He was also part of the realignment in the Democratic Party at the time. LaGuardia challenged alcohol prohibition at the time by making a film of himself drinking beer... the equivalent today would be if a mayor did a bong hit on tv.

http://www.druglibrary.org/schaffer/library/studies/lag/lagmenu.htm

FDR was inaugurated on March 4, 1933. On March 13 he called for the repeal of prohibition. He signed the Harrison-Cullen Act on March 23 - legalizing alcoholic beer and then noted, " I think this would be a good time for a beer."

He dealt with the banking crisis in his first week, CALLED FOR THE REPEAL OF PROHIBITION IN HIS SECOND WEEK, and went on to work out the New Deal with huge public support.

The repeal of prohibition came about on Dec. 5th - Congress did that, but FDR claimed full credit for the same. He popularity increased with the repeal of prohibition.



He started as a "dry" but moved to a "wet" in order to gain the nomination from the Democratic Party. Repeal of prohibition was an economic spur.

The number of "wets" elected to office with FDR increased as well.

the Democratic Party was over Prohibition.

FDR was right. In high school..... Long ago we were taught that prohibition led to the rise of the mafia, corruption in every level of the government and justice system, violence, crime and addiction. That the same people who had once backed prohibition changed their minds and joined forces with those who wanted to end prohibition. One of the arguments against prohibition was that legalization would mean the profits from alcohol could be taxed and that part of those taxes would be used to help addicts recover. And that those taxes would further help the struggling economy.
The war on drugs has had the same effect as prohibition on our nation and it is long past time to end it.

Alchohol has been around for centuries.

The puritanical perspective put up the roadblock.

Do we allow government to tell us how to live our lives and what
to eat and drink (what we put into our bodies)?

Watch Sylvester Stalone and Westley Snipes in Demolition Man (1993) to see
what a society is like when the government bans everything that is pleasurable.

Prohibiting human nature is always a fail...

prohibition led to 'normalizing' certain ideas and practices regarding drinking. Before prohibition 'good' women did not go into bars and it was considered bad form for men to be drunk in public.

Though I'm certainly not arguing that women should be kept our of pubs (one of my favorite places ) or that men didn't get drunk before prohibition, the fact that speakeasies encouraged these changes in behavior have been used to argue that the amendment may have added to the problem it was trying to solve.

for 50 year sentences because they deal drugs? That's REALLY as grave of an offense as raping a woman or a child or murder.

Addiction is it's own prison, but when you start talking about murdering people - ENDING THEIR LIVES or their innocence - that's a far more critical problem than someone getting fucked up after a long day. You will never convince me otherwise. That's only ideology talking, not sanity.

and problems related to alcohol abuse.

It may have even made the use of alcohol more appealing to young people and compounded the problem.

Instead of getting young people introduced responsibly to alcohol we take the tack that no one is ready to handle alcohol until the second they turn 21. As a result alcohol becomes a forbidden fruit to young people.

That took an Amendment to the Constitution.

worst decision, out of many, that FDR ever made

*wink*

enacted part of the fallout became the Depression.

My comment is that choice is primary. Trying to keep people from having choice always leads to some form of social mutation.

I always have to scratch my head in amazement when thinking that somewhere suicide is illegal.

Prohibition was repealed by the 21st amendment.

http://www.archives.gov/federal-register/constitution/

^snip^


The Constitution provides that an amendment may be proposed either by the Congress with a two-thirds majority vote in both the House of Representatives and the Senate or by a constitutional convention called for by two-thirds of the State legislatures. None of the 27 amendments to the Constitution have been proposed by constitutional convention. The Congress proposes an amendment in the form of a joint resolution. Since the President does not have a constitutional role in the amendment process, the joint resolution does not go to the White House for signature or approval. The original document is forwarded directly to NARA's Office of the Federal Register (OFR) for processing and publication. The OFR adds legislative history notes to the joint resolution and publishes it in slip law format. The OFR also assembles an information package for the States which includes formal "red-line" copies of the joint resolution, copies of the joint resolution in slip law format, and the statutory procedure for ratification under 1 U.S.C. 106b.




Just exactly how did FDR repeal prohibition?

