Prohibition: It Still Doesn't Work

In 2016, India's very populous state of Bihar (130 million people) embarked on the modern world's largest alcohol prohibition experiment to date, following the lead of the three other "dry" Indian states.  Now in the mid-2020s, the proverbial dust has settled, and the results are in.

By 2023, it became clear that many of the women who strongly supported the prohibition law initially (primarily in the hopes of reducing male drunken violence against women, especially domestic violence) ended up greatly regretting it.  Not only did prohibition wreck livelihoods and lead to harms from more dangerous and questionable black market alcohol (and alcohol substitutes), but such violence against women has also apparently come back with a vengeance as well after a short-term reduction.

Of course, such observations are anecdotal, so what about the statistics then?  Well, a study was done in 2024 using household survey data going up to 2020, and attempting to control for other variables.  And no matter how much the authors tried to make things look good, the results were not nearly as rosy as they made them seem.  We see a modest, likely short-term, improvement on some measures of health and domestic violence but not others, and and such surveys clearly have their limitations from reporting bias and undercounting.  Besides, in the case of violence, alcohol is generally NOT a root cause, but rather merely a potential accelerant with both individually and culturally-dependent effects, and is more likely a vain and frankly pathetic excuse for otherwise unacceptable behavior.  The real root causes of such go much, much deeper, such as most notably patriarchy in the case of intimate partner violence.

(This largely dovetails with an earlier study that compared different Indian states with and without prohibition and with varying legal drinking ages, with older data from long before Bihar went dry.  Basically, possible short term and often inconsistent benefits at best, but beyond that, prohibition is useless or worse than useless.)

In other words, the crude and blunt sledgehammer of prohibition (total or otherwise) essentially acts as a sort of "tourniquet" for excessive drinking and related problems.  But using any sort of tourniquet willy-nilly and/or leaving it on too long clearly does far more harm than good, whether such a tourniquet is literal or metaphorical.  The very same lessons can be drawn from using mass incarceration to fight crime, or worse, using lockdowns to fight a pandemic.

And in 2025, the black market for alcohol remains rampant in Bihar, killing people in the process.  That is true despite it being as vigorously enforced as is possible for such a law.  Prohibition clearly casts a long, dark shadow indeed.

Of course, all anyone considering such a law should have done was Google the history of the American experience with Prohibition to see why this was not exactly the wisest move.  I believe there is a name for doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results?

UPDATE:  South Africa had an even more recent experience with alcohol prohibition, in their case during the context of COVID restrictions in 2020.  And yes, a recent study found that there was a short-term reduction in crime and death from unnatural causes as a result, over and above any effects of the curfew restrictions.  Again, it acts as a sort of "tourniquet".  But it is clearly NOT a long-term solution!