Reasons for prohibition of alcohol in the United States

With the promulgation of the 1920+ 18 amendment to the Constitution on June 6, 2008, the prohibition of alcohol in the United States 14 began. Prohibition stipulates that the production, transportation, import, export and sale of all alcoholic beverages are restricted or illegal. It was not until 1933, 1933 February 6 that the prohibition of alcohol was abolished by 2 1 constitutional amendment, and this futile reform finally came to an end. This is a "wonderful" period in the history of American wine industry, which not only has a different degree of influence on all aspects of American social life, but also has a far-reaching impact on American wine industry, leaving a mark that cannot be ignored today.

Wine was sealed and destroyed at the beginning of prohibition. Image from: enobytes

The origin of Qing dynasty classics

If we want to comprehensively analyze the social background of prohibition, I am afraid it will take three days and three nights to complete, because it is related to many factors such as religion, politics, social culture and so on in the United States, and even closely related to the background of World War I at that time. To put it simply, this is a cultural war promoted by religious background, progressivism and feminist movement, in order to solve social problems such as high crime rate, domestic violence, immigration contradiction and so on.

Puritanism Tradition-Unshakable Absolute Morality

It is impossible for a country that advocates democracy and freedom to write prohibition into its constitution from the perspective of modern people. However, when we look back at American history, it becomes less difficult to understand. Puritanism is the main source of American culture. At that time, white Americans, the descendants of the first European immigrants, were influenced by Puritanism since childhood, and they just became the most conservative majority. Under the Puritan tradition of opposing extravagance and indulgence and advocating frugality and forbearance, people have 10 thousand reasons to oppose drinking: drinking is harmful to health, getting drunk, and engaging in dangerous work after drinking ... In the final analysis, alcohol is the root of all evil.

The appearance of prohibition has dealt a devastating blow to the American wine industry. Image from: newsinteractive

Progressive movement-post-industrial reaction

/kloc-at the end of 0/9, the United States just finished industrialization, and the social changes were drastic, resulting in a series of social problems: unfair distribution of wealth, obvious gap between the rich and the poor, intensified labor-capital contradiction, massive influx of immigrants, wealth dominating power, corruption breeding, and social traditional morality under material rule being challenged ... social order was seriously disturbed in all aspects. Faced with this reality, this far-reaching progressive movement is led by the middle class. Simply summarizing progressivism is to advocate strengthening the supervision of the federal government in social and economic activities in order to promote the overall improvement of society. Driven by progressivism, a large number of moral legislation, social legislation and control legislation have emerged, and the promulgation of prohibition of alcohol is one of the important achievements.

The implementation of prohibition was once considered as the victory of feminist movement. The picture shows Boston women crushing ice cubes used to freeze beer in a restaurant. Image from: New Documentary

Feminist movement-circuitous rights protection

The prohibition of alcohol was actually the result of the feminist movement "encircling Wei to save Zhao". 1In the first half of the 9th century, the United States passed the constitutional amendmentNo. 14, giving blacks the same voting rights as whites, which meant the overall victory of the abolitionist movement, and in this massive reform movement, women groups played a major role. Similarly, feminists devoted themselves to the prohibition movement, emphasizing that alcoholism is the main cause of domestic violence. They advocate that prohibition of alcohol changes men's behavior in order to protect children's growing environment and let women have equal status with their husbands in the family. The Christian Women's Prohibition Federation was the largest women's organization at that time, which pushed prohibition to a climax. Of course, the ultimate goal of the feminist movement is to strive for the equality of women's political rights, and it was not until the constitutional amendment 19 (recognizing women's right to vote) after the prohibition of alcohol was realized.

Xenophobia-a lingering sense of national superiority

With the process of industrialization and urbanization, the United States surpassed Britain to become the world's largest economy at the beginning of the19th century, which was followed by the influx of a large number of immigrants and social conflicts brought about by cultural shocks. Back to the Puritan culture mentioned earlier, it played an important role in it: for a long time, the traditional white Americans, as Puritans, had an irreplaceable sense of moral superiority and were born Anglo-Saxons. As mentioned above, Puritans were against alcoholism, so who was the biggest consumer of wine at that time? Yes, blacks, Jews and immigrants, including Asians, have opened pubs and entertainment places on the streets of the United States. These people generally have low income and low quality. White Puritans feel that traditional culture is under siege and that they are the main source of social problems. For the traditional white Americans, prohibition movement is the assimilation of foreign cultural values.

