Reviewed: Last Call: The Rise and Fall of Prohibition, by Daniel Okrent, Scribner, 468 pages, $30 Source: Cannabisnews.

What Can Today’s Crusaders Against Prohibition Learn From Their Predecessors Who Ended the Alcohol Ban?

Of the 27 amendments to the U.S.  Constitution, the 18th is the only one explicitly aimed at restricting people’s freedom.  It is also the only one that has ever been repealed.  Maybe that’s encouraging, especially for those of us who recognize the parallels between that amendment, which ushered in the nationwide prohibition of alcohol, and current bans on other drugs.

But given the manifest failure and unpleasant side effects of Prohibition, its elimination after 14 years is not terribly surprising, despite the arduous process required to undo a constitutional amendment.  The real puzzle, as the journalist Daniel Okrent argues in his masterful new history of the period, is how a nation that never had a teetotaling majority, let alone one committed to forcibly imposing its lifestyle on others, embarked upon such a doomed experiment to begin with.  How did a country consisting mostly of drinkers agree to forbid drinking?

The short answer is that it didn’t.  As a reveler accurately protests during a Treasury Department raid on a private banquet in the HBO series Boardwalk Empire, neither the 18th Amendment nor the Volstead Act, which implemented it, prohibited mere possession or consumption of alcohol.  The amendment took effect a full year after ratification, and those who could afford it were free in the meantime to stock up on wine and liquor, which they were permitted to consume until the supplies ran out.  The law also included exceptions that were important for those without well-stocked wine cellars or the means to buy the entire inventory of a liquor store ( as the actress Mary Pickford did ).  Home production of cider, beer, and wine was permitted, as was commercial production of alcohol for religious, medicinal, and industrial use ( three loopholes that were widely abused ).  In these respects Prohibition was much less onerous than our current drug laws.  Indeed, the legal situation was akin to what today would be called “decriminalization” or even a form of “legalization.”

After Prohibition took effect, Okrent shows, attempts to punish bootleggers with anything more than a slap on the wrist provoked public outrage and invited jury nullification.  One can imagine what would have happened if the Anti-Saloon League and the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union had demanded a legal regime in which possessing, say, five milliliters of whiskey triggered a mandatory five-year prison sentence ( as possessing five grams of crack cocaine did until recently ).  The lack of penalties for consumption helped reassure drinkers who voted for Prohibition as legislators and supported it ( or did not vigorously resist it ) as citizens.  Some of these “dry wets” sincerely believed that the barriers to drinking erected by Prohibition, while unnecessary for moderate imbibers like themselves, would save working-class saloon patrons from their own excesses.  Pauline Morton Sabin, the well-heeled, martini-drinking Republican activist who went from supporting the 18th Amendment to heading the Women’s Organization for National Prohibition Reform, one of the most influential pro-repeal groups, apparently had such an attitude.

In addition to paternalism, the longstanding American ambivalence toward pleasure in general and alcohol-fueled pleasure in particular helped pave the way to Prohibition.  The Puritans were not dour teetotalers, but they were anxious about excess, and a similar discomfort may have discouraged drinkers from actively resisting dry demands.  But by far the most important factor, Okrent persuasively argues, was the political maneuvering of the Anti-Saloon League ( ASL ) and its master strategist, Wayne Wheeler, who turned a minority position into the supreme law of the land by mobilizing a highly motivated bloc of swing voters.

Defining itself as “the Church in Action Against the Saloon,” the clergy-led ASL reached dry sympathizers through churches ( mostly Methodist and Baptist ) across the country.  Okrent says the group typically could deliver something like 10 percent of voters to whichever candidate sounded driest ( regardless of his private behavior ).  This power was enough to change the outcome of elections, putting the fear of the ASL, which Okrent calls “the mightiest pressure group in the nation’s history,” into the state and federal legislators who would vote to approve the 18th Amendment.  That doesn’t mean none of the legislators who voted dry were sincere; many of them-including Richmond Hobson of Alabama and Morris Sheppard of Texas, the 18th Amendment’s chief sponsors in the House and Senate, respectively-were deadly serious about reforming their fellow citizens by regulating their liquid diets.  But even the most ardent drys depended on ASL-energized supporters for their political survival.

