The Parable of Prohibition

[father william]

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[Ayay]

The end of a prohibition is the beginning of a tax regime. The new approved drug lords will say that 100%+ tax is for our own good.

[anuran]

Prohibition was about a lot of things. Some of it was the political power of the Church. Some of it was racism. Some of it was women who couldn't speak up about domestic violence but could get support to put down the booze which fueled it. Some of it was Party politics. After a while it was the self-perpetuating law enforcement machine and the vested interests of the Dry politicians and media outlets.

It certainly wasn't about taxes. We had a war over liquor taxes back in 1791. George Washington put down the Whiskey Boys, and the excise has been in place ever since even when it only applied to exported and medicinal booze. After Prohibition there were taxes on alcohol. There will always be taxes on alcohol that is sold to the public.

The two really fascinating things are how that first War on Drugs spawned our current mess and the cold-blooded killing of tens of thousands of Americans in the name of Prohibition.

With the end of Prohibition two wealthy, heavily armed, deeply entrenched, bitter rivals needed a new generation of illegal drugs. The Mob and the Prohibition Agents were both in danger of having to find honest work. Fortunately for them the Marihuana Tax Act came along in 1937. And later the "War on Drugs" made common weeds more precious than gold, destroyed most of our civil liberties and gave us the highest incarceration rate in the world. 6% of the world's population. 25% of its prisoners.

During Prohibition we had what is referred to as The Chemist's War. Alcohol consumption went up during the days of the Volstead Act. And a lot of it was horrible stuff like Smoke. One of the reasons it was so terrible was the concerted campaign on the part of the Prohibitionists to make alcohol not merely undrinkable but actually deadly. Benzene, kerosene, mercury salts, methanol and more were added to industrial alcohol to kill anyone who wanted to drink. "Dry" newspapers hailed the deaths of the scofflaws. Deborah Blum writes about it in her fascinating (gruesome) The Poisoner's Handbook: Murder and the Birth of Forensic Medicine in Jazz Age New York

[Ayay]

If you do not drink, smoke, use petroleum, buy sex, gamble, or work productively, then you are a tax avoider here in godzone cuntry. They pay us to do it for a vote, to avoid a revolution, an it all comes back in taxes to be used for furtherin this end.

Mafia is old-hat, passe. The new-improved version is happening right now.