Dbq Prohibition

As if becoming the decade of the worst economic bust in history, usually referred to as the Great Depression, was not enough, the early 19th century also came to be known as the age of Prohibition. For many years prior to the 1920s, a growing number of people had feared the damage alcohol could do to America. After years of work by organizations such as the Anti-Saloon League, the Eighteenth Amendment was passed and prohibition started on January 16, 1919 and continued until December 5, 1933. Although it was formed to stop drinking completely, it ended up being a resounding failure. It created a large number of bootleggers who were able to supply the public with illegal alcohol.

The Liberal party is making marijuana legal. This is a very bad decision but they are fixing everything the Conservative and the NDP are forgetting to fix. Crime and terrorism The crime back then was pretty high because of the government themselves. They made people lose jobs and as we’ve seen from movies and history when people don’t make money they choose to join crime because people go to great lengths to make money. In modern times such as these weapons and firearms have increased and been widely available to everyone.

The Reagan party helped promote the “War on Drugs”, which was a drug prohibition enforced on the United States. During this time, a hysteria over drugs had encompassed a large portion of the United States, resulting in laws being passed which prohibited the use of “illegal” drugs ( A brief history on the war on drugs). This was important to our culture because it started a longstanding hatred of drugs, where up until recently all drugs not for medical use, were illegal. Because this was becoming a bigger problem more people were being put in jail than ever, resulting in less space in prisons. The problem of less space in prisons, is still prevalent today, and doesn’t seem like it will fade away any time

Therefore someone will always fail to abide by the rules. Punishing all of the American citizens by the MLDA being raised to 21 is not the right way to go about and promote safe driving. The United States is not the worst place for drunk driving incidents; in fact, it is one of the lowest. According to Niall McCarthy there are more dangerous roads than that of the U.S., “58% on South Africa’s roads can be attributed to alcohol consumption… In the United States, 31% of all road accidents… In the United Kingdom and Germany, road deaths involving alcohol consumption are rarer at 16 % and 9 % respectively,” (McCarthy). South Africa is one of the most dangerous countries to drive in due to traffic fatalities encouraged by alcohol.

Jean Paul Balzac Ms. Seijo English 10 4 February 2014 Marijuana In 1919, alcohol was made illegal across the United States with the goal to better people’s lives and make society safer. During the fourteen years that the prohibition lasted, crime rate nearly doubled, unemployment rose, and tax revenue decreased. Eventually the ban on alcohol was repealed because of its negative impact on the economy and society. Now fast forward to the year 2015, where a common substance known as marijuana is illegal. It was made illegal in the 1930’s for the same reasons as alcohol, because it was believed that it was going to do harm to society.

A lot of people did not agree with prohibition and still wanted a way to get alcohol. Prohibition started because alcoholism and domestic violence was at a high and by getting rid of alcohol Congress thought domestic violence, bar fights and things of that nature would go away. Gangsters came to power because people needed a way to get alcohol and gangsters had it. But with the rise of gangsters came the rise of organized crime, which was just as bad if not worse than when people could freely get alcohol. One quote that explains how organized crime became more and more in power, “In Chicago a bare six months of prohibition has raised the total of crime, figured for the entire year, more than 25 per cent.

The ratification of the 18th Amendment to the US Constitution introduced a new period in American history most commonly known as Prohibition. It was the result of a nationwide temperance movement during the 1910s and ‘20s. The enactment of Prohibition led to a large increase of organized crime, the government lost millions of dollars, and there was corruption among government officials and police officers. The Anti-Saloon League (ASL) played a major role in the temperance movement against alcohol, starting late 1800s to early 1900s, with its establishment in 1893. The ASL consisted mostly of women, along with a few men.

The 1920s carried much change in society. Some of these changes were more rights for women, jazz music, and prohibition. The people of the 1920s were disillusioned by society lacking in idealism and vision, sense of personal alienation, and Americans were obsessed with materialism and outmoded moral values (The Roaring Twenties).Cultural changes were strongly influenced by the destruction of World War I ending 1918. America needed to recover and with it youth rebelled against the norms of the older generations. The prohibition outlawed alcohol to try and diminish the crime rate.

When president Ronald Reagan took over in 1981, the economy had been in the worst condition since the Great Depression (Shmoop Editorial Team).The crime rate increased drastically because of how bad the economy was. Violence, theft, and murder numbers increased significantly in areas where there were gangs and drugs. Overall, crime levels was so high that Congress had passed drug laws resulting in a rise in the number of U.S. prisoners (Woog

Many factors of the crack epidemic influenced the crime drop. First, the “precipitous rise in crack cocaine in the mid-to-late 1980s in America” made violence and crime increase drastically (Baumer and Wolff, 2014, p. 21). Since crime shot up, it made statistics seem to drop even more in the 1990s, especially for homicides, as stated by Levitt (2004). The shift from young people to a “graying” society is another point at which Baumer, Wolff and Levitt can all agree could be a cause for the crime drop of the 1990s (Baumer and Wolff, 2014, p. 20). As Levitt (2004) stated “those over the age of 65 experience victimization rates for serious violent crime that are less than one-tenth of those of teenagers” (p. 171) and since the young population got older, the crime followed in trend.