Money is the big issue IMHO. Cost too much to attempt to stop alcohol during prohibition and could make quit a bit more by taxing the hell out of it. Weed is harder to control but it has a stigma attached to it.
A lot of money could be made by taxing it but a lot of people have the wrong impression; they consider pot to be on the same level as cocaine/crack, meth(crank and -adone), pills (oxy to xanax), and herion. I’m probly biased due to the fact when i did both i prefered to smoke than drink if i had to choose.
I often wonder how much better off of a society we would be living in had prohibition stuck. [/quote]
It’s complicated, but it’s speculative, at best, to assume we would be “better off” at all.
During Prohibition, the black market swelled, making bootlegging killers like Al Capone multi-millionaires. Had this gone on until the present day, I think it is highly likely that organized crime, being so filthy rich and powerful, would make pretty much every level of government its puppet.
Think about it: Has “The War on Drugs” made any of us better off, or has it just allowed government enforcement agencies to grow more gargantuan (but somehow, always show a public facade of being overwhelmed and underfunded) and justify flushing billions of dollars a year down the toilet? (Not to mention making the biggest foreign drug cartels richer by eliminating smaller competition and
squeezing the market to keep street prices high.)
No doubt about it, that is pretty horrifying, and I agree that alcohol is largely an “instant asshole maker”, and is actually far worse than a lot of controlled substances (PM me if you want to hear how I came to that conclusion).
I think banning it, however, would just shift the crime from drunken domestics and barroom brawls to having to tackle organized crime syndicates and increased gang-related turf wars. This, in turn, would lead to an even more top-heavy DEA, burdening taxpayers even further. And I’m not even going to get into the revenue lost from no longer having alcohol tax money coming in.
It would definitely be a different world than we’re used to. Better? Hard to say.
Your story could be my story. I quit eight years ago and life is much easier. I never got in serious trouble with it ??no DUI, no broken marrige, no lost job ??but it was only a matter of time.
Thought it would be hard to give it up, but it was much easier than keeping going. And I have managed to find a whole lot of better things to do with my time.
Good for you for identifying a problem and good luck tackling it.