The "search team" of the American police force during prohibition. Image from: travsd

World War I and national hatred-there is no better excuse.

In the end, a perfect reason is indispensable to comprehensively implement a reform. 19 17, the United States declared war on Germany and formally joined the First World War, which provided an excellent opportunity for the prohibition of alcohol: on the one hand, alcohol needs food (wine, you come to a bad end! ), so in wartime, such precious food is not enough for the army, how can it be used to satisfy the pastime of alcoholics; On the other hand, at that time, all the major winemakers and breweries in the United States were from Germany, and banning alcohol was equivalent to patriotism.

An irresistible desire

It is not difficult to imagine that people can always circumvent the ban in various ways. In fact, according to statistics, the amount of alcohol consumed during prohibition even far exceeded that before, which is very ironic.

Those wonderful products during prohibition.

There are policies on the top and countermeasures on the bottom, and there are loopholes in all decrees, including during the prohibition period. The constitution stipulates that it is illegal to sell alcoholic beverages, but it cannot prohibit the sale of brewing materials.

Near beer: It is a kind of beer with an alcohol content of only 0.5%. This is because alcoholic beverages that were banned at that time were defined as beverages with alcohol content exceeding 0.5% in the Constitution, so this product is not illegal. It provides detailed instructions to remind buyers what not to do, otherwise they may brew their own beer with high alcohol content.

Malt and hops: As the name implies, breweries can't sell beer, but can only sell brewing materials, claiming that they are used for cooking or baking.

"Vine Glo": A concentrated grape juice popular during prohibition in the United States, which promised to ferment itself into wine after 30 days.

"grape brick": like Vine Glo, it is also a wine raw material, which is sold in the form of raisins and yeast. Manufacturers often attach such a "thoughtful reminder" to the package: If you accidentally add these things to a gallon of water and put them in a sealed jar, be careful, they may turn into wine in 20 days!

Grape juice was one of the most popular products during prohibition. Image from: newsoldday

Smuggling and underground trading have become hotbeds of gang power.

The formal market was banned, and the result was the rise of black market. Smuggling and underground trading once became profitable businesses. At that time, many organized criminal groups were established by relying on the profits of these illegal businesses. And these gangs rely on their growing power to make private wine business bigger and bigger. Al, the most famous gangster in Chicago? Capone began to rise during this period, and it is said that his daily profit from selling wine is as high as $5,000.

Those so-called legal wines

In order to ensure the use of alcohol for religious activities, some small-scale wine production is still legal, but their supply must be managed by the government. The result can be imagined, and few officials can resist the temptation in front of them. As a result, private liquor trade has gradually emerged within the government, and the problem of official corruption has become increasingly prominent.

In the hospital, doctors can prescribe whisky for patients. Although the prescription clearly indicates that all uses except medical care are illegal, there is actually no special department to supervise them. Many doctors prescribe prescriptions at will, during which the number of patients has greatly increased, and hospitals have become a good place to buy alcohol during the prohibition period.

A ban that must be abolished

Prohibition became more and more absurd in the later period. Originally, I wanted to improve the health level of the people by banning alcohol, but more and more people entered the hospital because of drinking inferior private wine. The original intention is to reduce the crime rate, but it has become the inducement of organized crime; Want to control corruption, but let more officials actively or passively collude with gangs during this period ... All kinds of phenomena make it urgent to abolish the prohibition of alcohol.

A protest March during prohibition. Image from: Today

Contradictory constitution

The biggest contradiction of prohibition is that it violates the most important spirit of the American Constitution: respecting citizens' individual rights and freedoms. In the process of enforcing the law against alcohol, the scale of search becomes more and more difficult to grasp. In the later period, more and more people, even the main people who advocated the prohibition of alcohol at first, began to feel that human rights were greatly threatened during this period.

There are hidden dangers in the underground market that have lost their norms.