The ASL strategy worked because wet voters did not have the same passion and unity, while the affected business interests feuded among themselves until the day their industry was abolished.  Americans who objected to Prohibition generally did not feel strongly enough to make that issue decisive in their choice of candidates, although they did make themselves heard when the issue itself was put to a vote.  Californians, for example, defeated four successive ballot measures that would have established statewide prohibition before their legislature approved the 18th Amendment in 1919.

As Prohibition wore on, its unintended consequences provided the fire that wets had lacked before it was enacted.  They were appalled by rampant corruption, black market violence, newly empowered criminals, invasions of privacy, and deaths linked to alcohol poisoned under government order to discourage diversion ( a policy that Sen.  Edward Edwards of New Jersey denounced as “legalized murder” ).  These burdens seemed all the more intolerable because Prohibition was so conspicuously ineffective.  As a common saying of the time put it, the drys had their law and the wets had their liquor, thanks to myriad quasi-legal and illicit businesses that Okrent colorfully describes.

Entrepreneurs taking advantage of legal loopholes included operators of “booze cruises” to international waters, travel agents selling trips to Cuba ( which became a popular tourist destination on the strength of its proximity and wetness ), “medicinal” alcohol distributors whose brochures ( “for physician permittees only” ) resembled bar menus, priests and rabbis who obtained allegedly sacramental wine for their congregations ( which grew dramatically after Prohibition was enacted ), breweries that turned to selling “malt syrup” for home beer production, vintners who delivered fermentable juice directly into San Francisco cellars through chutes connected to grape-crushing trucks, and the marketers of the Vino-Sano Grape Brick, which “came in a printed wrapper instructing the purchaser to add water to make grape juice, but to be sure not to add yeast or sugar, or leave it in a dark place, or let it sit too long before drinking it because ‘it might ferment and become wine.’ ” The outright lawbreakers included speakeasy proprietors such as the Stork Club’s Sherman Billings-ley, gangsters such as Al Capone, rum runners such as Bill McCoy, and big-time bootleggers such as Sam Bronfman, the Canadian distiller who made a fortune shipping illicit liquor to thirsty Americans under the cover of false paperwork.  Their stories, as related by Okrent, are illuminating as well as engaging, vividly showing how prohibition warps everything it touches, transforming ordinary business transactions into tales of intrigue.

The plain fact that the government could not stop the flow of booze, but merely divert it into new channels at great cost, led disillusioned drys to join angry wets in a coalition that achieved an unprecedented and never-repeated feat.  As late as 1930, just three years before repeal, Morris Sheppard confidently asserted, “There is as much chance of repealing the Eighteenth Amendment as there is for a hummingbird to fly to the planet Mars with the Washington Monument tied to its tail.”

That hummingbird was lifted partly by a rising tide of wet immigrants and urbanites.  During the first few decades of the 20th century, the country became steadily less rural and less WASPy, a trend that ultimately made Prohibition democratically unsustainable.  Understanding this demographic reality, dry members of Congress desperately delayed the constitutionally required reapportionment of legislative districts for nearly a decade after the 1920 census.  “The dry refusal to allow Congress to recalculate state-by-state representation in the House during the 1920s is one of those political maneuvers in American history so audacious it’s hard to believe it happened,” Okrent writes.  “The episode is all the more remarkable for never having established itself in the national consciousness.”

