The Drowsy Chaperone, that blowsy, buoyant, infectious smash hit at the Playhouse, is fuelled partly by the running joke of alcohol prohibition.

It's set in 1928 and booze is why the Chaperone is always drowsy. The gathered wedding party is obviously indifferent to the law. The hostess and her butler/gofer discuss code words for drinks. Pretty much the way everyone today deals with marijuana: with a wink and a nudge.

Watching the show brought to mind the fact that Prohibition was repealed 75 years ago this month. That decision was made for many reasons, but all were circumscribed by the simple fact that the United States was broke. It was no longer possible to suffer the massive drain on the public purse caused by a misbegotten adventure in moral engineering.

From 1920 to 1933, American federal spending on policing went from $2.2 million to $12 million; and the federal prison population rose from 3,000 inmates to 12,000. Forget the puny numbers compared to today's bailout amounts and the population of today's prisons: those figures represent an increase of 450 per cent and 300 per cent, respectively. It is doubtful that Prohibition would have been continued in the face of those costs even if it were successful. But it turned out it wasn't.

Consumption dropped for the first two years; but by 1933 it was 11 per cent higher than it had been in 1919. The roaring '20s, apart from its gang wars, saw a marked increase in diseases associated with alcohol consumption, especially bathtub gin and other home brews. In other words, efforts to get around the law brought disease, death, corruption, violence and a general disrespect for the law in general. Sound familiar?

In 1973, a couple of years after Richard Nixon declared his war on drugs, the budget for the Drug Enforcement Agency ( DEA ) was $75 million. In 2001, it was $1.2 billion, a staggering 1,500 per cent growth in less than 30 years.

Similarly, the total U.S. federal prison population in 1970 was 22,038. By 2001 that had grown to 137,536 inmates, a 524% jump - -- and 55% were in there for drugs.

In fact, by 1994, there were as many drug offenders in American prisons as there had been total prisoners in 1970.

We in Canada have locked up our fair share, but certainly less than our southern neighbours because we have been less obsessed by the notion that more and longer prison terms will have an impact on illegal drug use and abuse. That may be only for the time being, however, since the Harper government appears determined to install "get tough" measures, like mandatory minimums, that have been tried in the United States and are now being abandoned there as counterproductive and futile.

On the other hand, we can hope that the economic crunch will delay those plans. The cost of drug prohibition here and in the United States is a "known known", as Donald Rumsfeld once famously said. Cumulatively, from 1973 to 2006 our American neighbours spent $1 trillion on it. Recently, Harvard economics professor Jeffrey Miron ( a libertarian, by the way, so he should find an ally in that other economist, Stephen Harper ) calculated that the United States presently spends $76.8 billion annually on drug prohibition.

In this country the federal government, the provinces and the territories all keep separate track of police, prosecution, court and corrections costs within their jurisdiction. A compilation of those figures attributable only to illegal drugs in 2002 totaled $2,336,530,000.

That's right. This minor democracy of barely 30 million people managed to go through almost two-and-a-half billion dollars in just one year pursuing the unattainable.

Meanwhile, the Lower Mainland and most Canadian metropolitan areas and small cities ( Prince George, for example ) are witnessing persistent gang violence by those who want to gain or maintain status in the incredibly lucrative drug market. Al Capone has become the mystical figurehead for the equivalent mayhem of the '20s. But the St. Valentine's Day massacre of 1929 was no different from the many execution-style murders across the country today.

In the teeth of a recession it would probably not be worth the cost even if prohibition had some effect on drug use and abuse; but, as it turns out, it has had even less impact than the first prohibition. We have thrown billions at an illusory "problem" and drug consumption has risen far more dramatically than alcohol consumption did from 1922 to 1933. In Canada, between 1994 and 2004, self-report of regular use of marijuana and cocaine rose 100 per cent and 300 per cent, respectively.

In the United States the numbers are just as discouraging for the drug warriors. Indeed, they point to the possibility that prohibition actually fosters drug use. In the Netherlands, with its hands-off policy on pot consumption, 22 per cent report that they have tried marijuana at some point in their lifetime. The U.S. figure is 46 per cent, in spite of the country's Draconian penal laws.

The United States was prodded by the Depression to abandon a foolish and counterproductive policy. When it did, there was no sudden explosion of alcoholism; but there was a significant reduction in related disease and death and an almost instantaneous demise of the destructive criminal organizations the policy had generated. Better still, states garnered huge amounts of revenue from the taxation of alcohol. There is no reason to expect any different result if our present economic crisis were to lead to abandonment of drug prohibition.

As happened with the repeal of alcohol prohibition, we can save billions of dollars, advance the health and well-being of thousands of Canadians, and rid ourselves of a significant amount of criminal activity. Maybe our leaders can be just functional enough to take that great leap. 

Please also read: Long Term Exposure To Cannabis

Ed Note: The most important thing that I got out of this article is the explanation for the world's highest drug consumption rate in the USA; this country is No 1 and we now know that this is due to an ever increasing policy of prohibition.

Basically, there is a correlation and a dynamic relationship between the effort (money) you spend on prohibition of a certain drug. When you spend more effort or money to prohibit a drug; then, you are basically advertising it and thus, there will be a rise in the use of that drug.

Every effort to reduce a certain drug will be negated by the fact that every mention of that drug is free advertising. This message is then louder then any other message conveyed to the public, especially when this is not treated as a health issue but instead as a criminal one.

Meanwhile, cigarettes are completely legal you can light up anywhere even when close to little children and cigarettes kill in excess of 38,000 Americans every year from passive smoke inhalation ( and believe me 38,000 is an awful lot of dead bodies from people who did not even enjoy the habit ...) Yet marijuana has killed no-one (because its toxicity is zero) and studies have shown that in a population with marijuana smokers, these are the same people who have a lower incidence of cancer than non-smokers overall, including lung cancer.