A Toast!

Here to the repeal Prohibition in the United States!

Let's all lift a beer today and celebrate the seventy-fifth anniversary of the ratification of the twenty-first amendment! On December 05, 1933 with the ratification of the twenty-first amendment by Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Utah, the eighteenth amendment was officially repealed and the sale and consumption of alcoholic beverages once again became legal.

Thirteen years earlier, thirty-six of the forty-eight states ratified the eighteenth amendment establishing prohibition in the United States:

Section 1. After one year from the ratification of this article the manufacture, sale, or transportation of intoxicating liquors within, the importation thereof into, or the exportation thereof from the United States and all territory subject to the jurisdiction thereof for beverage purposes is hereby prohibited.

Section 2. The Congress and the several States shall have concurrent power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.

Section 3. This article shall be inoperative unless it shall have been ratified as an amendment to the Constitution by the legislatures of the several States, as provided in the Constitution, within seven years from the date of the submission hereof to the States by the Congress.

Thus entering a dark age in the history of the United States. What were they thinking? This was a clear pander to the religious right who wanted alcohol banned on a moral basis. The government cannot legislate morality! It never has been able to and never should have even tried.

It is interesting that this, the only amendment which made it into law based solely on pressure from a moral viewpoint, is also the only amendment ever to have been repealed. By its passage, the amendment didn't criminalize the consumption of intoxicating spirits, just their manufacture, import, and trafficking. If you could get your hands on it, you were allowed to drink it.

The twenty-first amendment officially repealed the eighteenth:

Section 1. The eighteenth article of amendment to the Constitution of the United States is hereby repealed.

Section 2. The transportation or importation into any State, Territory, or possession of the United States for delivery or use there in of intoxicating liquors, in violation of the laws thereof, is hereby prohibited.

Section 3. This article shall be inoperative unless it shall have been ratified as an amendment to the Constitution by conventions in the several States, as provided in the Constitution, within seven years from the date of the submission hereof to the States by the Congress.

What I found interesting when looking into this, though, was not that some states never actually ratified the amendment but that some states actively opposed it. Though, I cannot say that I am surprised at the states that have opposed it.

For example, South Carolina actually rejected the amendment. This would surprise nobody who has ever been out there... Until recently (I do not know if this has changed) you could not get a poured drink in bars... they had to sell it to you in single or double-shot bottles. And North Carolina refused to even hold a convention to consider the amendment! (Was Bob Jones really around that long ago!?)

But, at least for now, morality has no place in the constitution of the United States and I think we should all raise a glass and drink to that one... just as my grandmother and her friends and family did back in Minnesota on the homestead in 1933. Remember to keep vigilant and prevent the constitution from ever again becoming a club for well intended but misguided busybodies! 

Wherever you are today - Cheers!

Don Bergquist - December 05, 2008 - Lakewood, Colorado, USA