When they did away with alcohol prohibition, did they have alcohol addicts spike up quickly as well?
I don’t really know the answer, but I sure want to know because there are similarities here.
Well... every QUICK TRIP has liquor.
Alcohol was never prohibited. (It was legal to possess, for instance.) It was made a bit more difficult to get.
Marijuana is not the harmless drug that the pot heads claim, particularly for young users and it contains many more of the same carcinogens that are found in tobacco.
Recent studies indicate that marijuana causes attention deficit and short term memory loss, which is reversible within about 8 weeks of abstention in adults, but is permanent in young users. Heavy marijuana use has been shown to reduce the IQ by up to nine points in heavy users and increase the risk of psychosis.
Put together, all of these things are a pretty good description of some of the pot heads that I know. I remember when my son was in high school, he described the effect of regular marijuana on some of his friends as killing ambition, that some of the best students turned into losers.
Most likely they did. We shouldn’t be so quick to accept the popular opinion on prohibition. It’s quite possible America was better off during prohibition.
The only reason I never started smoking pot in high school is because it was illegal.
The spike has always happened. It even happened in Amsterdam when they legalized marijuana. But in short order, not only does number of users return to the typical, pre-legalization levels, but it was noted, those who use it use *less* of it.
The very best selling point of anti-marijuana use is, oddly enough, to tell children that truthfully it probably won’t hurt them, but what it will do is make them so dull and unmotivated that life will no longer be fun, but just monotonous. A loser’s life.
While it is laughing and cheery, and somewhat NSFW, a supposedly pro-drug song by a guy named “Afroman”, probably persuaded more marijuana users to stop smoking marijuana than every anti-drug ad ever created by the government. It really penetrated and made sense to them.
Again, somewhat NSFW.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WeYsTmIzjkw
Alcohol was prohibited but easily gotten.
Most people who wanted a drink could get it any time they wanted it. A few went blind from bad booze, Not like the hundreds who die from heroin overdoses.
I doubt it spiked much because they could get all they wanted during prohibition.It never really stopped. The only thing that stopped was the Government tax on it.
As with so many things, it's tough to get entirely accurate answers, since there are no definitive statistics from that period.
There is no doubt Prohibition caused alcohol consumption to drop. Estimates vary, from 20% to 60%. Best guess is probably 50%. Of course, it should be remembered that prior to national Prohibition, 2/3 of the population lived in states where alcohol had already been prohibited.
Alcohol rebounded pretty quickly, by 5 years into Prohibition probably to about 60% of consumption before it.
There was a spike in consumption after repeal. Consumption gradually increased thereafter, but did not reach pre-Prohibition levels till the 60s. It's been declining slightly ever since.
At the time of the Revolution, average consumption of alcohol was about twice what it is today.