Hitler on prohibition and distracting controversial issues

»Quite needlessly, a question is being thrown at our people today which, more than any other, seems capable of not only stirring the spirits, but of causing division. Not as if the question of prohibition is being unjustly hyped up as a major issue. [...] The only thing we have to find worrying today is the fact that it is being introduced into public discourse at the very moment when public attention should be focused on certain phenomena of a political nature. While the international Jewish stock exchange and finance capital, supported by Marxist-democratic auxiliaries at home, is taking the German people to the cleaners, a new bone of contention is being thrown at them in the form of a question which, whether important or not, cannot be resolved today.
In principle, you have to admit the following:
Alcohol is a pest of mankind.
The objection of those in favor of alcohol that moderate amounts do not harm people can be immediately dismissed by countering the simple fact that at least it does not benefit people either. In any case, alcohol is one of those questionable ‘pleasures’ that cost a nation like Germany well over a billion marks a year. The further objection that this billion (in reality it is over one and a half billion in Germany) is itself fed back into the national economy is also easily refuted by the observation that this one and a half billion, used for other purposes, would of course also flow back into the national economy
[...]
The objection that it is actually foodstuff [...] can easily be dismissed as nonsense. The nutritional value of a pint of beer is completely ridiculous and bears no relation to the price that has to be paid for it. It does not even correspond to that of a 3 pfennig roll. The opposite would be more correct, namely that alcohol deprives our national diet of enormous areas of arable land that could otherwise be used for bread grain.
In reality, not all people are satisfied with a simple ‘glass of beer’, but a large proportion of drinkers, unfortunately, do not know how to keep to the right measure and target. [...] The number of valuable people it has already destroyed or rendered useless for the nation, especially in our German nation, is many times higher than the losses on all battlefields in the same period.
[...]
The fight against alcohol has thus become an absolutely morally unassailable national mission. Make no mistake: the nation that succeeds in completely eliminating this poison from its body will perhaps initially have to feel bitter accompanying pains and overcome many resistances. But they will not only begin a great deed for the blessing of a future humanity, but will probably establish their rule over another world that is not prepared to take the same step.
If we Nationalsocialists as a political party nevertheless have to keep our distance from the alcohol issue today, then this is based on some very sober considerations:
[...]
This question, thrown into our nation today, again means a violent fragmentation and helps to reduce the necessary concentration of our entire offensive power, which must currently take place in the political field. [...]
Today, only one person laughs at every such contentious issue hurled at our people, and that is the Jew.
I would expect only one thing from the leaders of the Nationalsocialist movement: namely that they speak the word of moderation everywhere, condemn all excesses in the strongest possible terms and admonish our youth in particular again and again that the future of our people does not need a generation of drinkers, but a generation of fighters. The German student who trains his body in fencing and boxing does more for his nation than the drunkard whose strength lies only in the consumption of so many pints of beer.«

~ Adolf Hitler, Zur Frage der Trockenlegung (1926), printed in: Institut für Zeitgeschichte (ed.): Hitler. Reden, Schriften, Anordnungen, Vol. 1, Munich / New York / London / Paris / Saur: K. G. Saur Verlag GmbH & Co. KG 1992, Doc. 118, p. 362 ff.