Life — March 7, 1918 — page 8: what you’re looking at

What you’re looking at

# Explanation for Modern Readers This 1925 Life magazine page satirizes contemporary American social attitudes and behaviors during Prohibition. **"A Citizen"** (top poem by Clinton Scollard) depicts an ordinary middle-class man who owns a corporation, takes small bribes, loves cigars and pleasure, and uses morphine—presented as unremarkable and commonplace. **The 1925 scene below** shows club members openly discussing illegal drugs (cocaine, morphine, hashish) during Prohibition. One member boasts of making private whiskey, another claims opium use, and a visitor describes wrecking his health through drug abuse—all treated casually. The satire criticizes widespread hypocrisy: respectable citizens openly flouted Prohibition laws while society maintained a facade of propriety. The cartoons mock how drug use and illegal alcohol consumption had become normalized among the middle and upper classes, despite official prohibition and moral posturing.