Ruminations, September 6, 2009

Prohibiting drugs

Some who advocate the legalization of drugs call the present laws similar to prohibition where alcohol consumption was prohibited from 1920 to 1933. The commonly accepted history of Prohibition was that it was a total failure and contributed to a dramatic increase in crime.

Was prohibition a total failure? Maybe not. It’s kind of complicated.

Pre-Prohibition alcohol abuse in the United States was an ongoing problem. Before the American Revolution, some historians estimate that the average rum consumption in the United States was 3 gallons per year for every man, woman and child. According to historian Joyce Appleby writing in Inheriting the Revolution, alcohol consumption in 1820 was four times what it is today.

This was not just a concern of public drunkenness. Prior to prohibition, death due to cirrhosis of the liver was at 21.6 per 100,000 population and death from chronic alcoholism was at 10 per 100,000 of adults – more than double the rate today. Is it any wonder that temperance groups and a Temperance political party were formed with the goal of reducing and/or eliminating alcohol consumption?

In fact, by 1913 the United States already had a quasi-prohibition in effect. Nine states had enacted prohibition and 31 other states had local options. It has been estimated that 50% of the country was already prohibited from consuming alcohol.

Even with the restrictions on alcoholic consumption that were in existence, alcohol consumption in the United States in 1915 was about 2.5 gallons per year per capita and dropping due to state regulations. Did consumption decrease during Prohibition? It’s a safe bet that it did but there are, naturally enough, no valid statistics on the illegal consumption. In 1934, the first year after Prohibition ended, alcohol consumption was 0.91 gallons per capita (and began a steady climb from there). A reasonable estimate of consumption during Prohibition might be half of the post-Prohibition consumption level or less that half a gallon per year per capita.

So, was Prohibition a failure? Yes and no. It failed to stop consumption of alcohol altogether and provided new opportunities for criminals to profit. But, did it drastically reduce consumption and alcohol-related problems? Yes.

But we also need to remember that Prohibition took place during the 1920s, a time of excess and experimentation. Illegal drinking was part of that but the atmosphere itself contributed to that behavior. Had prohibition been enacted ten or twenty years earlier or later, it might have been more successful. And its repeal was not without political and economic motivation – repeal brought in some $500 million in tax revenue (about $7 billion in today’s dollars) to fund New Deal programs. And as historian Jack S. Blocker has said, opinion makers of the 1920s contributed to the change in attitudes about alcohol: “Inspired and led by the talented writers of the Lost Generation, the shapers of mass culture—first in novels, then in films, and finally in newspapers and magazines—altered the popular media’s previously negative attitude toward drink….Public drinking by women and college youth and wet attitudes disseminated by cultural media pushed along a process that social scientists call the ‘normalization of drinking.’”

It is a safe conclusion to state that the prohibition of illegal drugs today holds down their use. Should we legalize drugs, their consumption will probably increase several fold over the ensuing years. But everything has a price. Is it worth the cost of decriminalizing drugs and incurring a dramatic rise in drug use?

That’s another debate.

Obama’s greatest strength and greatest weakness

Employment counselors will tell you to prepare for a job interview by anticipating the questions you will be asked and preparing answers. The interviewer will ask the interviewee for strengths and the interviewee will dutifully identify several and back them up with specific achievements.

Then comes the next question: what is your greatest weakness? The employment counselor will tell you to say something like, “I work too hard” or “I’m too conscientious.” Naturally, unless the interviewer just fell off the turnip truck, he or she knows that you’ve prepared this answer and ignores it.

As an interviewer, several years ago I came across a way that helps determine an individual’s greatest weakness without asking the question. An individual’s greatest weakness is usually the greatest strength taken to an extreme. If you are really good at something, you tend to do it as often as you can – even when something else may be better suited. For example, someone who says “my greatest strength is that I’m a people person,” may tend to ignore procedures and project objectives that conflict with getting along with people. If someone tells you that they always see the big picture and the potential implication of outside factors, they may not see the detail and may overcomplicate a project by seeing too many outside factors. I’m not saying that the people in these examples shouldn’t be hired. Organizations need “big picture” and “people” persons. I’m just pointing out that, while we all have weaknesses, this is a way of determining the possible weaknesses of the people in the examples.

One of President Barack Obama’s greatest strengths is his verbal ability: his ability to stand in public and discuss at length the issues at hand. Because he is good at it and because so many people have told him that he is really good at it, Obama tends to do it as much as he can – even when silence would be better.

Obama seems to believe that he can fix any problem by delivering a speech on the subject. But, he has made so many public addresses that people are starting to tune out. And, like so many of us, he has a tendency to go to his strength during difficult times and double down—deliver another speech.

At times, Obama’s rhetoric can be elegant and spellbinding. It is one of his greatest strengths and can be pure joy to hear. But he needs to realize that overusing it can become his greatest weakness.

Quote without comment

Catholic Bishop R. Walker Nickless, Diocese of Sioux City, Iowa, on Health Care Reform: “The Catholic Church does not teach that government should directly provide health care. Unlike a prudential concern like national defense, for which government monopolization is objectively good – it both limits violence overall and prevents the obvious abuses to which private armies are susceptible – health care should not be subject to federal monopolization. … The proper role of the government is to regulate the private sector, in order to foster healthy competition and to curtail abuses. Therefore any legislation that undermines the viability of the private sector is suspect. Private, religious hospitals and nursing homes, in particular, should be protected, because these are the ones most vigorously offering actual health care to the poorest of the poor.”