Alcohol Prohibition: Mission Failure Reason

Alcohol Prohibition: Mission Failure Reason


The ‘rights’ and the ‘wrongs’ of the Alcohol Prohibition remains one of the highly debated and hotly contentious issue. Historically it has been a long battle between the alcohol prohibitionist who advocated alcohol drinks are extremely dangerous for human consumption as it causes very many serious alcohol(ism) problems. Therefore all of them should be banded or totally prohibited! On the other hand the alcohol drink proponent and its industry advocates argued for its regulated, moderate and safe use mainly for its very many beneficial aspect and most importantly prevent its illegitimate trading and use for the social safety and security point of view.

History has proven again and again the fact, that the alcohol drinking cause serious alcohol(ism)problems so enormous harm to the society (more than tobacco smoking when compared with its violent crime, delinquency, DUI etc.). Nevertheless imposing the ‘ Total Alcohol Prohibition’ makes the problems still more worse as it gives raises to alcohol bootlegging corruption, crime Mafia etc! Therefore it is been realized that the better way out of it is; first of all to educate people about the harms, dangerous involved in the alcohol consumption, so to teach them about its moderate or safe use. Together with bring in strict regulation over its quality, sales to ensure its moderate and safe use and to prevent its misuse! With such powerfully convincing argument most importantly to stamp-out the bootlegging crime Mafia and the official corruptions the alcohol prohibition repealed! So the proponents of the alcohol drink had won and alcohol prohibitionist had to accept the defeat in their main battle to bring in total alcohol prohibition.

Nevertheless they succeeded in bringing in some very stringent alcohol policy regulation such as imposing high alcohol taxes, increase of legal drinking age, restricting the time and places of alcohol consumption, imposing stringent DUI, BAC limits and its law enforcemet with its sever punishment to the drink drivers etc. However the alcohol industry successfully adapted to these regulations mainly by exploiting a big “loophole” of their opponents own making!

The main reason or the big loophole that resulted in the alcohol Prohibitionists mission defeat or failure is their own dogmatic BELIEF, borrowed from the institutions alcoholism doctrines, which overzealously advocates; “all alcoholic beverages no matter the alcohol content in them high or low potentially cause alcohol(ism) problems”.

The alcohol industry exploited this claim to their full advantage. So now the opponents can not blame them for manufacturing and marketing the extremely dangerous high alcohol content beverage under the banner of Standard Alcohol Drinks instead of the relatively safe low-alcohol drinks, as they themselves argue that the ‘low-alcohol drinks also can potentially cause alcohol(ism) problems!’ This allows the alcohol industry to manufacture and market those highly profitable, high alcohol content standard alcohol drinks, ironically at the expense of its own opponent’s claims which basically asserts that ‘there are not much safety difference between the high and the low-alcohol drink’! I have explained it extensively in my paper “Alcohol Research Misconduct: Cause Drunk Driving” http://alcohol-research-misconduct.blogspot.com/2008/01/alcohol-research-misconductcause-drunk.html published in the previous blog post.

Therefore the main reason for alcohol prohibitionist mission failure is their own making! Their own preposterous and dogmatic belief that advocates “in the matters of alcohol drinking there are not much safety difference between the high and the low-alcohol drink”. This stands quite CONTRARY to the available alcohol epidemiological research and its surveys, which basically points to the fact that almost all alcohol(ism) problems caused by the extremely dangerous high alcohol content drinks named as the “standard Alcohol Drinks (SADs)”, very popular among is the regular beer that contains around and above 5% alcohol, which can treacherously lead specially alcohol vulnerable gullible people inadvertently into excessive alcohol consumption thus into very many serious alcohol(ism) problems including the drunk driving/accidents! On the other hand there are absolutely no such research evidences to prove that the Low-Alcohol Drinks (LADs, preferably having around and below 2% alcohol) causing any of these alcohol(ism) problems most importantly the drunk driving/accidents.


Now this gives an opportunity to the alcohol prohibitionist to turn the table and beat the alcoholism causing, high profit making high-alcohol Standard Drinks proponents and the industry at their own game! They should rectify their historical mistake by wisely following the alcohol(ism) epidemiological research and the survey.
On its basis they should demand all the high alcohol drinks which comes under the banner of SADs should be banned and only the low alcohol content drinks should be allowed essentially for the moderate and safe public consumption! Or at least the former should be taxed two or three times higher than the latter. In other words one alcohol drink unit (around 10 to 13 grams of pure alcohol) in the SADs should be priced two or three times higher than the same amount of alcohol in the LADs having 2% v/v or less alcohol content in it.

The greatest advantage of exempting the LADs from the prohibition is that it will significantly prevent the reemergence of the Alcohol Bootlegging, its Corruption, Criminal Mafia, which is the main enemy of the alcohol prohibition all the while that is why historically they could not succeed! If the good quality LADs legally made available that too at its cost price, most of the alcohol drinkers would not go for the illegal (prohibited) high alcohol content SADs that would be highly expensive. After all they will have the opportunity of consuming same amount of alcohol if they like, still it would cost them far less! This will win more alcohol drinkers into its fold. Therefore it will have greater chances of succeeding than the total ban or prohibitions on all alcoholic beverage drinking!

Overall the prohibition on the SADs would act like a double edged sword. On the one hand it would cut off most of the profit of the alcohol industry because the main secret of their high profit lies in the high-alcohol content drinks that they sell. In general higher the alcohol content higher goes their profit margins and vice versa. On the other hand it will cut down the fertile grounds of the all alcohol drink total prohibition on which the alcohol bootlegging mafia mostly flourish!

Basically, the imposition Alcohol Prohibition or stringent restriction over the SADs would greatly help in eradicating most of the alcoholism problems including the DUI Drunk Driving/accidents mostly out from our society, which I believe is the main historic mission of alcohol prohibition.

Valerian Texeira
Alcoholics Curewell.