National Commission on Marihuana and Drug Abuse: History of Alcohol Prohibition

http://www.druglibrary.org/Schaffer/LIBRARY/studies/nc/nc2a.htm

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1913-1933: NATIONAL PROHIBITION -- PROLOGUE AND FINISH

October 28, 1919, was the day that Congress enacted the National Prohibition Act-more often known as the Volstead Act-with the intent to give effect to the new constitutional amendment. Officially, the liquor drought was to begin on January 17, 1920.

The early experience of the Prohibition era gave the government a taste of what was to come. In the three months before the 18th Amendment became effective, liquor worth half a million dollars was stolen from Government warehouses. By midsummer of 1920, federal courts in Chicago were overwhelmed with some 600 pending liquor violation trials . Within three years, 30 prohibition agents were killed in service.
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Writers of this period point out that the law was circumvented by various means. Although there may have been legitimate, medicinal purposes for whiskey, the practice of obtaining a medical prescription for the illegal substance was abused. It is estimated that doctors earned $40 million in 1928 by writing prescriptions for whiskey.

The legal system was equally evasive; the courts convicted about seven percent of those charged with liquor violations . The exception for sacramental wine from protection under the Volstead Act also invited abuse. In 1925, the Department of Research and Education of the Federal Council of the Churches of Christ reported that:

The withdrawal of wine on permit from bonded warehouses for sacramental purposes amounted in round figures to 2,139,000 gallons in the fiscal year 1922; 2,503,500 gallons in 1923; and 2,944,700 gallons in 1924. There is no way of knowing what the legitimate consumption of fermented sacramental wine is but it is clear that the legitimate demand does not increase 800,000 gallons in two years .

Walter Lippmann commented, "What was done was to evade a direct and explicit official confession that Federal prohibition is a hopeless failure". Whether or not Lippmann correctly read the Commission's intentions, there was clearly a gap between the input and the outcome of the report.

The new wet strength showed up at the National Convention of the Democratic party held in Chicago in 1932, where Mayor Cermak of that city filled the galleries with his supporters. And, though Franklin D. Roosevelt had wooed the dry vote for some time, he now came forward on a platform which favored the outright repeal of the 18th Amendment. Accepting his nomination, he stated:

I congratulate this convention for having had the courage, fearlessly to write into its declaration of principles what an overwhelming majority here assembled really thinks about the 18th Amendment. This convention wants repeal. Your candidate wants repeal. And I am confident that the United States of America wants repeal.

While dry leaders looked on with disgust, Roosevelt was elected president and Congress turned a somersault. The repeal amendment was introduced February 14, 1933, The final ratification was accomplished on November 7,1933, when Kentucky, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Utah gave their approval.

Congress officially adopted the 21st Amendment to the Constitution on December 5, 1933.

Within three weeks of taking office, President Roosevelt witnessed the first sales of 3.2 beer, following a redefinition by statute of the terms "intoxicating liquors." The more popular, higher alcohol-content beer was relegalized by Congress under the Cullen-Harrison Act. Sale of beer became legal on April 7, 1933, in the District of Columbia and the 20 states where state laws did not prohibit its sale. During the next four years the remaining states changed their laws to permit its sale, with Alabama and Kansas in 1937, as the last to join the legal sale ranks.