Well, the gov may have succeeded in making farmers rich, but doubt the program achieved its aim of alleviating a 'food shortage'. Ultimately, I'd bet even farmers were hurt, if not financially, morally.
And ya, the drug debate is often characterized as a black and white issue, when cultural differences also play a large roll. Also, in muslim countries they have raised the threshold of punishment (death in some cases) so high as to make risking bootlegging etc.. unnacceptable. It is a complex issue, but I still think legalization is the answer.
Do you have any info/link on how drinking rates went down during prohbition? Never heard that one, or even knew it was measured. The 'failure' of prohibition mentioned in the article was referring to the rise of organized crime and public corruption resulting from prohbitionist attempts.
>>Well, the gov may have succeeded in making farmers rich, but doubt the program achieved its aim of alleviating a 'food shortage' Oh, it absolutely did. It created huge surpluses - a problem now largely ameliorated by other programmes. There were grain mountains, wine lakes, milk lakes, etc. This was surplus food which the government bought up and put into storage. No shortages at all. Of course, that didn't mean that no-one was going hungry. Government intervention in the market put the prices up enormously. For some products prices were double the market rate. So some individuals may have been short of food, but Europe as a whole had plenty. The surpluses were often used for 'third world aid'. In plain English that means they were dumped on the market in developing countries free, or virtually free, bankrupting local farmers and in some cases causing the land to fall out of cultivation altogether. On balance, it was, and remains, an even more offensive and damaging policy than America's own agricultural 'protection'. Click
here for more on agricultural protection rackets.