How Prohibition Worked

The idea of banning alcohol in the United States started to pick up steam in the 1830s, long before Prohibition was instated. Many people believed that alcohol was strongly connected to insanity, poverty and many of the world's evils, and so the temperance movement gained momentum. The number of people opposed to "demon rum" grew exponentially. Before long, thousands of societies sprouted up that were dedicated to promoting temperance. Hundreds of thousands of supporters helped spread the word, and early temperance laws began to take shape.

­In 1838, Massachusetts created a law that made it possible to buy hard liquor only in large quantities, so working-class citizens wouldn't be able to purchase it. And in 1846, Maine became the first state to pass a statewide Prohibition law. This encouraged other cities and counties to go "dry."

In the 1850s, the First Reform Era began with the intent of bringing change to certain areas of society, namely slavery. The anti-alcohol movement followed suit — at this time, Irish and German immigrants were the focus of reformers. Much of the initial successes happened in rural America, specifically the Western and Southern states. Big-city folk were not nearly as interested in giving up alcohol as those in the Bible Belt were.

The Civil War sucked some of the life out of the Prohibition cause, albeit temporarily. After the war ended, a boom in the liquor industry, which led to increased alcohol consumption, rekindled the movement's fire. A couple of major forces in the Prohibition movement were created at this time:

The groups dedicated to encouraging temperance had a number of reasons for it. They believed there to be a direct link between alcohol and many antisocial behaviors, like child abuse and domestic violence. Another famous concern was that of Henry Ford, who believed that alcohol had a negative impact on labor productivity.

Anti-German sentiment during World War I helped catapult the issue into law. Many of the nation's breweries were operated by German immigrants, also known as "alien enemies" by the Anti-Saloon League. The sentiment was that the grain being produced should be used to feed soldiers rather than produce alcohol.

Many others fought this growing issue tooth-and-nail. The Association Against the Prohibition Amendment and the Women's Organization for National Prohibition Reform were just two of these groups.

Despite the efforts of anti-prohibition groups, support gathered for a ban on alcohol, and Congress passed the 18th Amendment on Jan. 16, 1919 (it went into effect in 1920). The amendment prohibited the manufacture, sale, export, import and transportation of alcoholic beverages — but stopped short of banning personal possession and consumption.

Basically, if your wine cellar was already stocked, you didn't have much to worry about. The 18th Amendment brought to a national level what was already accepted in many states. Sixty-five percent of the country, including 19 states, had already banned alcohol on a local level.

The Volstead Act, or National Prohibition Act, was crucial to the success of the 18th Amendment — it provided the federal government with enforcing ability. It also defined criminal penalties, exceptions (medicinal and religious-ceremony use) and the alcohol levels that qualified as "intoxicating." Any beverage with more than 0.5 percent alcohol was over the legal limit.

In a perfect world, once a law or constitutional amendment is passed, the resources necessary to enforce it are plentiful and effective. Prohibition, unfortunately for its supporters, was not so easily enforced. Many challenges quickly surfaced when it came time to keep demon rum from being bought, sold or imported.

Fiorello LaGuardia, mayor of New York City, testified before the Senate judiciary committee and had this to say about Prohibition: "It is impossible to tell whether Prohibition is a good thing or a bad thing. It has never been enforced in this country."

As we mentioned, Prohibition created a vast illegal market for the production, trafficking and sale of alcohol. In turn, the economy took a major hit, thanks to lost tax revenue and legal jobs.

Prohibition nearly ruined the country's brewing industry. Anheuser-Busch survived Prohibition by turning to other products, such as ice cream, root beer, malt extract and corn syrup. The city of St. Louis boasted 22 breweries before Prohibition, and a mere nine reopened after it ended.

The start of the Great Depression (1929-1939) caused a huge change in American opinion about Prohibition. Economic issues crippled the country, and it just didn't make sense to those suffering that the country couldn't profit from the legal taxation of alcohol. After all, the gangsters and bootleggers certainly seemed to benefit.

Prohibition also produced some interesting statistics concerning the health of Americans.

It takes one constitutional amendment to undo another. Enter the 21st Amendment, the first — and, so far, only — amendment to restore rights taken away by a previous amendment. In 1932, both parties called for the 18th Amendment to be repealed. In 1933, Congress answered by passing a resolution proposing the repeal. Once three-fourths of the states had ratified the resolution, the 21st Amendment was passed and alcohol began to flow again legally in the United States.

By Dec. 5, 1933, when the amendment was ratified, even people who had vocally supported Prohibition had changed their tune dramatically. Their opinions about the evils of alcohol remained, but they had realized the effects of Prohibition to be far-reaching and perhaps worse than alcohol itself. According to famous tycoon John D. Rockefeller, "Drinking has generally increased, the speakeasy has replaced the saloon; a vast army of lawbreakers has been recruited and financed on a colossal scale."

After Prohibition was repealed, it was left up to the states to decide how to govern alcohol consumption. Most states made 21 the legal drinking age, although a handful required drinkers to be only 18. No national drinking age existed until 1984, when the National Minimum Drinking Age Act was passed. One major catalyst behind the creation of this law was the increase in deaths related to drunk driving.

The 1980s and '90s saw a major movement to decrease drunk driving — Candy Lightner founded Mothers Against Drunk Driving (MADD) after a drunk driver fatally hit her daughter in 1980. Since then, alcohol-related driving fatalities have decreased substantially. In 1982, 60 percent of automobile-related fatalities involved alcohol. By 2017, that number had dropped to 29 percent.

Despite the national repeal on Prohibition, hundreds of counties in the United States enforce "dry" laws. These laws typically ban the manufacture and sale but not consumption.

Many, many other rules exist regulating the sale and consumption of alcohol on a local level. They often seem confusing and contradictory. One other once-common rule restricts the sale of alcohol on Sundays. This law was developed in Colonial times to honor the Christian Sabbath day in Colonial times.