consumption. If a comparable jump followed repeal of narcotics prohibition, there would be a horde of new addicts. They insist that Prohibition, despite its flaws, actually cut alcohol consumption dramatically.

“Absolutely not true,” says historian Harry G. Levine. “What is true is more complex and more interesting. What prohibition does, it knocks out beer, which is smelly, bulky, and has to be brewed locally because in the 1920s there is no refrigeration. Hard liquor, on the other hand, does not spoil, it’s more compact, it’s easy to ship. So people switch to whiskey, and the total volume of booze does go down, but they’re still drinking as much alcohol, just in a smaller glass. When repeal comes, beer consumption rebounds and liquor goes down, but this is partly because of the new liquor laws. There was a conscious policy on the part of the states to discourage hard liquor consumption. It was taxed more heavily, some states sold it only in government liquor stores, and they made it as hard to get as possible. It’s still prohibited in some counties. But for the next twenty years the total amount of alcohol consumed stayed about the same.” So it turns out that state liquor laws achieved the same thing as Prohibition, but without all the gunplay.^[21]

The experience in Europe also suggests there is less to fear from regulated narcotic sales than some people imagine. When narcotics were made available to serious addicts in England and Switzerland, the street trade diminished along with the crime rate.^[22] And in the only test of limited decriminalization within the U.S., the results did not support the prohibitionists. Between 1973 and 1978, possession of marijuana was reduced to a misdemeanor in 12 states, but the predicted explosion in cannabis use failed to materialize. The University of Michigan’s annual high school survey, Monitoring the Future, showed the seniors in these dozen states reported no more marijuana use than their counterparts in the other states.^[23]  Among adults, marijuana use did go up slightly but alcohol consumption went down. While that may have been alarming to the liquor industry, it was a net plus for public health since booze can kill you and cannabis can’t. In addition, there were significant financial