Many of us, I am sure, have had the same thoughts, Eric, after viewing the
first Burns episode.

As with so many other things in our culture, the question must be asked:
Where do we draw the line?

Attitudes tend in part to be generational. My depression-born generation had heard of marijuana but few actually saw or used it. We drank beer and, later, hard liquor. The boomer generation brought with it a taste for pot and for other drugs as well until, now, there are calls for legalization of many drugs. The argument will always be used that, since enforcement has often failed and is costly, why not just legalize? The same argument, by the way, is sometimes made against enforcement of minor property crimes. But, again, where do we draw the line? What should society tolerate?

I view marijuana as useful medically and see no reason it shuld not be used for that purpose. Otherwise I (and many others of my age) wonder
why so many should want to use a drug which dulls the brain, causes weight gain, and retards sex drive. The stoner/slacker presence at Hempfest,
glamorized in local media, should be enough to turn off anyone who values a clear head.

One can argue that alcohol does more societal damage than pot. But does that mean that wider pot useage should be facilitated? What about harder drugs? A discussion that needs to be continued.

A couple of thoughts.

1) The difference between enforcement of drug laws and enforcement of laws against minor property crimes is that, by definition, property crimes are not victimless. Drug crimes can be. That sounds like a good place to at least think of drawing a line.

2) Why should so many want to use a drug which dulls the brain, causes weight gain, and retards sex drive? Good question. Why should so many want to use alcohol?

3) It is far from clear that legalizing marijuana, or other drugs, should facilitate wider usage. In fact, a friend of mine — who once worked in the wine business — noted just the other day that it was far easier to get one's hands on alcohol during Prohibition than it is now, with all the Byzantine laws that sprang up in the wake of the 21st Amendment.

This is definitely a discussion that needs to be continued. It is unfortunate that Ken Burns didn't use this opportunity to do so, though understandable now that I've read his comments on the matter. Perhaps someone else can step up to the plate.

I was a bit disappointed by the "Prohibition" documentary but for a quite different reason. The documentary chickened out when it came to making the political comparisons to today, much as it did to the drug issue so well outlined by Eric Scigliano.

The 3-part film is based in large part on Daniel Okrent's superb history of Prohibition called "Last Call." For anyone interested in the madness of today's political scene, and an Xray into the roots of today's endless discord, Okrent's book is a superb guide to both.

The societal divisions are remarkably similar--wets vs drys and today's conservatives vs. liberals--as are ways that political zealousness linked to political savvy flipped the politics of its time on its ear and made non-adherence to the dry cause political heresy...and political suicide.

When you consider the range of issues now bedeviling us--taxes, immigration, debt ceilings, et. al--and the way politicians must dance to these populist themes or get tossed out on their collective ears (remember the last mid-term election?), the resemblance is startling--and frightening.

We have all feared the strong man or woman who could do to our political system if he/she were to grab hold of the discontent in this country. I think we once feared that's what Sarah Palin could do. It's what Wayne Wheeler of the Anti-Saloon League DID do in the 1920s, but working behind the scenes. We all know the potential is there, which is why "Last Call" is as good a Baedeker to our times as it is a guide to the insanity of Prohibition and its unintended consequences.

For someone who worked in politics in the 60's, TVD sure missed the boat on pot.

Our last three presidents all smoked it for a reason - it's a lot of fun (for most people, at least).

Legalize everything. Yesterday.

Oh, and just to pre-empt the likely outrage from my last sentence, I'll wager that I've lost more close friends to heroin than anyone who reads and/or posts at Crosscut - and I think that ought to be legalized, too.

I think Burns developed a brilliant technique for recounting historic events in The Civil War series. Other than that he is a rather pompous messenger of the conventional wisdom. Klezmer was never mentioned in the Jazz series. Other than the fact that he is or was an alcoholic why is Pete Dexter a worthwhile commentator on Prohibition? why didn't Burns make the obvious connection to the drug war? well the program it speaks for itself but Mr. Burns is not a brave commentator. He's David Susskind on automatic pilot.

Mr Burns never claimed to be able to included everything about any subject that he makes a documentary about. If you are not happy with his work, then do a documentary yourself. Or write; and self publish, what you want people to know. Just stop throwing stones at someone who has done so much for the education of our country.

"Marijuana became a bugaboo in the neo-racist 1920s and ‘30s because it was a “Negro” and “Mexican” drug"

Don't forget jazz musicians, Jews, and intellectuals.

