In the 1920s prohibition in the US notoriously failed to tackle alcohol use, led to lethal forms of liquor ent... — Owen Jones

In the 1920s prohibition in the US notoriously failed to tackle alcohol use, led to lethal forms of liquor entering the black market, fuelled organised crime and its associated violence, and wasted public money.

Author: Owen Jones

Insight: Prohibition is the textbook example of how good intentions can backfire spectacularly. What started as a sincere public health campaign ended up creating worse problems than it solved—poisoned bathtub gin, gangland murders, and a thriving underground economy that enriched criminals instead of hurting them. The deeper lesson here is about the limits of force. You can't simply ban human desire away. When people want something badly enough, prohibition doesn't make that want vanish; it just drives the behavior into shadows where there's no quality control, no regulation, no safety. The black market filled every gap, and suddenly law enforcement had a much harder job than before. They were fighting not just drinking, but the organized crime networks that profited from it. What's surprising is how relevant this remains today. We see similar patterns with drug policy, with extreme internet censorship, even with attempts to stamp out certain speech or behaviors. The pattern keeps repeating: we identify something we dislike, we ban it absolutely, and we're shocked when the unintended consequences prove worse than the original problem. Prohibition reminds us that sometimes the answer isn't just to forbid something—it's to think carefully about what actually happens when you drive something underground.