Cause Of Prohibition Research Paper

The Prohibition began when the 18th amendment was passed in January of 1920. ("The Prohibition Era"). There were important causes that lead to the Prohibition, yet there were still good reasons against it. The Anti-Saloon League, Volstead Act, and reasons going against the Prohibition. To begin with, is the Anti-Saloon League. The Anti-Saloon League was founded in 1893 as a state association in Ohio (“Anti-Saloon League”). “The Anti-Saloon League worked to unify public anti-alcohol sentiment, enforce existing temperance laws, and enact anti-alcohol legislation” (“Anti-Saloon League Museum”). The league used any and almost every way to promote the temperance. “They published thousands of fliers, pamphlets, songs, stories, cartoons, dramas,

“[They] would sell “medicinal whiskey’ to treat everything from toothaches to the flu. With a physician’s prescription ‘patients’ could legally buy a pint of hard liquor every ten days” (Andrews). A letter from the Chief State Constable Smyrl to Governor Richard I. Manning states, “the greater number of drunks, however, among both soldiers and civilians do not come from whiskey, but extracts and patent medicines.” People still found ways to get alcohol with the ban. Despite the fact there were still several people who were worried that with the absence of alcohol alcoholics would turn to narcotics. In an article of The Literary Digest magazine titled "Is Prohibition Making Drug Fiends?" talks about how it was thought that drunkenness would lead to drug addiction, but that is actually not the case. "[The] New York City Health Department during [1920] asked 1,403 drug patients how they became addicted. Of 1,247 who gave information, only 12, about 1 per cent., came to it from alcoholic indulgence." From someone else's report it says, "from the histories of persons registered it appears that there is no relation between the drug addict and the habitual user of alcoholic liquor." "[The] Philadelphia General Hospital [asked] each drug patient as to the effect of inability to get liquor upon his drug disease. 'No connection was whatever has been