This past week, once again, I have been trying to make sense out of another state law that is, frankly, nonsense. In this case it is in Florida and it will definitely impact the recruitment of volunteer Board members. I will once again try to influence how this law and the subsequent rules it spawned are enforced, but I will leave that story for another day.
This week, too, we watch the State of Indiana wrestle with its controversial “religious freedoms” law, which could spawn many side effects. One of the problems I have with some laws is the carelessness with which they are passed and then delegated to a few people to write the details, especially when they are pushed through by ideological zealots. And, unless opponents are equally passionate, the side effects can kill us, literally. Take Prohibition, for example.
Prohibition – 1920 to 1933. Prohibition is how we refer to a period between 1920 and 1933 when
it was illegal to make, sell, or consume alcoholic beverages in the United States. During the latter half of the 1800s and early 1900s there was a social movement called the Temperance Movement. This group was able to get 27 states to pass state laws that banned the manufacture and consumption of alcohol. But 27 states were not good enough for Temperance proponents; they wanted a federal constitutional amendment that would ban it in all 48 states.
One organization that was especially effective at strong-arming politicians into supporting anti-alcohol laws was the Anti-Saloon League, led ruthlessly and passionately by a Temperance zealot, Wayne Bidwell Wheeler. According to Bill Bryson in his fabulous book One Summer-America 1927 Wheeler emerges as one of the leading forces behind Prohibition. On January 16, 1919, thanks in large part to Wheeler’s organizational skills and antics, Nebraska became the thirty-sixth state to ratify the 18th Amendment, which banned the production and consumption of alcohol across the country, and Prohibition was then law.
The Devil is in the Details. The language in the constitutional amendment was, of course, very 
general. So Congress would need to pass a specific piece of legislation that contained the details and that became known as the Volstead Act. Because Wheeler had leverage over many congressional leaders, they let him work on the specific language with House Judiciary Chairman, Andrew Volstead of Minnesota. Cleverly, the preamble and beginning sections of the law did not seem too daunting and so Congress passed the law.
Many congressmen did not read the details of the Volstead Act before they voted. Many thought the law would only ban hard liquor and would not touch beer and wine. They were mistaken. In the small print, the law defined intoxicating liquor as anything more than .5%. As Bryson points out, that is about the same level as sauerkraut.
Enforcers Actually Killed Citizens. I think the most significant side effect of the law was that no one thought about what would happen with the 60 million gallons of alcohol manufactured for other products like antifreeze and paint thinners. What happened was much of this alcohol, which could be easily distilled into drinkable alcohol, got diverted into bootleggers’ (illegal) hands.
So the government, with creative help from Wayne Wheeler, decided to effectively poison the alcohol at the production level. While they could have added detergents or soaps that just would have made the alcohol unpleasant and undrinkable, they chose instead to add deadly chemicals like strychnine and mercury. This, they knew, would kill people who tried to drink it. And, reportedly, about 12,000 people died from doing just that in 1927 alone. And Wheeler was fine with this. Amazingly, no one in government or Congress said or did anything. We still use strains of that denatured alcohol today.
Other Side Effects.
- In the years after 1920 alcohol consumption increased. Alcohol was a $2 billion a year industry and most of it shifted overnight from regulated, legitimate tax-paying businesses to unregulated, untaxed illegal businesses.
- Once the law went into effect the federal government lost $500 million in tax revenue. This was 10 percent of all tax revenue. The state of New York lost 50 percent of its tax revenue.
- The government hired only 1,520 enforcement agents and paid them so low they often made less than garbage collectors. This made it easy to bribe the agents and encouraged unethical agent behaviors.
- Speakeasy saloons popped-up in most cities. These were bars selling illegal drinks. To stay open they simply bribed policemen. In New York City alone the average bar paid $400 a month to police and city officials, which was equivalent to $150 million dollars a year.
- Government officials profited from selling government seized and stored alcohol. During the summer of 1920 in Chicago 670,000 bottles of government-seized alcohol disappeared and likely got into the hands of mobsters like Al Capone. Two-thirds of the 50 million gallons of government-held whiskey at the start of Prohibition disappeared by 1933.
- Doctors could continue to prescribe alcohol to patients during Prohibition and they did so at record levels earning $40 million per year by the late 1920s. They often gave blank prescriptions to patients for certain fees.
- Religious organizations, especially the Catholic Church, were allowed to stock and use alcoholic beverages as part of their sacraments. The demand for communion wine exploded and many churches were rumored to host their own happy hours.
By 1933 the government needed tax revenue and was trying to bust-up organized crime that was largely funded by illegal alcohol sales. Wheeler and other Prohibition proponents were dead, too. Then President Roosevelt signed an amendment to the Volstead Act that allowed beer sales. And later that year, the 21st Amendment passed that repealed the 18th Amendment. The social experiment called Prohibition was dead.
I understand it takes leadership and vision to propose effective laws that protect citizens and often proponents have the best of intentions. But we must be careful not to let just the proponents write the details and oversee implementation – that’s when we just won’t make sense of the nonsense!
