As for the states that chose the third way, by Holder's 1993 account, seventeen states are still exercising some degree of monopoly control over alcohol. They were: Washington, Oregon, Idaho, Montana, Utah, South Dakota, Minnesota, Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Virginia, North Carolina, Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Alabama, and Mississippi.

The foregoing few paragraphs should dispel a common illusion regarding the history of alcohol- related gangsterism in America. Contrary to widely held belief, it was not only repeal and legalization that brought prohibition' s drug/crime epidemic to an end: it was also the introduction of the state monopolies with retained illegality of private commerce in alcoholthat turned back the tide of bootlegging and gangsterism. The capability of the state monopoly systems to dissipate the crime-generating propensity of prohibition is a neglected phenomenon of utmost importance. It is the repeated experience of this phenomenon, under widely varying circumstances, that validates belief that the drug/crime epidemic of our present time can be controlled with the aid of a state monopoly drug distribution system, again, while retaining the present illegality of private enterprise in drug supply activities.

John D. Rockefeller II and theOrigins of the U.S. Alcohol Monopolies The political process leading to creation of the American alcohol monopolies is especially interesting. A pivotal player in this process was John D. Rockefeller II (1874-1960). He was the son of the industrial titan who founded, among other things, the Standard Oil Company. The younger Rockefeller became a great capitalist in his own right, and, like his father, a generous philanthropist. He may be best known today as the builder of New York City's Rockefeller Center.

Rockefeller had been a lifelong abstainer and an early supporter of prohibition, but when he observed prohibition's failure to control alcohol and prohibition's propensity to generate gangsterism and corruption, he switched sides--with carefully staged public fanfare--to the cause of repeal. His dramatic change of direction in 1930 was widely credited, by observers on both sides of the issue, as the single most important influence leading the American people to the realization that prohibition was a failure, that it could not be made to succeed, and that it should be abandoned (Fosdick 1956, p. 257-258). But that is only the beginning of the story of Rockefeller's role in alcohol policy.

He went on to sponsor research on alcohol policy alternatives (Fosdick 1956, p. 259). For this purpose a large staff was assembled to collect detailed data and analysis on the world's entire range of alcohol control systems, their histories and their effectiveness. The research findings were then summarized in a book published in 1933 under the authorship of Rockefeller's principal investigators. This book evaluates the typical attributes of the licensing and state monopoly systems, and it provides a working plan for systems of the latter type, including design details the authors thought suitable to conditions in the United States. The book under discussion here is Fosdick and Scott's Toward Liquor Control,the first systematic tract for the state monopoly system in our national tradition.