DRINKING ISSUES

A century ago this month the U.S. passed the Volstead Act, which prohibited the sale, production and use of alcohol. Prohibition was repealed 14 years later. In recent years, collectively the U.S. consumes about 8 trillion gallons of alcohol a year.

Efforts to ban alcohol in the U.S. began in the 1820s and were fueled by religious revivalism. The state of Maine passed the first prohibition laws in 1846.

The campaign against alcohol coincided with the women’s suffrage movement because alcohol was seen as destructive to families and marriages. When U.S. troops left to fight in World War I in 1917, President Woodrow Wilson instituted a temporary wartime prohibition to save grain for the war effort. The 18th Amendment which banned alcohol was submitted to Congress about the same time and was passed with three-fourths of the states approval in Jan. 1919. The Volstead Act was passed in October 1919 and provided guidelines for enforcement.

The Prohibition era began with a decline in drinking and less arrests for drunkenness but long term enforcement was not successful. With the death toll of gang warfare and cost of policing illegal sales rising, support for Prohibition began to decline during the Great Depression in the 1930s.

In 1932, Franklin Roosevelt’s first presidential campaign was partially based on repealing the 18th Amendment and after he won, the 21st Amendment was ratified by Dec. 1933. LDS stronghold Utah, was the 36th state to ratify the end of Prohibition.