Prohibition was not one of America’s most successful experiments because people simply bought their way around it. Wealthy people stocked up prior to introduction in 1920, resulting in a massive hockey stick effect. President Wilson moved his stash to his private residence when his term of office expired. He had to because President Harding needed space to store his own.
The middle classes replaced drinking saloons with speakeasies nobody mentioned. Portable stills hit the streets in the first week. California grape farmers became rich, selling grape concentrate with a warning, “After dissolving the brick in a gallon of water, do not place the liquid in a jug away in the cupboard for twenty days, because then it would turn into wine”.
A new industry of criminals evolved to supply alcohol products at a price. Sheer practicality dictated these were concentrates like whiskey and brandy. Thus America changed from a nation of sociable wine and beer sippers, into a people who knocked back hard liquor on dark street corners, and behind closed curtains in their homes.
The medical profession did not take long to catch up. Within six months, some fifteen thousand doctors and fifty-seven thousand pharmacists held licenses to prescribe medicinal alcohol. Doctors made $40 million for whiskey prescriptions through to 1933. That was a heap of money in those days. The USS West Virginia battleship launched in 1921 and sunk at Pearl Harbor cost a mere $3.8 million for the hull and machinery.
The State of California was wise to relieve the pressure by allowing medical marijuana when the people asked for it. Lawmakers developed a complex system of licensing and regulation we are still trying to unpick. If they thought prohibition of adult cannabis was working, they should have thought again.
Los Angeles Times reports healthy people continue to work their way around the problem just as whiskey drinkers did during prohibition. Most medical doctors take an easy-going approach because they are after all only making recommendations. In-out-ten-minute-consultations cost an average $40, although doctors that do a thorough job charge considerably more.
As California approached January 1, 2018, there was a ‘graduation spirit’ on the streets. Los Angeles Times reported dispensaries “are not even asking for recommendation letters anymore”. Furthermore, “many of the heavily guarded medical dispensaries … are letting [people] stroll in without their state-issued IDs”.
Does this mean the carefully crafted California medical marijuana industry will fall on its head now adult marijuana is finally legal? Not entirely: Farmers will still grow cannabis, and doctors will still manage genuine cases of epilepsy, cancer, and other serious conditions. However, could dispensaries go the same way as speakeasies?
Speakeasies continued servicing their customers after Prohibition ended in 1933. They could put the shades up and let the streetlights in, although they had more competition. California dispensaries will have to adapt to a new reality of more open trading too. There may be less of them in future, although there will be more street-front stores engaging in adult marijuana sales.