You don’t need to have read today’s Health Research Board report to know that the idea of prohibition in Ireland is basically unfathomable.

And we would likely be inclined to label anyone that advocated it as something of a conservative zealot.

But of course there was a time when prohibition was a popular idea and it wasn’t just in the US, nor was it just among a minority of conservatives.

Mark Schrad is Associate professor of political science at Villanova University and author of Smashing the Liquor Machine: A Global History of Prohibition