Prohibition was stupid
what were they thinking
shareThey were thinking it would solve social ills.
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MovieChat Forums > The Untouchables (1987) Discussion > Prohibition was stupid
The same kind of thinking that keeps weed and other light drugs from getting legalized, the only difference being that alcohol was too popular for prohibition to work.
shareConsidering the death and social destruction wrought by alcohol, I don’t think it sets a great example as to why “weed and other light drugs” should be legalized.
shareI think it does for 2 reasons:
1) It doesn't make sense for one to be legal while the other one is illegal - society should make up its mind. Either ban both or allow both for the sake of common sense.
2) Weed it less harmful than alcohol in pretty much every way. Same goes for most light (or soft) drugs, many of which are even used as a form of therapy.
LEGAL WEED NOW.😎
shareProhibition of both alcohol and weed were racially motivated, initially.
shareDunno about weed, but the Temperance Movement was rooted more in both religiosity and social class snobbery than in racism. A lot of the people who spend the late 19th and early 20th century trying to ban alcohol had the simplistic idea that if they took away the alcohol, the lower orders would stop fighting and beating their wives and being generally trashy, and start behaving the way middle-class churchgoers thought they should behave. It was a "Social Reform" movement, and FYI a big motivator for a lot of the women involved was to stop domestic violence. They actually thought that if there were no alcohol there would be no beatings! Hahaha!
As for the start of prohibition, I've read that immediately after the end of WWI, the mood in the US was penitent and that there was an upswing in religiosity, and that was the zeitgeist that made the public approve of prohibition. Needless to say, it didn't last long, and it was only a few years before the Jazz Age got into swing, and illicit alcohol and speakeasies became the height of fashion.
Germans were white. People were still heated about World War I, and they ran most of the breweries. That was a good excuse, and women were always running their mouths like the real battleaxes they were about getting beat by their white husbands busting their lips when they came home hammered and the women wouldn't stop nagging them. That's why prohibition was thing. Blacks were probably like 5% of the population back then. No one gave a shit about them. Just like today, they were inconsequential.
shareBecause race means black or white. Right?
Wrong. Many of the recent immigrant Germans, Czechs, Poles and of course the Irish were Catholics. Seen as different races by those that declared themselves the "native" White Anglo Saxon Protestants.
Also it was feared that Jazz culture was encouraging the mixing of the races.
Germans, Czechs, Poles and Irish are white you moron. Learn what the fuck race means, ya moron. They were seen as different ethnicities, dumb ass. You wouldnt have these miscommunications if you learned to use the agreed upon definitions of the English language, instead of making them up as you go.
shareI have plenty of experience of being white and being treated like another race by WASP bigots. Purple faced, piss stained pricks like you.
It ended at the end of the film.. Great film.
shareThe dumb broads were given the vote shortly before that, and the most important thing they could think to do was to make beer illegal.
They're no smarter today, but comprise the largest voting block and are the easiest to manipulate, so the politicians love them.
All the politicians have to do is to promise 'free shit' to everyone, because women love to spend money as long as it's not their own.
Mysoginistic, are we?
shareVery stupid. Banning a popular substance because it's dangerous always leads to gang warfare, police corruption, dangerous product, and widespread contempt for the law. Just like with drug prohibition now.
Notice we don't have "beer wars"now.
The issue is that its popular to begin with. How do you propose we solve it?
shareOnly stupid when you have a culture of alcoholism.
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