Eighteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution

The Eighteenth Amendment was the product of decades of efforts by the temperance movement, which held that a ban on the sale of alcohol would ameliorate poverty and other societal problems.

The Eighteenth Amendment declared the production, transport and sale of intoxicating liquors illegal, although it did not outlaw the actual consumption of alcohol.

Although the Eighteenth Amendment led to a decline in alcohol consumption in the United States, nationwide enforcement of Prohibition proved difficult, particularly in cities.

[1] Founded in 1893 in Saratoga, New York, the Anti-Saloon League (ASL) started in 1906 a campaign to ban the sale of alcohol at the state level.

Their speeches, advertisements, and public demonstrations claimed that prohibition of alcohol would eliminate poverty and ameliorate social problems such as immoral sexual behavior and violence.

The ASL argued that prohibition would inspire new forms of sociability, create happier families, reduce workplace accidents, and improve the world overall.

[5] Many state legislatures had already enacted statewide prohibition prior to the ratification of the Eighteenth Amendment but did not ban the consumption of alcohol in most households.

[17] The law was strongly supported by the powerful Minnesota Republican congressman Andrew Volstead, chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, whose name came to be informally associated with the act.

However, the act was largely a failure, proving unable to prevent mass distribution of alcoholic beverages and also inadvertently causing a massive increase in organized crime.

As the production and sale of alcohol went further underground, it began to be controlled by the Mafia and other gangs that transformed into sophisticated criminal enterprises that reaped huge profits from the illicit liquor trade.

Gambling and prostitution also reached new heights, and a growing number of Americans came to blame Prohibition and to condemn it as a dangerous infringement of individual freedom.

[22] Public sentiment turned against Prohibition by the late 1920s, and the Great Depression only hastened its demise, as opponents argued that the ban on alcohol denied jobs to the unemployed and much-needed revenue to the government.

In 1932, the platform of Democratic presidential candidate Franklin D. Roosevelt included a plan for repealing the 18th Amendment, and his victory that November led to the end of Prohibition.

Law enforcement could not stop much illicit liquor; however, they used "sting" operations, such as Prohibition agent Eliot Ness famously using wiretapping to uncover secret breweries.

In response, the government employed the Coast Guard to search and detain ships transporting alcohol into the country, but caused several complications such as disputes over national jurisdiction areas at sea.

Atlantic City, New Jersey became a frequent location for smuggling operations because of a shipping point nearly three miles offshore that officials could not investigate, further complicating enforcement.

The Coast Guard was not well-equipped to chase down bootlegging vessels but began searching ships at sea instead of when they arrived at port, and upgraded its boats to facilitate more efficient and consistent arrests.

Many profitable gangs controlled every aspect of the distribution process, such as concealed brewing and storage, operation of speakeasys, and selling alcohol in restaurants and nightclubs run by crime syndicates.

With organized crime becoming a rising problem, control of specific territories was a key objective among gangs, leading to many violent confrontations such as the Saint Valentine's Day Massacre; as a result, murder rates and burglaries dramatically increased between 1920 and 1933.