Amendment 21

AMENDMENT XXI

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The eighteenth article of amendment to the Constitution of the United States is hereby repealed.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

Here are five interesting facts about the slow demise of Prohibition:

1. Two states rejected the 21st amendment. North Carolina and South Carolina rejected the amendment before December 5. So the vote was far from unanimous.

2. Another eight states didn’t meet before December 5 and didn’t even act to vote on the 21st Amendment: Georgia, Kansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Nebraska, North Dakota, Oklahoma, and South Dakota

3. One state didn’t end its version of Prohibition until 1966. Mississippi decided the keep its Prohibition laws for another three decades. As of 2004, half of Mississippi’s counties were dry. Currently, 17 states don’t allow any of their counties to be dry.

4. It was never illegal to drink during Prohibition. The 18th Amendment and the Volstead Act, the legal measure that included the instructions for enforcing Prohibition, never barred the consumption of alcohol–just making it, selling it, and shipping it for mass production (and consumption).

5. The Cullen-Harrison Act, signed about 10 months before the 21st Amendment was ratified, allowed people to drink low-alcohol content beer and wine. Incoming President Franklin D. Roosevelt had the Volstead Act amended in April 1933 to allow people to have a beer, or two, while they waited for the 21st Amendment to be ratified. The first team of Budweiser Clydesdales was sent to the White House to give President Roosevelt a ceremonial case of beer

In your opinion why do you feel the 18th amendment was actually ratified and fro what reasons?

Do you think Prohibition of anything can ever be an effective use to stop any specific thing being used?