18th Amendment Pros And Cons

As the roaring twenties reached their end the battle against alcohol in the United States is just arising to a turning point. With serious controversy over the Volstead Act the country was greatly divided. There was also the extreme rising occurrences of crime, the creation of gangs and a newly established, unorganized criminal justice system. Prohibition was a disaster across America and the more reforment from the government just made things worse. In 1928 Herbert Hoover is elected president burning the dust off onto Al Smith by simply walking away with electoral votes, winning 444-40. Hoover designed his campaign to focus on rebuilding America. As Lisa Mcgirr explains it in her book “The War on Alcohol”, “The nation was awash in illegal

Throughout Prohibition it was enormously controverse. Also the Volstead Act has not shown much effectiveness considering its main goal was to take away workers spending on alcohol, as well as keeping domestic violence of alcoholics out of the home. Yet, all the law brought was insanely higher amounts of spending on alcohol and brought the violence to the streets in a immense form of federal criminality. Even though many people wanted to dispose of the Eighteenth Amendment it was so unlikely to happen because never before in U.S. history has persevered and later on wanted to reverse. McGirr quotes George K. Statham when she writes “‘the repeal of the Eighteenth Amendment is about as likely as the repeal of the Thirteenth Amendment, the return of dueling, or gladiatorial combats….The world moves, and it has never yet taken a great moral or social step forward and afterwards retraced its step.’ Five years later, the Twenty-First Amendment broke the Eighteenth Amendment’s record speed for ratification…”(pg.233) Many reasons were given as to why the Eighteenth Amendment was revoked. Mostly because it was more tearing the country down rather than building the country up and America is a country that looks towards the future in moving forward in developing the nation to make it the best country in the world. McGirr concludes onto multiple different points onto why the government revoked the amendment. “Widespread disrespect for law, controversial actions of the Volstead vigilante enforcers, ever more draconian enforcement legislation, and the siren song of nightlife culture experimentation led former supporters to conclude that law was doing more harm than good.”(pg.233) People began to realize the harmful effects of the Volstead Act that was crumbling the nation as Prohibition continued to lose continuously more supporters from 1928. Another reason for loss of especially government support in the Eighteenth Amendment was the economical perspective. As the