Saloons & Suffragettes: The Rise and Fall of Alcohol Prohibition, Part 1

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Kelly Roberson: Pretty soon after passage and implementation of prohibition, people start to look around and say, Oh no, this definitely is not doing what we thought it was going to do. Corruption’s running rampant. Consumption isn’t curbed. There’s a newly formed Bureau of Prohibition that’s in charge of kind of enforcing this new law, but they only had 1500 agents to cover [00:02:00] the entire country.

So that worked out to about one to 70, 000 Americans, and they’re not paid well. So this is not going to be a success.

Ellen Scanlon: Welcome to how to do the pot, an award winning podcast, helping you feel confident about cannabis. I’m your host, Ellen Scanlon.

You just heard from Pennsylvania based Kelly Roberson, the executive director of the Center for Alcohol Policy. This is part one in our new three part series about alcohol and cannabis. When I first got into the cannabis industry back in 2019, I watched the Ken Burns documentary on alcohol prohibition.

I highly recommend it. I really didn’t know very much about that chapter in American history and was kind of blown away by the parallels, how alcohol went from being banned to [00:03:00] normalized and how similar the challenges and opportunities feel in cannabis today. In this series, we’ll explore how alcohol went from being outlawed to becoming a multi billion dollar staple of everyday life.

In today’s episode, we’re diving into the fascinating story of prohibition, the rise, the fall, and everything in between. We’ll explore how saloons, women led movements, and big cultural changes transformed the way Americans drink, and what these lessons can teach us about the future of cannabis. Have you signed up for my Substack newsletter yet?

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Kelly Roberson, who you heard from at the beginning of the show, is the executive director of the Center for Alcohol Policy, a nonprofit that educates policymakers, regulators, and the public about alcohol. [00:05:00] I asked Kelly to take us back to the years leading up to Prohibition. It was a complicated time in U.

1. history. After the Civil War, people were reeling from immense loss and there was widespread economic devastation, especially in the South. Saloons offered cheap alcohol and a sense of community.

Kelly Roberson: After the Civil War, saloons were a huge problem. I mean, they’re just absolute dens of iniquity. They’re a space primarily for working class men.

I mean, women are there too, in a couple of different roles and professions. Primarily, this is for men as clientele, and it’s a place where they can go and get free meals that are super salty, like super salty snacks are free and abundant. So what happens when you eat that? You You want to drink more, right?

So there’s tons of fights. There’s overconsumption. There’s public health issues. There’s what’s called paycheck pledging. So if you’re not familiar with this term, it’s where instead of taking [00:06:00] that paycheck to the bank and taking that money home, you’re taking that paycheck straight to the bar to pay off that tab that you’ve run up courtesy of all these salty snacks.

So none of that money is really making it home to your family, causing a whole host of family welfare issues.

Ellen Scanlon: The social issues were tearing families apart. It was also a time when the saloons were capitalizing on a specific business opportunity called tide houses.

Kelly Roberson: And that’s where you have a saloon that’s kind of behold into one brand or one supplier where they’re getting product at a supremely low cost, which is awesome for their profits at the saloon, but they can’t serve any other competitors products.

So that’s the catch. It’s like to the exclusion of all other products. You can only sell our liquor, our beer, whatever. So this is an issue for a few reasons. Number one, marketplace competition, there isn’t any right. And number two, it’s driving prices down while simultaneously skyrocketing consumption.

[00:07:00] And that’s a really, really bad combo. Essentially the lowest cost to consumers is definitely not the lowest cost to society. So people recognize this is a super unhealthy environment and something’s got to be done about it.

Ellen Scanlon: By the late 1800s, as a response to how drinking was affecting people’s lives, a new social and political movement was gaining momentum.

Kelly Roberson: We have kind of this groundswell of support for what was called the temperance movement, and there were quite a few groups involved in this, but none as well known as the Women’s Christian Temperance Union and also the Anti Saloon League. So Anti Saloon League, that was led by a guy named Wayne Wheeler, and they were sort of, Singularly focused on achieving prohibition, like a national prohibition by any means necessary.

He wasn’t beholden to a party, which is different from some of the other temperance groups. Wayne Wheeler encourages his fellow prohibitionists to be single issue voters. It doesn’t matter if they’re a Dem or a Republican. He’s extremely influential, politically [00:08:00] speaking, and eventually accomplishes this goal of achieving that national prohibition, even down to helping write the Volstead Act.

