Is Alcohol Different?

That alcohol prohibition was a failure is widely accepted. See, for example, Alcohol Prohibition Was a Failure . The DEA actually disagrees .

Repeal.net frequently compares drug prohibition to alcohol prohibition. The most common objection one hears to this comparison is that alcohol is different. It's not as bad as currently illicit drugs. It's not as addictive. It's not as bad for your health. It doesn't make people violent.

Below are some quotes and links about alcohol. We do NOT advocate alcohol prohibition.

Evangelist Billy Sunday "attacked drinkers in his audience as 'dirty, low-down, whiskey-soaked, beer-guzzling, bull-necked, foul-mouthed, hypocrites'. He spiked his sermons with stories of drunks shooting family and friends, or axing their wives." Detroit News

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Quotes from Carry Nation:

" Men are nicotine soaked, beer besmirched, whiskey greased, red-eyed devils."

" Vote for a principle which will make it a crime to manufacture, barter, sell or give away that which makes three-fourths of all the crime and murders thousands every year, and the suffering of the women and children that can not be told.
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Drinking men neglect their wives. Their wives become jealous. Men often go with abandoned women under the influence of that drink that animates the animal passions and asks not for the association of love, but the gratification of lust. Men do not go to the houses of ill-fame to meet women they love but oftener those they almost hate. The drink habit destroys in men the appreciation of a home life.
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The curse of heredity is one of the most heart-breaking results of the saloon. Poor little children are brought into the world, cursed by disposition and disease, entailed on them. How can mothers be true to their offspring with a constant dread of the nameless horrors wives are exposed to by being drunkards' wives."
 

From the DEA: "Look at the problems that alcohol abuse has wrought. In the 1920s those advocating the repeal of Prohibition argued that crime and other social ills would be alleviated if alcohol were legal. Has that happened? We now have approximately 11 million alcoholics or problem drinkers in this country whose behavior has contributed to decreased productivity in the workplace, fetal defects, traffic fatalities, domestic violence, and other crime."