A Brief History of Prohibition
To really understand Prohibition and how it came about we need to go back to the founding of our county. When the pilgrims arrived they believed that beer, wine and other liquors were safer to drink then water; they also believed that alcohol was good for your health.
Eventually they started to realize this was not the case, though by now it had become the way for men to celebrate almost every event in life, happy or sad. Going to the saloon to drink with the other men was a way for men to prove they were real men. And women were not allow in saloons, at least not respectable women.
By the mid 1820's drunkenness had become common place and the Reverend Lyman Beecher started a crusade against drinking alcohol, or intemperance as he called it. It would be almost one hundred years before his crusade would lead to the issuance of the 18th Amendment which made the selling or manufacturing of alcohol illegal. To learn more about the people and events that lead to Prohibition go to Crusaders for Prohibition.
Although the 18th Amendment set the stage for Prohibition the actual standards were set by the Volstead Act.
Prohibition did not quite have the effect people were hoping for. It did initially cut down the cases of drunkenness; the number of people with alcohol intoxication dropped by one-third and the numbers of deaths due to alcohol use declined. Prohibition also saw the start of organized crime with bootleggers like Al Capon and Roy Olmstead. When it came to enforcing Prohibition the government was not well prepared to meet the challenges. Even in the government here were as many people against Prohibition as there were for it, so corruption ran rampant. Of course, making something illegal just made more people want to try it, so Speakeasies opened up everywhere to provide people with alcohol and a good time. As it became apparent that prohibition was causing more problems then it cured people started speaking out and demanding the 18th Amendment be Repealed.