Drugs During Prohibition

The consumption of drugs have always been a part of society, from tobacco used by the native Americans to the coco leaf used by mayans, people exhibit a tendency to use narcotics. While drugs were used for medicinal purposes risks were still associated with them as they are today. As with most things, narcotics can be harmful, and even dangerous, while drugs do not usually cause a society to collapse, it does have a profound effect on how societies function as in the case of the 1900s.While there were positives to the initial inaction of prohibition it was more detrimental than beneficial. During the early days of America there were many things that improved the growth of the nation, but one factor that really helped to grow America was the

Many were just shacks but some were for the rich and well connected, during this time of alcohol restriction all classes in society participated in drinking alcohol, no class was excluded from drinking from the very poor to politicans and police. One of the main reasons for this use of alcohol during prohibtion was the loophole that only selling and distrubtion of alcohol were prohibited, because if the fact that the consumption wasn 't restricted people readily continued to drink alcohol, the only thing that really changed was who they got their supply of alcohol from, no longer did they get their supply from the local taverns but now they received thier alcohol from the local speakeasy. Another reason for the rampant wave of crime during prohibtion was the fact that the people responsible for enforcing it were horrendously understaffed, there were only about 1500 federal agents given the job of enforcing prohibition. These same 1500 agents were responsible for the enforcement of prohibtion on all the states, leaving about 30 for every state of the

While there were benifits of prohibition such as the instant decrease in crime and that workers didn 't miss as many days due to being drunk, the negatives were also huge. The crime before wasn 't as bad as during prohibtion, because of the restriction of alcohol new types of crime were created, such as bootlegging. The reasons for the start of prohibition were somewhat justified, alcohol has a direct parallel to crime and its proven that drunk individuals are more prone to crime. Also the health effects of alcohol are quite detrimental they can make a person 's quite shoddy with excessive consumption. During those times temprence wasn 't a commonly practiced ideal so alcohol addictions were more common, it would only make sense that people would begin to see the parallels between alcohol and many of the negative things that plague society. Something that wasn 't accounted for before inacting prohibtion however was human nature, just because a law was created didn 't change the beliefs that a person had nor did it change how the individual acted. All that changed following a new law was the concequence for an action, but depending on the action which in this case was the consumption of liquor people are more willing to break laws if it gives them access to something they have a dependency towards. For many people during that period alcohol was not only a way to relax but it was an escape from the hardships of