Prohibition

 The Eighteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution was ratified by the required number of states on January 16, 1919 (103 years ago).  It stated that "the manufacture, sale or transportation of intoxicating liquors within, the importation thereof into, or the exportation thereof from the United States and all the territory subject to the jurisdiction thereof for beverage purposes is hereby prohibited."

"The Eighteenth Amendment was the result of decades of effort by the temperance movement in the United States.  Starting in 1906, the Anti-Saloon League (ASL) began leading a campaign to ban the sale of alcohol at the state level." 

"(The ASL) led speeches, advertisements, and public demonstrations, claiming that banning the sale of alcohol would get rid of poverty and (other) social issues, such as immoral behavior and violence.  It would also inspire new forms of sociability between men and women and they believed that families would be happier, fewer industrial mistakes would be made, and overall, the world would be a better place."

"Under Prohibition (as the Eighteenth Amendment became known), illegal importation and production of alcoholic beverages (bootlegging) occurred on a large scale across the United States. In urban areas, where the majority of the population opposed Prohibition, enforcement was generally much weaker than in rural areas and smaller towns." 

"Perhaps the most dramatic consequence of Prohibition was the effect it had on organized crime in the United States."  

"As the production and sale of alcohol went further underground, it began to be controlled by (various) gangs, who transformed themselves into sophisticated criminal enterprises that reaped huge profits from the illicit liquor trade.  Chicago's Al Capone emerged as the most notorious example of this phenomenon, earning an estimated $60 million annually from his bootlegging and speakeasy (illicit establishment that sells alcohol) operations."

The Eighteenth Amendment was repealed by the Twenty-first Amendment on December 5, 1933.  Why?  It was extremely unpopular.  More people wanted alcohol than didn't want it.  

The corporation for which I worked for more than 31 years, Joseph E. Seagram & Sons, Inc., a beverage alcohol company, was incorporated on October 23 of that same year, 1933.

Alcohol is a drug.  The lesson of the Prohibition era is that you shouldn't try to outlaw a drug people want.  People will simply break the law.  

Did the US learn its lesson?  No.  In 1937, the US outlawed cannabis (Marihuana Tax Act).  Currently, on a state by state basis, cannabis is slowly becoming legalized again.  

What about cocaine and other narcotics?  No.  In 1914, the US outlawed cocaine and the rest with the Harrison Narcotics Tax Act.  While still illegal, cocaine is becoming more socially acceptable.

An anecdote:  John Pemberton created a cocaine-based beverage in the Nineteenth Century.  Wounded in the Civil War and addicted to morphine, he used cocaine as a treatment.  

With his knowledge of pharmacy, Pemberton first marketed "Pemberton's French Wine Coca" as a cure-all for any number of ailments.  When his home state of Georgia outlawed alcohol in 1885, the alcohol in the formula was replaced with sugar and became Coca-Cola, the most popular commercial beverage in the world.  However, because of public pressure, all traces of cocaine were removed from Coca-Cola by 1929.