1933 and Beyond: Post-Repeal STI and Modern Developments
In 1933, when Bertha Rachel Palmer became Director of STI, she was faced with the challenge of revitalizing alcohol education in the face of Repeal.
Pictured here is the WCTU’s Alcohol Education booth at the Century of Progress World’s Fair in Chicago, showing some of the promotional materials available for the new era.
Continued concern about the need for alcohol education through the 1960s is reflected in the health textbook, state-level teachers’ manuals and guidelines, and liver-sample visual aid shown here. By the mid-to-late 1960s, however, narcotics education had joined alcohol and tobacco education programs. In 1963, President Kennedy’s Advisory Commission on Narcotic and Drug Abuse advocated for more intensive drug and alcohol education in public schools. Campaigns ranging from scare tactics to the “Just Say No” theme of the 1980s and the DARE program in the 1990s focused more on drugs than alcohol, but the influence of the WCTU’s Scientific Temperance Instruction initiatives, begun nearly a century ago, is still evident.