I wish I had a ten dollar bill for every time time I’ve been told how prohibition failed…very badly. Regretfully, I must agree. Partly, this was because those in charge of enforcement of the law were some of the worst violators of the law.

I guess we have learned our lesson. When it came to tobacco, they realized they needed a different approach. They didn’t even consider outlawing it.

Instead, they used a multi-pronged approach. They virtually stopped smoking in this country. All advertising, drastically decreased, it was gradually disallowed in various places and now it is banned just almost entirely.

Very few smoke today. Another decade or two and it will virtually disappear from our nation, to which I say, GOOD RIDDANCE! Who knows? It might stop climate change.

How-some-ever, it has prompted me to think, what if we had used the same method on alcoholic beverages? If, and again I say if we had used the other other method as with tobacco, would we today be living in an alternate universe?

Perhaps, today many people would have their loved ones they lost in a car accident caused by someone under the influence. Maybe there would be thousands less divorces and no one could figure the children would who would have been saved from broken homes. I can’t even imagine a guess at all the health problems that wouldn’t have been suffered. Alcoholic beverages cause more severe health problems than tobacco. If you doubt what I’m saying, ask Mickey Mantle. Oops. Can’t do that. He died from liver disease brought by alcoholic beverages.

Many times I have been told that alcoholism is the number one drug problem in this country. And yet alcoholic beverages are some of the biggest advertisers in the US. When you include the subtle ads hidden in plain sight In movies and TV shows. And, of course, they always put good light on it. And, of course, they make it appear as if it is far more common than in the real world.

For me, I would much prefer that alternate universe. The problem is I must live in the one I’m in. So does everyone else.