What if prohibition continued to the present day?

[West234]

Prohibition has always been one of the weirdest periods of history to me. So I was wondering what would have happened if prohibition never ended and continued to the present day?
Of course, there are some problems with this the most obvious being that prohibition was a complete disaster for the United States in every way and quickly grew to be hated by massive portions of the American public. If we want prohibition to stay around I think firstly the government needs to take a more proactive role in actually enforcing the law and preventing the rise of at least the majority of the major crime spike associated with Prohibition. You also might need a continuous faction in America that was demonizing Alcohol and kind of like what happened with making it more stigmatized like many drugs are in America nowadays.

 

[Analytical Engine]

In parts of the US, it does still continue.

Dry county - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

 

[Hugh Third of Five]

In parts of the US, it does still continue.

Dry county - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

Dry counties don't have prohibition. Alcohol is still legal there, even though selling it is not. People just go over to the nearest wet county, buy booze there, and come back. There's no law against buying beer, wine, or spirits in a wet county and taking it back to a dry one.

Prohibition involved federal agents going around destroying any liquor they could find.

 

[The Tai-Pan]

Dry counties don't have prohibition. Alcohol is still legal there, even though selling it is not. People just go over to the nearest wet county, buy booze there, and come back. There's no law against buying beer, wine, or spirits in a wet county and taking it back to a dry one.

Prohibition involved federal agents going around destroying any liquor they could find.

It was legal to have booze and drink it during Prohibition.

 

[Hugh Third of Five]

It was legal to have booze and drink it during Prohibition.

Only if you could show you'd acquired it before Prohibition went into effect. It was absolutely illegal to just cross over into Canada or Mexico, buy booze, and bring it back across the border.

 

[The Tai-Pan]

Only if you could show you'd acquired it before Prohibition went into effect. It was absolutely illegal to just cross over into Canada or Mexico, buy booze, and bring it back across the border.

What? I was wrong?...impossible.

'Section 1. After one year from the ratification of this article the manufacture, sale, or transportation of intoxicating liquors within, the importation thereof into, or the exportation thereof from the United States and all the territory subject to the jurisdiction thereof for beverage purposes is hereby prohibited.

Section 2. The Congress and the several States shall have concurrent power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.

Section 3. This article shall be inoperative unless it shall have been ratified as an amendment to the Constitution by the legislatures of the several States, as provided in the Constitution, within seven years from the date of the submission hereof to the States by the Congress.'

I suppose you are correct. I thought the wording was slightly looser but of course, it isn't. There would be no other avenue....although I wonder, what if you just found a big trove of it? Like you bought a house and it had a bunch of liquor in it?

 

[JanWellem]

If, as invisioned by many of its' original supporters, prohibition would've made only hard liquor illegal while not being extended to wine and beer it could very well have survived. It was its' implementation in form of the Volstead Act extending prohibition to any beverage containing more than 0.5% alcohol, which made it increasingly unpopular among the general population.

 

[Analytical Engine]

There were a bunch of exemptions under Prohibition - communion wine, medical alcohol* etc.

Prohibition pushed the alcohol trade into the hands of organised criminals. That would have continued as long as prohibition continued.


*yes, people used to be prescribed alcohol by their doctor

 

[black_0]

An interesting question is if continuous prohibition of alcohol would stop or at least slow the spread of other illegal intoxicants in USA.

Also, although I doubt very plausible of such scenario (considering the attitudes from which the prohibition movement arose) it would be interesting to have an ATL USA in which alcohol is illegal but you can buy weed or shrooms in every other store.

 

[Booster Gold]

If Alcohol was still the narcotic de'jure, and prohibition spread (there were temperance movements all over northern Europe and Canada) it might save some developing countries like Colombia from the devastation of the coca trade.

Another interesting question that comes from my reasearch into this - would lasting prohibition in America contribute to lasting prohibition in Canada?

 

[JanWellem]

There were a bunch of exemptions under Prohibition - communion wine, medical alcohol* etc.

Prohibition pushed the alcohol trade into the hands of organised criminals. That would have continued as long as prohibition continued.


*yes, people used to be prescribed alcohol by their doctor

Even today most liquid pharmaceuticals contain alcohol. Just look up the ingredient lists of your cough-relief.

 

[brunohusker]

Basically you’d have to convince the drys that Prohibition could work. By 1933 most felt it failed and that it was better to just personally abstain. Granted maybe a movement to keep hard liquor banned, or at least higher alcohol content liquor banned might be a compromise. Plus many states still banned it. Oklahoma did until the 50s and Kansas was quite strict with their laws until the 80s, and interestingly Missouri next door still has very lax liquor laws.

So maybe we see beer and wine made okay in an amendment but not hard liquor above a certain content. Basically the really hard stuff is banned but in effect most people don’t want that. However, it still is trafficked and organized crime continues to profit off it until full repeal is enacted in the 60s.

 

[DougM]

In real timeline Prohibition is the single biggest cause of modern organized crime as it created the large powerful wealthy organizations that over the years evolved into what we have now. So a lot of the drug issues we have were in part a result of these large organizations with a lot of power and wealth that suddenly needed a new source of income when prohibition ended so they moved into Drugs.
So if you extend prohibition you probably slow the drug trade so that it is a few years more before the organizations get into it as big as they did. But these organizations will still be selling booze so they will be
anger more powerful and have even more money then they did.
This is not going to end well.

 

[PolishMagnet]

yes, people used to be prescribed alcohol by their doctor

I suppose I self-medicate 🤣

On a more serious note, I can't imagine it would hold out forever. It would at most last 40 years, something like marijuana under the war on drugs

 

[Anarch King of Dipsodes]

Even today most liquid pharmaceuticals contain alcohol. Just look up the ingredient lists of your cough-relief.

But during Prohibition, doctors could and "prescribe" whisky, gin, rum, etc. "Antiques Roadshow" showed a Prohibition-era doctor's case which held numerous small bottles of brand-name liquor.

 

[The Ranger]

You spelt it as probation. Which certainly does continue. So it sounds like something from a timeline where all probation, not just federal probation, was abolished, leading to much longer prison sentences.

 

[Mad Bad Rabbit]

Even today most liquid pharmaceuticals contain alcohol. Just look up the ingredient lists of your cough-relief.

A lot of medicines are not soluble in water and have to be dissolved in ethanol, other solvents being too toxic

[ looking at you, diethylene glycol from the goddamn Elixir Sulfanilamide tragedy ]

 

[jsb]

If Alcohol was still the narcotic de'jure, and prohibition spread (there were temperance movements all over northern Europe and Canada) it might save some developing countries like Colombia from the devastation of the coca trade.

Is Alcohol not still by far the most used narcotic in OTL? Why would anything that encouraged more organized crime in the rest of Northern Europe and Canada, like Alcohol prohibition did in the US, not just lead to a larger coca trade?

 

[Booster Gold]

Is Alcohol not still by far the most used narcotic in OTL? Why would anything that encouraged more organized crime in the rest of Northern Europe and Canada, like Alcohol prohibition did in the US, not just lead to a larger coca trade?

Because the mob would have a hell of a time controlling both and what they couldn't control they would squeeze out. There's a reason people like Pablo Escobar never branched out into the heroin trade, for example, and it wasn't lack of resources

 

[EWHM]

I think you've got a good chance of serious unrest during the Depression if Prohibition continues. An even better chance if the US tries getting into WW2 under Prohibition.