Prohibition as a tool of social stratification: The historical failure of moral legislation

“ Unfortunately, the perpetual discussion of home-brew receipts and hidden sources of supply has prevented a general realization that we are witnessing one of the most far-reaching legislative experiments of all time. What we ought to be talking about is the consequences of prohibition to health, poverty, crime, earning-power, and general happiness. ”

“ They know their own business. 'In every community,' said President Harding recently, 'men and women have had an opportunity to know what Prohibition means. They know that debts are more promptly paid, that men take home the wages that once were wasted in saloons, that families are better clothed and fed, and more money finds its way into the savings bank. In another generation I believe that liquor will have disappeared, not merely from our politics, but from our memories.'
VII
Great Britain led the world in the deliverance of humanity from the degradation of slavery ”

“ The great benefit which Prohibition has done to the poor and the working classes is reason enough for its continued existence. It is for the manufacturers, the professional class, the capitalists to give up gladly whatever small pleasure they may have derived from the use of alcohol, in order that John Jones, workingman, may have money in the bank and a happy home, instead of his Saturday night debauch. ”

“ To my way of thinking, the main result of the effort drastically to enforce Prohibition, aside from making us a nation of law-breakers, law-evaders, sneaks, bribers, boot-leggers, bigots, corruptionists and moral cowards, has been to transfer the burden of inebriety from one set of shoulders to another set of shoulders. Men who formerly drank to excess have sobered up, against their will, for lack of cash or lack of chance to buy hard liquor. ”

“ Altogether, we have here a case of one element of the population decreeing the mode of life of another element of whose circumstances and desires they have no understanding, and who are affected by the decree in a wholly different way from that in which they themselves are affected by it. Many other points might be made, further to emphasize the monstrosity of the Prohibition that has been imposed upon our country. Of these perhaps the most important one is the way in which the law operates so as to be effective against the poor, and comparatively impotent against the rich. ”

“ It is possible, for instance, that total abstinence for the working classes coupled with apparently unlimited supplies of liquor for their employers may have the double consequence of increasing the resentful desire of the former to wrest the control of wealth from those who are monopolizing a time-honoured source of pleasure, and of weakening the ability of the heavy-drinking sons of our captains of industry to stand up in the struggle against the sober brains of the labour leaders of the future. Prohibition may thus bring about a striking shift of economic power. ”

“ I say that when the rich do not like the law, they simply defy it. The proof of that statement is written on the front pages of our newspapers day by day. The rich are making no pretense of obeying the prohibition law; I have had drinks offered to me, in defiance of law, in the offices of leading senators and government officials. The big bootleggers today are eminent citizens, on terms of equality with bankers and judges and corporation attorneys ”

“ How profoundly the whole course of the Prohibition movement has been affected by the desire of the South to keep liquor away from the negroes, needs no elaboration; it would not be going far beyond the truth to say that the people of New York are being deprived of their right to the harmless enjoyment of wine and beer in order that the negroes of Alabama and Texas may not get beastly drunk on rotgut whiskey. ”

“ There’s not an American that doesn’t understand the culture and the understanding that Prohibition was a failure, and so we repeat it again like we repeated Iraq after we had the failure of Vietnam. When will we learn? When we learn that the issue of drugs is a public health issue. Addiction is a public health issue, not a criminal issue where we throw people in jail and criminalize them to no advancement to the people, and if there’s one group of people in this country that needs to face up to that problem, and we have to face up to it, and that is the African American community. ”

“ Lack of understanding and appreciation of the disease of narcotic drug addiction and its treatment by a large majority of the medical profession has fostered conditions which make it impossible to determine a rational procedure for treating and curing the addicted by the State at this time. ”

“ "I wasn't going to mention it, but I want you to understand why I have to do this."
"Jesus, Jolu, what?"
"I hate to say it, but you're white. I'm not. White people get caught with cocaine and do a little rehab time. Brown people get caught with crack and go to prison for twenty years. White people see cops on the street and feel safer. Brown people see cops on the street and wonder if they're about to get searched. The way the DHS is treating you? The law in this country has always been like that for us." ”

“ The real struggle will be a struggle not of the mind but of the spirit; it will be Socialism and regimentation against individualism and liberty. The cause of Prohibition has owed its rapid success in no small measure to the support of great capitalists and industrialists bent upon the absorbing object of productive efficiency ”

“ I have no desire to be pointed out as a person aiming to make himself conspicuously erratic by behaving differently from the run of his fellows. Since the advent of Prohibition nearly everybody I meet is drinking with an unbridled enthusiasm; and when not engaged in the act of drinking is discussing the latest and most approved methods of evading, circumventing and defying the Federal and State statutes against drinking. ”

