Published on Brock University (http://www.brocku.ca)
Brock prof’s research examines post-prohibition liquor laws in Ontario
A Brock prof’s research into how the government of Ontario dealt with the regulation of alcohol and public drinking in the province in the post-prohibition 20s and 30s raises some interesting questions about our society’s attitudes towards to alcohol.
“We have this incredibly conflicted relationship with alcohol,” says Dan Malleck, associate professor of Community Health Sciences and author of Try to Control Yourself: The Regulation of Public Drinking in Post-Prohibition Ontario, 1927-1944.
“From the end of prohibition in Ontario until the Second World War, liquor laws in the province changed significantly,” says Malleck. “And with the creation of the LCBO in 1927, the government tried to foster a system that worked in the complex political and social culture of the time.”
The whole idea of allowing drinking in a province where a lot of people still thought it should be illegal because it was immoral and destructive to society had to be weighed against the fact that prohibition simply did not work.
