The 18th Amendment: Volstead Act Loopholes, Rum Row and Poisoned Alcohol

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The 18th Amendment banned the manufacture, sale and transportation of intoxicating liquors but never made drinking or private possession illegal. It grew from decades of work by the Anti-Saloon League, founded in 1893, and the Women's Christian Temperance Union, along with Carrie Nation's hatchet raids, and by 1916 23 of the 48 states had their own prohibition laws. Congress proposed the amendment in December 1917, Nebraska became the 36th state to ratify in January 1919, and it took effect on January 17, 1920. It was the first amendment with a ratification deadline, upheld in Dillon v. Gloss. The Volstead Act, shaped by Wayne Wheeler and championed by Minnesota congressman Andrew Volstead, passed over Woodrow Wilson's veto and defined intoxicating as more than half a percent alcohol, outlawing beer and wine.

Loopholes let the wealthy keep pre-1920 cellars and let doctors prescribe whiskey, while rum runners supplied speakeasies from Canada, Mexico, Cuba and the Bahamas. Al Capone's Chicago syndicate reportedly took in about $60 million a year, overall crime rose 24 percent, and the homicide rate climbed from about 6 to nearly 10 per 100,000. In the late 1920s the government ordered industrial alcohol laced with more methanol, and up to 10,000 people died from poisoned liquor. After the 1929 crash, Franklin D. Roosevelt ran on repeal, and Congress sent the 21st Amendment to state conventions rather than legislatures. Prohibition ended on December 5, 1933, the only amendment ever repealed.

• Only Connecticut and Rhode Island rejected the 18th Amendment outright.
• Rum Row ships anchored just past the three-mile limit off places like Atlantic City while speedboats ran cargo ashore.
• Overcrowded courts held bargain days where bootleggers pleaded guilty in exchange for small fines.
• New Jersey Senator Edward I. Edwards called the poisoning program legalized murder.
• The sources note that liver cirrhosis hospitalizations and public drunkenness arrests did fall early in Prohibition.