Prohibition

Prohibition is the laws that are designed to prevent the drinking of alcoholic beverages. The laws prohibit the manufacture, sale, or transportation of such beverages. Alcoholic beverages include beer, gin, rum, vodka, whiskey, and wine. In the United States, prohibition became so popular in the early 1900’s that, in 1920, a prohibition amendment was added to the U.S. constitution. This amendment, the 18^th Amendment, caused the use of alcoholic beverages to decline sharply. However, many people ignored the national ban and drank illegal beverages supplied by networks of bootleggers. The 18^th Amendment was abolished in 1933. It is the only amendment to U.S. constitution that has ever been repealed.

In the 1600’s and 1700’s, the American colonists drank large quantities of beer, rum, wine, and hard cider. Such alcoholic beverages were often safer to drink than impure water or unpasteurized milk and were less expensive than coffee or tea. By the 1820’s, people in the United States were drinking the average, the equivalent of 7 gallons of pure alcohol per person each year. Some people, including physicians and ministers, became concerned about he extent of alcohol use. They believed that drinking alcohol damaged people’s health and moral behavior, and promoted poverty. People concerned about the use of alcohol urged supported temperance, the reduction or elimination of the use of alcoholic beverages. By doing this, Social reformers dumped beer into the Lake of Michigan and other major lakes.

At first, supporters of temperance urged drinkers to drink only moderate amounts. But the supporters later became convinced that all alcoholic beverages were addictive. As a result, they tried to end the use of alcohol. In the 1820’s and 1830’s, the first temperance crusade reduced the average annual intake of pure alcohol per person to about 3 gallons. During the 1850’s, about a dozen states passed prohibition laws, led by Maine in 1851. From about 1900 to 1920, numerous economic, political, and social reforms were carried out in the United States. During this period, many reformers supported national prohibition for many reasons. First, social reformers blamed alcohol for poverty, health problems, and the neglect by husbands of their wives and children. Also, political reformers saw saloons and bars as the backbone of corrupt urban political organizations. Employers felt that drunkenness reduced their workers’ safety and productivity. During the early 1900’s some people felt that the large numbers of recent immigrants to the United States would become more "American" if their drinking habits were changed. Many religious denominations taught that drinking alcohol was immoral.

Between 1880 and the beginning of World War I, many states adopted either statewide prohibition or local-option laws. Local-option laws gave individual communities the right to ban the sale of alcohol. In 1913, congress passed the Webb-Kenyan Act, which forbade the mailing or shipping of liquor into any state that banned such shipments. When the United States entered World War I in 1917 most Americans considered prohibition as an appropriate patriotic sacrifice. In December 1917, the U.S. Congress approved the 18^th Amendment to the constitution. The 18^th Amendment went into effect in 1920 with widespread support.

Although national prohibition did not eliminate the drinking of alcoholic beverages, it did sharply reduce their use. Purchasing liquor was not only against the law, but it was also very expensive. But still a large minority of Americans continued to drink alcohol. Drinking wine, beer, and other alcoholic beverages had been a traditional part of the cultures of many recent immigrants to the United States, including Irish, Italians, Jews, and Poles. Bootleggers met much of the demand for illegal alcoholic beverages. Most bootleggers were young immigrant men. The liquor trade was highly profitable, and bootlegger’s battled each other for control of liquor supplies and markets. Recent immigrants to the United States saw prohibition as an attack on their cultural tradition. After the Great Depression began in 1929, many people argued that prohibition took away jobs and deprived the government of badly needed revenues from taxes on liquor.