Alcohol Prohibition as Economic Folly
In the episode on the worst economic mistakes of the twentieth century, Bob Zadek introduces Prohibition as the first item the guest mentions in his book, and notes that it has its parallel in 2014 in the so-called drug wars, calling it an exact parallel. He asks Burton Abrams to explain from an economic standpoint why Prohibition was economically damaging, why it was a failed policy, and why it made the list of top ten economic follies Worst Ten Economic Mistakes of the 20th Century (2014).
Abrams describes alcohol consumption as fairly widespread in the United States at the turn of the century, with many immigrants arriving from Eastern Europe and Southern Europe where drinking beer and wine was an everyday normal occurrence. He says a number of people in the country, mostly rural Protestants, found this to be a threat to their way of life and disliked other people consuming alcohol, and were able to muster forces to pass a constitutional amendment to prohibit the sale and distribution of alcohol. According to Abrams, this set in motion a series of negative consequences that haunted the economy for some 14 years, leading to disrespect of the law, a tremendous rise of organized criminals, bribery of government, and prisons filled with convicted alcohol smugglers. He characterizes it as an attempt by the government to impose a government standard of morality held by a small minority of the people at the time.
Zadek draws out a core principle: any law that criminalizes behavior that most people think is not criminal is bad policy, and you cannot affect the majority of people’s natural behavior by making an act criminal. He extends the principle to immigration laws, which he says attempt to criminalize the improvement of one’s life, and to drug laws, which criminalize activity most people think is okay. When an otherwise neutral activity—neutral in the sense that it does not harm somebody else—is made criminal, Zadek argues, it creates disrespect for the law and turns otherwise honest, law-abiding citizens into criminals, disrupting the social fabric as well as producing economic costs like incarceration, trial, and enforcement. Abrams confirms that Prohibition was ultimately repealed by another constitutional amendment, the only constitutional amendment to be repealed.
The Drug War as Prohibition’s Parallel
In the 2012 episode on principle over politics, Zadek frames drug legalization as an issue of economics and of American freedom, saying it makes no economic sense to spend money trying to influence social behavior and to create crimes when there is no victim. He stresses that the point is not that drugs will be legal but the principle that governs drug policy The Triumph of Principle Over Politics (2012).
Gary Johnson points to border violence with Mexico, which he calls very real, citing 40,000 deaths south of the border over the last four years, and describes this as a prohibition phenomenon in which disputes are played out with guns rather than the courts. He says that legalizing marijuana would arguably eliminate 75% of the border violence with Mexico, that drugs should be recognized first as a health issue rather than a criminal justice issue, and that he believes 90% of the drug problem is prohibition-related rather than use-related. He compares the situation to the prohibition of alcohol, when disputes were played out with machine guns on the street as opposed to in the courts, and urges that disputes be brought into the courts, income reported, and the product regulated and taxed.
In the 2014 episode, Zadek tells listeners to think about the drug wars as Abrams speaks and to set aside moralistic feelings about drugs, asking whether it is good policy for the country. Abrams says the war on drugs has a very direct parallel to the period of Prohibition and that the similarities and arguments are almost identical—one could substitute war on drugs for Prohibition and go down the line.
The Iron Law of Prohibition and Fentanyl
In the 2022 episode on the overdose crisis, Dr. Jeffrey Singer argues that there is no relationship between the number of opioids prescribed and non-medical use or addiction, but that there is a relationship between the number of opioids prescribed and overdoses: the fewer opioids prescribed, the greater the number of overdoses, because fewer prescription pain pills become available for diversion into the black market, leaving non-medical users with more dangerous options Fresh Approaches to the Overdose Crisis (2022). He cites the National Survey on Drug Use and Health, saying the percentage of adults with heroin addiction, alcohol addiction, cocaine addiction, and cannabis addiction has been unchanged over the years, though raw numbers grow with population.
Singer describes doctors who operated as drug dealers, including a doctor arrested in Orange County for selling OxyContin prescriptions at $600 a prescription at a Starbucks, and pill mills in Florida, where drug dealers ran what was called the “Oxy Express,” paying to fly people down from New York with instructions on which pain clinic and doctor to visit and which pharmacy to use. He attributes this to prohibition, saying prohibition corrupts doctors, pharmacists, policemen, prosecutors, and politicians, and that it makes the activity very lucrative. He notes that Purdue Pharma is bankrupt and that billions of dollars have been extracted from pharmaceutical companies in settlements, and that overdose rates keep climbing, which he expects the next CDC report to show has exceeded 100,000.
