LEAP 3 - The History of Propaganda in America
Matthew Fellenzer
Patrick Genzardi
4-11-18
COM 416 - Professor Hobbs
LEAP 3
The History of Alcohol Propaganda
Piktochart: https://create.piktochart.com/output/29495766-new-piktochart
Abstract
This academic essay will include a comparison on the drinking age in America using propaganda sources. It will also include an infographic created to portray the specific details touched on in this essay. The drinking age in America has been a controversial topic for almost 100 years now. The argument to change this law comes from the fact that the United States is one of a couple countries in the world that still apply the law of a drinking age of 21 years old. To be exact, there are only 12 countries in the world that have a drinking age of 21, United States being included in that. Some feel that this law is counter-productive while some feel that every country should have a law with this age. This essay will explore the differences between the past and present laws of the drinking age in America when at one point in time the law was 18 and then the present time of 21.
Introduction
What exactly is propaganda? According to the Merriam-Webster dictionary, the term propaganda is “the spreading of ideas, information, or rumor for the purpose of helping or injuring an institution, a cause, or a person” and “ideas, facts, or allegations spread deliberately to further one’s cause or to damage an opposing cause.” Propaganda was used during the Prohibition era by means of spreading ideas and information in favor of the prohibition of alcohol and also against the production, importation, and transportation of alcohol. Fast forward almost 100 years, the government and media are still using similar propaganda tactics to support the law of keeping the drinking age 21 years old and above. In present day the use of propaganda supporting the drinking age is mainly focused on adolescents brain development and drunk driving prevention, but there may be an alternative agenda. Even though the idea of prohibition in the 1920’s and having the drinking age be 21 years old now are different, the media outlets and government still used similar propaganda tactics in supporting their arguments.
Propaganda of Prohibition of the Past
In the 1920’s there were many different ways that propaganda was used in support of prohibition. Many similar uses of propaganda were also seen in The State Of Deception, by Steven Luckert and Susan Bachrach. One of the most notable similarities of propaganda use between the two was the use of cartoons, posters, and newspapers in support of their message. The Nazi party would focus more on portraying a negative message of the Jewish race in their propaganda use, but in America their use of propaganda during prohibition would focus more of the negative effects of alcohol. In 1919, Russell Henderson, who was a writer for “The American Issue,” created a cartoon of a man who appeared in an American newspaper as an old man who is infested with “liquor cooties.” This cartoon was to show people that as you get older, alcohol has a worsening effect on a person's body as they age. This is a prime example of propaganda used to show that alcohol was this bad thing and they wanted to abolish it completely out of the country.
A different propaganda approach used during prohibition was the targeting of families. At this point in history people were seeing some of the first uses of propaganda, and this form of propaganda really hit home. A narrative was created that if a husband drank alcohol he would destroy his family. Scenes of children being abandoned to poverty and shame by their drunken father or of wives being brutally beaten were constantly depicted. Justin Edwards's classic tract, Temperance Manual, presents a litany of evils attendant on drinking. There is gruesome medical evidence, complete with descriptions of swollen and discolored organs and of bodies exploding when alcoholic breath gets too near a candle; the “poisoning of the seed and a legacy of death and disease” are likewise luridly detailed (ncbi.nlm.nih.gov). This ad provided below is an
example on how the media negatively attacked families that consumed alcohol. Prohibition, the movement for repeal mobilized its support primarily through the use of polemics and propaganda. The battle lines were split between wet and dry, and third parties were anathema. As the decade of the 1920s came to an end, the propaganda tactics favoring the maintenance of Prohibition were more than holding their own.
