THE  AMERICAN 
JOURNAL  OF  PHARMACY 
VoJ^Ffr      1  '  '^^v.      September,  192 1.  No.  9. 
v  n  r  a 
SEP  23  ,92^|DITORIAL 
ALCOHOL  PROBLEM. 
The  Prohibition  Amendment  constitutes  one  of  the  most  radical 
modifications  of  general  law  that  the  world  has  ever  experienced. 
The  extinction  of  slavery  was  a  violent  change,  but  the  slave  area 
was  a  comparatively  small  part  of  the  United  States,  and  the  other 
great  nations  had  long  since  abandoned  the  system  and  even  placed 
it  under  active  "condemnation.  The  use  and  abuse  of  alcoholic  bev- 
erages go  back  to  the  remotest  periods  of  written  history.  They  have 
been  always  associated  with  the  joyous  side  of  life,  and  have  also 
been  regarded  as  valuable  therapeutic  agents.  The  Amendment 
practically  cuts  out  all  these  relations,  for  as  interpreted  by  the  Act 
of  Congress  the  proportion  of  alcohol  permissible  is  so  far  below 
that  in  the  normal  beverages  as  to  be  regarded  by  the  mass  of  the 
people  as  without  value. 
Undoubtedly  this  remarkable  legislation  has  been  largely  due  to 
the  persistent  refusal  of  the  liquor  interests  to  control  in  any  way 
the  objectionable  features  of  the  traffic.  Just  as  the  slave-lords,  in 
the  first  half  of  the  nineteenth  century,  not  only  refused  to  mitigate 
the  cruelties  of  slave  life,  but  demanded  further  extension  of  it  and 
unlimited  privileges,  so  the  liquor  interests,  making  no  effort  to 
reduce  the  abuses  of  the  saloon,  selling  without  hesitation  to  unli- 
censed places  and  in  many  other  ways  showing  an  indifference  to 
law  and  order  finally  aroused  so  much  opposition  that,  as  in  the  case 
of  slavery,  the  whole  institution  was  swept  away,  without  regard 
to  the  economic  effects  or  abstract  legal  principles  involved. 
In  the  present  state  of  affairs,  the  position  of  the  practicing 
pharmacist  is  serious.  In  proportion  as  law  enforcement  eliminates 
the  saloon  or  throws  it  into  alleys  and  by-ways,  the  drug  store  is 
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