ABSTRACT
The Great War invested Prohibition with a patriotic aura since German Americans owned many breweries. The sharp increase in smuggling, violent crime, and evasion spurred repeal of what President Herbert Hoover, who opposed Prohibition, called "a noble experiment" in 1933, the year that he handed over the White House to Democrat Franklin D. Roosevelt amid the Great Depression. President Calles, who disdained the Chinese, justified the prohibitory measures on the grounds of protecting the quality of the race, an argument embraced by some American prohibitionists. During World War II, the United States formally pressed Mexico to control illegal narcotics traffic. Mexico remained a source of narcotics, especially when tens of thousands of service personnel returned from overseas with a taste for, if not a full-blown addiction to, drugs. The state's governor, Colonel Rodolfo T. Loaiza, proposed "exterminating narcotics trafficking" and converting poppy-growing farms in the remote municipalities of Badiraguato and nearby Mocorito into bean and corn producers.
