posted
Do you have any sources for that belief? From what I can find, the consensus is that the long term effect was very minimal.
This is actually something I'm very interested in, so any conflicting information would be very appreciated.
Posts: 10177 | Registered: Apr 2001
| IP: Logged |
posted
Unfortunately, I don't have any sources for you. I wish I did, for I'm interested in reading more about it myself.
Posts: 16551 | Registered: Feb 2003
| IP: Logged |
posted
The worst thing that prohibition did was spawn American style lager. It's an abomination. Before prohibition there were local breweries everywhere producing good European brews. After prohibition there was Anheuser Bush.
Posts: 2596 | Registered: Jan 2006
| IP: Logged |
posted
I've heard it before as well. Prohibition broke the national habit of stopping at the bar after work. It wasn't all a disaster and went a long way towards its goals.
Posts: 1753 | Registered: Aug 2002
| IP: Logged |
posted
Significant impact by prohibition itself only has tenuous support. The amount of alcohol consumption by Americans dropped some when prohibition started. It had already dropped considerably before prohibition started. Even during prohibition alcohol consumption nearly surpassed immediate pre-prohibition consumption. In long-term trends in alcohol consumption prohibition only shows up as a small blip. The relative amounts spent on hard liquor vs other alcohol was not significantly different before and after prohibition.
And of course, homicides rapidly increased during prohibition (by around twenty percent nationwide), and rapidly decreased once it ended.
There was a great decrease in alcohol consumption in the US, but it occurred before prohibition. Prohibition's contribution to decreases in alcohol consumption are tenuous at best -- indicators for it (deaths by cirrhosis and drunkenness arrests) only decreased slightly compared to immediately before prohibition, and reattained the levels they had just before prohibition immediately after prohibition.
quote:I've heard it before as well. Prohibition broke the national habit of stopping at the bar after work.
I've heard a lot of things. Some of them even turn out to be true. This, from what I've read, isn't. Alcoholic consumption post-prohibition was, from my reading, pretty much on par with pre-prohibition.
You may have heard about this in one of OSC's columns. I remember him mentioning it, using pretty much that same language. But...(edit)OSC's fact checking sometimes leaves a great deal to be desired.
Posts: 10177 | Registered: Apr 2001
| IP: Logged |
posted
fugu touches on part of this issue that I'm particularly interested in. There were things prior to prohibition that led to a significant decrease in alcoholic consumption.
I'm very interested in the process of large scale social and social mythology changes, so this is very interesting to me.
In general, overt, antagonistic methods may increase compliance, dislodge weakly adhered to behavior, and alter people's habits, but they rarely have a large effect on adoption of different norms, which is really where you normally get your long-term effects from.
The interplay of personality, methods chosen, overall effect, and persistance is one of my special interest areas.
posted
I think the best way to approximate the prevalence of that particular facet of alcohol consumption would be bars per capita. If bar-going habits reduced, we'd expect a reduction in the number of bars, generally speaking.
That's a moderately difficult dataset to dig for, but I'll see what I can find.
edit: particularly hard given "bar charts" and "bar graphs"
Posts: 15770 | Registered: Dec 2001
| IP: Logged |
posted
The problem is that most paper/dataset titles and abstracts will only use one term, and the most common in US usage is bar.
I've found some related stats, but nothing close enough. For instance, there's been a significant decrease in the number of bars since shortly after WW2.
Posts: 15770 | Registered: Dec 2001
| IP: Logged |
quote:I've heard a lot of things. Some of them even turn out to be true. This, from what I've read, isn't. Alcoholic consumption post-prohibition was, from my reading, pretty much on par with pre-prohibition.
Re: kat's point. Check out Norman Clark's _Deliver Us from Evil: An Interpretation of American Prohibition_. There's no definitive history of Prohibition, but this is as close as it gets, and is probably the most sophisticated interpretation out there. More recent stuff, like Ann Syzmanski and John Guthrie, tends to examine the organizational strategies of the movement rather than the cultural motivations or impact of the period. So Clark remains largely normative, and concludes that Prohibition did in fact impact American drinking habits.
Earlier interpretations, like Andrew Sinclair's or Herbert Asbury's or even the late sainted Richard Hofstadter's, tended to dismiss Prohibition as the fruit of paranoid backwards fundamentalist minds, unworthy of the respect of real historians. More recent research - like Clark - tends to take the movement more seriously, and has realized that there were actually respectable, educated middle class people concerned about practical social issues. In other words, that the period is worth taking seriously.
Posts: 794 | Registered: Aug 2000
| IP: Logged |
posted
Matt, Although I could be mistaken, I was pretty sure we were talking about the legal period of Prohibition, as started by the 18th Amendment and the Volstead Act, not the Abstinence/Prohibition movement.
I did obliquely credit this movement with reducing alcoholic comsumption.
Posts: 10177 | Registered: Apr 2001
| IP: Logged |
quote:Originally posted by MrSquicky: I'd be willing to bet that the mean size of bars has increased during that time, though.
And that more restaurants added bars to their establishments. And, inversely, that bars added restaurants.
Posts: 4753 | Registered: May 2002
| IP: Logged |
posted
Nope, you're not mistaken. Clark's book deals with the period you're addressing. I do kind of go off topic in my post - talking about the movement - but all six books I mention deal with the 1920s as well as the second wave of the temperance movement that immediately preceded it.
Posts: 794 | Registered: Aug 2000
| IP: Logged |
posted
I believe that you are correct MrSquicky, but in fairness the 18th Amendment and the Volstead Act were significant fruits of the efforts of the Abstinence/Prohibition/Temperance movement. I seem to recall that prior to the 18th Amendment and the Volstead Act the movement had considerable success in reducing public consumption of alcohol, much like the current efforts to educate Americans on the dangers of smoking and second hand smoke seem to be resulting in a nationwide reduction in smoking.
Posts: 148 | Registered: Mar 2005
| IP: Logged |
Printer-friendly view of this topic
![[Wink]](wink.gif)
