Repeal of Prohibition

The repeal of Prohibition in the United States was accomplished with the passage of the Twenty-first Amendment to the United States Constitution on December 5, 1933.

In 1919, the requisite number of state legislatures ratified the Eighteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, enabling national prohibition one year later. Many women, notably members of the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union, were pivotal in bringing about national Prohibition in the United States, believing it would protect families, women, and children from the effects of alcohol abuse.

The proponents of prohibition had believed that banning alcoholic beverages would reduce or even eliminate many social problems, particularly drunkenness, crime, mental illness, and poverty. In 1925 journalist H. L. Mencken believed the opposite to be true:

Five years of Prohibition have had, at least, this one benign effect: they have completely disposed of all the favorite arguments of the Prohibitionists. None of the great boons and usufructs that were to follow the passage of the Eighteenth Amendment has come to pass. There is not less drunkenness in the Republic, but more. There is not less crime, but more. There is not less insanity, but more. The cost of government is not smaller, but vastly greater. Respect for law has not increased, but diminished.

Some supporters of Prohibition, such as Rev. Charles Stelzle who wrote Why Prohibition! (1918), believed that prohibition would eventually lead to reductions in taxes, since drinking "produced half the business" for institutions supported by tax dollars such as courts, jails, hospitals, almshouses, and insane asylums. In fact, alcohol consumption and the incidence of alcohol-related domestic violence were decreasing before the Eighteenth Amendment was adopted. Following the imposition of Prohibition, reformers "were dismayed to find that child neglect and violence against children actually increased during the Prohibition era."

During Prohibition, people continued to produce and drink alcohol, and bootlegging helped foster a massive industry under the control of organized crime. Drinking in speakeasies became increasingly fashionable, and many mothers worried about the allure that alcohol and other illegal activities associated with bootlegging would have over their children.

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