Over the years, I have been something of a fan of Ken Burns and his many historical documentaries. His work is extremely important, as most people don’t have the time or the interest to study history as intently as myself. “Those who don’t know history are doomed to repeat it” and “history is prologue” are words I take very seriously. I actually view the study of history as a kind of study of macro psychology, where wonderful amounts of data are available to explain how human beings will act over time in certain situations.
Regular readers of this blog may recall that I have occasionally gotten up on my e-soapbox and called for the legalization of controlled substances. More than once I have pointed out that the illegality of drugs like cocaine and marijuana constitute a contemporary form of Prohibition, with all its many unintended ill effects. So when the Ken Burns series on Prohibition came out, I was curious to know how he would address that historical parallel. Sad to say, I was disappointed.
I just watched the final installment in the series, and I’m going from memory here, but basically the narrator said that “many groups have attempted to impose their version of morality by passing constitutional amendments, but all attempts to do so have failed, in part because of the memory of Prohibition.”
This stuck me as downright odd, if not, well . . . incorrect. What about the “prohibition” of other drugs? Sure, it’s not prohibited by a constitutional amendment, but that’s a pretty fine distinction.
Regardless of how the law got passed, Prohibition was about the illegality of one specific drug, i.e., alcohol. Ultimately, the law did little to deal with the disease of alcoholism, it did not prevent anyone who wanted a drink from getting one, it turned many average citizens into lawbreakers, and as its price skyrocketed, so did the power of the criminals who profited from selling it. In my view, the “prohibition” of other popular drugs are doing the very same thing to us as we speak.
I was very hopeful that this series on 1920’s Prohibition would bring this obvious parallel to light. I was saddened and disappointed when it was not even mentioned.
The Prohibition of cocaine and marijuana has led to large areas of Mexico and other countries being totally under control of criminal organizations. Thousands of people, including many innocent bystanders and public officials, have been murdered. The “war on drugs” has cost billions. We have over 2 million fellow citizens incarcerated in the United States, at a cost of something like $30,000 a year per inmate, and the vast majority of those imprisoned people are there, one way or another, due to issues of drugs (typically doing crime to support the purchase of the drugs to which they are addicted). Huge sums of money flow out of the country daily, and all this commerce is completely tax free.
This is, in my view, “modern day prohibition.” The parallels seem rather obvious to me, and so I am truly amazed that they were glossed over, or maybe even denied, by America’s de facto top historian.
© Justin Locke
