To drink or no? Ever since the first people stumbled across alcohol
(and then each other) this has been a question commonly asked.
Statistics show that a majority of domestic violence, automobile
accidents, and rape, all involve (many times) alcohol. Whether one
thinks consumption is "right" or not has been asked by people for
people from time to time. This would be the case of the 18th
Amendment of 1919.
The Act passed by those concerned with the above-mentioned problems,
prohibited the vending, transportation of, and consumption of
alcohol. The law was intended to be enforced nation-wide. Police
raided and trashed many vendors to stop their trade. Sometimes
however, the police took their share of the whiskey they were
supposed to break, and paid reporters to look the other way. On the
whole, prohibition was effective in smaller town/cities, but worked a
bit less in the larger cities.
It is said that for every market that is destroyed, a new underground
market is created. This was exactly the case with prohibition. Though
domestic violence did decrease, much crime increased. Bootlegers
(people who made/sold their own whiskey) popped up everywhere.
Speakeasies, which were underground bars, were frequented by
virtually everyone. Seceret drinking was considered a glamorous
thing-even in Washington parties. Bootlegging gangs began to
increase, thus an increase in street crime occured. One of the most
famous of these gangsters was Al Capone. Capone's bootlegging ring
earned him approximately 60,000,000 dollars a year. One example of
gang related crime was the St. Valentines Day Massacre, in which
Capones's gang gunned down and killed seven members of "Bugs"
Morgans' gang.
As gang violence increased, the popularity of prohibition decreased.
Near to the end of the 1920's, the same people who backed prohibition
decided to take it away. It is stated now that drugs are bad, but
some say the war on drugs is worse. Prohibition lasted from 1919 to
1933 when it was repealed to prevent the related crimes and as a
whole satisfy the masses.