Lessons From Prohibition

by Stuart Shapiro

I just finished watching Prohibition, a documentary by Ken Burns.  I’ll say, first off, that I am a sucker for Ken Burns documentaries.  This one was particularly strong as I learned quite a bit.  I was also struck with the lessons for the current political debates.  The divisions we see on immigration today mirror many of those on banning alcohol a century ago.  Prohibition was supported by largely rural, largely native populations and opposed by urban folks and first generation immigrants.  The section on the 1928 election reveals that the vitriol of the political rhetoric today is not something new.

The documentary also shows, quite convincingly in my view that, as a country, we don’t like to ban things.  Whether it is marijuana or, hard as it is for me to say it, guns, bans on things run up against some major cultural barriers.  That said, we are quite okay with regulating things.  We hated Prohibition but quite quietly accepted drinking ages, restrictions on alcohol content, and drunk driving laws and understood that they weren’t a slippery slope back to Prohibition.  There are lessons there as well.  My review is here.

By: Stuart Shapiro

Stuart is a professor and the Director of the Public Policy
program at the Bloustein School of Planning and Public Policy at Rutgers
University. He teaches economics and cost-benefit analysis and studies
regulation in the United States at both the federal and state levels.
Prior to coming to Rutgers, Stuart worked for five years at the Office
of Management and Budget in Washington under Presidents Clinton and
George W. Bush.