It is unlikely that the health benefits from Prohibition in the US were as dramatic as David Concar and Laura Spinney claim ("The highs and lows of prohibition", 1 October). Their figures show a sharp fall in deaths from cirrhosis of the liver three years before the new legislation came into force in 1920, matched by an increase in deaths from other causes.
It seems more plausible that doctors either changed their practices, responding to social pressure against alcohol by not recording an alcohol- related disease on death certificates, or, being heavy drinkers themselves, decided to make the statistics look better.
The authors write: the fact that reported deaths from cirrhosis began to drop before the onset of Prohibition may have a different explanation. By the time Prohibition began in the US, a broadly based temperance movement had been in full swing there for a number of years. The decline ...
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