Prohibition Amendment To The Constitution example essay topic

Prohibition. Prohibition refers to laws that were implemented to prevent the drinking of alcoholic beverages. The laws forbid 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 18th Amendment, caused the consumption of alcohol to decline sharply. However, many people ignored the ban and drank illegal alcohol supplied by bootleggers. The 18th Amendment was abolished in 1933. It is the only amendment to the U.S. Constitution that has ever been repealed. The movement toward prohibition.

In the 1600's and 1700's, the American colonists drank lots of beer, rum, wine, and hard cider. By the 1820's, people in the United States were drinking, on the average, 7 gallons (26 liters) of pure alcohol per person each year. This amount of alcohol is in about 70 gallons (260 liters) of beer, 39 gallons (148 liters) of wine, or 151/2 gallons (58.7 liters) of distilled liquor. Some people, including doctors and ministers, became concerned about the amount of alcohol the Americans drank. They believed that drinking alcohol damaged people's health as well as affected their moral behavior, and encouraged poverty.

The people concerned about alcohol abuse wanted to establish 'temperance,' that is to decrease and end the use of alcohol. At first, supporters of temperance urged drinkers to drink only moderate amounts. But the supporters later became convinced that all alcoholic beverages were addictive and would therefore lead to more drinking. As a result, they tried to abolish the use of alcohol. In the 1820's and 1830's, the first temperance movement reduced the average annual consumption of pure alcohol to about 3 gallons (11 liters) per person. In 1851 Maine became the first State to pass prohibition laws.

Throughout the 1850's, about a dozen states followed suit. Support for prohibition declined after the Civil War began in 1861. To revive support, people who supported prohibition, known to many as drys, formed a number of organizations to promote liquor reform. In 1869, for example, drys founded the Prohibition Party, which presented prohibitionist candidates for political office. From about 1900 to 1920, numerous economic, political, and social reforms were introduced in the United States. During this period, many reformers supported national prohibition, and they did so for a variety of reasons.

Social reformers blamed alcohol for poverty, health problems, and the neglect families by husbands and fathers. Political reformers saw saloons as support for corrupt city political organizations. Employers felt that drunkenness reduced their workers' 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 sinful and immoral. Between 1880 and the beginning of World War I in 1914, many states adopted either statewide prohibition or local-option laws. Local-option laws gave communities the right to ban the sale of alcohol. In 1913, Congress passed the Webb-Kenyon Act, which forbade the mailing or shipping of liquor into any state that banned such shipments. That same year, drys began calling for a prohibition amendment to the Constitution. When the United States entered World War I in 1917, most Americans considered prohibition an appropriate patriotic sacrifice.

In December 1917, the U.S. Congress approved the 18th Amendment to the Constitution. This amendment prohibited the manufacture, sale, transportation, import, and export of "intoxicating liquors". It was ratified by the states in January 1919. In October 1919, Congress adopted the Volstead Act. This law provided for the enforcement of the 18th Amendment and defined intoxicating liquors as those containing at least 0.5 per cent alcohol. The 18th Amendment went into effect in 1920 with widespread support.

Life during prohibition. Although national prohibition did not eliminate the drinking of alcoholic beverages, it did decrease their use. Buying liquor was not only against the law, but it was also very expensive. However, 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. In addition, numerous urban middle- and upper-class Americans considered drinking as sophisticated and sociable.

During prohibition, many people made their own beer, wine, or distilled liquor at home illegally. Also, many people bought alcoholic drinks in illegal bars called "speakeasies". Many physicians gave their patients prescriptions for legal "medicinal" wine or liquor. Bootleggers met much of the demand for illegal alcoholic beverages. Most bootleggers were young immigrant men. The liquor trade was highly profitable, and bootleggers battled each other for control of liquor supplies and markets.

Violent gang wars erupted in many large cities, and gang members killed one another. Al Capone of Chicago was probably the most famous bootlegger at the time. During the late 1920's, more than 1 million gallons (3.8 million liters) of liquor was smuggled into the United States each year from Canada. Liquor also was smuggled into the country from ships just outside U.S. waters in the Atlantic or Pacific oceans or in the Caribbean Sea. In addition, alcoholic beverages were made from alcohol that was legally produced in the United States for use in manufacturing. Neither federal agents nor state and local officials could stop the widespread violation of national prohibition.

The decline of the prohibition movement. "Anti prohibitionists" opposed prohibition for a number of reasons. They argued that the ban on alcohol encouraged crime and disrespect for the law. They also claimed that prohibition gave the government too much power over people's personal lives. Recent immigrants to the United States saw prohibition as an attack on their traditions. After the Great Depression began in 1929, many people argued that prohibition took away jobs and deprived the government of needed revenues from taxes on liquor.

In the 1932 presidential campaign, the Democratic Party endorsed the repeal of prohibition, and the Democratic presidential candidate, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, won the election by a large margin. In February 1933, Congress proposed the 21st Amendment to the Constitution to repeal the 18th Amendment. The states quickly ratified the 21st Amendment, and national prohibition ended on Dec. 5, 1933. A few states, mainly ones in the South, retained prohibition until the 1950's or 1960's. In 1966, Mississippi became the last state to repeal statewide prohibition.

Since then, most efforts to forbid the use of alcohol by adults have been abandoned. Attention has shifted instead to the treatment of alcoholics and to the solution of other alcohol related problems. Conclusion: Lessons for Today The lessons of Prohibition remain important today. They apply not only to the debate over the war on drugs but also to the mounting efforts to drastically reduce access to alcohol and tobacco and to such issues as censorship and bans on insider trading, abortion, and gambling. Although consumption of alcohol fell at the beginning of Prohibition, it subsequently increased. Alcohol became more dangerous to consume; crime increased and became "organized"; the court and prison systems were stretched to the breaking point; and corruption of public officials was rampant.

Prohibition removed a significant source of tax revenue and greatly increased government spending. It led many drinkers to switch to opium, marijuana, patent medicines, cocaine, and other dangerous substances that they would have been unlikely to use in the absence of Prohibition. The repeal of Prohibition dramatically reduced crime, including organized crime, and corruption. Jobs were created, and new voluntary efforts, such as Alcoholics Anonymous, which was begun in 1934, succeeded in helping alcoholics. Those lessons can be applied to the current crisis in drug prohibition and the problems of drug abuse.

Second, the lessons of Prohibition should be used to curb the urge to prohibit. "Neo prohibition" of alcohol and prohibition of tobacco would result in more crime, corruption, and dangerous products and increased government control over the average citizen's life. Finally, Prohibition provides a general lesson that society can no more be successfully engineered in the United States than in the Soviet Union.