The Wine Commonsewer

Prohibition is Repealed!

Good Morning Gentle Readers,

In 1921 my favorite Grandma's fiance was machine gunned in a firefight with the Fibbies at the Canadian border. His crime? Importing intoxicating liquors from Canada. Grandma kind of wondered why he hadn't been around for several days until she read the story in the paper. Surprise. Twelve years later, on December 5, 1933, the 18th Amendment was repealed and importing liquor no longer carried an informal death sentence. 

Prohibition also decimated the wine industry in California, pushing the evolution of high quality wines out for a half century and changing forever our cultural views toward alcohol. Many wineries collapsed with the end of the market for legal wine. Sacramental wine simply wasn't profitable. Others replanted wine grapes with juice grapes that resulted in a glut of low quality grapes that far outlasted the demise of Prohibition. Some growers, like the Mondavis, grew Zinfandel and shipped the grapes back east to Italian Catholics who were permitted to make their own wine for sacramental purposes. Guys like Ernest & Julio Gallo hooked up with the Chicago mob to sell wine made in clandestine wineries in Central California.

Like our modern War on the Bill of Rights Drug War, Prohibition provided vast sums of cash to people like Frank Costello (Boss of New York's Five Families) and his alleged bootlegging partner Joe Kennedy. 

Unfortunately, America missed the lessons of Prohibition as it applies to drugs, choosing to spend billions of dollars and billions of police man-hours in the futile effort to prevent some junkie from sticking a needle in his arm. 

With the exception of Oakland, where the Teamsters Union job classifications lists Beer Truck Tail Gunner, Bud and Coors aren't killing each other in a long running turf war over who gets to sell beer to whom. Laugh if you will but the vicious Arellano-Felix gangsters in Mexico are not killing people over Dos Equis or Blue Agave.

Repeal Day Bonus: Law Enforcement Against Prohibition, a group of former cops, prosecutors, and judges remind us that.....

After nearly four decades of fueling the U.S. policy of a war on drugs with over a trillion tax dollars and 37 million arrests for nonviolent drug offenses, our confined population has quadrupled making building prisons the fastest growing industry in the United States.

Despite all the lives we have destroyed and all the money so ill spent, today illicit drugs are cheaper, more potent, and far easier to get than they were 35 years ago at the beginning of the war on drugs.

So, because we can do so legally, let's celebrate with a glass to your health, friends.

As Always,

TWC

Note: Parts of this post appeared December 5, 2008

Prohibition also decimated the wine industry in California, pushing the evolution of high quality wines out for a half century and changing forever our cultural views toward alcohol. Many wineries collapsed with the end of the market for legal wine. Sacramental wine simply wasn't profitable. Others replanted wine grapes with juice grapes that resulted in a glut of low quality grapes that far outlasted the demise of Prohibition. Some growers, like the Mondavis, grew Zinfandel and shipped the grapes back east to Italian Catholics who were permitted to make their own wine for sacramental purposes. Guys like Ernest & Julio Gallo hooked up with the Chicago mob to sell wine made in clandestine wineries in Central California.

Like our modern War on the Bill of Rights Drug War, Prohibition provided vast sums of cash to people like Frank Costello (Boss of New York's Five Families) and his alleged bootlegging partner Joe Kennedy. 

Unfortunately, America missed the lessons of Prohibition as it applies to drugs, choosing to spend billions of dollars and billions of police man-hours in the futile effort to prevent some junkie from sticking a needle in his arm. 

With the exception of Oakland, where the Teamsters Union job classifications lists Beer Truck Tail Gunner, Bud and Coors aren't killing each other in a long running turf war over who gets to sell beer to whom. Laugh if you will but the vicious Arellano-Felix gangsters in Mexico are not killing people over Dos Equis or Blue Agave.

Repeal Day Bonus: Law Enforcement Against Prohibition, a group of former cops, prosecutors, and judges remind us that.....

Prohibition also decimated the wine industry in California, pushing the evolution of high quality wines out for a half century and changing forever our cultural views toward alcohol. Many wineries collapsed with the end of the market for legal wine. Sacramental wine simply wasn't profitable. Others replanted wine grapes with juice grapes that resulted in a glut of low quality grapes that far outlasted the demise of Prohibition. Some growers, like the Mondavis, grew Zinfandel and shipped the grapes back east to Italian Catholics who were permitted to make their own wine for sacramental purposes. Guys like Ernest & Julio Gallo hooked up with the Chicago mob to sell wine made in clandestine wineries in Central California.

Like our modern War on the Bill of Rights Drug War, Prohibition provided vast sums of cash to people like Frank Costello (Boss of New York's Five Families) and his alleged bootlegging partner Joe Kennedy. 

Unfortunately, America missed the lessons of Prohibition as it applies to drugs, choosing to spend billions of dollars and billions of police man-hours in the futile effort to prevent some junkie from sticking a needle in his arm. 

With the exception of Oakland, where the Teamsters Union job classifications lists Beer Truck Tail Gunner, Bud and Coors aren't killing each other in a long running turf war over who gets to sell beer to whom. Laugh if you will but the vicious Arellano-Felix gangsters in Mexico are not killing people over Dos Equis or Blue Agave.

Repeal Day Bonus: Law Enforcement Against Prohibition, a group of former cops, prosecutors, and judges remind us that.....

Prohibition also decimated the wine industry in California, pushing the evolution of high quality wines out for a half century and changing forever our cultural views toward alcohol. Many wineries collapsed with the end of the market for legal wine. Sacramental wine simply wasn't profitable. Others replanted wine grapes with juice grapes that resulted in a glut of low quality grapes that far outlasted the demise of Prohibition. Some growers, like the Mondavis, grew Zinfandel and shipped the grapes back east to Italian Catholics who were permitted to make their own wine for sacramental purposes. Guys like Ernest & Julio Gallo hooked up with the Chicago mob to sell wine made in clandestine wineries in Central California.

Like our modern War on the Bill of Rights Drug War, Prohibition provided vast sums of cash to people like Frank Costello (Boss of New York's Five Families) and his alleged bootlegging partner Joe Kennedy. 

Unfortunately, America missed the lessons of Prohibition as it applies to drugs, choosing to spend billions of dollars and billions of police man-hours in the futile effort to prevent some junkie from sticking a needle in his arm. 

With the exception of Oakland, where the Teamsters Union job classifications lists Beer Truck Tail Gunner, Bud and Coors aren't killing each other in a long running turf war over who gets to sell beer to whom. Laugh if you will but the vicious Arellano-Felix gangsters in Mexico are not killing people over Dos Equis or Blue Agave.

Repeal Day Bonus: Law Enforcement Against Prohibition, a group of former cops, prosecutors, and judges remind us that.....