I wish the end wasn’t so tragic, so I could chuckle over this.
Eamonn Kilbride, 46, was performing the energetic dance by Korean popstar PSY at the Thwaites Brewery party in Blackburn, Lancashire when he suddenly fell to the ground.
Given the location, I suspect alcohol played a big roll in all of this. We can transpose this over to American history and unintended consequences. People were upset by the social issues with excessive drinking in the US so we banned the sale and consumption of alcohol. From that we had a massive, and bloody crime syndicate created with the sole purpose of distributing illegal alcohol to the people. It killed and harmed far more people than the booze ever did. So we repealed the law and amended the constitution and never looked back.
Today the people who cite “Gun Death” are the modern Temperance Movement. Let’s not let that mistake happen with our guns.
h/t Bob
“From that we had a massive, and bloody crime syndicate created with the sole purpose of distributing illegal alcohol to the people. It killed and harmed far more people than the booze ever did.”
Bob, I think you need to re-evaluate this statement. Looking at the homicide rates during prohibition (1919-1933) the rates were obviously much higher (10-30%) than immediately prior to prohibition. Although the years immediately after prohibition were just as deadly. This increase if all related to the prohibition gangs was 2000-3000 extra deaths a year.
Contrast this with the number of alcohol related deaths. If the rate of alcohol related deaths was prior to prohibition was only half what it is today, then alcohol was “responsible” for 10,000+ deaths a year prior to prohibition.
My guess is that what killed prohibition is a) everyone realized they still like to drink, b) there wasn’t an appreciable difference in crime (what criminals did was simply switch to bootlegging since it was much more profitable), c) what crime there was saw a higher instance of reporting in the news (no newspaper reports the town drunk dying of alcohol poisoning but they will report a “crime” ring bust when they find the Sunday School teacher making hooch in his bathtub). I know, b) and c) seem kind of contradictory, but what it comes down to is people get more worked up over one massacre of 26 people by a madman then they ever will by the death of 10,000 over the course of a year from easily preventable causes.
From what I have read, crime rates did not increase during prohibition and whatever increase in murders there were certainly didn’t compare to the number of alcohol deaths