Formal production is forbidden, but people have to choose private winemaking and underground wineries with poor quality and no safety guarantee. During this period, many more patients were admitted to hospital because of alcoholism than before. Not only that, the phenomenon of stealing industrial alcohol has been repeatedly banned, so many methanol poisoning patients have appeared. In the workshop of liquor production, self-made distillation equipment often has serious quality problems, and serious accidents such as explosions often occur, resulting in injuries to workers.

Obeying the law or breaking it is a question.

On the one hand, with the expansion of gangs, organized crime is becoming more and more rampant, but on the other hand, prisoners who are really put in prison are often first-time offenders and have no innocent criminal record. At that time, state prisons were overcrowded, and most of these people were just people who usually had drinking habits but were innocent and had no criminal record. Prohibition actually disrupted the social habits and personal life rhythm of many Americans, forcing people to make choices before the law.

Too much for the national treasury.

Banning the entire American wine industry means that the government has lost the tax revenue of an industry. At the same time, in the process of implementing the prohibition, it needs to spend a lot of financial expenditure, making the prohibition a real loss-making business.

The economic crisis has given you a reason to go back on your word.

Finally, the famous Great Depression came to America (1929- 1933). In this period of national grief, how to invigorate the economy and make people afford to eat has become the only important thing. No one is in the mood to pay attention to whether drinking is immoral. On the contrary, the abolition of prohibition may provide some help to the active economy: the production of alcohol can expand food consumption, stimulate domestic demand, and bring a little hope to overproduced American agriculture; In industry and commerce, the circulation of one more commodity may bring more liquidity to the market. In a word, all walks of life are expecting the lifting of prohibition, and some even joked that it can even give those bankrupt businessmen a little paralysis and comfort. Finally, in 1933, President Roosevelt complied with public opinion and announced the abolition of prohibition, so the constitutional amendment 18 became the only constitutional amendment abolished in American history.

The picture shows prohibition sweeping through California. Image from: lib.unc

Prohibition and American wine industry

There is no doubt that the ban has dealt a heavy blow to the American wine industry. During the prohibition period, wineries generally faced three fates: closing down, planting grapes or other fruits, and illegally producing cheap wine. In any case, those wineries that carefully grow and brew fine wines no longer exist. In terms of quantity, from 19 19 to 1925, the number of wineries in California dropped sharply from 700 to 100, and the wine production in the United States decreased from 55 million gallons to 35,000 gallons. In terms of quality, the mighty prohibition movement has turned American wine from an exquisite product into a fast-moving consumer product that only seeks alcohol, which is undoubtedly a disaster for the American wine industry.

For us today, it may be hard to imagine that before prohibition, the wine industry in Ohio was bigger than that in California. However, due to the ban, many vineyards have changed to grow cash crops, and some of them are no longer used as agricultural land. Even if they want to recover, it is even more difficult. The previous scale no longer exists today.

Compared with other alcoholic beverages such as beer and spirits, it is more difficult to recycle wine, and it will not happen overnight. As we all know, to cultivate high-quality grapes, it takes time to optimize the soil environment, find the most suitable varieties according to local characteristics, and even wait for the vines to grow to a certain age. This process takes at least three to five years, sometimes even decades.

The picture shows that after the prohibition was abolished, Americans took out the wine and beer hidden in the cellar for public auction. Image from: donsmarylandhistory

At the beginning of lifting the ban, the United States was still in the recovery stage after the Great Depression. Expensive and exquisite products like wine are often not as popular as relatively low-cost drinks such as beer and cereal wine, which also makes the recovery of wine industry lag behind other wines.

Today, when we review the rapid growth of American wine industry in recent decades, we are amazed at its powerful energy, but sometimes we can't help but wonder what the American wine industry would be like today without prohibition.

The news of the abolition of prohibition quickly occupied the front page of the newspaper that day.

Post-prohibition era

Although prohibition has become history in the United States, the United States has never relaxed the control of alcohol. 2 1 The constitutional amendment not only abolished the prohibition of alcohol, but also gave the state governments the power to legislate independently on the circulation of alcohol. Until today, the United States has very strict and detailed regulations on the sale and transportation of wine. The "three-level distribution system" and the "direct mail restriction law" are the direct products after the prohibition of alcohol. In addition, the United States has strict management on the issuance of liquor retail licenses, and consumers also need to show valid identity documents to buy alcohol.