Drinking Age Propaganda of the Present
On July 17, 1984, President Ronald Reagan signed the National Minimum Drinking Age Act, a law that required states to raise the drinking age to 21 or face a 10 percent cut to their federal highway funding. Every state agreed to adopting the higher drinking age. Since then, many different forms of propaganda has been created in order to support teens from drinking and keep the legal drinking age at 21 years old. In 1993, In Los Angeles California, a program called Drug Abuse Resistance Education better know as “DARE” was created to educate and prevent teenagers from using drugs and especially partaking in drinking alcohol (mic.com). The DARE program wasn’t a success from the start, but now it is being implemented in 75 percent of our nation’s school districts. The DARE program has grown to be a major use of propaganda in America by supporting the drinking age being 21 years old and preventing teenagers from drinking alcohol. At its peak the DARE program has been worth hundreds of millions of dollars, but even with its financial success its use of propaganda may lead people to believe that it is having more of a positive effects on teenagers then it actually is. Self esteem and resistance were two major cornerstones of the DARE program and at first this sounds like an effective approach but in reality it was pushing certain teenagers to drink alcohol and use drugs. Students who went through DARE weren’t any less likely to drink alcohol than the students who didn’t. In fact, there’s some well-regarded research that some groups of students were actually more likely to drink alcohol if they went through DARE. Scientists knew the DARE program was ineffective relatively early on, but the program grew anyways. The program’s eventual reform was the result of a long and hard battle between evidence-based research, and popular opinion. The DARE program even created its own mascot called “Daren the Lion” another addition to its use of propaganda.
One of the main reasons the legal drinking age was changed to 21 from 18 years old was due to the drunk driving epidemic in the 1970’s. Since then, there has been many forms of propaganda created in order to show the negative effects on drinking and driving, and why it has been more common in younger people. One of the most common uses of propaganda to support this was through television commercials. There has been hundreds of commercials created showing a person either killing somebody or going to jail as a result of driving while drunk with the slogan
“Drive Sober Or You’ll Get Pulled Over.” According to the NHTSA, drunk-driving accidents have dropped by 50 percent since the law was passed (one.nhtsa.gov). The greatest proportion of this decline was among 16 to 20 year olds: approximately 37 percent of traffic fatalities in this age group were alcohol related in 2013 compared to more than 75 percent in the 1970s, meaning that this Act and use of propaganda has produced a positive result.
Comparing and Contrasting Prohibition and Modern Day Drinking
Propaganda use in the 1920’s to support prohibition and propaganda use in present day supporting drinking alcohol legally both have the same overall message but with different intentions. The use of propaganda in the present day has intentions of educating people on the safety issues behind drinking illegally with some financial interest in mind, compared to the propaganda used in the 1920’s. In the 1920’s, propaganda was used to scare people, lie, and to support government intention. A narrative was created that any man that drinks alcohol would beat his wife and leave his family which is simply not true, and that your organs will fall out shorty after you drink alcohol which is also false. The result of abolishing alcohol completely in the 1920’s was a way for the government to implement propaganda by reducing crime and corruption, solve social problems, reduce the tax burden created by prisons, and improve health in America (cato.org). The difference in the present day is that we currently have accepted alcohol nationally and internationally, so the propaganda use is more aimed towards informing and profit.
Propaganda use in the 1920’s and present day were used in a similar manner because both types of advertisements possess the same intentions. In both periods of time, a major contribution to propaganda use was due to government intention. Even though America is a democracy, the government has the ultimate power to spread information they want out to the public. This is the case of not only the past era of prohibition propaganda, but the modern day era of our government spreading their beliefs on our drinking age and importance of safe drinking. The news and the media will always be the main source of propaganda, and in both time periods propaganda was used effectively. The topic of alcohol and the legal drinking age will always be a controversial topic, but through propaganda, anyone can share their opinions and be heard around the world.
Conclusion
Propaganda has been used for generation all around the world to express their ideas that people want to implement and support an agenda. In this case propaganda was used by our government to promote the abolishment of alcohol in our country at one point in time and to help our society moderate alcohol in present day time. Propaganda became very important because it is used to reach out to all different types of people and people of all ages. Even though propaganda failed during the prohibition era , the modern day propaganda seems to be having a positive effect and we hope that it continues to influence the people of our country in the future.
Works Cited
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https://www.cdc.gov/alcohol/fact-sheets/alcohol-use.htm
Andrews, E. (2015, January 16). 10 Things You Should Know About Prohibition. Retrieved April
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and Alcohol Consumption Among Youth. Retrieved April 12, 2018, from https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK37586/
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