Prohibition and the Effects on Culture and Society in the 1920's

No person shall, on or after the age when the 18th Amendment to the Constitution of the unify States goes into effect, manufacture, sell, barter, transport, import, export, deliver, furnish or take any intoxicating liquor except as permit in this act (Title II, Section 3 National banishment Act). At midnight on January 16th, 1920 the 18th Amendment to the Constitution was put into action, and the United States of America went dry. Under the Volstead Act, passed in October of that same year, any drunkenness with over .5 percent alcohol was considered intoxicating, and therefore forbidden under the 18th Amendment. Almost immediately breweries, distilleries, and saloons closed their doors. Many community believed that alcohol created a dis tell apartly society of community without morals, and point before the 18th Amendment was ratified, about 65 percent of the res publica had already banned alcohol. In 1916, seven states adopted anti-liquor laws, delivery the number of states prohibiting the manufacture and sale of alcoholic beverages to 19. Drunkenness was blamed for family breakdown, crime, poverty, and violence and the government set out to put people on the right path in the creation of the interior(a) forbiddance act (Craats 20).



While prohibition was created to prevent the precipitation of society, it was ineffective since it was unenforceable and in opposition to its purpose, it lead to a society of organized crime, increased alcohol consumption, lawlessness and the humiliation of morals that now classifies the 1920s culture.

Organized crime infiltrated the ranks of federal agents and local anesthetic police-all underpaid and overworked men who could not always resist the temptation and crush of the wealth of organized crime (Hanson 35). With salaries of only $2,300 a year, the prohibition movement was alluring to these men, and the result was an increase in graft and corruption of thousands of...

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