Historians see parallels between repealing the prohibition on alcohol in the 1920s and the forthcoming end of illicit pot.

Though Ontario lifted the ban on alcohol sales in 1927, the province tightly regulated its availability through a monopolized liquor control board that for more than four decades kept track of customer history and personal information through permit books and purchase forms.

“In Ontario and most other provinces, they followed this pattern of strong government regulation. It legitimized the reintroduction of alcohol and allowed it to go forward,” said Mark Sholdice, a doctoral candidate in Canadian history at the University of Guelph.

Now, after 88 years of being sold exclusively on LCBO shelves and in Beer Store backrooms, six-packs arrived in Ontario grocery stores on Dec. 15, with wine to follow.

A similar possibility awaits marijuana — eventually: “Essentially heavy regulation of production, distribution, consumption . . . with more liberalization as the decades go on and it becomes normalized.”

Premier Kathleen Wynne said Dec. 14 that LCBO outlets are “very-well suited” for pot retail, once legalization is dealt with by the federal government.

Sholdice cautioned that a state-controlled marijuana agency — LCBO or otherwise — may follow incentives not just to allow consumption but to encourage it over time, along the same lines as provincial lotteries.

“Governments by the 1980s had become dependent on these ‘vices’ to raise revenue, so they become much more comfortable with actually promoting these activities, whereas before the government was much more interested in controlling the behaviour and in educating the consumers,” Sholdice said.

The prohibitionists of the late 19th and early 20th centuries sought to eliminate problems like workplace accidents, public drunkenness and “social deterioration,” said Dan Malleck, associate professor of history at Brock University and the author of books on Canada’s drug laws and Ontario’s post-Prohibition booze rules.

Those issues aren’t necessarily linked with marijuana, though Wynne stressed the LCBO’s ongoing corporate policy of “social responsibility.” Recent research on the drug’s effect on the adolescent brain makes youth consumption an ongoing concern, Malleck noted.

Sholdice highlighted the possible hindrances of a self-sustaining public agency, should the province want to loosen or decentralize the process further down the line.

“It’s not just tradition, or that people are afraid of change, but employees at the LCBO and the Beer Store are members of public unions. Generally, the labour movement is really against change that would see their members lose their jobs,” he said.