A LIBERTARIAN LOOKSAT LEGALIZATION
stiff drinks a day for every man, boy, wife, mother, and young lady in the nation. A notable event of the 1830s was the opening of the Oregon Trail. More notable is that anybody could find Oregon. Another notable event of the 1830’s was the (unsurprising, given the circumstances) growth of the Temperance Movement. The teetotalers advocated laws against alcohol, but until the 18th amendment was passed nearly 100 years later, they had to rely mostly on social pressure. This worked. Rorabaugh says that even by 1840, per capita consumption was reduced to 3.1 gallons a year and was at about 2.5 gallons (approximately where it is today) when Prohibition began. But here’s a little bad news for libertarians... Laws also work. Contrary to the folklore of the Roaring Twenties, Prohibition did not lead to an increase in drinking. Annual per capita consumption of alcohol fell below one gallon. Such statistics are not perfectly reliable due to people like my dad. He and my Uncle Joe almost froze to death in a snowstorm driving an open Model T truck full of bootleg whiskey down from the Detroit River to Toledo. Fortunately, they were well-supplied with anti-freeze. Nonetheless, Prohibition did have measurable effects on alcohol abuse. According to a study from the Harvard University School of Government, cirrhosis death rates for U.S. men were 29.5 per 100,000 in 1911 and 10.7 per 100,000 in 1929. Decades later, a lot of laws were also passed against smoking. You couldn’t do it here. You
couldn’t do it there. You couldn’t even do it in the filthy john at CBGB on the Bowery. And cigarette taxes were raised exorbitantly. But with a drug as addictive as nicotine (and, Montecristo No. 5 smoldering in my ashtray, I know of what I speak) there should have been heavily armed “Camel Cartels” springing up all over Virginia, North Carolina, and Kentucky, each with its “Pall Mall Escobar” or “El Chapo Menthol.” It didn’t happen. Social pressure to quit smoking decreed otherwise. According to the Centers for Disease Control 42.4% of American adults smoked cigarettes in 1965. Only 14% do now. A country doesn’t get rid of a habit like that in one generation just by waving a legislative magic wand. Seatbelt use is another example. “Click it or ticket” legislation did play a part. But social pressure was more important than anything the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration did to increase seatbelt use from 14% in 1983 to 89.7% in 2017. I judge this by my 14-year-old son (whose social pressure is called Mom) dutifully buckling up when he and I drive the Jeep from the house to the barn, 200 yards on a grass track with no highway in sight, at 5 mph, and the only thing we’re going to hit is Henny-Penny if I left the chicken coop open. And yet... And yet... I wrestle with that libertarian angel. A free society will self-organize to produce beneficent social pressure. But a free society is also free to politically advocate, exercise governance, and engage in lawmaking. And social pressure can’t do everything. There
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March 2019
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