“If you will allow me to say so, ma’am, several drinks never do any harm. It is only the first which is dangerous. After that, the damage is done.”

Noel Coward, “Fallen Angels”

For much of Maine’s history as a state, getting that first drink required a lot more initiative than ought to have been necessary. As detailed in the new book “Distilled in Maine: A History of Libations, Temperance & Craft Spirits” by food blogger Kate McCarty, the manufacture and sale of alcoholic beverages became illegal here in 1846, and with only a brief interruption, remained so until the repeal of national Prohibition in 1933.

But even before the ban on intoxicating liquors was approved, Maine had altogether too many statutes regulating its sale and consumption. As McCarty notes, the first law passed by the Legislature after Maine became a state in 1820 imposed licensing fees on shops that sold booze. Then, she discovered, things got even stricter:

“Laws quickly followed that prohibited drinking in excess where liquor was sold, gambling and drinking in the store and sales to minors without parental permission or to known drunks (as defined by a publicly posted list of names) as well as forbidding liquor stores from granting undergraduate college students class credit without prior permission from the college.”

If not for that last one, I could have graduated midway through my freshman year.

Those seeking prohibition allied themselves with other reformers calling for an end to slavery, women’s suffrage and “preserving the Sabbath by campaigning against Sunday newspapers,” thereby enhancing their credibility when they warned of the consequence of strong drink. “The negative health effects of alcohol were widely documented,” McCarty writes, “seen as the cause of epilepsy, gout and even spontaneous combustion.”

Energy saving tip: Inviting a few drunks over to the house can really cut down on your heating bills.

According to the book, anti-alcohol forces set the template for future fanatics in the anti-abortion, anti-immigration and anti-gay movements: “The alliance over a singular issue became a trend, and whether a candidate was temperate or not outweighed his stance on any other issue.”

Prohibition was a boon to certain industries. Rum runners crossed Maine’s mostly unguarded border with Canada and ran specially designed lobster boats out to meet off-shore freighters. Alcohol for medicinal purposes remained legal, so physicians and quacks concocted boozy elixirs that were supposed to cure all manner of ailments. Worst of all, Moxie was created as a cure for drunkenness. It didn’t work, but we’re still stuck with that vile stuff.

In short, banning alcohol was a failure. Stills were common on Maine farms and in the seedier sections of cities. Everyone who wanted a drink knew where booze was available for purchase. The forces of temperance (a misnomer of intemperate proportions) busted up only a tiny percentage of bootlegging operations, making little difference in the availability of hooch.

Unfortunately, once Prohibition ended, things got worse. In place of an outright ban, there were myriad regulations on the sale of adult beverages. The price set by the state was high. The selection, also set by the state, was limited. And availability was restricted to state-run stores that opened late and closed early in an effort to discourage imbibing. Small wonder that as late as the 1970s, places like Portland’s Fore Street were lined with seedy storefronts that specialized in illegal, after-hours sales.

Or so I’m told.

The situation has improved in recent years, but as McCarty points out, even the eased regulations haven’t kept pace with the rise of craft distilling. The current clumsy system requires these small operations to sell their product to Maine’s monopolistic wholesaler at a figure set by the state, which still maintains its post-Prohibition mindset of keeping liquor prices high to discourage consumption.

What this actually discourages is buying in Maine, where the booze run to New Hampshire is as much a tradition as lobster bakes and crazed gubernatorial outbursts. But since most locally made liquor isn’t available in the Granite State, this creates another impediment to the industry’s growth.

Changes are needed in Augusta, and if the politicians and bureaucrats aren’t amenable to adjusting their rules to reflect reality, it may be time to follow the lead of advocates for legal marijuana (one such organization calls itself the Campaign to Regulate Marijuana Like Alcohol – perish the thought) and take the matter to referendum.

Otherwise, the legacy of Maine’s extended experiment with Prohibition will linger still. And that’s the wrong kind of still.

Distill your comments into an email and send it to aldiamon@herniahill.net.