Prohibition was an icon of the Roaring Twenties. Proponents of temperance had, for centuries prior, advocated for a federal law against alcohol, and, with the passing of the 18th amendment in 1920, they reached their goal. What advocates saw as a foolproof way to clean up society ended up backfiring and turning the nation towards more than a decade of illegal and immoral behavior that should have been foreseeable. Prohibition was an immense failure because of the unpredicted disobedience that arose and the detrimental effects of this disobedience on society.
In order to evaluate the extent to which Prohibition was a failure, it much first be understood for what reasons the ban on alcohol happened. Alcohol had always been a prevalent aspect of American society. An English captain, in a visit to America in 1839, noted that Americans seemed to react to everything with a drink. He talked about how Americans drink to celebrate anything from a meeting to a birth. They drink for seemingly pointless reasons, like if the weather is especially hot or cold. They drink after favorable elections or not favorable ones. His essential point is that they drink no matter what happens and that alcohol was an extremely major part of the American culture.
Consumption of alcohol on such large of a scale evidently led to many societal issues. Domestic violence was prevalent because husbands would come home drunk and unable to control themselves. Crime committed by intoxicated persons was becoming more and more common. Alcohol related diseases were on the rise. Tired of the state of the nation and its society, people began to protest alcohol more and more.
Temperance rose as an opposing force to the drinking culture. Temperance, meaning moderation, especially from pleasures such as alcohol, gained traction and support from a variety of groups. The two main groups of proponents of temperance were women and capitalists. Women objected alcohol because their husbands would go out and spend their entire paychecks on alcohol then come home and beat their wives. Capitalist bosses in charge of factories complained because of the common practice of their employees showing up to work drunk or hungover, not working as well as they could.
In the early 19th century, temperance started as a religious movement by evangelists who protested alcohol’s harmful effects on human cognitive ability; they feared that society’s lack of logical thinking would lead the country to forget about religious institution. In the mid, 1800s, discussions about temperance were halted by the increasingly heated debates about slavery. When arguments about alcohol restarted, they attracted more than just religious groups. Finally, in 1920, after a lot of debate, the 18th amendment was ratified, prohibiting the manufacture, sale, and transportation of alcohol. The original amendment was not very specific; only the National Prohibition Act, commonly referred to as the Volstead act, gave the specifics of the ban on alcohol. This law became the source of extreme societal downturn over the next thirteen years.
An important reason for Prohibition’s ineffectiveness was its difficulty to enforce. Leaders at the time thought that the ban would be easy and cheap to enforce. Lawmakers incorrectly assumed that people would develop a respect for the law, so they wouldn’t need to spend a lot to enforce it after some time. Congress originally dedicated $6,350,000 for the first year of enforcement; a few years later, over $300,000,000 was needed to enforce the law. The government’s lack of preparation for the war on alcohol that would come over the next decade made Prohibition worse than it could have been because, had they known about the difficulties they would face, government policy makers would have been more prepared to enforce their debated law.
As with any law, disobedience was more than common amongst those who appreciated alcoholic beverages on a regular basis. It was very common for people to distill alcohol at home. The process of “bootlegging” liquor was cheap and easy, and it provided people with an accessible source of liquor. In addition to the homemade liquor, medicinal alcohol was still legal, so corrupt doctors would write false prescriptions very frequently, making the obtainment of illegal alcohol very easy. Using the illegally created or obtained alcohol, speakeasies were formed, which served alcohol in secret locations across the country. These were basically secret bars where people who needed a drink could go to have one. They were very prevalent during the 1920s and were the main source for alcoholic demands.
When alcohol was banned and people still needed to make a living, mobsters and organized crime became the suppliers of liquor to thirsty Americans. These criminals would illegally obtain alcohol, bribe police to look the other way and not interfere with the bootlegging process, distribute the contraband to eager drinkers, and even intimidate voters in local elections to favor a politician who would not hinder their business. Even with disobedience and crime on the rise, the government failed to see the detrimental effects of Prohibition.
