Pubdate: Thu, 21 Mar 2002 Source: Daily Independent, The (KY) Copyright: 2002 The Daily Independent, Inc. Contact: http://www.dailyindependent.com/ Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/1573 Author: Donald A. Nash Referenced: http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v02/n448/a06.html Referenced: http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v02/n463/a06.html ALCOHOL PROHIBITION WAS NOT A FAILURE According to the reasoning of Allan Erickson (March 9 ), our country needs to abolish all prohibitions against murder, robbery, drunken driving, spouse and child abuse and slavery. He claimed all prohibitions have failed, so the prohibition of slavery brought about by Abraham Lincoln, at the cost of thousands of lives, must be a failure. As to alcohol prohibition, he (also Stan White, March 14) needs to do some historical research. National alcohol prohibition was not a failure. Before prohibition, Neeley institutes were a chain of prosperous alcohol rehabilitation establishments. During prohibition, they went out of business because of a lack of patients. Bellevue Hospital in New York changed its alcoholic ward into a children's clinic. Drunken driving and crime decreased nationally despite propaganda about racketeering in large cities. Repeal of prohibition was the failure! After repeal, crime and drunkenness doubled within a decade. According to a Readers Digest report in 1983, alcohol sales provided $12.2 billion in taxes but cost the nation $89.5 billion in liquor and crime control, health care, not counting family poverty, spouse and child abuse, highway accidents and death it brings about. What do you think repeal of illegal drug use would cost the country? Abraham Lincoln compared prohibition of liquor with prohibition of slavery. He said, "Whether the world would be benefited by the total and final banishment of all intoxicating drinks seems to me to not now any longer be an open question....The liquor traffic is a cancer in society eating out its vitals and threatening its destruction. It cannot be regulated; it must be eradicated...." What do you think he would say about illegal drug traffic today? Donald A. Nash Grayson - --- MAP posted-by: Ariel