He was a driving force in causing a coattails effect in the 1932 election, which brought many anti-Prohibition congresspersons into a position where they could pass the 21st. Also, he was able to sign the law that changed the Volstead Act, which raised the allowable amount of alcohol in a drink from the pathetic 0.5% to a barely acceptable 3.2%, which made beer possible. After that, it would have been silly to prohibit stronger beverages, and it was his leadership that deserves to be credited with eliminating this sad example of reich-wing social engineering.

rather than being dragged kicking and screaming?

FDR ran on a platform that included working to repeal Prohibition. Then he actually did it!

That Congress was going to do all the things FDR ran on, on their own, and since FDR was in office he just got to take credit for it? ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING ME?

and ratification by 3/4 of the states that blaming it on the one man who has no Constitutional role in the process is overreaching.

It seems clear that the country wanted it repealed and saying that one man did it isn't a valid statement.

As opposed to what we have now which is the "he did the best he could" which, conveniently enough, happened to be the DLC/third way/New "Dem"/ whatever RW garbage promoted as 'progressive' and 'liberal'.

Prohibition was one of the chief causes of lawlessness in the Roaring Twenties. The War on Drugs is one of the chief causes of lawlessness for all of my lifetime.

Hauling illegal whiskey from Canada would be a great way to make a fortune.

Drugs is not working.

Just a simple story will show what I mean: When my husband and I moved into a house in small town America my father came to visit. He looked rather puzzled. Then he took a walk to look the neighborhood over. Came back laughing and went to look at the bathtub. The house i was living in belonged to the local bootlegger. The dance hall was just down the block on the same alley. Dad and his bunch used to walk down that alley to buy the booze.

FDR simply ended a program that did not work. And as we all know it opened the field for more jobs, taxation of the product and regulation of production. Prior to that much of it was made at home with not oversite of methods and the state did not get to tax it. Alcoholism existed long before that. We also would just have continued to make home brew. Alcoholism would nto have gone away.

and let states work out law concerning this substance.

it would be a great thing to spur the economies of those states who are already on the way to legalization, would stop wasting taypayer dollars in yet another failed attempt at prohibition, and would give him some cred with both liberals and libertarians.

We've already reached the tipping point on this issue, based upon poll after poll.

Those who oppose such actions are not going to vote for him anyway. His continued insistence that the drug war is valid is a preposterous stance. No one who studies this issue believes this unless they are paid to do so.

Didn't have the M$M as a secret pillar of government to hide behind. The tools back then were crude and no one had any mass government-corporate programing tool, unlike today.

If the M$M and the MIC were well established back in those days and I will add the DHS we would not be touching a drop of the stuff to this day.

Besides, Hoover was far too busy hunting down commies and scowled at anyone that mentioned there was such a thing as a national syndicate of criminals. Which now is an institution today known as prison.

No, prohibition doesn't work.

It didn't work for booze, it doesn't work for drugs.

The answer is obvious. Interesting that some of the institutions and practices make demon rum - demon rum never came back after 1934 - one being the brewery owned bar system.

http://www.pbs.org/kenburns/prohibition/

I was hooked from the opening:

"By 1830, the average American over 15 years old consumed nearly seven gallons of pure alcohol a year – three times as much as we drink today – and alcohol abuse (primarily by men) was wreaking havoc on the lives of many, particularly in an age when women had few legal rights and were utterly dependent on their husbands for sustenance and support."

I love Burns. I've seen his Civil War series a couple of times.

and SO many unholy alliances were formed. Something that really stuck with me was Al Smith (a "wet" Irish-Catholic Democrat) being met by burning crosses while campaigning in the Midwest. That's just one of MANY examples of how crazed this country was over Prohibition. Hell, even Winston Churchill weighed in that it was "an affront to the whole history of mankind."

Definitely some of the best television I've ever watched.

I have it on DVD, and pop it in every now and then. And I loved the way that it dealt with the more humorous aspects of Prohibition: Near beer and malt extract were both legal and could easily be combined to make illegal 2% beer; bricks of frozen grape concentrate with labels warning the purchaser not to add water to the product and leave it in a dark place or it would ferment; the Vassar-educated daughter of a Congregational minister writing reviews of speakeasies in Manhattan for the "New Yorker" under the pen name "Lipstick" -- the series did have its humorous side. But the serious side is the disastrous effects of Prohibition eventually forced its repeal.