Its useful to recall the reasons behind the push to establish prohibition of Cannabis:

1) The alcohol prohibition industry was decimated by the end of prohibition and needed work. It needed a new source of jobs and corruption money. The war on drugs (i.e., Marijuana) looked like a good substitute. Think a Narc is ever going to voluntarily walk away from a job that allows him to legally seize hot cars and treat them as his own? Or have access to highly valuable illicit drugs that he can skim and sell for his own pocket? Of course, today, we also have the prison industry grossly profiting off of it. And a lucrative industry it is. We've even created a new industry of "drug abuse treatment specialists" who live off of court referrals of people busted for possession of cannabis who'd rather sit through boring counseling sessions then sit in jail. And what a surprise, these people will tell you that marijuana is addictive! Think they're going to acknowledge that the war on drugs is an abject failure, ridiculous, and destructive? N way. Its their gravy train?

2) Hearst owned extensive low grade timber lands and he needed a market for it. Dupont had just invented Rayon, made from wood fiber. Eureka! Newsprint and Rayon. Hearst certainly didn't want any competition from alternative fibers, especially if he wasn't going to profit of of them. Check out some of the yellow journalism Hearst put out regarding marijuana. This propaganda seems laughable today, but it waseffective then. And there's fallout from prohibition that is usually not mentioned: capture of the paper market by wood fiber, creating a market for low grade material and resulting in vast deforestation. Or cyclic deforestation if you are charitable towards clearcuts.

While I often enjoy Scigliano's take on conventional wisdom, his primary criticism of Burn's latest epic is misplaced. The analogy to the war on pot is so flagrant that it need not be made for risk of hindering its viewership and path to legalization. I did have the benefit of seeing a recent presentation Burn's made in Seattle for KCTS/PBS. Without specifically mentioning pot, he did make the point that he goes out of his way to allow the public to make their own connections. Burn's continues to make contributions to our understanding of who we are that will be appreciated for generations to come. Perhaps there's room for another in the Jazz series according to Scigliano and some readers. The more archival and contemporary imagery preserved the better at this point, as far as I'm concerned. Others can edit tighter in the future if need be.

I think you're (collectively) missing the point. The show was on prohibition. Prohibition banned alcohol. The show was about alcohol. I watched it. I didn't think "oh, this is wrong because there isn't a mention of drugs that would become popular in 60 years."

We can't legalize Pot! People would just grow it at home 'cause it's like a weed! No taxes, no revenue. OMG government funding would collapse.

What's actually humorous is that farmers in North Carolina want to grow industrial hemp instead of tobacco. Tobacco is extremely hard on the soil and hemp as others have noted has a lot of reasonable uses, and doesn't require a lot of fertilizer or pesticides or herbicides. So there are some interesting allies in the legalization of hemp.

Oh, and if you read interviews with Mr. Burns he has in fact made the point that the current prohibition on drugs is very much analogous to the failure of alcohol prohibition.

Given the current right-wing climate in congress, he probably doesn't want to threaten public broadcasting any more than it already is by belaboring that point in his documentary (or by making more explicit that the descendents of the drys are the Tea Party types and their ilk).

@ bubbleator- interesting theory about the drys and the Tea Party. I would love to see the Tea Party take up prohibition of alcohol ;) And how, exactly, does their favorite Ron Paul feel about legalizing pot?

Decriminalizing pot is not a partisan issue. Republicans favor the War on Pot because of their puritanical morals (characterized as "The awful feeling that somewhere, somebody might be having a good time"). Democrats favor the War because it allows government to get bigger, more powerful and more intrusive. I haven't watched the Burns piece all the way through, but if he fails to mention that the War on Pot was conceived to provide work for all the law enforcement officials who would have been left unemployed by the repeal of Prohibition, he truly is not telling the whole story. It's one of the first government jobs programs.

I think there is a big difference between the prohibition movement and the movement to decriminalize or even legalize drugs. Naturally, the main question in drinking and drug use is to what extent does society have to regulate individual conduct? But the lesson from Prohibition is one in political science and democracy. The prohibitionist operatives were able to cleverly take a single issue and keep hammering the political system until they got what they wanted. The 18th Amendment was one thing, then the Anti-Saloon League wrote the Volstead Act which took the whole program beyond what people probably expected. The Wets thought the Drys would just go away.

The lesson of Prohibition is how a focused and uncompromising political movement can get its way in a democracy. It's all perfectly legal, but is it right?

Interesting piece in the Independent:

http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/history/the-long-shadow-line-history-and-the-war-on-drugs-2368050.html

(http://goo.gl/9z52R for short)

"What can the tobacco trade of the 17th century tell us about the modern war on drugs? Charles C Mann, whose new book has been called a 'historical Freakonomics', draws the parallels"

Holy carp. Burns told a pretty good story about policy gone wrong. That's not enough? Hey, he didn't mention health care, either! Or gambling and prostitution! (Feel free to insert your pet cause here.) While I have no use for marijuana personally, I think the drug war has gone past the point of absurdity as well (and y'all might not think it's quite so wonderful when you have to deal with someone who's stoned in public, as I already have in the classroom). But the parallels to the drug war were so obvious in the program that they frankly didn't need to be stated. The program's subtext was about excess in general. That's not enough?