Prohibition and the Birth of Organized Crime

Prohibition in the United States was a measure designed to reduce drinking by eliminating the businesses that manufactured, distributed, and sold alcoholic beverages. The Eighteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution took away license to do business from the brewers, distillers, vintners, and the wholesale and retail sellers of alcoholic beverages. The leaders of the prohibition movement were alarmed at the drinking behavior of Americans, and they were concerned that there was a culture of drink among some sectors of the population that, with continuing immigration from Europe, was spreading (“Why Prohibition” 2). Between 1860 and 1880 America's urban population grew from 6 million to more than 14 million people. The mass of this huge increase found itself toiling in factories and sweatshops and living in horrible social conditions; getting drunk was there only highlight in life.

Prohibition is the legal ban on the manufacture and sale of intoxicating drink (“Temperance, Prohibition, Alcoholism” 1). The term also denotes those periods in history when such bans have been in force, as well as the political and social movements condoning them. This method of liquor control was most often aimed at preventing alcoholism and thus removing a social, physical, and economic harm from society.

Many Americans, religious leaders, and political leaders saw alcohol as the key to all that was evil, a curse on the nation. Significant numbers of people believed that the consumption of alcoholic beverages presented a serious threat to the integrity of their most vital foundations, especially the family (“Prohibition” 846).

In the 1600's and 1700's, the American colonists drank large quantities of beer, rum, wine, and hard cider. These alcoholic beverages were often safer to drink than impure water or unpasteurized milk and also less expensive than coffee or tea. By the 1820's, people in the United States were drinking, on the average, the equivalent of 7 gallons of pure alcohol per person each year (“drinkingprohibition” 1). As early as the seventeenth century, America was showing interest towards prohibition. Some people, including physicians and ministers, became concerned about the extent of alcohol use (“There was one...” 1). They believed that drinking alcohol damaged people's health and moral behavior, and promoted poverty. People concerned about alcohol use u...

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... begun in 1934, succeeded in helping alcoholics (“History” 3).

Prohibition failed to improve health and virtue. Prohibition was supposed to be an economic and moral godsend. Prisons and poorhouses were to be emptied, taxes cut, and social problems eliminated. 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 successors of Prohibition were bootleggers, crime bosses, and the forces of big government.

The Prohibition of alcohol was probably the most senseless Amendment in the history of the United States of America. Everyday people were forced to change their penchants of drinking alcoholic beverages. But only a minority really quit drinking, all the others became criminals. Any violator of the liquor law had the fear of getting caught. And some of them were arrested and convicted just for drinking alcohol.

The illegal liquor business, caused by Prohibition, was the start of organized crime in the USA. Many politicians and other officials in all positions became corrupt and criminal. This state remained even after the repeal of the liquor law for a long time.