Other Prohibition-driven assaults on the Constitution are likewise little remembered today.  In 1922 the Court reinforced a dangerous exception to the Fifth Amendment’s Double Jeopardy Clause by declaring that the “dual sovereignty” doctrine allowed prosecution of Prohibition violators in both state and federal courts for the same offense.  In 1927 the Court ruled that requiring a bootlegger to declare his illegal earnings for tax purposes did not violate the Fifth Amendment’s guarantee against compelled self-incrimination.  And “in twenty separate cases between 1920 and 1933,” Okrent notes, the Court carried out “a broad-strokes rewriting” of the case law concerning the Fourth Amendment’s prohibition of “unreasonable searches and seizures.” Among other things, the Court declared that a warrant was not needed to search a car suspected of carrying contraband liquor or to eavesdrop on telephone conversations between bootleggers ( a precedent that was not overturned until 1967 ).  Because of Prohibition’s demands, Okrent writes, “long-honored restraints on police authority soon gave way.”

That tendency has a familiar ring to anyone who follows Supreme Court cases growing out of the war on drugs, which have steadily whittled away at the Fourth Amendment during the last few decades.  But unlike today, the incursions required to enforce Prohibition elicited widespread dismay.  Here is how The New York Times summarized the Anti-Saloon League’s response to the wiretap decision: “It is feared by the dry forces that Prohibition will fall into ‘disrepute’ and suffer ‘irreparable harm’ if the American public concludes that ‘universal snooping’ is favored for enforcing the Eighteenth Amendment.”

The fear of a popular backlash was well-founded.  From the beginning, Prohibition was resisted in the wetter provinces of America, where the authorities often declined to enforce it.  Maryland never passed its own version of the Volstead Act, while New York repealed its alcohol prohibition law in 1923.  Eleven other states eliminated their statutes by referendum in November 1932, months before Congress presented the 21st Amendment ( which repealed the 18th ) and more than a year before it was ratified.

This history of noncooperation is instructive in considering an argument that was often made by opponents of Proposition 19, the marijuana legalization initiative that California voters rejected in November.  The measure’s detractors claimed legalizing marijuana at the state level would run afoul of the Supremacy Clause, which says “this Constitution, and the laws of the United States which shall be made in pursuance thereof…shall be the supreme law of the land.” Yet even under a prohibition system that, unlike the current one, was explicitly authorized by the Constitution, states had no obligation to ban what Congress banned or punish what Congress punished.  In fact, state and local resistance to alcohol prohibition led the way to national repeal.

That precedent, while encouraging to antiprohibitionists who hope that federalism can help end the war on drugs, should be viewed with caution.  For one thing, federalism isn’t what it used to be.  Alcohol prohibition was enacted and repealed before the Supreme Court transformed the Commerce Clause into an all-purpose license to meddle, when it was taken for granted that the federal government could not ban an intoxicant unless the Constitution was amended to provide such a power.  While the feds may not have the resources to wage the war on drugs without state assistance, under existing precedents they clearly have the legal authority to try.

Another barrier to emulating the antiprohibitionists of the 1920s is that none of the currently banned drugs is ( or ever was ) as widely consumed in this country as alcohol.  That fact is crucial in understanding the contrast between the outrage that led to the repeal of alcohol prohibition and Americans’ general indifference to the damage done by the war on drugs today.  The illegal drug that comes closest to alcohol in popularity is marijuana, which survey data indicate most Americans born after World War II have at least tried.  That experience is reflected in rising public support for legalizing marijuana, which hit a record 46 percent in a nationwide Gallup poll conducted the week before Proposition 19 was defeated.

A third problem for today’s antiprohibitionists is the deep roots of the status quo.  Alcohol prohibition came and went in 14 years, which made it easy to distinguish between the bad effects of drinking and the bad effects of trying to stop it.  By contrast, the government has been waging war on cocaine and opiates since 1914 and on marijuana since 1937 ( initially under the guise of enforcing revenue measures ).  Few people living today have clear memories of a different legal regime.  That is one reason why histories like Okrent’s, which bring to life a period when booze was banned but pot was not, are so valuable.

