Re:100 years ago, prohibition went into effect
by scarface74 on Thursday January 02, 2020 @11:29AM
(#21936749)
Of course both alcohol and drug abuse are bad. But anytime the government is given more power, it’s always applied unevenly to poor and minorities.
As much as some people love their guns for instance, the NRA and conservative politicians like Reagan were all for gun control when minorities were “exercising their rights”.
When you look at it closely a lot of these laws (which have roots in old religious law) do have a kind of hook into "public safety." You can - through the lens of people without the technical capability to mitigate them - understand how the causality of certain acts were reflected in the creation of the laws.
The argument that was made about alcohol was that it had a systemic, cascading effect on society. I think it's a fair argument at scope. Rampant alcoholism certainly can lead to a lot of larger societal problems.
What prohibition proved, though, was that sometimes the cure is worse than the disease.