Nationwide prohibition lasted from 1920 to 1933. The Eighteenth Amendment, which made it illegal to produce, transport, and sell alcohol, was passed by the U.S. Congress in 1917. In 1919, the amendment was ratified by three-quarters of the nation-states required to make it constitutional. That same year, the Volstead Act was passed, which developed the U.S. government`s enforcement of prohibition. The national moratorium on alcohol remained in effect for the next 13 years, after which a general disillusionment with the policy—influenced by factors ranging from the rise of organized crime to the economic malaise caused by the stock market crash of 1929—led to its dissolution at the federal level by the Twenty-first Amendment. Alcohol prohibition continued at the state level in some places for the next two decades, as it did for more than half a century before the Eighteenth Amendment was ratified in 1919. Sacramental wine was still allowed for religious purposes (the number of dubious rabbis and priests quickly skyrocketed), and pharmacies were allowed to sell “medical whiskey” to treat everything from toothache to flu. With a doctor`s prescription, “patients” could legally buy a pint of alcohol every ten days.
This pharmaceutical alcohol is often accompanied by seemingly ridiculous instructions from the doctor such as “Take three ounces per hour to stimulate until it is stimulated.” Many speakeasies eventually operated under the guise of being pharmacies, and legitimate chains flourished. According to prohibition historian Daniel Okrent, the unexpected profits from the legal sale of alcohol helped Walgreens grow from about 20 locations to more than 500 in the 1920s. Average alcohol consumption in the 1830s and 1840s was three times higher than it is today. Wine was not an important element in the diet at the time, so there was more pure alcohol, much more. Men and women didn`t drink together in public, except the rich, so the tavern was a retreat for men and a place for an unhappy man to really bond one. Benjamin Rush, one of the leading physicians of the late 18th century, believed in moderation rather than prohibition. In his treatise “The Inquiry into the Effects of Ardent Spirits on the Human Body and Mind” (1784), Rush argued that excessive alcohol consumption was detrimental to physical and mental health, calling drunkenness a disease. [30] Apparently influenced by Rush`s widely debated beliefs, in 1789 about 200 farmers from a Connecticut community formed a temperance association. Similar associations were formed in Virginia in 1800 and New York in 1808. [31] Over the course of a decade, other abstinence groups formed in eight states, some of which were national organizations. The words of Rush and other early abstinence reformers served to dichotomize alcohol consumption for both men and women. While men loved to drink and often considered it vital to their health, women who began to adopt the ideology of “true motherhood” abstained from alcohol.
As a result, middle-class women, who were considered the moral authorities of their households, refused to drink alcohol, which they saw as a threat to the home. [31] In 1830, Americans consumed an average of 1.7 high-percentage bottles per week, three times more than in 2010. [20] The key to understanding the strength of the temperance movement in the United States at the turn of the 20th century was the sheer horror of saloons. It is no coincidence that the organization that coordinated the attack on alcohol was called the Anti-Saloon League. Saloons were synonymous with drunkenness, gambling, prostitution, drugs, and political corruption — and politicians used them as places to buy votes by offering jobs and other incentives.