Reflecting on the long-term impact of the vain attempt to get between Americans and their liquor, Okrent writes: “In 1920 could anyone have believed that the Eighteenth Amendment, ostensibly addressing the single subject of intoxicating beverages, would set off an avalanche of change in areas as diverse as international trade, speedboat design, tourism practices, soft-drink marketing, and the English language itself? Or that it would provoke the establishment of the first nationwide criminal syndicate, the idea of home dinner parties, the deep engagement of women in political issues other than suffrage, and the creation of Las Vegas?” Nearly a century after the war on other drugs was launched, Americans are only beginning to recognize its far-reaching consequences, most of which are considerably less fun than a dinner party or a trip to Vegas.

Source: AlterNet (US Web)
Copyright: 2011 Independent Media Institute
Website: http://www.alternet.org/
Author: Jacob Sullum, Reason

As some Americans have been, and continue to be, pointing at the utility of such measures, Tony Newmann, communications director for the Drug Policy Alliance gives his view on the conception of drugs:

ALL OF US USE DRUGS, BUT ONLY SOME OF US GO TO JAIL!

Despite a $40 billion a year “war on drugs” that is premised on the goal of creating a “drug-free society,” our country is swimming in drugs.

Most people start using drugs before they even leave the house in the morning.  Yes, that first cup of coffee is what many of us need to start the day.  The next drug that millions of Americans use, sometimes up to 20 times a day, is our nicotine! And then, after a long day of work, many of us head to a local bar or to our refrigerator and pour ourselves a cocktail, ice cold beer or a nice glass of wine.

And I’m just getting started.  There are over 100 million Americans who have used marijuana.  Thirty years after Nancy Reagan told us to “Just Say No,” half of high-school seniors will try marijuana and 75% will try alcohol before they graduate.  And what about the college students who use Ritalin to help them focus and put in long hours at the library? And how about all of the superstar athletes who use performance enhancing substances? What about all of the men ( and women ) who are deeply grateful forthe “little blue pill”? And how about the businessmen who stay up until three in the morning with the help of a “little bump”?

Drugs are so popular because people use them for both pleasure and for pain.  Drugs can be fun.  How many of us enjoy having some drinks and going out dancing? How many of us enjoy a little smoke after a nice dinner with friends? Many people bond with others or find inspiration alone while under the influence of drugs.  On the flip side, many people self-medicate to try to ease the pain in their lives.  How many have us have had too much to drink to drown our sorrows over a breakup or some other painful event? How many of us smoke cigarettes or take prescription drugs to deal with anxiety or stress? Throughout recorded history, people have inevitably altered their consciousness to fall asleep, wake up, deal with stress, and for creative and spiritual purposes.

While it is clear that drug use doesn’t discriminate and the majority of us are using one drug or another, the reality is that the war on drug users does discriminate.  More than 1.8 million people are arrested every year on nonviolent drug charges.  In New York City, “moderate” Mayor Bloomberg’s police arrested close to 50,000 people for marijuana possession in 2009 – and 87% of those arrested were black and Latino, despite similar rates of marijuana use as whites.  The reason for the discrepancy is that the NYPD stops and frisks blacks and Latinos – but not white people.  Last week the New York Times ran a front page story that showed blacks and Latinos were nine times more likely to be frisked than whites.

The racist enforcement of drug laws is not limited to just New York or just marijuana.  Thanks to the mass incarceration of people for nonviolent drug law violations, the U.S.  is the world’s leading jailer.  The U.S.  has 5% of the world’s population but has 25% of the world’s prison population.  Nationally, blacks are 13 times more likely to be incarcerated on drug charges as whites, despite similar rates of drug use.

Why are some drugs legal and other drugs illegal today? It’s not based on any scientific assessment of the relative risks of these drugs – but it has everything to do with who is associated with these drugs.  The first anti-opium laws in the 1870s were directed at East Asian immigrants.  The first anti-cocaine laws, in the South in the early 1900s, were directed at black men.  The first anti-marijuana laws, in the Midwest and the Southwest in the early 1900s, were directed at Mexican migrants and Mexican Americans.

