The only Amendment added to our Constitution, and voided by another, is the 18th, which didn’t prohibit drinking alcoholic beverages, but prohibited “manufacture, sale, or transportation of intoxicating liquors…” I am quite certain that the Carry Nation (1846-1911) supporters were proud, as she attempted to destroy bars with her little hatchet. It was passed and placed on our Constitution in 1919, and it took FDR in 1933, to get it off, with the 21st Amendment. Did it reduce alcohol consumption?
Samuel Eliot Morrison, in his “Oxford History of the American People,” wrote, “No sooner had national prohibition become law, than the country seemed to regret it, and a new occupation; bootlegging, sprang up to quench the public thirst. The federal government, in ten years, made over half a million arrests for breaking the Volstead Act, and secured over 300,000 convictions, but smuggling increased.”
Clark Warburton’s “The Economic Results of Prohibition,” showed that alcoholic consumption during prohibition, went from .3 to 1.86 gallons of wine, from .44 to .87 gallons of whiskey, and from1.26 to 6.9 gallons of beer, per person, per year.
What prohibition gave us was the Mafia, speakeasys, huge amounts of crime, and the FBI, neither of which we needed or wanted. Alcohol went underground, thereby depriving government of huge tax revenues. Tens of thousands of waiters, bartenders, restaurants, distributorships, breweries, distilleries, bottle makers, and all that goes with alcohol consumption, including advertising, all went out of business. Empty stores and restaurants galore, and the unemployment lines proliferated. Speakeasys came into operation, and there were so many, that in New York alone, there was one “speak” for every 275 residents.
People who drank little, often became alcoholics, and it became a thrill to disobey the law. America had been drinking since its founding. Prohibition made Canada very rich. Before prohibition, there no major Canadian whiskey brands sold in America. Now look. It made the Kennedys very rich, as old Joe had a shipload of Scotch waiting off shore for the moment prohibition was depleted from our Constitution, with the 21st Amendment.
The apostle Paul wrote in 1st Timothy 5:23: “Do not drink water any longer, but use a little wine for the sake of your stomach and your frequent cases of sickness.” Noah, after getting really sick of being a boat so long, became inebriated with wine almost as soon as got off. There rumors around which say that Kamala becomes a bit tipsy quite often, and even during an interview.
-Don Stott. don@coloradogold.com