Prohibition un-Catholic?

Jeffrey Tucker has written an article called Prohibition is un-Catholic which is a good read with regards to the "war on drugs" and prohibition in both past and present.  This was so well written that it has persuaded me to change my position on the "war on drugs" at least to some extent.  I think I may be becoming more libertarian.  It is self-evident that the "war on drugs" is failing and quite pathetically.  It is my opinion that one of the keys to its failure is the porous border which under the constitution should be a requirement to be secured.  I believe that the prohibition against drugs is doing more harm than good.  But, I do have mixed feelings regarding the prohibition of the hard core drugs.

Tucker uses some writings of Rev. James M. Gillis to show how prohibition on alcohol during from 1920 -1933 really hurt the temperance movement and to show how prohibition is un-Catholic.


"It is my own conviction that the prohibition law was the greatest blow ever given to the temperance movement. Before prohibition, the people at large were becoming more and more sober. Total abstinence had become the practice, not of a few, but of millions. There was an enormous increase in temperance in America, in the period of fifty years preceding the passing of the Eighteenth Amendment to the National Constitution. Then the attitude of multitudes changed. Under the Volstead Law, drinking became a popular sport. The passage of the law was a psychological blunder, and a moral calamity. It is for this reason, first of all, that I regret the prohibition law.


"We must come back to the original and only true plan for improving the world -- education, exhortation, moral suasion. "Slow methods!" say the impetuous "drys." Yes, but every moral agency must work slowly. It does, perhaps, seem ridiculous to attempt the moral and spiritual regeneration of mankind by the infinitely tedious method of addressing the individual, converting him, and keep him right. But that was the method of Christ. "Preach to every creature," was His commission to the Apostles. Only when the individual is convinced, can you be sure of his conversion.


"The process of conversion is long and slow. Anyone who attempts labor-saving devices in dealing with the volatile spirit of man, will fail. There are no "short cuts" in the moral world. Impatient and impetuous persons cannot, not will not, see that self-evident fact. Consequently such persons have always produced disaster in place of reform. The only way to make the country sober is to persuade individual citizens , one by one, to be sober. . . . Prohibitionists do not even see the enormous and unescapable fact that prohibition is a failure. "None are so blind as those who will not see." " 


You can read the entire article here.