"[F]rom its very inception, the movement wasn't about sin-obsessed puritans, but rather a backlash against 'the most predatory and dangerous of all big businesses,' in which unregulated liquor traffickers hooked their customers on a highly addictive substance, just like Big Pharma stoking the opioid crisis. In both cases, every market incentive drives the industry to maximize private profit by flooding the community with wares that destroy the public welfare. In penning his famous Six Sermons on Intemperance—which jumpstarted the modern temperance movement in 1826—Boston preacher Lyman Beecher repeatedly used but one Bible verse: 'Woe unto him that giveth his neighbor drink, that puttest thy bottle to him, and makest him drunk also' (Habakkuk 2:15). Temperance activists aimed not at the drink or the drunkard, but the predatory drink seller, to be confronted through a consumer boycott."
Mark Lawrence Schrad at Politico reconsiders the Prohibitionists.
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