Prohibition Dbq Essay

Prohibition was the one time in American history when alcohol was banned across the whole country throughout the 18th Amendment. This created many problems for America that were not expected. Prohibition began in 1919 when the 18th Amendment was passed throughout the United States. Congress in America thought this would have a positive effect on the states, but they were wrong. This law was taken back when the 21st Amendment began. A question some might ask is, “Why did America repeal the 18th Amendment?” America repealed the 18th Amendment because of the increase in crime, the failure to enforce this law, and the state of the economy.
The first reason Americans had changed their minds about Prohibition was the increase in crime. When Prohibition

Prohibition lead to an increase in crime and it was hard to enforce the Amendment. For example, bootleggers found ways to get alcohol through the borders of Mexico and Canada because they knew that the whole border could not be defended and it was easy to send a truck with products in it without being caught red handed. Another way that bootleggers smuggled alcohol into the States was by shipping it in boats. According to Document C, along the coasts of New York and New Jersey, the enforcement, that being police and Congress, could not check the supplies within a ship unless they were three miles within the coastline. Ships carrying alcohol would wait until late hours in the night and sent ships out to transport the alcohol to the bootleggers on the coast. Congress was not helping to enforce this law either. In fact, they were violators of the law themselves. According to Mabel Walker Willebrandt in Document D, Congressmen and Senators were in drunk dazes on the floor constantly. This evidence supports the fact that the enforcement of the law was not great. Despite this, bootleggers were very smart to find these methods of illegality in such short time. America had repealed the 18th Amendment because there were not any perfect ways to enforce this law and people could find ways to sneak through the authorities’ eyes and smuggle alcohol through

America was losing money by not having alcohol sales to gather taxes. Without these taxes, the United States lost lots of money. According to Document E, the people in Congress had known about these illegal alcohol sales and taxed the violators for their profits, America could have had as much as $200,000,000 dollars or more for emergency needs whilst repaying the current American debt at the time. The economic state of America caused Americans to change their minds about Prohibition because the United States was losing more money by the day because they didn't know about the sales of alcohol and the tax, they were losing from