From JOHN FEATHER
It is unlikely that the health benefits from Prohibition in the US were as
dramatic as David Concar and Laura Spinney claim (“The highs and lows of
prohibition”, 1 October). Their figures show a sharp fall in deaths from
cirrhosis of the liver three years before the new legislation came into force
in 1920, matched by an increase in deaths from other causes.
It seems more plausible that doctors either changed their practices,
responding to social pressure against alcohol by not recording an alcohol-
related disease on death certificates, or, being heavy drinkers themselves,
decided to make the statistics look better.
The authors write: the fact that reported deaths from cirrhosis began to
drop before the onset of Prohibition may have a different explanation. By the
time Prohibition began in the US, a broadly based temperance movement had been
in full swing there for a number of years. The decline in cirrhosis was surely
the result of increasing public awareness of the hazards of alcohol, not
doctors fiddling their books to make the situation look better. (In any case,
demonising a substance usually makes doctors look for victims – witness the
recent history of ecstasy abuse in Britain).
