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To: SJC_Libertarian
Crime has always come before enforcement. It's even Biblical. Remember Adam and Eve?
As far as gangs coming here form all over in the 20th century, well that little invention called the airplane did help advance bringing folks of all kinds back and forth across the world.

Thanks for your post.
547 posted on 09/17/2002 5:46:20 PM PDT by A CA Guy
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To: A CA Guy
Crime has always come before enforcement.

You seem to have missed the point of my post.

Until passage of the XVIII defined manufacture, sale, transportation, importation, or exportation of alcoholic beverages as crimes, those actions were not regarded as criminal at all. In legalese, these actions are not "malum in se", but for a time became "malum prohibitum".

Once that happened, the strong persistent popular demand for beer, wine, and spirits led to the rise of criminal organizations who were motivated to serve that demand by the opportunity for immense profit created by the attempt to legally prohibit the commodity. It further led to murderous turf wars, tainted products, corruption of law enforcement (who could also be enticed by handsome payoffs), and the injury or death of innocent bystanders.

Once prohibition was repealed, the systemic conditions that gave rise to the criminal gangs also disappeared, and the attendant violence and corruption was largely abated. Like it or not, this is how the world works. Ignoring this reality, as we do today with our INSANE "War on [some] Drugs", literally causes the violence and corruption that we incorrectly associate with the "illicit" trafficking rather than with the prohibition itself.

620 posted on 09/19/2002 5:30:28 PM PDT by SJC_Libertarian
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