Sixteen years of Prohibition

  • Published
  • By Airman 1st Class Stephanie Englar
  • 14th Flying Training Wing Public Affairs
COLUMBUS AIR FORCE BASE, Miss. --  The 1920's in the United States is known to many as "The Roaring Twenties". It was a time categorized by jazz, speakeasies, gangsters, and flappers.

Drinking gained popularity after the American Revolution, and many groups began to form in an attempt to dissuade people from becoming intoxicated. Although their initial focus was on just limiting drinks ingested, they soon began to push for total prohibition of alcohol.

Drawing most of their support from Protestant Evangelical churches, the Anti-Saloon League had many supporters who believed alcohol caused nothing but problems and lobbied for the complete prohibition of it. They got their wish in 1919 when the Eighteenth Amendment was ratified and thus banned the sale, production, and transportation of intoxicating liquors.

While the Eighteenth Amendment prohibited alcohol, it was the Volstead Act that clarified it. The Act stated that any beverage that was over 0.5 percent alcohol by volume would be classified as an "intoxicating liquor". The Act granted the Federal Government and the states the ability to enforce the ban by "appropriate legislation".

Almost as soon as the Eighteenth Amendment was ratified, groups formed against it. These groups of people saw that the ratification of Eighteenth Amendment brought in more problems than they had before. These problems included gangsters, such as Al Capone, who saw the high demand for alcohol and the limited avenues of acquiring it. These criminals opened up secret underground bars, called speakeasies, where people could converse, dance the night away to jazz music, and drink alcohol illegally.

While a number of the speakeasy owners had homemade stills to produce their own alcohol, others would hire men to smuggle in rum from the Caribbean or whiskey from Canada.

The speakeasy owners got away with their illegal practices by paying off the newly hired Prohibition officers. These officers were in charge of raiding speakeasies, but at the time they were under qualified and underpaid, making them easy to bribe.

While the Eighteenth Amendment banned the sale, production, and transportation of intoxicating liquors it did not ban the consumption. When people found out about the upcoming ban, they stockpiled cases of liquor in their homes for later consumption. One of the loopholes of the Volstead Act was that alcohol could be consumed with a doctor's prescription. Naturally, many prescriptions for liquor were written in a short period of time.

With the Stock Market Crash in 1929 and the beginning of the Great Depression, people began to change their opinions on the Eighteenth Amendment. The Anti-Prohibition movement advanced more and more as the 1920s progressed. While people were upset about the financial situation they were also upset with the increase in criminal activity. People argued that allowing alcohol again would help to create jobs and to create a revenue source for the government.
The Eighteenth Amendment was repealed by the Twenty First Amendment which made alcohol legal again. The Twenty First Amendment was proposed February 20,1933 and became officially effective on December 15, 1933. The Eighteenth Amendment was the first and only amendment to be repealed in U.S. History.