Prohibitionism is a legal philosophy and

political theory Political philosophy studies the theoretical and conceptual foundations of politics. It examines the nature, scope, and legitimacy of political institutions, such as states. This field investigates different forms of government, ranging from d ...

often used in

lobbying Lobbying is a form of advocacy, which lawfully attempts to directly influence legislators or government officials, such as regulatory agency, regulatory agencies or judiciary. Lobbying involves direct, face-to-face contact and is carried out by va ...

which holds that citizens will abstain from actions if the actions are typed as unlawful (i.e. prohibited) and the prohibitions are enforced by law enforcement.C Canty, A Sutton. ''Strategies for community-based drug law enforcement: From prohibition to harm reduction''; in T Stockwell, PJ Gruenewald, JW Toumbourou, WLoxley W, eds. ''Preventing Harmful Substance Use: The Evidence Base for Policy and Practice.'' New York: John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., 2005. pp. 225-236. This philosophy has been the basis for many acts of

statutory law A statute is a law or formal written enactment of a legislature. Statutes typically declare, command or prohibit something. Statutes are distinguished from court law and unwritten law (also known as common law) in that they are the expressed wi ...

throughout history, most notably when a large group of a given population disapproves of and/or feels threatened by an activity in which a smaller group of that population engages, and seeks to render that activity legally prohibited.

Examples

Acts of prohibition have included prohibitions on types of clothing (and prohibitions on lack of clothing), prohibitions on

gambling Gambling (also known as betting or gaming) is the wagering of something of Value (economics), value ("the stakes") on a Event (probability theory), random event with the intent of winning something else of value, where instances of strategy (ga ...

and exotic dancing, the prohibition of drugs (for example, alcohol prohibition and cannabis prohibition), prohibitions on tobacco smoking, and gun prohibition. Indeed, the period of

Prohibition in the United States The Prohibition era was the period from 1920 to 1933 when the United States prohibited the production, importation, transportation, and sale of alcoholic beverages. The alcohol industry was curtailed by a succession of state legislatures, an ...

between 1920 and 1933 due to the Eighteenth Amendment and the Volstead Act often is referred to simply as "

Prohibition Prohibition is the act or practice of forbidding something by law; more particularly the term refers to the banning of the manufacture, storage (whether in barrels or in bottles), transportation, sale, possession, and consumption of alcoholic b ...

", as is the " War on Drugs" that succeeded it.

Criticism

The success of a measure of prohibitionism has been criticized as often depending too much upon effective enforcement of the relevant legislation. Some people have argued this is because the majority of the targets of prohibitionism are in the category of victimless crime, where they claim the harm that comes from the crime is non-existent, questionable, or only to the person who performs the act and even then the magnitude of the harm being relatively small. Under this interpretation enforcement becomes a conflict between violation of statue and violation of free will. Since the acts prohibited often are enjoyable, enforcement is often the most harmful choice to the individual. This sometimes results in laws which rarely are enforced by anybody who does not have a financial or personal motivation to do so. The difficulty of enforcing prohibitionist laws also criticized as resulting in selective enforcement, wherein the enforcers select the people they wish to prosecute based on other criteria, resulting in

discrimination Discrimination is the process of making unfair or prejudicial distinctions between people based on the groups, classes, or other categories to which they belong or are perceived to belong, such as race, gender, age, class, religion, or sex ...

based on races, culture, nationality, or financial status. For example, American philosopher

Noam Chomsky Avram Noam Chomsky (born December 7, 1928) is an American professor and public intellectual known for his work in linguistics, political activism, and social criticism. Sometimes called "the father of modern linguistics", Chomsky is also a ...

has criticized drug prohibition as being a technique of

social control Social control is the regulations, sanctions, mechanisms, and systems that restrict the behaviour of individuals in accordance with social norms and orders. Through both informal and formal means, individuals and groups exercise social con ...

of the "so-called dangerous classes".Noam Chomsky, "On the War on Drugs", ''Week Online'', DRCNet, February 8, 2002
/ref> Prohibitionism based laws have the added problem of calling attention to the behavior that they are attempting to prohibit. This can make the behavior interesting and exciting, and cause its popularity to increase. This is essentially in relation with the

Streisand effect The Streisand effect is an unintended consequences, unintended consequence of attempts to hide, remove, or Censorship, censor information, where the effort instead increases public awareness of the information. The term was coined in 2005 by ...

Notes

External links

Peter Cohen, ''Re-thinking drug control policy – Historical perspectives and conceptual tools'', United Nations Research Institute for Social Development, 1993
*[https://web.archive.org/web/20070527192717/http://www.sciencedirect.com/science?_ob=ArticleURL&_udi=B6VJX-4834NV6-1&_coverDate=04%2F30%2F2003&_alid=515922818&_rdoc=1&_fmt=&_orig=search&_qd=1&_cdi=6106&_sort=d&view=c&_acct=C000050221&_version=1&_urlVersion=0&_userid=10&md5=dc2e357fd02e909e7ebeb54f3d867221 Harry G. Levine, "Global drug prohibition: its uses and crises", ''International Journal of Drug Policy'', 14(2): 145–153, April 2003] (journal article)
Should cannabis be taxed and regulated?
(journal article)
Learning from history: a review of David Bewley-Taylor's The United States and International Drug Control, 1909–1997
(journal article)
Shifting the main purposes of drug control: from suppression to regulation of use

Setting goals for drug policy: harm or use reduction?

Prohibition, pragmatism and drug policy repatriationChallenging the UN drug control conventions: problems and possibilities
{{Authority control Alcohol law Social conflict Drug control law Law enforcement in the United States Philosophy of law Political science terminology Political theories Prohibition Tobacco control

Examples

Criticism

See also

Notes

External links