Try and envisage this scenario: Parliament enacts legislation prohibiting the manufacture, importation, sale and barter of all alcoholic drinks in Malta and Gozo with almost immediate effect. What would you think would happen? Civil strife instigated by the Paceville business community, perhaps? A sudden dramatic increase in demand for professional alcohol treatment services? A sizeable upsurge in the unemployment figures? Certainly life would be very different compared to what it is like today. Alcohol is so much part of us that to try and erase it from daily living in any Western country would be unthinkable, no?
Well not quite unthinkable. That is precisely what happened in the United States of America just over a century ago. In January 1920 the American Constitution was amended in such a way as to render all transactions involving alcohol together with its manufacture illegal.
The reasons for Prohibition are easy to pinpoint: for decades, an anti-alcohol movement, known as the Temperance Movement had been growing from strength to strength as it appeared evident that alcohol consumption was associated with, nay, directly responsible for, much anti-social behaviour: drunkenness, neglect of families, murder, violence, absenteeism from work....you name it. This sort of behaviour flourished, according to the Temperance Movement - and few could have realistically contradicted it - precisely because it was fuelled by the demon drink in those dens of iniquity known as saloons, with which many American towns were teeming.
Common sense and a growing body of what appeared to be scientific evidence pointed to the fact that the eradication of drinking would be accompanied by a dramatic decrease in social and human problems.
For thirteen long years, Prohibition ruled...at least on the legal level. In reality, probably because it was imposed on a nation which was never convinced of its validity, and, in any case, was not prepared to accept it, Prohibition did not meet its objectives. While alcohol consumption did fall dramatically, especially in the initial period, the problematic behaviour Prohibition was supposed to eradicate actually increased. Criminals organised themselves into efficient providers of the alcohol people were desperately seeking and prepared to pay good money for. The American Mafia was born at this time, and thrived on the strong demand for illegal alcohol Prohibition created. Because spirits are less bulky than beer, it was easier to smuggle and manufacture whisky and other spirits illegally, and former beer drinkers switched to sprits, thus probably consuming more alcohol.
The whole atmosphere of illegality surrounding drinking bred violence (for example, among rival gangs vying for control of the industry), which resulted in a higher rate of murders than in the pre-Prohibition area. There was no official control of standards, and the quality of alcohol drunk was in many cases abysmal, with people dying as a result.
By the early thirties, it was evident that the ‘noble experiment’ had failed miserably. Alcohol was simply too deeply-rooted in the national psyche for any attempt to force abstinence upon people to succeed. In all probability, the sceptical political class itself was not prepared to back the initiative the whole way by providing the necessary resources to enforce Prohibition, and to educate the public in the ways of abstinence. In December 1933, America heaved a collective sigh of relief and reached for a legal celebratory glass of champagne as the by then infamous legislation which had brought legal Prohibition into being was repealed.
