Prohibition in the United States

The United States had passed a new constitution that outlaws the manufacture, transport, import, export, and sale of alcoholic beverages. The intention was to reduce the consumption of alcohol by eliminating businesses that manufactured, distributed and sold it. Federal Prohibitions agents or police were given the task to enforce the law. The law has been passed out in the hopes of reducing crimes and social problems, which wives have been complaining about for a while. Women had been forming organizations to help promote prohibition on alcohol. At last, all their hard work paid off when the constitution outlawed alcohol.

Prohibition officially began in the United States on January 16, 1920, a full year after the ratification of the 18th amendment. The 18th amendment prohibited the sale, manufacture, and transportation of alcohol. Interestingly enough, it did not prohibit the consumption of alcohol. Three months before the 18th amendment went into effect, the Volstead Act, otherwise known as the National Prohibition Act of 1919, was passed. The Volstead Act was the enabling legislation for the 18th Amendment that established prohibition in the United States. It lasted until 1933 when it was repealed by the 21st amendment (Burnham, 23).

The whole act of prohibition is all thanks to the Temperance Movement, which encouraged no alcohol. Temperance movement had long been active in the American political scene but the movement first became organized in the 1840's by religious denominations, primarily Methodists (Blocker, 14). Prohibitionist campaign began in the mid-nineteenth century, when the state of Massachusetts decided that rum should be sold in large quantities to prevent the people got drunk. This period dates the foundation of the Prohibition Party (1869), the oldest of the minor parties in American business today that presidential elections of 1888 and 1892 obtained up to 2.2 percent 100 votes; since 1900, they had very little involvement at the local level. However, in the early twentieth century, the prohibitionists become particularly active.

In the nineteenth and twentieth century in United States, crime was everywhere, it overwhelmed and frightened people, and created real networks of people obsessed with money ready to kill, take, racketeering, operated to achieve their purposes . The "kickoff" of that expansion was booed by a law prohibiting the sale, consumption, production and transportation of alcoholic beverages within the State: The Prohibition (Lerner, 87). The United States, which is a land of immigration, welcomed many immigrants including Irish and Scotch, who brought their expertise on distillation. These neo-Americans then began to build distilleries at their home territory. Alcohol was then widespread and heavily used, distracting men from their family and professional obligations. That is why in many countries alcohol was accused of generating crime and disease, and therefore was prohibited in the nineteenth century.

Thus, all states of the United States of America were deprived of alcohol on January 29, 1919, upon publication of the 18th Amendment to the Constitution. It was the birth of a troubled period during which real mafia empires were established based on the smuggling ...