This thread is getting so OT it's ridiculous, but..
the modern "war on drugs" is pretty much the same thing with about as much success..
Dougie.
>
> There are different opinions nowadays on the reasons that the 18th amendment
> (prohibition) was ratified. May of the cited reasons today are colored by
> people's political points of view.
>
> But, in short, anti-drinking organizations (or "temperance" groups) wanted
> to end the social problems of drinking that they observed. The problems
> associated with saloons included prostitution, gambling and
> public drunkenness. All of these were criminal, which the groups wanted to
> end, but additionally, they were immoral, thus it was easy to get the
> backing of religion.
>
> Now considered a "failed experiment" (to paraphrase one quote), the 19th
> amendment ended prohibition because crime increased when alcohol went
> underground, instead of decreasing.
>
> On Mon, Jan 25, 2010 at 9:29 AM, <hcarteau_at_...> wrote:
>
> >
> >
> > > Chris Lemens wrote:
> >
> > > > (To the non-Americans: During Prohibition -- when we constitutionally
> > > > illegalized liquor -- the Bureau of Revenue within the Treasury
> > > > Department was in charge of enforcing the liquor laws. Hillbillies
> > > > thus called them revenuers.)
> > > >
> > > > I'm sure that there are lunar revenuers. Maybe that's what Ghost Gors
> > > > was really about. There could be a lunar hero band called the
> > > > Untouchables, with their leader, Eliotus Nessus.
> >
> > /// Thank you for this excellent joke, I burst into laughing so loud my
> > wife
> > came to see what it was about !
> >
> > This whole "prohibition" stuff is extremely strange to a French. You'd
> > think the
> > american government would avoid mingling into peoples' private lives. Was
> > it
> > something religious ?
> >
> >
> >
>
>
> [Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
>