Prohibition and the Eighteenth Amendment

PROHIBITION AND THE EIGHTEENTH AMENDMENT

Interest in National Legislation

Despite the fact that some form of Prohibition had been enacted into law in thirty-one states by 1913, interest in the enactment of national Prohibition legislation remained strong. The abuse of alcohol was an issue of great importance in many communities, and it especially galvanized the reformers who were interested in the rehabilitation of criminals and delinquents, the elimination of slums, the alleviation of poverty, and Christian temperance. Many Americans considered alcoholism a serious problem, yet many others were inclined to ignore its personal and social costs. Advocates of reform initially focused on convincing individual communities and states to formulate regulatory policies to advance Prohibition, but these efforts proved to be of limited and often temporary value. For the reformers, the answer was to be found not only in the application of highly restrictive laws that acknowledged the danger consumption posed to the public's social and moral health; reformers decided that they must also work for a more uniform enforcement of the laws against the sale and manufacture of alcoholic beverages.

Reluctant Partner

In the nineteenth century the courts generally granted wide latitude to the states to control or forbid the manufacture and sale of liquor. In 1890 the Supreme Court, however, determined that states could not prohibit the importation of liquor in its original packaging without interfering with the federal government's constitutional authority to regulate interstate commerce. That same year, to sidestep this limitation on a state's regulatory power, Congress passed the Wilson Act, which eliminated the distinction made by the Supreme Court between alcohol manufactured locally and that imported and maintained in its original packaging. Despite this congressional action, the Supreme Court eventually settled on an interpretation of the Wilson Act that protected the interstate shipment of liquor from any restrictions a state might impose on such shipments. The act, the Court decided, did not open shipments of liquor to state regulation until the contents of the shipments in question were placed in the hands of the consumer. There the matter stood until efforts to involve Congress in removing yet another obstacle to state liquor regulation built momentum.

Webb-Kenyon Interstate Liquor Act

In 1913 a bill was introduced in Congress to provide the states with the power they would need to ban the importation of liquor altogether. In those instances where the consumption of alcohol was prohibited locally, enforcement of the law often proved difficult: consumers had only to travel to neighboring towns or counties where no prohibition against liquor existed. Efforts in Congress to exclude from the law liquor intended for strictly personal use was defeated, and the bill was subsequently passed by a large majority in both houses. But President Taft promptly vetoed it, believing the bill gave Congress more power over interstate commerce than the Constitution permitted. Within days Congress overrode the president's veto and the Webb-Kenyon Interstate Liquor Act became law on 1 March 1913. Four years later, in Clark Distilling Company v. Western Maryland Railroad, the Supreme Court upheld the constitutionality of the act, registering no objection to Congress's decision to share, if somewhat conditionally, its power to regulate this particular aspect of interstate commerce. The states' bid for federal assistance in the preservation of their liquor laws had finally achieved some measure of success, but efforts to involve the federal government further in such regulation, at least on a national level, proved unsuccessful until the coming of the war.

DRUGS AND THE NARCOTIC ACT
OF 1914

In 1914 Congress, pressured by the government's own representatives and the increasingly obvious need for greater measures against drug use, passed the Harrison Narcotic Act, which authorized the federal government, under its revenue collection authority, to record narcotics transactions and to restrict their use to clearly medical purposes. The act carried penalties for the violation of its various provisions and acknowledged the responsibility of the federal government to address an aspect of public health policy that was entirely different from and more pressing than those it had previously addressed.

The American public had increasingly come to view the open trade, distribution, and use of narcotic's as threatening the nation's moral health and public safety. Earlier concerns had focused almost entirely on the proper use of narcotics for therapeutic or medicinal purposes and the fear that certain consumable goods contained narcotic additives designed to promote increased purchases through addiction. Passage of the Pure Food and Drug Act of 1906 provided the federal government with its first opportunity to take action against the sale of fraudulent and potentially harmful medicines, but initial efforts to enforce the act failed to address the illicit drug trade, the smuggling and sale of such narcotics as opium and cocaine.

By 1912 it had become common knowledge that efforts to control the use of narcotics on a purely local level had been an abysmal failure. In New York, legislation that had been introduced to prohibit the sale and use of cocaine, then just beginning to reach alarming levels, had been stalled by fears that such controls would adversely affect the stated numerous manufacturers of medicines and interfere with the doctor-patient relationship. In Illinois drug dealers were immune from arrest because the mere possession of cocaineand other drugs was still legal throughout the state. Increasing concerns for the public's safety and growing fears that public morals were being subverted led to greater demands for action on a federal level. In 1919 the constitutionality of the Harrison Narcotic Act was upheld by the Supreme Court, and the federal government's role in the enforcement of an ever-increasing number of antinarcotics statutes would thereafter remain unchallenged.

Passing the Eighteenth Amendment

For the advocates of national Prohibition, the advantages of such legislation were clear: the flow of alcohol from outside the country could be shut off; transferring responsibility for the enforcement of Prohibition to the federal government would result in a more efficient and uniform effort to achieve the law's objectives; and federal involvement would insulate the enforcers of the law from corruption and local influence. Whether these arguments by themselves would have proved persuasive in Congress is uncertain. What rekindled congressional interest was the task of mobilizing the nation's resources for war. In August 1917 Congress passed the Lever Food and Fuel Control Act, giving President Wilson the authority to control the use of certain food products, including ingredients used in the production of liquor, for purposes of supporting the nation's war effort. Shortly thereafter, the president issued proclamations directly affecting the manufacture of intoxicating liquors. Much to the dismay of the prohibitionists, he made no decision about the production of beer or wine below a certain alcoholic content. As preparations for the war progressed and the country, in an explosion of patriotic sentiment, committed itself to greater sacrifices, Prohibition advocates proved increasingly successful in equating temperance with the need for order and austerity. On 18 December 1917, despite the determined resistance of the liquor industry's lobby and the reluctance of some congressmen whose constituents viewed such legislation as a form of discrimination against their ethnic or cultural traditions, Congress adopted and submitted to the states for ratification what became the Eighteenth Amendment to the Constitution. Then, a year later, before the amendment was approved by the necessary thirty-six states, Congress enacted the Wartime Prohibition Act, which made unlawful the sale of liquor for beverage purposes for the duration of the war. Touted as a measure to protect the morals of the millions of men then being conscripted into service, the act was well received throughout the country and helped to create support for bills pending in state legislatures respecting ratification of the amendment. Once the war was over, resumption of the production of alcoholic beverages again drew the attention of Congress. On 28 October 1919 it passed the Volstead Act over President Wilson's veto, thus extending Prohibition to all beverages containing a minimum of 0.5 percent alcohol. Barely three months later, after final ratification by the states, the Eighteenth Amendment became law. The Supreme Court, in a series of cases known as the national Prohibition cases, confirmed the constitutionality of both the Eighteenth Amendment and the Volstead Act, the provisions of which remained in full force throughout the nation until the amendment's repeal in 1933.

Source:

Page Smith, America Enters the World: A People's History of the Progressive Era and World War I, volume 7 (New York: Penguin, 1985).