Pubdate: Sun, 10 Dec 2006
Source: St. Petersburg Times (FL)
Copyright: 2006 St. Petersburg Times
Contact: http://www.sptimes.com/letters/
Website: http://www.sptimes.com/home.shtml
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/419
Referenced: http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v06/n1644/a03.html
Author: Priscilla M. Chase

PROHIBITION'S PROBLEMS

Remember Alcohol Dec. 3, Letter

Life with legalized drugs is bad, but life with prohibition is even worse.

The writer could have made his case even stronger by reminding us 
that national prohibition of alcohol was accompanied by reduced death 
rates from alcoholism and cirrhosis of the liver (See Dr. Clark 
Warburton's 1932 book The Economic Results of Prohibition).

So what were Americans thinking when they ended national Prohibition? 
Consider this, from the 1930 resolution of the Women's Organization 
for National Prohibition Reform: "... National Prohibition, wrong in 
principle, has been equally disastrous in consequences in the 
hypocrisy, the corruption, the tragic loss of life and the appalling 
increase of crime which have attended the abortive attempt to enforce 
it; in the shocking effect it has had upon the youth of the nation; 
in the impairment of constitutional guarantees of individual rights; 
in the weakening of the sense of solidarity between the citizen and 
the government, which is the only sure basis of a country's strength."

Those women knew life was better and safer with legal alcohol than 
life with illegal alcohol because they'd lived it both ways. They 
learned that driving a popular drug underground causes more societal 
damage than it prevents.

Priscilla M. Chase, Palm Harbor
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