Alcohol was immensely important to immigrants that came to the United States from Europe in the 1600’s. A few centuries later, specifically 1917, many Americans believed that alcohol consumption was a problem. An eighteenth amendment was assembled and passed by congress which banned production, transport, and marketing of alcohol. Even a drink consisting of over 1 percent alcohol was considered an alcoholic beverage. America was officially a “dry” country. Subsequently, the nation realized prohibition was not working and things began downfall. America began to change its mind, repealing the amendment because prohibition was unenforceable, nobody wants it, and legalizing alcohol would benefit our economy.
Prohibition was nearly impossible to enforce, and people usually got away with breaking the law. “Smuggling from Mexico and Canada has been successful on a large scale because it is utterly impossible to patrol the thousands of miles of border..”(Haskin 1923)
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“How can you have the heart to prosecute a bootlegger, send a man to jail for six months or a year for selling a pint or a quart of whiskey, when you know for a fact the men who make the laws… are themselves patronizing bootleggers?”(Willebrandt 1929) Not only are these men violating the law, but they themselves made the law in the first place! “Congressmen and Senators… are persistent violators of the Volstead Act.”(Willebrandt 1929) They drink some liquor, drink another, and then drink even more! They repeatedly break the law because of their great desire for more alcohol. So where do they get it? “Bootleggers infest the halls and corridors of Congress and ply their trade there.”(Willebrandt 1929) They break the law right in the very building the law was developed! Even the drafters cannot handle the law upon themselves any longer. Nobody wants prohibition anymore, and it is not reasonable for the 18th amendment to last any