The prohibition is a period in the United State’s history when the consumption and production of liquor were banned. Prohibition was ratified with the 18th Amendment in January 1920. However, the prohibition was difficult to impose, and results were not satisfying, so Congress proposed the 21st Amendment to the Constitution that would repeal the 18th Amendment on December 5, 1933, which ended the prohibition.

The prohibition started as a religious movement, such as the abolitionist movement to end slavery, in the early decades of the 19th century. In 1838, Massachusetts passed a temperance law to impose a ban on the sale of spirits in less than 15-gallon quantities, though the ban was lifted two years later. However, it set the path for such legislation. The State of Maine passed the first prohibition law in 1846, followed by a stricter was in 1851. When the Civil War Broke out, several other states imposed similar laws. After the civil war ended, the movement gained rapid support in the late 19th century from social reformers who saw alcohol consumption as a destructive force in families and marriages. Others associated alcohol with urban immigrant ghettos, a primary cause of crimes, and political corruption.

At the start of the 20th century, a new wave of attacks started on the sale of liquor led by the Anti-Saloon League (established in 1893). Some factory owners also supported the prohibition to increase the efficiency of their workers in an era of increased industrial production and extended working hours. When the United States entered into the First World War in 1917, President Woodrow Wilson imposed a temporary wartime prohibition to save grains for food production. Congress submitted the 18th Amendment which outlawed the production, transportation and sale of intoxicating liquors began on 17 January 1920. The act defined ‘intoxicating liquor’ as anything that contained one half of one percent alcohol by volume, the medical or industrial use of the was exempted. Both the local and federal government tried to enforce prohibition across the country. The task was initially assigned to the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) and later transferred to the Prohibition Unit (federal Bureau of Prohibition). The bureau numbered around 3,000 agents and they can take help from local police. Several other steps were taken to prevent the smuggling from the Canadian and Mexican borders.

Despite very early signs of success, such as the number of deaths decreased due to Cirrhosis, the enforcement was very difficult. The illegal production and sale of liquor (bootlegging) started to meet the demands. Before the prohibition, been bars and saloons, served large quantities of. After the prohibition, there were illegal drinking dens known as “speakeasies” or “blind pigs” which by the end of the decade were numbered at an estimated 200,000. The era also encouraged the rise of criminal activity associated with bootlegging. The most notorious example was the Chicago gangster Al Capone, who earned $60 million annually from bootleg operations and speakeasies. The price of bootleg liquor was doubled which only restricted the poor and some working-class people. Prohibition almost destroyed the brewing industry, causing a huge loss in jobs. It also resulted in a loss of $11bn in tax revenues, and cost $300m to enforce. An estimated 10,000 people died of alcohol poisoning during prohibition from bootleg whiskey, tainted gins and a federal government program that added poison to alcohol to frighten folks from imbibing (according to The Poisoner’s Handbook: Murder and the Birth of Forensic Medicine in Jazz Age New York).

When Franklin D. Roosevelt ran for president in 1932, he demanded to revoke the prohibition and easily won the victory over the incumbent President Herbert Hoover. Eventually, in February 1933, Congress passed the 21st Amendment which repealed the 18th Amendment. Though a few states continued to prohibit alcohol after Prohibition’s end, Mississippi was the last until 1966.

Have a look at these historical photos that perfectly depict the prohibition era.