On this day 1933…Prohibition ends

(TDB) - Eighty years ago today the Volstead Act was finally repealed in the US bringing an end nearly 13 years of Prohibition.

The 18th amendment was repealed by the introduction of the 21st to the US constitution, which once again allowed the production and legal distribution of alcohol.

The sale of alcohol did not return to all of the US, townships of counties could choose to remain “dry” and many did, particularly in a belt from Texas and across Oklahoma, Arkansas, Ohio and Indiana.

Mississippi had made alcohol illegal in 1907 and didn’t repeal Prohibition until 1966, while Kansas still did not allow on-trade sales until 1987.

Introduced on a wave of pietistic Protestantism, Prohibition badly damaged the nascent American wine industry and drove brewers and distillers underground, with “moonshiners” and unscrupulous bootleggers producing what was often poison.

Some 10,000 people may have died from drinking denatured alcohol during prohibition.

It made ordinary, law-abiding citizens into criminals by the simple virtue of enjoying a drink and spurred a wave of violent criminality that allowed serious organized crime syndicates to take root and grow powerful in American cities.

The American financier and teetotaller John D Rockefeller Jr admitted in a letter in 1932: “When Prohibition was introduced, I hoped that it would be widely supported by public opinion and the day would soon come when the evil effects of alcohol would be recognized. I have slowly and reluctantly come to believe that this has not been the result.