“ But as I remarked just now, what can you do when you are encompassed about by the bottle-toting, sop-it-up-behind-the-door custom which has sprung up since Prohibition was slipped over on us by the Anti-Saloon League?
I confess that I have not the strength of character to swim, almost alone, against the social current. So I partake of the occasional snort and to that extent stand a self-admitted apologist for an offense which no true reductionist should commit. ”

“ There has never been a time when deliberate disregard of law was habitual among the classes which represent culture, achievement, and wealth-- the classes among whom respect for law is usually regarded as constant and instinctive. That such disregard now prevails is an assertion for which President Angell did not find it necessary to point to any evidence. It is universally admitted. Friends of Prohibition and enemies of Prohibition, at odds on everything else, are in entire agreement upon this. ”

“ Prohibition is a restraint of liberty so clearly unrelated to any primary need of the state, so palpably bearing on the most personal aspect of a man's own conduct, that it is impossible to acquiesce in it and retain a genuine and lively feeling of abhorrence for any other threatened invasion of the domain of liberty which can claim the justification of being intended for the benefit of the poor or unfortunate. ”

“ There is of course the existing class that does not care for drink and is afraid of its effects to the point of wishing to keep it away from those who do like drink. That class already flourishes in most communities, and so I do not place it among any two classes which are created by the prohibition. The two classes are as follows-the class that submits, and gradually develops priggishness and self-satisfaction at being in the majority, and the class that rebels, and gradually develops priggishness and self-satisfaction at being in the minority. ”

“ The ingrained idea that, because there is no king and they despise titles, the Americans are a free people is pathetically untrue; and you have only to watch the working of the Prohibition law to see the dangers of repressive legislation. There is a perpetual [205] interference with personal liberty over there that would not be tolerated in England for a week. ”

“ First of all, let it be clearly understood that the addiction which I shall discuss is limited strictly to opium and its derivatives; first, because my own experience is limited to this group and, second, because much that I shall have to say does not apply to all so-called habit-forming drugs to an equal extent, and to some of them not at all. Addiction as thus limited is as true a disease as any with which the human body is afflicted. ”

“ The constant use of narcotics produces a condition in the human body that many physicians of medical authority now recognize as a definite disease, which diseased condition absolutely requires a continued administration of narcotics to keep the body in normal function unless proper treatment and cure is provided.
“Withdrawal of the drug of addiction induces such fundamental physical disorganization and unbearable pain that addicts are driven to any extreme to obtain narcotic drugs and allay their suffering by self-administration. ”

“ Each addict requires, under the conditions of his daily life at a given time, to satisfy the demands of his physical addiction-disease mechanism, and to maintain him in narcotic drug balance, an amount of drug which can be estimated in terms of twenty-four hours and which I have called the amount of minimum daily need. The most important consideration in the administration of narcotic drug to a narcotic addict is to supply the amount of minimum daily need and maintain narcotic drug balance with the least inhibition of function. ”

“ After addiction-disease is once developed the addict loses whatever euphoric sensation he may possibly have experienced, and all that narcotic administration spells for him is relief from suffering. Without the drug of his addiction he endures intense physical suffering and misery. Without the drug of his addiction he cannot pursue a social, economic, or physically endurable existence. ”

“ Furthermore, the addict who is insufficiently supplied with the opiate of his addiction, turns in desperation to the use of things far more harmful to him than the drug of his addiction. This he does in the vain hope of obtaining mental and nervous and physical stimulus and support and some surcease of his misery. ”

“ Also the amount of drug taken by a patient in twenty-four hours is absolutely no adequate measure of the strength or stage of development of his addiction-disease. If he does not get enough opiate he cannot competently functionate; he cannot be adequately nourished; he cannot sufficiently eliminate. He is subjected to the influences of constant discomfort and nerve strain in the endurance of low-grade withdrawal manifestations. ”

“ The forcible reduction of dose without regard to the environmental, mental, economic, physical or other conditions of the average and individual addict, and absolutely ignoring the considerations of the mechanism and symptomatology of his addiction-disease is barbarous, harmful and futile. Enforced reduction of dose below the point of body need is not worth what it costs in nerve-strain, suffering, and physical inadequacy. The extent of addiction-disease and the degree of progress in its remedy cannot be measured in terms of amount of drug administered. ”

“ In other words, the most potent activity in the arrest of development of even the vicious and criminal aspects of the narcotic addiction situation lies in education. Laws and their enforcement in the control of the incorrigible and vicious will always be a necessity, but laws and their administration alone are not sufficient for the control of the many-sided addiction situation. ”