So the Volstead Act is what we now know as the 18th Amendment.

Ellen Scanlon: In January of 1919, the 18th Amendment to the Constitution was passed. It banned the manufacture, sale, and transportation of intoxicating liquors, but it did not ban consumption. Prohibition quickly became a national disaster. Kelly explains how it all went so wrong.

Kelly Roberson: So basically you could drink anything you had from before Prohibition began. You also had kind of a year long runway from the time that Prohibition was adopted as the 18th Amendment to when it started. So people Oh, they stockpiled so they’re just collecting all this alcohol so they can continue to drink it throughout prohibition pretty soon after passage and implementation of prohibition people start to look around and say, Oh, no, this definitely is not doing [00:09:00] what we thought it was going to do corruptions running rampant consumption isn’t curbed.

There’s a newly formed Bureau of prohibition that’s in charge of kind of it. enforcing this new law, but they only had 1, 500 agents to cover the entire country. So that worked out to about 1, 000 to 70, 000 Americans, and they’re not paid well. So this is not going to be a success. So people are making their own liquor at home, moonshine, bathtub gin.

It’s Gross and unsafe stuff. Rum runners and bootleggers are selling alcohol everywhere and they have so much cash they can just pay off whoever they want. Like they’re all in on it and they’re probably making more money from the payoffs than they were from their salaries. Speakeasies are thriving.

It’s whack a mole trying to shut them all down. Drunk driving’s up. Liver cirrhosis. Public intoxication. There’s no respect for this prohibition law. Organized crime is fighting for local control over the illegal markets. Al Capone, Bugs Moran, and the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre, it’s all related. So it’s just a [00:10:00] disaster zone.

Ellen Scanlon: There was another major cultural change happening in the same year. It was the passage of the 19th Amendment, which gave women the right to vote. Kelly shares how women shaped this moment in U. S. history.

Kelly Roberson: So, 18th Amendment is Prohibition, and 19th Amendment is one that’s certainly near and dear to all of our hearts, giving us the right to vote.

So, eight months after Prohibition began, the 19th Amendment was ratified. And, During the Temperance Movement and prior to Prohibition, you have the Anti Saloon League and the Women’s Christian Temperance Union. So the WCTU was an organization focused on creating a sober and pure world by abstinence, purity, and evangelical Christianity.

They were essentially women protesting the evils of alcohol and the harm done to the home. When I talked about paycheck pledging, that’s massive harm being done at home. [00:11:00] Women were not being treated well by these husbands coming home, extremely intoxicated, right? So there’s a big inspiration for them to see prohibition come about.

You have these women kind of leading the charge on wanting to see more support for prohibition. When the Bureau of Prohibition was created, it was initially run by this woman, Mabel Walker Willibrand, so all of these efforts initially being run by a woman, and she had just recently earned or been given the right to vote.

Later on, as we’re seeing that Prohibition is not successful,

This lady was a dyed in the wool Republican. She was the first female representative to the Republican National Committee from New York, and initially she was supportive of Prohibition until she realized just how, uh, how Few people were taking this seriously. It was not working. So she pretty quickly gets [00:12:00] about a million people on board with her calls to repeal Prohibition, even though she used to support it.

And she rallies all of her folks behind voting for FDR, who was elected president in 1932. So you have women on both sides of it.

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What finally brought an end to prohibition? [00:14:00] After 13 years, Americans decided to set aside politics and rally behind a candidate who promised to repeal it. Kelly shares more.

Kelly Roberson: Why did prohibition end? Well, you have kind of a perfect storm of issues. What happens in 1929? You have a stock market crash.

Organized crime is wreaking havoc everywhere, so you’ve got a collapse of the economy and, oh by the way, you’ve got a presidential election in 1932. So FDR wins in a landslide. He ran on a probe repeal platform.

Ellen Scanlon: Prohibition ended in 1933 with the 21st Amendment, making alcohol the only substance in U. S.

history to have two constitutional amendments about it. This move helped the government collect much needed tax revenue during the Great Depression. Industrialist John D. Rockefeller, the wealthiest man in the country at that time, [00:15:00] commissioned a report to study alcohol regulations worldwide. The findings shaped U.

