Prohibition is discussed across these episodes less as a single historical episode than as a recurring policy pattern: the criminalization of a widely demanded product or activity. Guests and host Bob Zadek return to alcohol Prohibition as the reference case, then extend the same reasoning to narcotics, immigration enforcement, and flavored e-cigarettes. The consistent argument is that banning a product in demand sends it underground, enriches criminals, corrupts officials, and fails to eliminate the behavior.
Alcohol Prohibition as the Reference Case
In the episode on the worst economic mistakes of the twentieth century, Zadek introduces Prohibition as the first item in Burton Abrams’s book and calls it an exact parallel to the drug wars of 2014 Worst Ten Economic Mistakes of the 20th Century (2014). Abrams describes alcohol consumption as fairly widespread in the United States at the turn of the century, with many immigrants arriving from Eastern Europe and Southern Europe where drinking beer and wine was an everyday normal occurrence. He says a number of people in the country, mostly rural Protestants, found this to be a threat to their way of life and were able to muster forces to pass a constitutional amendment to prohibit the sale and distribution of alcohol.
Abrams states that this set in motion negative consequences that haunted the economy for some 14 years. Among them he lists disrespect of the law, a tremendous rise of organized criminals, wealthy organized criminals, bribery of government, and prisons filled with convicted alcohol smugglers. He characterizes the activity as fairly widely desired by the public at large and the law as an attempt by the government to impose a government standard of morality held by a small minority. Zadek draws from this a core principle: any law that criminalizes behavior that most people think is not criminal is bad policy, because making an otherwise neutral activity criminal creates disrespect for the law and turns otherwise honest, law-abiding citizens into criminals. Abrams notes that Prohibition was ultimately repealed by another constitutional amendment, the only constitutional amendment to be repealed Worst Ten Economic Mistakes of the 20th Century (2014).
The Drug War Parallel
Gary Johnson, in the episode on the triumph of principle over politics, points to border violence with Mexico and states that 40,000 deaths occurred south of the border over the last four years. He calls this a prohibition phenomenon, describing disputes played out with guns rather than the courts, and argues that legalizing marijuana would arguably make 75% of the border violence with Mexico go away. Johnson says he is in the camp that believes 90% of the drug problem is prohibition-related, not use-related, and compares the situation to alcohol Prohibition, when disputes were played out with machine guns on the street as opposed to in the courts. He advocates getting those disputes into the courts, getting income reported, and regulating and taxing the product The Triumph of Principle Over Politics (2012).
In the 2022 episode on the overdose crisis, Dr. Jeffrey Singer argues that there is no relationship between the number of opioids prescribed and non-medical use or addiction, but that there is a relationship between the number of opioids prescribed and overdoses: the fewer opioids prescribed, the greater the number of overdoses, because fewer prescription pain pills become available for diversion into the black market, leaving non-medical users with more dangerous options. He cites the National Survey on Drug Use and Health for the claim that the percentage of adults with heroin addiction, alcohol addiction, cocaine addiction, and cannabis addiction has been unchanged over the years, even as raw numbers grow with population. Singer describes doctors who operated as drug dealers, including a doctor arrested in Orange County for selling OxyContin prescriptions at $600 a prescription at a Starbucks, and Florida pill mills served by an “Oxy Express” that flew people from New York to Florida. He attributes this corruption to prohibition, saying it corrupts doctors, pharmacists, policemen, prosecutors, and politicians, and that prohibition makes the activity lucrative for corruptible people Fresh Approaches to the Overdose Crisis (2022).
Singer also invokes what he says people who study this call the Iron Law of Prohibition: prohibition by its definition fosters the development of more potent forms of whatever is prohibited. During alcohol prohibition, he says, they were not smuggling in beer or wine but whiskey; he compares it to tailgating, where people drink beer and wine in the parking lot but bring tequila or whiskey in flasks into a stadium where no alcohol is allowed. He says crack cocaine probably would not have come about were it not for prohibition, because prohibition fosters more potent forms that can be smuggled in smaller amounts and subdivided into more packets. On fentanyl, he distinguishes illicit fentanyl made in labs and pressed into counterfeit prescription pills from medicinal fentanyl used in anesthesia, intensive care, and skin patches, and says dealers press it so unsuspecting people think they are buying oxycodone. He notes fentanyl has been mixed with heroin and substituted for it, partly because COVID disrupted heroin supply chains while fentanyl is easier to make in a lab, and says most non-medical heroin users view fentanyl as a contaminant rather than choosing it. He states that the reason for the overdose crisis is drug prohibition, and that during alcohol prohibition thousands died from tainted alcohol while now hundreds of thousands are dying from laced illicit opioid drugs Fresh Approaches to the Overdose Crisis (2022).
