Prohibition era

Prohibition era (1920–33) The period during which the manufacture, sale, and transportation of alcoholic drinks was prohibited in the USA. A culmination of the aspirations of the Temperance Movement, it began when the Eighteenth Amendment to the Constitution went into effect by the passing of the Volstead Act (1919). Despite the securing of some 300,000 court convictions between 1920 and 1930, drinking continued. Speakeasies (illegal bars) and bootlegging (illegal distilling of alcohol) flourished. The success of such gangsters as Al CAPONE, who controlled the supply of illegal alcohol, led to corruption of police and city government. After the Wickersham Commission in 1931 reported that the prohibition laws were unenforceable and encouraged public disrespect for law in general, the Eighteenth Amendment was repealed by the Twenty-First Amendment. A number of states and counties retained full or partial prohibition, but by 1966 no statewide prohibition laws existed.