1. policy, and it was decided that beer and wine, lower dose products, should be treated differently from liquor. Kelly explains how the responsibility for alcohol regulation shifted to the states.

Kelly Roberson: In simplest terms, they were like, look, we can’t have a national plan on this. It’s not working. So instead of using kind of this top down mandate from the federal government being the ones in charge of this, the 21st Amendment says, you know what, the best people to handle this are the states and the states know what’s going to work best for their citizens.

3. 2 percent beer and wine, only those two products and not liquor.

Ellen Scanlon: The recommendations from the Rockefeller report were designed to protect consumers by developing a three tier system with checks and balances.

Kelly Roberson: This is designed to create an orderly marketplace, but also [00:16:00] to protect consumers and non consumers alike.

I mean, roughly 30 percent of Americans don’t consume alcohol, and that’s been consistent forever. That’s where we get that three tier system, where you have suppliers, who are the ones making the product, whether that’s beer, wine, or spirits. You have wholesalers or distributors, the ones who then take that product to the market.

And then you have retailers, the ones who sell the product to the public. Those three tiers are generally the same for every state, but there are different models for alcohol regulation that a state can adopt. So you have two different ones. There’s a control model where the state serves as the distributor and then sometimes also the retailer.

So that would be like your state liquor store. There are 17 states and one county that have this system. Or you have a license model, which is where you establish and license a distribution tier that’s separate from the state. And this really holds industry participants to account. [00:17:00] So those wholesalers, those distributors, the second tier there, they have to be located in their communities because what you saw pre prohibition was you have these suppliers from out of state who aren’t located in those communities who don’t care about what’s happening there.

So by having someone who lives local in the community, having them be on the hook that’s crucially important here. So if there is a problem, that three tier system serves as a break, serves as that, that safeguard. It might be bulky, but it’s definitely there to protect the public to ensure that there’s no undue influence from maybe large players who have a lot of cash coming in and influencing a market.

Ellen Scanlon: The three tier system 90 years.

Kelly Roberson: You have 50 different states or 50 different regulatory regimes or more that govern alcohol. So there’s a lot of changes that have been made and it’s not, it’s not a monolith, but it started with some really, really, really good sound structure.[00:18:00]

Ellen Scanlon: I asked Kelly to share what she thinks the major successes and failures of alcohol policy have been.

Kelly Roberson: Prohibition certainly was a quote, noble experiment that didn’t work as intended in the very least and led to a lot of lawlessness led to the rise of organized crime. But what came back after that was a better behaved, more responsible industry and more responsible structure.

I think it’s kind of like when you break a bone. It heals and it might be a little bit stronger, right? So you, you broke this alcohol policy for 13 years and what came back was something that was better regulated, something that people really wanted and could get behind and unified the nation around that.

So I think there also came a greater understanding and awareness of the harms that can come from the abuse of alcohol.

Ellen Scanlon: As you think about the long history of alcohol regulations, [00:19:00] Kelly shared a story that I think the cannabis industry can learn from, about the value of public trust.

Kelly Roberson: I was speaking with the director of the Montana Department of Alcohol Regulation, and she and her department had done a whole review of all alcohol laws in their, in their state, and their governor had asked them to do it.

them to find where you can cut the red tape. And you actually had the industry coming in to say, whoa, whoa, whoa, don’t, don’t get rid of that. We like that regulation. We want that regulation. So I think the alcohol industry is really interesting in this regard and that you have those industry participants calling for regulation because they know they’ve been able to grow this industry because of its track record of safety, because of that consumer confidence that they’ve built over.

90 plus years now. It’s taken a long time and it’s been really consistent application of regulation and reliability there for [00:20:00] consumers to say, okay, yep, we trust this. This is safe.

Ellen Scanlon: Next week in part two of our series, you’ll hear from women about how cannabis has shifted their relationship with alcohol and how low dose cannabis is reshaping socializing from book clubs to barbecues.

Stay tuned

for lots more information and past episodes, visit do the pot. com and that’s also where you can sign up for our newsletter. If you like how to do the pot, please rate and review us on Apple podcasts. It really helps more people find the show. Thank you to our producers, Maddy Fair and Nick Patri. I’m Ellen Scanlon and stay tuned fo