IT’S COME TO THIS: As James Lileks writes, “the Well Axtually lads over at Vox” defend Prohibition. Needless to say, Lileks, with much more of a sense of perspective and knowledge of that time period pushes back:

Fewer people got drunk and beat up other people. Maybe. The stats are not clear. There was the whole gang thing, but it was blown out of proportion. Yes, it made an entire nation learn to shrug at the law, but other than that, it worked better than you think.

Question is, how well did you think it worked in the first place? I think it did a pretty good job of shutting down every legitimate avenue for alcohol consumption. In fact I think it had a rather robust success rate for that. The failures were deeper and unsustainable.

To be fair, Prohibition is far from the worse thing that the Vox juiceboxers have come to the defense of.