On July 11, 1933, Connecticut ratified the 21st amendment leading to the repeal of national prohibition of alcohol. The Day published a rather interesting editorial on the subject:
Raise a glass to state’s decision to repeal bad policy
By DAVID J. HANSON
Seventy-five years ago, on July 11 of 1933, Connecticut ratified the Twenty-first Amendment leading to the repeal of National Prohibition of alcohol.
In the early part of the 20th century the Yankee old-stock population increasingly advocated prohibition as a way to reduce what it considered the crime, poverty and vice associated with the flood of southern and eastern European immigrants entering the state.
Yale economist Irving Fisher, a strong promoter of prohibition, complained that in Connecticut cities “the American stock has been submerged by a wave of immigrants from Italy, the Balkans, Russia, and Poland.”
The Connecticut Temperance Society, the Prohibition Party, the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union, the Anti-Saloon League, the Connecticut Ku Klux Klan (CKKK) and other groups saw prohibition as a way to “Americanize” immigrants.
Some employers viewed prohibition as a way to increase the efficiency of their work force, especially their immigrant workers. But not everyone supported prohibition. Organized labor tended to oppose it in the belief that it was an attempt to make workers more docile. After the Eighteenth Amendment established National Prohibition in 1920, union leader Samuel Gompers complained that it was the only amendment in history to reduce rather than expand the freedoms enjoyed by Americans.
Apparently, many people in Connecticut weren’t going to let their freedom to drink be denied. After legitimate tax-paying alcohol producers and retailers were outlawed, illegal operators, including organized criminals, moved in quickly to meet the brisk demand for alcoholic beverages.
To operate, the bootleggers and speakeasies had to bribe law enforcement officers and even entire departments. It often required that elected officials also be bribed and the public became alarmed at the decline in public morality.
Prohibition denied the state tax revenues from alcohol at the same time it was causing dramatic increases in crime and violence, heavy court workloads, and over-crowded jails.
Bootleg alcohol was carelessly made and often contained creosote, lead toxins and even embalming fluid. Consumers sometimes suffered paralysis, blindness and death. This led many drinkers in the state to switch to opium, cocaine, hair tonic, sterno or “liquid heat,” and other dangerous substances that they would have been unlikely to consume in the absence of Prohibition.
As widespread crime and other problems caused by Prohibition mushroomed, more and more residents decided that the cure was much worse than the disease and called for repeal.
Seventy-five years later, Connecticut residents continue to suffer from the legacy of Prohibition-era thinking. Connecticut remains one of only three states in the entire country that still prohibits the Sunday sales of beer, wine and spirits. This is despite the fact that Sunday has become the second busiest shopping day of the week.
As Connecticut marks this historic 75th anniversary of Prohibition Repeal, raise a toast to the state’s early vote to repeal one of the biggest policy debacles in American history; and, let’s hope Connecticut continues its push into the 21st century by abolishing the final vestiges of the failed experiment in social engineering that was Prohibition.
DAVID J. HANSON, PH.D., IS PROFESSOR EMERITUS OF SOCIOLOGY AT THE STATE UNIVERSITY OF NEW YORK AT POTSDAM. HE NOW LIVES IN CHAPEL HILL, N.C.
These prohibition era laws should be repealed. It is ridiculous that you can’t by beer or wine on a Sunday, or after 9PM on other nights. We need look no further than drug use to see, that prohibition tactics don’t work.
