Rates of alcoholism, arrests for public intoxication and deaths related to alcoholism under Prohibition in the United States were several times higher than either before or after.
Evidence for this? I've seen contrary statements from a very eminent criminologist on the deaths from alchohol, at least. What is the best source for statistics on such issues?
My source was The Poisoner's Handbook, which suggests that deaths were not tracked well or at all in most of the US. The book gives statistics for New York City but a cursory examination of its sources does not seem to list where those statistics were obtained from. The best source for statistics likely doesn't exist, but likely bets would include hospital records and any statistics published by whatever coroner/medical examiner's offices you can find.
One source [0] seems to suggest that deaths were lower but rising. Deaths from poisoned alcohol tripled between 1920 and 1925.[1] The author of the latter paper (Mark Thorton) has written extensively on the subject, his book The Economics of Prohibition may be informative.
Comments
Rates of alcoholism, arrests for public intoxication and deaths related to alcoholism under Prohibition in the United States were several times higher than either before or after.
Evidence for this? I've seen contrary statements from a very eminent criminologist on the deaths from alchohol, at least. What is the best source for statistics on such issues?
My source was The Poisoner's Handbook, which suggests that deaths were not tracked well or at all in most of the US. The book gives statistics for New York City but a cursory examination of its sources does not seem to list where those statistics were obtained from. The best source for statistics likely doesn't exist, but likely bets would include hospital records and any statistics published by whatever coroner/medical examiner's offices you can find.
One source [0] seems to suggest that deaths were lower but rising. Deaths from poisoned alcohol tripled between 1920 and 1925.[1] The author of the latter paper (Mark Thorton) has written extensively on the subject, his book The Economics of Prohibition may be informative.
[0] http://druglibrary.org/prohibitionresults1.htm [1] https://www.cato.org/pubs/pas/pa-157.html