Reefer Madness, the name of the 1930s anti-cannabis propaganda film, has lately taken on new meaning in Sonoma County, where elected officials are wrangling with pot farmers and rural residents over ordinances regulating the cultivation and sale of cannabis. Fear-based propaganda isn’t the only 1930s throwback to this fracas—reminders of Prohibition hang about the county like the fumes of illegal stills, calling to mind Mark Twain’s alleged dictum: “History doesn’t repeat itself, but it certain does rhyme.”
The main challenge facing responsible cannabis cultivation today is not the legal farmer living next door (one is applying for a license across the road from me), but the grower who remains, in the words of County Sheriff Mark Essick, “non-compliant” with the new ordinances. It was much the same following the repeal of Prohibition in 1933.
While Prohibition is now viewed as a cautionary tale of moral overreach, its enactment and repeal actually had more to do with money. Prior to Congress’s enactment of a federal income tax in 1916, between 30 and 40 percent of the federal government’s revenue came from taxes on alcohol. The enactment of Prohibition in 1919 only became a viable prospect for moral advocates like the Anti-Saloon League and Women’s Christian Temperance Union once income taxes had replaced the government’s dependency on alcohol taxes.
Less well known is the role that criminal gangs played in fermenting Prohibition. They didn’t fear it, they loved it, and in fact supported politicians and organizations who fought to keep it in place. Having just been handed one of the biggest markets in the country, they made sure that nobody who wanted a drink went without. In protecting their market, they also unleashed a wave of corruption, extortion, and violence, placing a number of innocent people in the crossfire. (Sound familiar?). By 1926, annual sales of illegal liquor in the U.S. had reached an estimated $3.6 billion—roughly the size of the entire federal budget at the time.
Charlie Garzoli ran Petaluma’s largest liquor ring. A member of a large Two Rock dairy family, Garzoli used a dog food plant on Hopper Street near the river as his front. The plant featured a fifteen hundred gallon still that produced 196 proof “jackass” whiskey. Sugar used in its manufacture was first transported from ports in the South Bay to local dairies via inconspicuous, souped-up sedans stripped of all seats but the driver’s, giving them the storage capacity of a small truck, before being shuttled to Garzoli’s plant. After the “alky” was made, it was transported in five-gallon tins via the sedans back to the relay ranches, and then delivered to San Francisco via the Sausalito ferry, or driven north as far as Oregon, Washington, and Idaho.
Once the Great Depression hit, revenues from federal income taxes plummeted by 60 percent. Desperate for a new source of income, the government turned to the giant untaxed and unchecked liquor industry. (Sound familiar?). After Prohibition’s repeal in 1933, the industry was flooded with state and local regulations. The new measures set licensing and product safety requirements for sellers, and imposed enforceable restrictions (like tavern closing hours and age limits) on consumers. As Prohibition historian Dan Okrent notes, repeal actually “made it harder, not easier, to get a drink.”
Charlie Garzoli, unwilling to comply with the new regulations and taxes, continued bribing and extorting local law officials to maintain his criminal enterprise. For years, federal and state agents remained flummoxed by the seemingly unending supply of illegal alcohol flowing from Petaluma. Finally, in the spring of 1937, they succeeded in trailing a sugar shipment to Garzoli’s dog food plant. Garzoli was apprehended while trying to flee, and sentenced to two years in Washington state’s McNeil Island Penitentiary for having defrauded the government of $1,000,000 in taxes ($17 million in current-day-currency). Other members of Garzoli’s gang—including prominent ranchers and businessmen—were issued lighter sentences. A major local banker, Adolph Bloom, committed suicide.
Those who had fought Prohibition’s repeal back in 1933 tried to present the new legal distillers as “the bootlegger’s friend,” much like some rural residents are trying to present legal cannabis growers today as “the drug dealer’s friend.” But, as Sheriff Essick noted at a community gathering , precisely the opposite is true. Legal growers, working with law enforcement, are the only ones who can bankrupt and destroy the criminal, black market gangs. The sad irony is that only pot prohibitionists, blinded by reefer madness, can keep them thriving.
A version of this article appeared in the Petaluma Argus-Courier May 9, 2019.