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this post was submitted on 08 Aug 2025
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Asklemmy
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Not to diminish the harms of alcohol, but the USA tried that once and it went pretty badly. Prohibition of other drugs has also led to considerable harm. The cure may be worse than the disease here.
It bugs me that the lessons were learned with alcohol but they've double downed on everything else
How did prohibition go badly in the case of alcohol?
Are you talking about how there was resistance to it at all?
It created a massive black market which greatly increased the profitability of organized crime. That lead to a substantial increase in policing, often conducted with little regard for civil rights.
Not to mention the dangers of bootlegging when you don't know what you're doing. Methanol is suuuper toxic, and there were many people accidentally poisoned while making their own alcohols during prohibition. Shoot, just look at how dangerous it is to buy street drugs now with fentanyl everywhere these days. Ideally there should be regulation to protect consumers. Random drug dealers as well as corporations have proven themselves untrustworthy, and most drugs/alcohol have some medicinal/spiritual/sociocultural applications, so outright illegalization results in a net negative.