Eighteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution

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Image:Prohibition.jpg Amendment XVIII (the Eighteenth Amendment) of the United States Constitution, along with the Volstead Act (which defined "intoxicating liquors"), established Prohibition in the United States.

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History

The senate passed the amendment on December 18, 1917. The amendment was ratified on January 16, 1919, having been approved by 36 states. It went into effect one year later on January 16, 1920.

When Congress submitted this amendment to the states for ratification, it was the first time that a proposed amendment had a provision that placed a deadline on ratification. The validity of the amendment was challenged on that basis in Dillon v. Gloss. The Supreme Court ruled on the case in 1921, upholding the constitutionality of such deadlines.

The amendment was subsequently repealed by the Twenty-First Amendment on December 5 1933, making it the only provision in the Constitution to be explicitly modified.

The ramifications of the 18th Amendment, which will forever live on to be remembered as "Prohibition", have reached into today. The Amendment eternally changed the notion that localized crime could not evolve into a full-fledged mafia syndicate; while also removing the facade of a utopian society without alcohol (or any other drug, for that matter) in its veins, because it is just one of the many luxuries that make up the plasma in the American bloodstream. Prohibition changed the lives and roles of moonshiners and rum-runners, transforming them, along their product, into the lifeblood of American speakeasies and mob dons, forever revolutionizing the American dream and image.

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Text

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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.

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