Singer invokes what people who study this call the Iron Law of Prohibition: prohibition by its definition fosters the development of more potent forms of whatever is prohibited. During alcohol prohibition, he says, they were not smuggling in beer or wine but whiskey; he offers the analogy of tailgaters drinking beer and wine in the parking lot but bringing tequila or whiskey in flasks into a stadium where no alcohol is allowed. He says crack cocaine probably would not have come about were it not for prohibition, because prohibition fosters more potent forms that can be smuggled in smaller amounts and subdivided into more packets. He distinguishes illicit fentanyl, made in labs and pressed into counterfeit prescription pills, from medicinal fentanyl used in anesthesia, intensive care, and skin patches, and says fentanyl has substituted for heroin partly because COVID disrupted heroin supply chains. At the bottom, he says, it is all prohibition that does this.
Prohibition Logic and E-Cigarette Regulation
In the 2022 episode on FDA rules against smoking, Zadek says the country has experienced prohibition, in which a perceived harm from the misuse of an otherwise lawful product led to a constitutional amendment prohibiting alcohol on a national basis FDA’s New Rules Against Smoking (2022). He says the desire existed, the activity was sent underground, criminals made lots of money, and organized crime became a big-time activity as a result, and that the experiment was ultimately judged a failure. He adds that narcotics were legal for the first 125 years of the country, then became illegal for reasons he calls wholly irrational, with the drug wars arising in earnest compliments of President Nixon and supported by President Reagan and others after them.
Guy Bentley distinguishes outright generalized prohibition from hyper-regulation that in effect has a similar result. He explains that the main call is to ban flavored e-cigarettes because they are alleged to appeal overwhelmingly to kids, and that most kids who vape do vape flavored products—but that most adults who vape also vape flavored products, and tobacco-flavored vapes are not very popular among people using vaping to quit smoking. He says he quit smoking thanks to vaping, as did his mother and his fiancee. He describes the FDA regulatory process as costing millions of dollars and thousands of hours in lawyering, usually only manageable by the biggest companies, which are traditional cigarette companies. He says more than 5 million e-cigarettes have been denied right of sale by the FDA, that about 98% of e-cigarettes in the country are technically illegal already, and that the FDA has authorized only a handful, all in tobacco flavors, not a single flavored e-cigarette.
Bentley predicts that if bans and denials continue, people currently using those products will go back to smoking cigarettes, which he calls the worst public health outcome, and that illegal vapes will be imported mostly from China, with people making their own e-liquid in off-label illegal markets lacking product standards, inspection, and accountability. He notes combustible cigarettes like Marlboro Lights, Marlboro Reds, and Camels will remain on the shelf while local vape stores are bankrupted. Zadek emphasizes that once a product is sent into the black market, quality control is lost, there is no warranty and no product liability insurance, and tax revenue is lost—illustrating with truckloads of cigarettes coming from untaxed Virginia to overly taxed New York. He says that as learned from prohibition, from drugs, and as we are about to learn from e-cigarettes, banning a product in demand sends it underground, denying users governmental protection and society reasonable taxation.
Across episodes: the same question, extended
The same question—whether prohibition achieves its aims or produces black markets, corruption, and violence—runs across the 2012, 2014, 2022 overdose, and 2022 vaping episodes. What changes is the target: Gary Johnson and Burton Abrams apply the parallel to the drug war, Jeffrey Singer extends it to fentanyl and the Iron Law of Prohibition, and Guy Bentley and Bob Zadek apply it to FDA regulation of flavored e-cigarettes. The 2011 immigration episode touches the topic only in passing, with Zadek’s remark that America is harmed by attempting to close its borders; the excerpts show no development of the prohibition theme there.
What the sources do not cover
The excerpts do not state the name or number of the constitutional amendment that enacted or repealed alcohol Prohibition, nor the date of either. They do not give the title of Burton Abrams’s book, the state in which Orange County is located, or the outcome of any case. They do not cover the details of the National Survey on Drug Use and Health methodology, the specific FDA authorization decisions beyond the general denial figures, or any arguments in favor of prohibition beyond the three baskets Bentley attributes to groups like Vital Strategies and the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids.