Prohibition: The 18th Ammendment
Prohibition: The 18th Ammendment
Mark Thornton, author of Policy Analysis: Alcohol Prohibition was a failure, said, “Prohibition did not achieve its goals. Instead, it added to the problems it was intended to solve”
(Thorton, 15). On Midnight of January 16, 1920, one of the personal habits and customs of most Americans suddenly came to a halt. The Eighteenth Amendment was put into effect and all importing, exporting, transporting, selling, and manufacturing of intoxicating liquor was put to an end. Shortly following the enactment of the Eighteenth Amendment, the National Prohibition Act, or the Volstead Act, as it was called because of its author, Andrew J. Volstead, was put into effect. This act determined intoxicating liquor as anything having an alcoholic content of anything more than 0.5 percent, omitting alcohol used for medicinal and sacramental purposes. Likewise, this act also set up guidelines for enforcement (Bowen, 154). Prohibition was intended to reduce the consumption of alcohol and thereby reduce crime, poverty, death rates, and improve the economy and the quality of life. “National prohibition of alcohol -- the ‘noble experiment’ -- was undertaken to reduce crime and corruption, solve social problems, reduce the tax burden created by prisons and poorhouses, and improve health and hygiene in America” (Thorton, 1). This, however, was undoubtedly to no avail.
The Prohibition amendment of the 1920s was ineffective because it was unenforceable, it caused the explosive growth of crime, and it increased the amount of alcohol consumption. “It is impossible to tell whether prohibition is a good thing or a bad thing. It has never been enforced in this country” said author Fiorella LaGuardia, author of American Prohibition in the 1920’s (LaGuardia 46). After the Volstead Act was put into place to determine specific laws and methods of enforcement, the Federal Prohibition Bureau was formulated in order to see that the Volstead Act was enforced. Nevertheless, bootleggers and commoners alike flagrantly violated these laws.
Bootleggers smuggled liquor from oversees and Canada, stole it from government warehouses, and produced their own. Many people hid their liquor in hip flasks, false books, hollow canes, and anything else they could find (Bowen, 159). There were also illegal speak-easies, which replaced saloons after the start of prohibition. By 1925, there were over 100,000 speak-easies in New York City alone (Bowen, 160). As good as the ideal sounded, “...prohibition was far easier to proclaim than to enforce” (Wenburn, 234). With...