The Eighteenth Amendment
Prohibition
Prohibited the making, selling, and transporting of alcoholic drinks until it was repealed fourteen years later.
Ratified 1919 · 3 minute read
Published by Quasi-Legal Institute · Report an error
Repealed in 1933 by the Twenty-first Amendment
Section 1. 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. Section 2. The Congress and the several States shall have concurrent power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.
In plain language
What was banned
The amendment banned making, selling, and transporting alcoholic drinks. It did not directly ban drinking or owning alcohol, which is one reason people could keep supplies they had bought earlier.
The Prohibition era
Temperance groups spent decades arguing that alcohol caused poverty, violence, and family breakdown. The amendment was ratified in January 1919 and took effect a year later. Congress passed the Volstead Act to carry it out, which defined an “intoxicating” drink as anything with more than half of one percent alcohol.
The Eighteenth was the first amendment to include a deadline for ratification, which was seven years.
Why it ended
Enforcement proved difficult. Illegal production and sales grew into a large black market, and organized crime profited. Many people ignored the law, and the government lost the tax revenue that legal alcohol had provided, a problem made worse by the Great Depression.
The Twenty-first Amendment repealed it in 1933. It remains the only amendment in American history that was repealed by another amendment.