Back in the 1920’s, Al Capone was a notorious gangster and bootlegger who ran the streets of Chicago. He rose from being a street thug to becoming an underworld mob boss when he took advantage of the era of alcohol prohibition in the United States in the 1920 and 1930s when the production, importation, transportation and sale of alcohol was outlawed.
However, prohibition had the opposite effect. It drove the once legal and flourishing trade in alcohol underground and ceded it to a ruthless criminal underworld led by Capone. It is estimated that prohibition cost the federal government just over $11bn in lost tax revenue while over 1 000 people a year died from drinking unsafe alcohol.
“The respect for the law especially during a public health pandemic, especially when you are relying on goodwill and cooperation of citizens, is eroded when you start bringing in prohibitions that are seen as widely unfair and unnecessary,” he said. At South African Breweries, our value chain is wide-reaching and incorporates a total of 3 739 suppliers of which 1 345 are SMMEs, supporting in excess of 140 000 jobs.
Research and learnings from the previous ban shows that prohibition of the legal sale of alcohol leads to exponential growth in the production of illicit alcohol.
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