Too often, the stereotypical “drug user” is someone we see panhandling on the street or the image of a young person of color.  The reality is that most Americans use some drugs and most families include someone who is dealing with addiction to a legal or illegal drug.  By declaring a “war on drugs” we have declared a war on ourselves, our families, and our communities.

We have to learn how to live with drugs, because they aren’t going anywhere.  Drugs have been around for thousands of years and will be here for thousands more.  We need to educate people about the possible harms of drug use, offer compassion and treatment to people who have problems, and leave in peace the people who are not causing harm.  And we need to take action against the incarceration of so many of our brothers and sisters who are suffering behind bars because of the substance that they choose to use.

The state’s medical-marijuana amendment, passed by voters in 2000, says that employers don’t have to accommodate medical-marijuana use in the workplace.

But another Colorado law, enacted a few years ago to protect cigarette smokers, prohibits firing employees for engaging in legal activities during nonworking hours.

That suggests that people who smoke medical marijuana before arriving at work could be protected under state law, whether their employers like it or not. And with roughly 30,000 Coloradans now estimated to be qualified to use medical marijuana, employers are growing increasingly uneasy.

It’s the kind of quandary employers in other states are have faced as well, as medical marijuana gains increasing acceptance.

“No cases have been litigated yet in Colorado, so we’re not sure how a court might rule or how a jury might find,” said Danielle Urban, an attorney with Fisher & Phillips LLP, a Denver-based employment law firm.

State courts in California, Washington, and Oregon have handled cases involving employees that were terminated for medical-marijuana use, and they all have sided with employers, she said.

However, none of those states had a law similar to Colorado’s “Unlawful prohibition of legal activities as a condition of employment” statute.

“An employer can always send an employee home if they’re under the influence,” said Vance Knapp, an employment attorney at Sherman & Howard LLC in Denver. “The tricky issue becomes what happens if an employer does a random drug test and an employee tests positive, but says ‘I’m not intoxicated; I’m using this on my own time to treat my chronic disease.’”

Unlike alcohol, elements of marijuana use can be detected for days or even weeks, making it difficult to determine how recently the drug was used.

“I’m a former prosecutor, and I can tell you that sometimes the trace elements of marijuana can be in a person’s bloodstream or hair follicles for three weeks, even after smoking one marijuana cigarette,” Knapp said. “It’s not like alcohol, where it burns off after a good night’s sleep and drinking some water.”

Read the full article here

Filed under: Cannabis News, medicinal, Quotes & Opinions, Society and Cannabis Tagged: alcohol, cigarette smokers, Colorado, companies, Danielle Urban, detected, employers, legal activities, medical marijuana, random drug test, Vance Knapp

On the surface, it stands to reason that people who smoke cannabis could possibly face similar elevated risks for head and throat cancers as do those who smoke tobacco, and/or drink alcohol. Both alcohol and tobacco use carry significantly higher risks for such cancers.

In 1999, a highly – publicised study indicated that cannabis users might face some elevated risk of head and neck cancers, as is the case with consumers of tobacco and alcohol. However, even the researchers from that study cautioned against making too much of their results and called for further study.

Two recent studies appear to contradict that, suggesting that cannabis users face no increased risk of head and neck cancers, and may even enjoy a measure of protection. Results show that moderate cannabis users actually appear to have a reduced risk level for head and neck cancers compared to control cases. However, due of the limited power and length of use studied, a small or longer-term effect cannot be ruled out.

Both of these studies support a growing body of data that indicate that cannabinoids have potential anti-tumour and anti-cancer properties. Clearly, further examination is required!

That’s really what it is about, isn’t it? How do I know whether I, or someone I care about, have a drug or alcohol problem? What are the signs and symptoms?

