The Twenty-First Amendment stands apart as the only constitutional amendment to overturn an earlier one. By repealing the 18th Amendment, the 21st Amendment brought Prohibition – which banned the manufacture and sale of alcohol in the United States - to an end.
The 21st Amendment states:
Section 1.
The eighteenth article of amendment to the Constitution of the United States is hereby repealed.
Section 2.
The transportation or importation into any State, Territory, or possession of the United States for delivery or use therein of intoxicating liquors, in violation of the laws thereof, is hereby prohibited.
Section 3.
This article shall be inoperative unless it shall have been ratified as an amendment to the Constitution by conventions in the several States, as provided in the Constitution, within seven years from the date of the submission hereof to the States by the Congress.
In an effort to end prohibition in the midst of the Great Depression, Congress proposed the 21st Amendment on February 20, 1933. Two months later, President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed the Cullen-Harrison Act, which allowed some low-alcohol beer and wine to be made and sold in the United States. Although the legislation was widely supported, many Americans continued to push for the complete repeal of prohibition. In December of that year, the 21st Amendment was ratified.
Utah became the 36th state to ratify the amendment, ending federal prohibition and returning control over alcohol laws to the states. Each state could then establish its own rules governing the sale and importation of alcohol.
After the amendment was ratified, Roosevelt issued a proclamation celebrating the “return of this individual freedom.” “I trust in the good sense of the American people that they will not bring upon themselves the curse of excessive use of intoxicating liquors, to the detriment of health, morals and social integrity,” the president said.
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