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Hello and welcome to the Americano podcast, a series of discussions about American power, politics and society.

On each episode, I will talk to an American expert or an expert on America

about something that's going on in America in 2023. I am delighted to be joined today by

Nico Vorobiov who is a journalist and the author of a book called Dope World.

And we're going to be talking about prohibition,

because Nico has written a very interesting piece for Spectated World,

entitled The Mistakes of Prohibition Still Haunt Us.

And it is 90 years, as some readers may be aware since prohibition was ended.

The 18th Amendment was repealed.

It was introduced in 1919.

And it's extraordinary to think, isn't it, Nico, that it went on for that long

because it's, it's, we now associate it with bootlegging, gangster, and so on, but it also coincided with

the roaring 20s. What's the biggest misperception, do you think, about the prohibition era?

First of all, Freddie, thank you very much for having me on. I think one of the biggest misconceptions is that a lot of people back at it now and they

think that the movement for prohibition was just led by a bunch of Bible thumpers or like

shrill women like, I forgot her name, but the one who went around with hatchets

smashing up bars. But actually, it's quite a wide, diverse range of actors were responsible

for pushing sobriety. So you had the early feminists who were like trying to protect their kids from black

guys and making sure the man in the house was sober enough to put food on the table. You had

...