Prohibition

How successful was Prohibition ? On the 18th of December 1917, congress sent to the states the Eighteenth Amendment, which one year after ratification on 16th of January 1919, banned the manufacture, sale or transport of intoxicating liquors. In 1919 the Volstead Act defined as “intoxicating” all beverages containing more than 0.5 percent alcohol, which then became illegal once the Eighteenth Amendment went into effect in 1920. Prohibition of Alcohol in America between 1920 and 1933 was undertaken to reduce crime and corruption, …

…stock market crash of 1929. Prohibition did not improve productivity or reduce absenteeism. In contrast, private regulation of employees' drinking improved productivity, reduced absenteeism, and reduced industrial accidents wherever it was tried before, during, and after Prohibition. Prohibition did not achieve its goals. Instead, it added to the problems it was intended to solve and supplanted other ways of addressing problems. The only beneficiaries of Prohibition were bootleggers, crime bosses, and the forces of big government.