The eighteenth amendment to the US Constitution was so controversial that it ended up being the only Constitutional amendment in US history—so far—to be repealed. This is the infamous prohibition amendment, the one that banned the production and sale of alcohol in the United States. It was proposed by Congress in December of 1917, after decades of pressure from temperance (i.e., anti-alcohol) groups. It took a while to get the full ¾ majority of states necessary to adopt it, so the amendment was not adopted until January of 1919. Only Rhode Island and Connecticut ultimately rejected the amendment. The eighteenth amendment was repealed later, by the twenty-first amendment, in December of 1933.
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What Does it Say?
Section 1. After one year from the ratification of this article the manufacture, sale, or transportation of intoxicating liquors within, the importation thereof into, or the exportation thereof from the United States and all the territory subject to the jurisdiction thereof for beverage purposes is hereby prohibited.
Section 2. The Congress and the several States shall have concurrent power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.
Section 3. This article shall be inoperative unless it shall have been ratified as an amendment to the Constitution by the legislatures of the several States, as provided in the Constitution, within seven years from the date of the submission hereof to the States by the Congress.
What Does it Mean?
Temperance groups in the United States had been pressuring Congress to ban alcohol for decades. These groups believed that a ban on the manufacture and sale of alcohol would ease poverty, domestic abuse, and other important societal issues of the time. The eighteenth amendment did what they temperance groups wanted—it made producing, transporting, and selling alcohol illegal in the United States. Interestingly, though, it did NOT make drinking alcohol illegal. If you could get it without making, transporting, or selling it yourself, you could drink it.
Not long after the amendment was adopted Congress passed the Volstead Act, which gave the federal government the power and authority to enforce Prohibition. This act defined alcohol as wine, hard liquor, or beer, and made producing, transporting, or selling these things illegal, and thus able to be prosecuted under the Volstead Act.
At first, there was indeed a dramatic reduction in alcohol consumption in the United States after the adoption of the eighteenth amendment. There were also fewer people being hospitalized for alcoholism, and fewer liver-related medical issues caused by alcohol. This was only just at the beginning after the adoption of the amendment. Pretty soon after its adoption, enterprising entrepreneurs began the underground production and sale of alcohol, much of it of a poor quality, which led to health issues in those who drank a lot of it on a regular basis.
Also, quite a few people were killed in home alcohol distilling accidents, and about ten thousand people were killed because of wood alcohol poisoning. Speakeasy culture became extremely popular among all classes of society. Overall, alcohol use in the United States increased under Prohibition.