Positive Effects Of Prohibition In The 1920s

Nevertheless, prohibition did managed to repair some of the damages made by alcoholic Americans. Deaths and arrest from alcohol and drunkenness dropped significantly during the 1920s as seen by this graph. In 1920, deaths by alcohol use dropped from 7 % of an 100,000 population to 1% during a thirteen year period (Hall 1167).

Prohibition managed to impose a steep drop in the early stages of prohibition but as time goes, people began to dip their toes into the acts of rebellion where deaths and such began to rise steadily from alcoholism. As shown in Figure 2, deaths from over drinking began to rise once again back up to its original numbers. However, prohibition did manage to significantly drop deaths and arrest from overdrinking for
However, “Prohibition did not improve health and hygiene in America as anticipated”, instead it created a significant health risk in the liver from liquor, named cirrhosis (Thornton 5). Drops did occur during prohibition but they only occurred before the beginning of the first World War, where many men and women were preparing to fight (Blocker 236). Thornton notes that:
The death rate from alcoholism bottomed out just before the enforcement of Prohibition and then returned to pre-World War I levels. That was probably the result of increased consumption during Prohibition and the consumption of more potent and poisonous alcoholic beverages. The death rate from alcoholism and cirrhosis also declined rather dramatically in Denmark, Ireland, and Great Britain during World War I, but rates in those countries continued to fall during the 1920s (in the absence of prohibition) when rates in the United States were either rising or stable (Thornton 5).

This dispels the argument against the successfulness of Prohibition. While drunkenness declines, there are other problems which can relates to today’s problems with the war on
Deaths, hygiene problems, corruptness and crime still were major complication in the US, but the era after it proved to be a period of reform. The Great Depression and well as the “repeal of Prohibition dramatically reduced crime, including organized crime, and corruption. Jobs were created, and new voluntary efforts, such as Alcoholics Anonymous, which was begun in 1934, succeeded in helping alcoholics”(Thornton 8). This was second step to getting America right where it had originally been. “AA rejected the prohibitionists' claim that anyone could become a slave to alcohol, the fundamental assumption behind the sweeping approach of the Volstead Act” and they cut a rigid line between over drinking and moderate drinking, thus creating the beginning of oa more alcohol driven society in the US (Blocker