That's right, 75 years ago today, Alcohol Prohibition came to a close.

Called "the Noble Experiment," more of a misnomer; it was an experiment in suppressing the sovereign rights of U.S. citizenry over their own bodies. There's nothing noble about forcing people, through punishment, to live according to someone else's morality. Especially when it comes to restricting what they do with their own bodies.

Unfortunately, common sense in one area does not necessarily translate to common sense everywhere. Somehow, the lessons of Prohibition have not left their mark on the American People. There's a great capacity to forgive and forget, and in this particular case, bad policies were forgiven, and now forgotten, even as bad policies stare in our face everyday, as (some) drug prohibition continues on.

As Ethan Nadelmann stated in the Wall Street Journal today (paraphrased): the devil you do know scares you less than the devil you don't.

I can vouch for that. When I was locked up in federal prison for Conspiracy to Distribute LSD, I had a case manager quip during a 'progress' meeting: "I haven't seen an LSD case in almost a hundred years!"

Yes, LSD cases are rare. Since the heyday of prosecution in the 70's, LSD has fallen off the map of priorities to the federal government. LSD cases have become more and more rare through the 80's and 90's, even to today. Even more rare was for me to hold my tongue: "hard to imagine [not seeing an LSD case for a hundred years] that, considering it's only been illegal for 36 [at the time] years."

The point being that the prison staff member couldn't imagine a world where LSD wasn't illegal, and similarly, in his head, it always had been. He couldn't think in terms of the drug war being a rather novel (not to mention fruitless) approach towards handling certain substances in a society.

People might hate the comparison, but it's like being in the Antebellum South, and imagining a world with interracial couples being a norm, rather than exception.

The bottom line? Common sense won over prejudice. An experiment in repression clearly demonstrated to be a failure was abandoned. It might be because they called it an "experiment" rather than a "war" that it was repealed. No matter what the case, however, it is a common sense that we need to import to these modern times.

So while a lot of people will be celebrating today, I will not. Over 500,000 people remain in prison because of prohibition - just not alcohol prohibition. I'll celebrate when they're let free - not just because they're unjustly punished, but because our society will finally be one major step closer towards truly being the land of the free.