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The Prohibition era was the period from 1920 to 1933 when the United States prohibited the production, importation, transportation, and sale of alcoholic beverages. [1] The alcohol industry was curtailed by a succession of state legislatures, and Prohibition was formally introduced nationwide under the Eighteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, ratified on January 16, 1919.
Whether obtaining liquor illegally or sourcing it from industrial alcohol poisoned by the government, drinking alcohol was dangerous during the prohibition era. A famous example of poisoning is the case of Bix Beiderbecke whose medical records and subsequent death seem to point to methanol poisoning, possibly because of the United States ...
In 1919, the requisite number of state legislatures ratified the Eighteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, enabling national prohibition one year later. Many women, notably members of the Woman's Christian Temperance Union, were pivotal in bringing about national Prohibition in the United States, believing it would protect families, women, and children from the effects of alcohol ...
At 12:01 a.m., Jan. 17, 1920, America was cut off. Saloons closed their doors. Taps stopped flowing. People stockpiled their whiskey, beer and wine to weather the dry spell that would last 13 years.
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The Prohibition Bureau was demoted from Bureau status to Unit status and became the FBI's Alcohol Beverage Unit (ABU). Though part of the FBI on paper, J. Edgar Hoover, who wanted to avoid liquor enforcement and the taint of corruption that was attached to it, continued to operate it as a separate, autonomous agency in practice. [14]
Crime rates soared under Prohibition as gangsters, such as Chicago's Al Capone, became rich from a profitable, often violent, black market for alcohol. The federal government was incapable of stemming the tide: enforcement of the Volstead Act proved to be a nearly impossible task and corruption was rife among law enforcement agencies. [1]
The Michigan legislature prohibited the sale of liquor in 1917, three years before national Prohibition was established by a constitutional amendment. [1] [2] Along with temperance supporters, industrialist Henry Ford owned the River Rouge plant and desired a sober workforce, so he backed the Damon Act, [2] a state law that, along with the Wiley Act, prohibited virtually all possession ...