Dan Gardner, writing in the Ottawa Citizen, pens a fantastic column where he notes the conservative thinker Francis Fukuyama’s solution to the problem of escalating drug war violence in Mexico. Fukuyama says “of course” legalization is the way to reduce the problem, but politically “it has very little chance of being enacted by Congress, and therefore is not for the time being a realistic policy choice.” Gardner then consults the history books to show people that what is considered impossible today can be reality tomorrow.
“There is as much chance of repealing the 18th Amendment as there is for a hummingbird to fly to the planet Mars with the Washington Monument tied to its tail,” claimed Morris Sheppard, a U.S. Senator from Texas.
The 18th Amendment was the constitutional provision banning alcohol. It was passed in 1920. Sheppard made his statement in 1930.
The 18th Amendment was repealed in 1933.
Sheppard wasn’t the only one caught out by history. Far from it.
“They can never repeal it,” boasted Congressman Andrew Volstead in 1921.
“I will never see the day when the 18th Amendment is out of the Constitution of the U.S.,” said Senator William Borah in 1929.
Prohibition’s supporters had good reason to be confident. Legalization wasn’t merely unpopular. It required an amendment to the constitution. “Thirteen states with a population less than that of New York State alone can prevent repeal until Halley’s Comet returns,” Clarence Darrow observed when Prohibition came into force in 1920. “One might as well talk about his summer vacation on Mars.”
I remember growing up in the Cold War when there was an East and West Germany and a Berlin Wall. That wall had existed my entire life, preceding me by seven years, in fact. I vividly recall even as a child marvelling at the numbers of kilotons and megatons of nuclear weaponry and destruction that were mutually directed at the US and USSR. “The Day After” played on my network TV when I was a junior in high school, painting the “what if” picture of nuclear attack in Lawrence, Kansas. That entire balance of power and terror was focused on the fulcrum of the Berlin Wall, where close to one hundred East Berliners died when killed by guards as they tried to cross the wall to freedom in the West.
Then one night I come home at about 3am from a gig in the winter of ’89. I put down my bass and turn on the TV, and there’s Tom Brokaw with a live “breaking news” report (at 3am?). There are a whole bunch of jubilant white people dancing on top of and hammering away at some wall. I turn up the volume. What? The Berlin Wall? You gotta be kiddin’ me!
Our day is coming. Mr. Obama, tear down this prohibition!
Thats a moving ending! In a slew of personal irony today, I was in fact thinking of prohibition. I thought Of the Berlin Wall, which I too remember from Mr. Tom Brokaw’s announcement. Prohibition is just as much a wall of brick and mortar as the Berlin wall! Need Proof? Ask anyone in prison today for a non violent drug charge of possession. You can bet your sweet ass you get shot or worse attempting to flail the fence to freedom at T.D.C.J. We are Americans! We have rights and duties to protect those rights!
Stop sitting there reading! Get busy writing letters, sending email, link your friends here ant to Xcannabis and Norml’s main page. Email your Reps, Email the President, Call your reps, just get involved! This change is our Patriotic duty!