We, at Beershara, love to indulge in a few drinks once in a while. It could be beer, spirits, traditional brew or anything that has a bit of alcohol in it. But imagine if we lived in a time when alcohol was illegal. If that is difficult for you, just imagine if Mututho became president. We would assume that his first rule of business would be to regulate the alcohol industry. Or we could be wrong and he could turn out an awesome president.
If your imagination fails you, all you have to do is go back in time to America in the 1920s. It might seem hard to believe at first but there was a time in that great nation when alcohol was illegal. Prohibition in the United States was a nationwide Constitutional ban on the sale, production, importation, and transportation of alcoholic beverages that remained in place from 1920 to 1933. Yes, 13 FREAKING YEARS!!!
It was promoted by “dry” crusaders movement, led by rural Protestants and social Progressives in the Democratic and Republican parties, and was coordinated by the Anti-Saloon League. Prohibition was mandated under the Eighteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. Enabling legislation, known as the Volstead Act, set down the rules for enforcing the ban and defined the types of alcoholic beverages that were prohibited. For example, religious uses of wine were allowed. Private ownership and consumption of alcohol was not made illegal under federal law; however, in many areas local laws were more strict, with some states banning possession outright.
Prohibition supporters, called drys, presented it as a victory for public morals and health. Anti-prohibitionists, known as wets, criticized the alcohol ban as an intrusion of mainly rural Protestant ideals on a central aspect of urban, immigrant, and Catholic life. Though popular opinion believes that Prohibition failed, it succeeded in cutting overall alcohol consumption in half during the 1920s, and consumption remained below pre-Prohibition levels until the 1940s, suggesting that Prohibition did socialize a significant proportion of the population in temperate habits, at least temporarily.
Nationwide Prohibition ended with the ratification of the Twenty-first Amendment, which repealed the Eighteenth Amendment, on December 5, 1933.
Is that a national holiday? It should be.
(info via Wikipedia)