In 1920, the Eighteenth Amendment kicked off the Prohibition Era in the United States by banning the manufacture, sale, and transportation of alcohol. The amendment was ratified on January 16, 1919, and roughly six months later, Congress passed the National Prohibition Act – also known as the Volstead Act - which made it possible to enforce the ban on alcohol.
The 18th Amendment went into effect on January 17, 1920. It states:
After one year from the ratification of this article the manufacture, sale, or transportation of intoxicating liquors within, the importation thereof into, or the exportation thereof from the United States and all territory subject to the jurisdiction thereof for beverage purposes is hereby prohibited.
The Congress and the several States shall have concurrent power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.
This article shall be inoperative unless it shall have been ratified as an amendment to the Constitution by the legislatures of the several States, as provided in the Constitution, within seven years from the date of the submission hereof to the States by the Congress.
Three years before the Eighteenth Amendment took effect, President Woodrow Wilson enacted a separate ban on alcohol to with the stated goal of conserving dwindling grain supplies during World War I.
Prohibition was wildly unpopular, thus difficult to enforce, and the amendment gave rise to organized crime. “Bootlegging,” the illegal manufacturing and sale of liquor, was common throughout the Roaring Twenties.
Al Capone, a Chicago gangster, became one of the most infamous figures in bootlegging, earning an estimated $60 million every year from his illegal alcohol empire. "Nobody wanted Prohibition,” Capone insisted. “This town voted six to one against it. Somebody had to throw some liquor on that thirst. Why not me?"
Amid the spike in crime, President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed the Cullen-Harrison Act, which allowed the creation and sale of beer and wine with low-alcohol content. Just nine months later, the federal ban on alcohol was repealed by the 21st Amendment’s ratification. The 18th Amendment remains the only constitutional amendment ever ratified and subsequently overturned.
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