Why didn't prohibition work? Christians worked very hard to enact it, but it only lasted 13 years. Why?

Question

McDizzy: 2/3 of the House of Representatives, 2/3 of the senate, and half the states legislatures.

Answer 1

Turning millions of drinkers into outlaws over-night created a huge black market. Imagine what would happen if tobacco was outlawed.

Answer 2

Prohibition never seems to work. It didn't work for tobacco, but they will try again. It didn't work for alcohol, but it will likely be tried again. It has not worked with drugs, and is a currently failing program. What prohibition does do is create an immensely profitable market for criminal activity. The gangs get so wealthy and powerful that they can buy all the protection they need and the officials of the government even get involved. It was the violence of the territory wars that ended prohibition. people got sick of having their cities turned into war zones and demanded changes.

Answer 3

Because it was wrong.

Firstly it involved forcing your own beliefs onto everyone else.

Secondly (I didn't know it was christians who pushed it through), Jesus allegedly turned water into wine - If consuming alcohol was wrong, I really don't think he'd have done that just to impress the chicks... do you?

EDIT: In hindsight, is it not possible that the good christian people who created prohibition, realised that they could make far more money to finance their humble christian lifestyles by levying alcohol with excessive tax?

Answer 4

Christians did NOT enact Prohibition -- it was people who said they were Christians but weren't.

True Christians would never use government to enact their ideal goals -- to be an example for every man in the world. Christ didn't use force to change people, He lived a perfect life as an example.

When you use force, you are a Pharisee, not a Christian.

Prohibition failed like ALL government failed -- God wants us to accept living a better life for ourselves, not to force others to live the way.

Answer 5

13? Christians?

In England and the American colonies, governments after 1750 made repeated and futile efforts to discourage the excessive use of distilled spirits. In the mid-19th century Abraham Lincoln said that intoxicating liquor was “used by everybody, repudiated by nobody” and that it came forth in society “like the Egyptian angel of death, commissioned to slay if not the first, the fairest born in every family.” By the 1820s people in the United States were drinking, on the average, 27 liters (7 gallons) of pure alcohol per person each year, and many religious and political leaders were beginning to see drunkenness as a national curse.

Many people believed a close relationship existed between drunkenness and the rising incidence of crime, poverty, and violence, concluding that the only way to protect society from this threat was to abolish the “drunkard-making business.” The first state prohibition law, passed in Maine in 1851, prohibited the manufacture and sale of “spiritous or intoxicating liquors” not intended for medical or mechanical purposes, and 13 of the 31 states had such laws by 1855. By that time the annual per capita consumption of absolute alcohol had fallen to about 8 liters (about 2 gallons).

The political crisis that preceded the American Civil War distracted attention from Prohibition. Many of the early state laws were modified, repealed, or ignored, and for years few restraints were placed on manufacturing or selling anything alcoholic.

In the U.S., a major shift in public opinion occurred during the early years of the Great Depression, when opponents could argue persuasively that Prohibition deprived people of jobs and governments of revenue and generally contributed to economic stagnation. The actual political campaign for repeal was largely the work of the Association Against the Prohibition Amendment (AAPA), a nonpartisan organization of wealthy and influential citizens in all states who were “wet” in principle and who feared that through Prohibition the federal government might permanently compromise the tradition of individual freedom. Like the ASL, the AAPA actively endorsed and opposed candidates for state and federal offices. Its goal was that Congress should submit to the states the 21st Amendment to the Constitution, which would repeal the 18th, and submit it in such a way as to circumvent the various state legislatures in which, it feared, dry legislators from rural districts, in opposition to majority sentiment, might present a serious challenge to ratification. To avoid this, Congress—for the first time since the Constitution itself was ratified and for much the same reason—called for ratifying conventions in each of the states: Delegates would be elected by the people for the specific purpose of voting yes or no regarding the question of the 21st Amendment. The elections for convention delegates in 1933 produced a repeal vote running almost 73 percent. In a remarkably coordinated effort by the states and the Congress, ratification was complete in December of that year.

Answer 6

It was a bad idea for a narrow band of clenched butt Christians to use the coercive power of the state to shove their religious prejudices down everybody else's throat. It was doomed to fail because it went against everything this country was founded to protect.

Answer 7

Alcohol was already so well entrenched in modern society that it was ridiculous to think that it could simply be banned. The same thing is happening now with drug prohibition.

Answer 8

Christians? Maybe that is what they claimed, but they were not following or teaching TRUTH.

A 19th century book titled "Bible Wines" was 85% false. 85% of the author's cited ancient documents either said nothing about wine or actually opposed the author's claims.

Answer 9

Because Jesus drank wine. Because almost everyone in the Bible drank wine. It goes against the nature of things!

Answer 10

Perhaps because it was not something they should have been involved in. When did Christ say that if we cannot convert a sinner, we should force them by law to live a certain way?