18th Amendment History

The eighteenth amendment to the United States Constitution is one of the more famous and highly controversial revisions to the document, and the only amendment, that was later repealed with another amendment. It downright outlawed the manufacture, transport, sale, and consumption of intoxicating liquors (for non-religious purposes) from the year 1920 to 1933. Initial intentions for prohibition were seen as progressive and forward thinking by many, but the rapid rise in organized crime, increase in sickness and death from homemade liquors, rampant corruption, and loss in productivity and tax revenue from the regulated sale of alcohol were just some of the reasons that led to its loss of support and eventual repeal in 1933. The eighteenth amendment

There were a few core groups responsible for the prohibition movement in the United States. The first movement that comes to mind is the temperance movement, which had been evolving for many decades before the years leading up to prohibition. “American women spearheaded what briefly turned into a nationwide movement, discovering their formidable power for the first time” (Behr, 53). In the early twentieth century, women were just starting to become a serious part of public policy. Suffrage for women was granted after the passing of the eighteenth amendment, but the Teetotalism (complete abstinence from alcohol) platform they adopted was a serious selling point for their movement, and was something that attracted women nationwide to their ideals. The earliest and most notable temperance group in the United States was the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union (WCTU). Originally organized in Ohio in 1873, the WCTU was “the first mass organization among women devoted to social reform with a program that "linked the religious and the secular through concerted and far-reaching

The Volstead Act was what came of this vision. It is named for Andrew Volstead, the chairman of the House Judiciary Committee at the time. In regards to weather Volstead or Wheeler were the masterminds of the act, Richard Hamm notes, “it is beyond dispute that the measure was an Anti-Saloon League Proposal” (251). The Volstead act dealt with a number of things, including allowing the manufacture and research of alcohol for scientific use, and outlining a means of enforcing people who were in violation of prohibition in general. The Volstead Act is most famously notable for its blatant loopholes. Section 29 allows “non-intoxicating fruit juices and ciders” to be manufactured at home for personal consumption, but the Internal Revenue Service soon struck down the alcohol by volume limit of .05%, which essentially legalized home wine making and manufacture. Beer was a beverage excluded from the homemade manufacturing allowance however. Another gap in the document was hard liquor for medicinal purposes. The bill allowed physicians to prescribe any amount of whiskey to their patients. Woodrow Wilson vetoed the bill on October 28th, 1919, but the house overrode it on the very same day. “In retrospect, the Volstead Act was hopelessly inadequate, because it grossly underestimated the willingness of the lawbreakers to risk conviction... and the ease with which the lawbreakers would