It's the 75th anniversary of the end of Prohibition:

Rarely in the annals of human experience has so well intentioned an idea been such a monument to failure as America's 13-year attempt to eradicate the evil of alcohol. The National Prohibition (or Volstead) Act was passed by Congress in October 1919, overriding the veto of President Woodrow Wilson. The following January, the Act was ratified as the 18th amendment of the constitution after it had been approved by the required three-quarters majority of US states.

The "noble experiment", as its supporters termed it, did indeed lead to a modest decline in alcohol consumption and an overall improvement in public health. But those meagre and transient advantages were nothing compared to the unintended side-effects of Prohibition: a drastic decline in federal and state revenues, a surge in clandestine binge drinking and of course speak-easies, bootlegging, moonlighting and mobsters, not to mention the criminalisation of millions of US citizens, including some its most eminent politicians, who were technically flouting the law of the land.

Prohibition's passing belongs to a distant age; you have to be 90 years old at least to be a surviving violator. But this 75th anniversary has a rare resonance. Prohibition was brought down by its growing unpopularity, and the indisputable evidence the measure was doing far more harm than good. But the final nail in its coffin was the Great Depression, at its height in 1933. Why should extra misery and deprivation continue to be heaped upon a population suffering so much hardship already? "The human suffering that it [Prohibition] entailed," wrote H L Mencken, journalism's bard of the age, "must have been a fair match for that of the Black Death and Thirty Years War."

Read the entire article by Rubert Cornwell in the UK Independent.

Will you be marking the anniversary tonight? I'll be hoisting a glass and toasting, among other things, all of my comrades here at TPM.

Salud! Kampai! and To Your Health!