Evidently, the ban on alcohol was a complete and utter failure. Prohibition, whose goal was to end the consumption of alcohol, led more towards higher crime rates and more violence than to its actual goal of decreasing liquor supply. There are many reasons for this dichotomy between the goal and the result of the thirteen-year ban of liquor. First and foremost, the most conclusive proof of Prohibition’s failure was that the 18th amendment was the only one to be repealed in the history of the United States. This means that the 18th amendment is the only one to have been formally recognized by the government as either inappropriate, unconstitutional, or morally wrong. At first glance, one might think that prohibition stopped alcohol related deaths; however, this drop, in truth, happened after World War I, before prohibition started. The only thing that succeeded in mollifying the effects of alcoholism in America was the introduction of programs like Alcoholics Anonymous, after the repeal of Prohibition. Corruption in government, especially in the area of police bribery, increased dramatically as mobsters paid off police officers to allow shipments of alcohol to be received and distributed. Ironically, prohibition actually made some people drink even more at one time than they used to. Those who went to speakeasies did not go to have just one drink. Finding the time to drink was much harder than it used to be, so people took advantage of every chance they had. Also, some of the moonshine alcohol was poorly prepared and therefore very dangerous to consume, leading to many deaths.
There are multiple statistical proofs of Prohibition’s failure. Crime rates soared in the 1930s. Prisons became overcrowded with the wave of criminals convicted of prohibition crimes. Specifically, alcohol and drug crimes increased 1000% between 1925 and 1930. As Prohibition continued, crime rates increased exponentially right up until its repeal in 1933. This horrific increase in crime wasn’t as detrimental as the fact that the new wave of illegal activity was organized, and therefore more dangerous. It is clear that this crime surge was no coincidence based on the fact that the rates dropped immediately after Prohibition was repealed. In general, Prohibition’s goals were not achieved, and failures and regressions in social construction occurred instead.
The lessons of Prohibition have important modern applications. Today, various cultures and nations attempt bans on alcohol. They are realizing soon after they enact their bans that Prohibition simply does not work. For example, a Sioux tribe in South Dakota has recently lifted its ban on alcohol, which is to be replaced by a new system of regulating alcohol consumption in a safer way. This is clearly learned from the Prohibition era, where the ban was replaced by programs like Alcoholics Anonymous. Another prevalent issue today is the debate over the legalization of marijuana, which some say has many parallels to Prohibition. Despite this, America refuses to learn from the past and recognize its previous mistakes.
One of the parallels between Prohibition and the debate over marijuana is the state versus federal government debate over the issue. Prohibition on the state level existed, at least in theory, much before the federal law was passed. The repeal of the 18th amendment in 1933 did not legalize alcohol in The United States. Rather, it simply illegalized the federal law that banned alcohol and left the decision up to the states. Today, marijuana is mirroring Prohibition in the sense of how it is becoming a separate issue by state, with Washington and Colorado legalizing it. The states are the primary decision makers in both instances.
Another similarity between the two situations is the type of crime that each one caused. As previously discussed, along with the ban on alcohol came the rise of organized crime to combat the restrictions. Similarly, marijuana’s illegality provides a business for drug cartels across the world to grow and distribute the drug. In both cases, crime leaders recognize that as long as there is a demand for the contraband, supplying it can be very lucrative. An end to the ban would take away from the cartels’ business and reduce crime, just as it did in 1933 with the ban on alcohol. It is clear that the two controversies have much in common and that the lessons learned from the failed attempt at the prohibition of alcohol should be applied to the ban on marijuana.
A simple evaluation of Prohibition, that is, the declaration of whether or not is succeeded, is not a simple task. Some say that it showed the nation that the government is willing to go to extremes to stand for what it believes to be right, which alone can deter society from abusing substances in the future. However, the vast majority of historians agree that Prohibition was a failure because not only did it fail to achieve its goals of cleaning up society, in fact, it made society worse because of the crime and deterioration that it caused in addition to the fact that most Americans continued to consume alcohol throughout the ban. The only positive aspect of the episode is the fact that the country has learned valuable lessons about tolerance and can apply these lessons to future issues, like the debate over marijuana.