Everything you know about Prohibition is wrong

It is very hard to find articles about Prohibition, or even tangentially mentioning it, that don't explicitly say one or both of two things:

1. It didn't work because people kept drinking illegally, and

2. It encouraged organized crime, especially gangsters such as Al Capone.

The two links above are just a drop in the bucket--there are countless other examples of news articles claiming the exact same things. The problem is that both of these premises are either largely or totally wrong.

First of all, Prohibition did lower alcohol consumption. Not only that, but "The lowered level of consumption during the quarter century following Repeal, together with the large minority of abstainers, suggests that Prohibition did socialize or maintain a significant portion of the population in temperate or abstemious [not self-indulgent] habits." Even libertarian economist Jeffrey Miron, along with Jeffrey Zwiebel, estimates that shortly after Prohibition became law in 1920, alcohol consumption fell to about 30% of its pre-Prohibition level, albeit temporarily (it increased to 60-70% of this level over the next few years). By other estimates (by Miron and Angela Dills), prohibition reduced cirrhosis by about 10-20%. 

As for crime, according to a 2006 paper by Jack Blocker, "Although organized crime flourished under its sway, Prohibition was not responsible for its appearance, as organized crime’s post-Repeal persistence has demonstrated." 

So why does it matter whether Prohibition failed or not? Because, as the aforementioned 2006 paper points out, "Arguments that assume that Prohibition was a failure have been deployed most effectively against laws prohibiting tobacco and guns, but they have been ignored by those waging the war on other drugs since the 1980s, which is directed toward the same teetotal goal as National Prohibition." Yet that does not mean people haven't argued that since Alcohol Prohibition was a failure, drug prohibition was too. Take the Drug Policy Alliance, which on December 5, 2013, the 80th anniversary of the repeal of Prohibition, announced that "Eighty years ago today, the Twenty-first Amendment to the Constitution was ratified and alcohol Prohibition was officially repealed. If you only know one thing about Prohibition, it's probably the fact that it was a tremendous failure. Making alcohol illegal led to huge increases in organized crime, corruption, and violence." This argument, however, is founded on a false assumption, because as Blocker notes, "Simplistic assumptions about government’s ability to legislate morals, whether pro or con, find no support in the historical record."

So does this mean prohibition would work if we reinstated it now? Sort of: according to Wayne Hall of the University of Queensland, "It is incorrect to claim that the US experience of National Prohibition indicates that prohibition as a means of regulating alcohol is always doomed to failure. Subsequent experience shows that partial prohibitions can produce substantial public health benefits at an acceptable social cost, in the absence of substantial enforcement."

Now you’re doubtless wondering what “partial prohibitions” are. So was I when I first read the above paper. Apparently, under partial prohibition of a drug, it is legal to possess and use it for nonmedical purposes, or to import, produce, and cultivate it for your personal use, or possibly to give a small amount of it as a gift, or to sell small amounts of it, to someone else. Under this paradigm, it would still be illegal to import, produce, or cultivate the drug for the purpose of distribution (as opposed to personal use), to commercially distribute the drug for nonmedical reasons, or to drive while under its influence.

This seems like the way alcohol is treated now, except that companies can produce and distribute it for commercial purposes. The really appealing part, though, is that this policy encourages:

• Permitting a simultaneous medical, educational, religious, and parental effort to concentrate on reducing irresponsible use and remedying its consequences, and
• Removing the criminal stigma and the threat of incarceration from a widespread behavior (possession for personal use) which does not warrant such treatment.

These two ideas seem to balance the desire to reduce the adverse effects of drug use and avoid stigmatizing and/or arresting and/or imprisoning people who use such drugs.