Only the prohibitionists can keep them alive. Legalizers are the only people who can bankrupt and destroy the drug gangs, just as they destroyed Capone. So it’s a nasty irony that prohibitionists try to present legalizers-then and now-as “the bootlegger’s friend” or “the drug-dealer’s ally.” Precisely the opposite is the truth. They knew if it ended, most of organized crime in America would be bankrupted. He has uncovered fascinating evidence that the criminal gangs sometimes financially supported dry politicians, precisely to keep it in place. Armed criminal gangs don’t fear prohibition: They love it. One insight, more than any other, ripples down from Okrent’s history to our own bout of prohibition. He threatened them by weaving together a coalition of evangelicals, feminists, racists, and lefties-the equivalent of herding Sarah Palin, the National Association of Women, David Duke, and Keith Olbermann into one unstoppable political force. It was begun by a little man called Wayne Wheeler, who was as dry as the Sahara and twice as overheated-and a political genius, maneuvering politicians of all parties into backing a ban. It was in this context that the Anti-Saloon League rose to become the most powerful pressure group in American history and the only one to ever change the Constitution through peaceful political campaigning. Powder cocaine and crack cocaine are equally harmful, but crack-which is disproportionately used by black people-carries much heavier jail sentences than powder cocaine, which is disproportionately used by white people. An echo of this persists in America’s current strain of prohibition. The Ku Klux Klan said that “nigger gin” was the main reason that oppressed black people were prone to rebellion, and if you banned alcohol, they would become quiescent. Of course, there were more obviously sinister proponents of Prohibition too, pressing progressives into weird alliances. Within 10 days, only four of the original 13 remained, and the rebellion was spreading across the country. This prayer-athon then moved around to every alcohol-seller in the town. They worked in six-hour prayer shifts on the streets until the saloonkeeper finally appeared, head bowed, and agreed to shut it down. They marched as one to the nearest bar, where they all sank to their knees and prayed for the soul of its owner. A huge crowd of women cheered: They believed their husbands were squandering their wages at the saloon. One Sunday in 1874, Eliza Thompson-a mother to eight children, who had never spoken out on any public issue before-stood before the crowds at her church and announced that America would never be free or godly until the last whiskey bottle was emptied onto the dry earth. It’s not hard to see how this fug of liquor caused problems, as well as pleasure-and the backlash was launched by a furious housewife from a small town in Ohio.
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