“ We shall save much public money, and personal effort and time, and shall save the narcotic addict much suffering and discouragement, and shall add much to human health, competency and happiness when we realize these facts as applied to addiction-disease, and proceed upon them in a spirit of broad humanity and of rational clinical study and remedy of obvious disease symptomatology. Narcotic drug addiction-disease is a definite, and in most cases arrestable disease. ”

“ Education is the great need of the hour. Until it is accomplished all else will fail. Until we all know what we are dealing with, how can we hope to successfully handle it? It is to be hoped that the time is not far distant when in every medical school and hospital will be taught in principle and practice, in class-room and clinic all that is known or will be known of the pathology, symptomatology, physical phenomena and rational therapeutics of narcotic addiction-disease. ”

“ They often lie when there is not the slightest excuse for it. The moral disintegration is often the first sign noticed.
After habitually using any of these drugs for a while the body demands the continuation and if the victim is deprived of his accustomed portion there will be a collapse with intense suffering. Every tortured nerve in the body seems to call out for the drug. The victim will do anything to get his drug. He will lie, steal, and he may even attack those who are caring for him. For the time being he is insane.
Many professional men use cocaine. ”

“ All this is based upon the accepted theory that drug addiction is a vicious habit requiring only a little fortitude and strength of will on the part of the wretched victim to rid himself of it, while the saddest feature of it all is that this canker, eating at the very heart of the nation itself, blighting and destroying the lives of many useful men and women, is not being reached. ”

“ One of the great hardships under which every addict suffers is the constant dread lest his affliction become known and he be branded a “morphine fiend,” a term which should be prohibited, or at least never used by an intelligent physician. What this exposure would mean to a man of standing in his community I need not explain. This risk he must always run, but it would be robbed of some of its terror if the nature of addiction were better understood. ”

“ It is ignorance also that has stamped the honest and innocent, worthy and intelligent, and often illustrious sufferer from narcotic addiction-disease with the attributes and characteristics of the inherently irresponsible or otherwise incapable of self-guidance and self-restraint. The ignorance of the facts of addiction-disease has taken from these people even their ordinary legal and public rights in any issue which involved the possible revelation of their addiction. ”

“ In great numbers they have realized our failure to appreciate their condition and to remedy it, and have after desperate trials of quacks, charlatans and exploited “cures,” finally accepted their slavery and by regulation of their drug and life, their addiction unsuspected, maintained a socially and economically normal existence. Some failing in this, perhaps broken and impoverished, their addiction recognized, have become social and economic derelicts and often public charges. ”

“ The problem of the care of the worthy and innocent addict in such a way as not to unnecessarily harm him nor deprive his family and society of his competent activity is just as important as the handling of the addict of the type of individual from whom society must be protected. The large numbers of worthy and valued citizens who are individually and personally social and economic assets and who are sufferers from addiction-disease constitute a very important consideration in the narcotic problem. ”

“ That it can be truthfully applied to some people who have developed addiction-disease is unquestioned, but that it fails to take into consideration a much larger number who are not irresponsible panderers to morbid habit, nor bereft of will-power, honor and decency, nor a menace to themselves or to society, but are honest and upright members of society and economic assets in the community, accounts in large part for the failure of laws and their administration to remedy the narcotic drug situation. ”

“ Despite the years of effort that have been devoted to handling the narcotic addict on the basis of inferiority and neurotic tendencies, and of weakness of will and perverted appetite—in spite of exhortation, investigation, law-making and criminal prosecution—in spite of the various specific and special cures and treatments—narcotic addiction has increased and spread in our country until it has become a recognized menace calling forth stringent legislation and desperate attempts at administrative and police control. ”

“ Naturally, with such ministers, the mental effort required for ethical definition is not to be found and taboo luxuriates. “Drink” to these people means whisky in rowdy dives. In the first decade of the twentieth century the Southern States under their new masters began to go Prohibition.
Southerners, anxious to avoid the reproach of intolerance, will sometimes say that the desire to keep liquor from the negroes was the chief motive for Prohibition. Liquor, they will say, inflamed the negro’s passions and predisposed him to attempt rape upon white women. ”

“ In a prison which is controlled by white people and in which large numbers of black inmates are confined, opportunities for racial discrimination against the blacks exist in a number of principal fields, namely: inmate classification, including promotions to a higher class or demotions to a lower class, job assignments, disciplinary proceedings, and punishments imposed for infractions of prison rules. ”

“ However, when one approaches such areas as prison discipline, alleged brutality practiced upon inmates, inmate classifications, and job assignments, racial consists of inmate populations and prison staffs cannot be overlooked, nor can there be overlooked the effect that racial attitudes and prejudices may have, or be alleged to have, on relationships between inmates and between inmates and prison officers and employees. ”