Prohibition, and all that Mabel has worked to build, comes crashing down, thanks in part to a sly tell-all by none other than George Cassiday. And in New York City, Gettler & Norris finally see their work yield meaningful results.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
What is the historical background of Prohibition and its impact on public health?
Also, I gotta say, it's a little ironic that of all the people to comment on what went wrong with prohibition, it may have been Mabel herself who put it best.
The violence which has accompanied enforcement of the prohibition law has done more than anything else to instill in the public mind the question and the doubt. Can prohibition ever be enforced? Is it worth the price in human life?
Adios, Mabel. It wasn't all your fault. Well, that wasn't not your fault.
Prohibition was a huge mistake in all kinds of ways. What I hope is that we actually learn from the mistake. I hope that understanding our history will add something to the idea that we're not going to repeat the mistakes of the past.
It started as a moral crusade, as a minority of hardliners fought to remake American life in their own squeaky clean image. A powerful political lobby turned it into a wedge issue. Congress made it a crime. It was a culture war that made it all the way to the Constitution. Does all of this feel a bit familiar to you? It should, because it's basically the world we still live in today.
Our political system is set up so that certain people benefit from nasty, unending political fights. For starters, take, well, lobbyists.
The term lobbyist actually comes from the fact that they would come and they would wait in the lobby outside the chamber. And so they were the lobbyists who would stay there in the lobby and speak to the needs of the constituents, which was a real service.
That's my friend Josh Graham-Lynn. He directs a bipartisan anti-corruption organization called Represent Us. And full disclosure, I do some work with them, too.
But what's ended up happening is there's nothing really preventing lobbyists from taking Congress people out to dinner, or, hey, you want to borrow my jet, or even worse, hey, you've done a great job in Congress, and when you leave, you should come work for my lobbying firm. We can offer you $10 million a year. It's called the revolving door, and it's a huge problem.
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