According to Politico‘s Mark Lawrence Schrad, Prohibition was more about destroying “the liquor traffic” than ending the consumption of alcohol. He said that Prohibition was in opposition to “the predatory booze manufacturers and unregulated saloons that made money hand over fist from the drunken misery, addiction and pauperism of their customers.”

You can’t go very far away from the University of Alabama in T-Town without running into a “saloon.” Today’s world isn’t the same as the one that existed during Prohibition. In terms of binge and underage drinking things have really gotten out of hand.

The National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (NIAAA) said this about Underage Drinking:

People ages 12 to 20 drink 4.0 percent of all alcohol consumed in the United States. Although youth drink less often than adults, when they do drink, they drink more. More than 90 percent of all alcohol drinks consumed by youth are consumed through binge drinking

As the Franklin Stove Blog (FSB) posted in 2016, underage drinking in T-Town is driven by bars that cater to students regardless of any city codes. The “saloons” are virtually unregulated. Hard to detect fake IDs make any effective screening for age impossible.

The recent spat of lawsuits in T-Town involving alcohol use by minors reflect all of this, as reported in the FSB. Violence and even deaths are tied to underage drinking in T-Town.

The Gastropub classification in Tuscaloosa‘s codes further complicates matters. Tuscaloosa‘s economy is considerably impacted by alcohol sales.

There is no likelihood that any form of prohibition, or effective enforcement of the city’s underage drinking codes, will happen. The prohibitionists that Schrad wrote about wouldn’t believe what’s going on in T-Town.