Prohibition Logic and E-Cigarette Regulation
In the 2022 episode on FDA rules against smoking, Zadek lays out the Prohibition analogy directly: a perceived harm from the misuse of an otherwise lawful product led to a constitutional amendment prohibiting alcohol on a national basis. He says the desire existed, the activity was sent underground, criminals made lots of money, and organized crime was invented or became a big-time activity as a result. He calls it a failed experiment, and says that not learning from mistakes, the country did the same thing with narcotics, which he says were legal for the first 125 years of the country before becoming illegal for reasons he calls wholly irrational, with the drug wars arising in earnest compliments of President Nixon and supported by President Reagan and others after them FDA’s New Rules Against Smoking (2022).
Guy Bentley applies the parallel to e-cigarettes. He explains that the main call is to ban flavored e-cigarettes, that most kids who vape vape flavored products but most adults who vape also vape flavored products, and that tobacco-flavored vapes are not popular among people using vaping to quit smoking. He says several states have completely banned flavored e-cigarettes while many have tried and been defeated, and that because the FDA regulates e-cigarettes, manufacturers must go through a regulatory process costing millions of dollars and thousands of hours in lawyering that usually only the biggest companies can comply with. He states that more than 5 million e-cigarettes have been denied right of sale by the FDA, that about 98% of e-cigarettes in the country are technically illegal already, and that the FDA has authorized only a handful, all in tobacco flavors, not a single flavored e-cigarette. He predicts that if bans continue, people currently using those products will go back to smoking cigarettes, illegal vapes will be imported mostly from China, and people will make their own e-liquid in off-label illegal markets without product standards, inspection, or accountability, while combustible cigarettes remain on the shelves FDA’s New Rules Against Smoking (2022).
Zadek adds that once a product is sent into the black market, control over quality is lost, there is no warranty, no product liability insurance, and zero regulation. He notes the loss of tax revenue, giving the example of truckloads of cigarettes coming from untaxed Virginia to overly taxed New York, and says that once a product in demand is banned rather than reasonably regulated and taxed, it is sent underground, denying users governmental protection and society reasonable taxation FDA’s New Rules Against Smoking (2022).
Immigration and Vice as Adjacent Cases
In the 2011 episode on immigration reform, Zadek argues as a policy matter that America is harmed profoundly by attempting to close its borders, saying the country is shooting itself in the foot and that the approach is mean-spirited. He wishes America would adopt what he calls the sensible policy of letting them all in Immigration Reform Is Broken (2011). In the Prohibition discussion with Abrams, Zadek extends the principle to immigration laws, which he says attempt to criminalize the improvement of one’s life, and to drug laws, which he says criminalize activity most people think is okay Worst Ten Economic Mistakes of the 20th Century (2014).
In the e-cigarette episode, Zadek lists alcohol in the supermarket, cigarettes, gambling, and lottery tickets as legal temptations that society addresses through parenting and information rather than prohibition, and says that with e-cigarettes there is a temptation and urge to prohibit despite what he calls a strained and far-fetched chain of harm FDA’s New Rules Against Smoking (2022).
Across episodes
The topic recurs across four episodes spanning 2012 to 2022. Gary Johnson in 2012 frames drug legalization as a matter of principle and economics, citing border violence figures The Triumph of Principle Over Politics (2012); Burton Abrams in 2014 supplies the historical account of alcohol Prohibition and its repeal Worst Ten Economic Mistakes of the 20th Century (2014); Jeffrey Singer in 2022 adds the Iron Law of Prohibition and the fentanyl and overdose data Fresh Approaches to the Overdose Crisis (2022); and Guy Bentley in 2022 extends the analysis to FDA regulation of flavored e-cigarettes FDA’s New Rules Against Smoking (2022). The later treatments add mechanism and current data, but the underlying argument — that prohibition creates black markets, corruption, and more dangerous products — is consistent rather than developed or revised across the excerpts.
What the sources do not cover
The excerpts do not give the text or number of the constitutional amendment that enacted or repealed alcohol Prohibition, nor the names of the statutes that criminalized narcotics. They do not state the outcome of any court case on drug or e-cigarette regulation, or identify which amendment any case turned on. The excerpts also do not provide a full accounting of the economic costs of Prohibition beyond the consequences Abrams and Zadek name, and they do not carry the immigration discussion past Zadek’s opening remarks.