If you are wondering whether you or someone else has a drug or alcohol problem, the probability is HIGH that there is, in fact, a problem. Generally, we don’t wonder whether someone has a “problem” if there is not a problem. The rest of the signs and symptoms might help you quit “wondering” and take action:

Health and behavior

- Continuing to use even though you have health problems that are affected or caused by your use.
- Irritability, anger, hostility, fatigue, agitation, anxiety, depression, psychosis (seeing or hearing things that are not there), lack of coordination, difficulty concentrating .
Financial and legal issues
- Spending money on drugs/alcohol that is needed for paying bills or inability to keep track of money that is spent, collection agencies calling.
- Being arrested, doing things that you would normally not do, such as stealing to obtain drugs .
- Continued use despite legal and other consequences is a sure sign of addiction.
Employment or school
- Continuing to use drugs/alcohol even though you realize your job or education is in jeopardy.
- Missing work or school, or going in late due to use.

Family and friends

- Feeling annoyed when other people comment on, or criticize your use of drugs/alcohol. Choosing drugs/alcohol over family and friends is a sign of addiction. Addicted people are defensive, protecting their use.
- Feeling remorse or guilt after using drugs/alcohol.
- Associating with questionable acquaintances or frequenting out of the ordinary locations to purchase or use drugs.

Social life
- Scheduling your day around using drugs/alcohol.
- Focusing recreational activities around obtaining drugs/alcohol, using drugs/alcohol, or recovering from drug/alcohol use. Addicted people are preoccupied with their substance use as it takes a progressively more important role in their lives.
- Seeking friendships with people who use and neglecting, even alienating, important relationships with people who do not use.
- Using drugs/alcohol when alone.

Cravings and relapse
- Strong and overwhelming desire to use at a specific time of day or several times a day.
- Drug/alcohol seeking behaviors.
- Trying to stop or control using the drug/alcohol but failing more than once.
- Feeling that you must have the drug to deal with your problems.

Tolerance

- Tolerance means that it takes more of the substance to “get off”. In order to feel the same effect, one has to use more of the drug/alcohol than intended and using it more frequently. The exception to this is marijuana, cannabis, and hashish which store in the fat cells of the brain making it easier to high on lesser quantities.
- Tolerance is a measure of addiction and suggests that, if one quits, withdrawal symptoms will begin.
- Blackouts – Continued functioning, without any memory of what happened or what was done later, is a sure sign that tolerance has increased addiction and that withdrawal symptoms will be present when one stops using.

Withdrawal Symptoms
- Cocaine: Agitation, insomnia, anxiety, depression, anger, cravings, fatigue, nausea, vomiting, shakes, irritability, muscle pain
- Anti-anxiety medications (tranquilizers): Sleeplessness, irritability, anxiety, feeling shaky, headache, dizziness, loss of appetite, and in extreme cases, seizures
- Painkillers/Heroin: Dilated pupils, goose bumps, watery eyes, runny nose, yawning, chills, nausea, muscle cramps, stomach cramps, diarrhea, vomiting, shakes, sweats, feeling jittery, irritable, panic, tremors
- Methamphetamine: Fatigue, disturbed sleeping patterns, irritability, intense hunger, moderate to severe depression, anxiety, psychotic reactions

Effects on memory and motivation

- Impairments in learning, memory and cognitive functioning.
- Losing interest in activities and hobbies that were once pleasurable.

Risky behavior

- Drinking & driving.
- Going to crime-ridden areas or association with “seedy” characters in order to “score” drugs.
- Criminal or unsafe, irregular activity to get drugs or money to buy drugs.
- Sharing needles .
- Having promiscuous or unsafe sex.

Signs and symptoms of Cannabis use (Marijuana and Hashish)

- Heightened visual and auditory perceptions and increased sensitivity in taste.
- Increased appetite.
- Problems with memory, difficulty concentrating, paranoid thinking.
- Decreased coordination, slowed reaction time.
- Bloodshot eyes, elevated blood pressure, increased heart rate.

If you, or someone you know, have one or more of these signs or symptoms there is a good possibility that you might have a substance abuse problem. Help is available but, over time, these signs and symptoms tend to get worse – not better – on their own. Treatment works!