Alcohol should be prohibited again

The executive summary from the Cato Institute sums it up very well: "The National prohibition of alcohol (1920-33)—the “noble experiment”—was undertaken to reduce crime and corruption, solve social problems, reduce the tax burden created by prisons and poorhouses, and improve health and hygiene in America. The results of that experiment clearly indicate that it was a miserable failure on all counts. The evidence affirms sound economic theory, which predicts that prohibition of mutually beneficial exchanges is doomed to failure. The lessons of Prohibition remain important today. They apply not only to the debate over the war on drugs but also to the mounting efforts to drastically reduce access to alcohol and tobacco and to such issues as censorship and bans on insider trading, abortion, and gambling. Although consumption of alcohol fell at the beginning of Prohibition, it subsequently increased. Alcohol became more dangerous to consume; crime increased and became “organized”; the court and prison systems were stretched to the breaking point; and corruption of public officials was rampant. No measurable gains were made in productivity or reduced absenteeism. Prohibition removed a significant source of tax revenue and greatly increased government spending. It led many drinkers to switch to opium, marijuana, patent medicines, cocaine, and other dangerous substances that they would have been unlikely to encounter in the absence of Prohibition. Those results are documented from a variety of sources, most of which, ironically, are the work of supporters of Prohibition—most economists and social scientists supported it. Their findings make the case against Prohibition that much stronger.[1]"The failure of prohibition came down to alot about freedoms being taken away. People just don't like to be told what they can do or cannot do. Alcohol prohibition caused folks to move to other more dangerous drugs. It might've slowed down consumption at first, but studies showed it increased during prohibition comparable levels of preprohibiton. There were 10 times more places to get it, it was much more lethal (poisonous) and strong[2]. During prohibition the Coast Guard increased by 188% and it's budget increased by 500%. How much more power does the government need? Just as in the prohibition of marijuana today, they continue to fail. 1.5 trillion dollars later spent on the war since the Controlled Substances Act was in effect, the usage has not changed. In fact, high school aged kids usage went up. There seems to be no relationship between arrests and use rates[3]. No, even with the more money and manpower they threw at it, it still had no effect. Prohibition did not achieve its goals. Instead, it added to the problems it was intended to solve and supplanted other ways of addressing problems. This is why it will never be tried again. This is why marijuana prohibition too will eventually subside. The only beneficiaries of Prohibition were bootleggers, crime bosses, and the forces of big government. Carroll Wooddy concluded that the "Eighteenth Amendment . . . contributed substantially to the growth of government and of government costs in this period [1915-32] [4]. Sources:[1] http://www.cato.org...[2] http://object.cato.org...;[3] http://www.aclu-wa.org...;[4] Ibid.; Wooddy, p. 104.