Maybe not, but it gave us honey fitz and his besotten killer son teddy and allowed him to buy the Presidency for his other drug-addled son, John (who muddled through pretty well until his untimely demise).
And we all have to admit to the comedy gold that was Jerry Rivers opening up the “tomb” to find 3 empty gin bottles.
Prohibition may not have created Capone. But instead of being just a street thug and petty criminal, Prohibition allowed Capone to become CEO of a Fortune 500 company.
.......along with a little help from old family friend Johnny Torrio.
Tend to agree. The best book on Prohibition is Norman H. Clark, “Deliver Us from Evil,” a new look at Prohibition.
This article is crap. Prohibition did create Capone, and a lot of other gangsters as well.
Prohibition was a huge failure and so is the so called "war on drugs" we have going now. After repeal of prohibition gangs were quiet for a short period(by gangs I mean the mafia)teenage gangs were virtually harmless because they lacked real weapons until the mob started running drugs to make up for the money lost after prohibition was repealed. Prohibition costs us many freedoms, among them were some second amendment rights that are down the drain forever. The "war on drugs" is costing us even more freedoms, open warfare on the 4th amendment for starters, swat teams shooting down innocents and breaking down doors without legal warrants(no knock warrants are not mentioned in the constitution, therefore they are illegal).
No amount of spin will ever make Prohibition successful.
I remember talking with my grandfather many years ago who lived through prohibition. He said that everyone still drank, period. Perhaps events related to drinking declined because people who were drinking did not want to call attention to themselves.
Shot down in flames...
So Prohibition with its bribery,widespread citizen disregard for the law, gang warfare, and all was just great because FOR SOME REASON people were drinking less years later?
How does the author isolate all factors to be sure Prohibition was the only ,or even major, reason alcohol consumption decreased?
I’ve been doing some research on my great grandfather and found that he was arrested during a raid on a speakeasy in Detroit in 1916. 2 years before prohibition.
Someone once said, "it is not the length of life that is important, but the depth". I'll drink to that.
In Europe alcohol is still treated as a normal part of most peoples' diets and a meal without it uncivilized. Or shall we be like the teetotaling Wahabbis and Taliban? There's sober behavior we can all emulate. /s
Prohibition had two theaters - the legal and the social.
It did help create the “mobs”. It’s hard to imagine the “mobs” becoming as big and well-funded they became, without prohibition.
It also was part of a process whereby “the people” changed attitudes about drinking; where drinking heavily and drinking as an addict received increased negative public sentiment. Over time, drinking in moderation though with some regularity also gained in acceptance. The American people sort of found their median between wanton consumption and abstinence.
So, if the period of prohibition may have helped create, in its wake, our present moderate levels of alcohol consumption, as well financing the mobs, is it not possible the nation is educated enough, alert enough, changed enough and ready for the same type of transition from the War On Drugs, to something else?
If it was so successful, why did the States repeal it?
No, but it was the power of that collectivist government law that turned him into a Hitler.
You know - Hitler, the Corporal who liked to paint.
Until he ran for office.
Think of Prohibition and the mob as parallel to what happened in Black neighborhoods more recently. Back in the 40s and 50s you had mobs running numbers -- small stuff. When drugs hit big, you got the gangsters moving into drug traffic and growing a lot bigger and more dangerous.
So sure, you had protection rackets in Italian neighborhoods before Prohibition, but it was the alcohol ban that made the racketeers so numerous and powerful and dangerous and prominent.
Prohibition was a bad idea, but it's so easy to slam that it's almost mandatory for contrarians to put in a good word for it every once in a while.
Dutch Schulz,Lucky Luciano,Hymie Weiss .
All these small time hoods became major figures because of prohibition
not to mention the extortion ,corruptions,bombings,murders ,booze smuggling,speakeasys and all the rest of the stuff that gave the roaring twenties its name
The writer has no idea what the hell he's talking about
Best thing to come from Prohibition: Boardwalk Empire! Best drama on TV!
Can you say “revisionist history”??
I knew you could!
In order to become a nation driving cars we needed Prohibition. But before the national Prohibition became a constitutional amendment 65% of the nation was already under state bans on alcohol.
Operation of individual motor vehicles REQUIRES sobriety. Horses are immune to a man’s drunkenness, they are safe to operate in all but a few cases of drunkenness.
Because of the all the state prohibitions of the same era it’s not clear that we needed a national prohibition. Yet that the Constitution needed an amendment to enact a Prohibition it is a mighty argument against nearly all modern Federal regulation that does not have any Constitutional warrant.
There’s no amendment that allows Congress or an Executive Branch regulation limit the flow in our showerheads and toilets.
Any study of the criminal gangs that wielded so much power during the prohibition shows that the gangs started long before the Prohibition, most or all arising out of the Five Points area of New York in the mid and late 1800’s.
Yet to deny that the Prohibition did not greatly increase the size, power and influence of criminal syndicates is to ignore the very strong example of that same dynamic we have today. The rise of the Mexican Narcoistas into a power that challenges the national government of Mexico, and that dominates some of the most affected Estados there is a Prohibition based dynamic!