First, a major impetus behind Prohibition was making a point of who was in charge: dry "real (Potestant) Americans" vs "wet" immigrants, Catholics and Jews. Teabaggers would have been right at home amongst the drys.

Second, you might as well blame the Prohibitionists for the problems you discuss, because they didn't permit a nuanced view of problem drinking. Even afterward, that "anyone complaining about booze is just another dry killjoy" attitude lasted for decades. It would have, FDR or not.

"The ASL, under the shrewd and ruthless leadership of Wayne Wheeler, became the most successful single issue lobbying organization in American history, willing to form alliances with any and all constituencies that shared its sole goal: a constitutional amendment that would ban the manufacture, sale and transportation of alcohol. They united with Democrats and Republicans, Progressives, Populists, and suffragists, the Ku Klux Klan and the NAACP, the International Workers of the World, and many of America's most powerful industrialists including Henry Ford, John D. Rockefeller, Jr., and Andrew Carnegie – all of whom lent support to the ASL's increasingly effective campaign."

http://www.pbs.org/kenburns/prohibition/roots-of-prohibition/

The players involved in this are fascinating. And many of those not-so-dry Protestants were running moonshine...

They only kept Prohibition for 14 years, which is short compared with our current time frames for wars on this and that.

IIRC, at the end of Prohibition they released people convicted under the Volstead Act. This amounted to only 13,200 inmates, which woud be trivial compared with war on drugs incarcerations.

which keeps production, trade and consumption out of the hands of mob-cartels and pirates. What becomes illegal goes on the black market, what is not regulated has a potential to become poisonous, and a risk to the peace and safety of innocent people.

Regulation is the adult solution to what will always be present in society. Drug abuse should be in the hands of the healthcare and social services departments. This would free up law enforcement to focus all their attention on big time criminals--the ones who can do the MOST damage to whole countries and whole ecosystems.

Regulation (by publicly elected officials) assumes and faces the FACT that there is INHERENT CORRUPTION in government and the business sector--and the only way to have ANY public control over it is to LEGALIZE and REGULATE to keep all the dealings done in the light of day. Regulation only reduces corruption--but it prevents it from taking a stronghold because it does not pretend that it cannot exist in their own ranks. They are under the same scrutiny as the general public--true equality under the law.

The War on Drugs (and everything) makes crooked institutions and cartels richer every day, they avoid scrutiny by taking themselves out of the equation. They put on the white hat and assume the authority to do whatever they want--and they can now since they have no oversight, which is supposed to be US.

Regulators too can become corrupt--but this is the ONLY check and balance that gives the PEOPLE any kind of voice in the matter--and the tools in which to kick out corruption when we see it.

We have to free up our election process first, and the campaigns should not run on corporate money.

Answers here: http://www.democraticunderground.com/1002566181#post23

The only thing prohibition did/does is drive the booze/drugs underground and let the criminal element easily get involved.

Drugs have been around since forever. Ancient civilizations smoked/ate hallucinogenic plants, etc. Caffeine is a drug, and humans have been ingesting that for centuries. Drugs will always be around. They don't present a problem for most people. I think it's better when the criminal element is not involved. They "push," threaten, murder, beat up, and blackmail people.

Prohibition gave us Al Capone, bootlegging, lot's of murders, etc. Just like the drug war today. Until we elected Reagan, Prohibition was the worst mistake this nation ever made.

Is that just hyperbole for effect or something? I can think of a number of things much worse than Prohibition perpetrated by this country prior to the Reagan Administration.

"Last Call: The Rise and Fall of Prohibition". Fascinating.

It was really interesting to learn that prohibition was a progressive position at the time and went hand in hand with the women's suffrage movement.

Asides from some REALLY harmful stuff that people probably should never have access to I don't think it's the Government's job to tell me what I can and can't put into my body.

And besides I like to booze it up from time to time.

I don't know of anyone besides a handful of right wing fundamentalists who feel this way.

Shit, I'm going to go mix a vodka drink right now just because of this.