what was the underlying impetus that prohibition came to be?
375238
For all our cherished freedoms, Americans are by and large still very puritanical. If not for the "coastal liberals", the masses would probably not even notice as their rights are squelched one by one by this fascist Bush crime family
720841
Many people assume that marijuana was made illegal through some kind of process involving scientific, medical, and government hearings; that it was to protect the citizens from what was determined to be a dangerous drug.\n\nThe actual story shows a much different picture. Those who voted on the legal fate of this plant never had the facts, but were dependent on information supplied by those who had a specific agenda to deceive lawmakers. You'll see below that the very first federal vote to prohibit marijuana was based entirely on a documented lie on the floor of the Senate.\n\nYou'll also see that the history of marijuana's criminalization is filled with: \n\nRacism \nFear \nProtection of Corporate Profits \nYellow Journalism \nIgnorant, Incompetent, and/or Corrupt Legislators \nPersonal Career Advancement and Greed \nThese are the actual reasons marijuana is illegal.\n\nThe Mexican Connection\n\nIn the early 1900s, the western states developed significant tensions regarding the influx of Mexican-Americans. The revolution in Mexico in 1910 spilled over the border, with General Pershing's army clashing with bandit Pancho Villa. Later in that decade, bad feelings developed between the small farmer and the large farms that used cheaper Mexican labor. Then, the depression came and increased tensions, as jobs and welfare resources became scarce.\n\nOne of the "differences" seized upon during this time was the fact that many Mexicans smoked marijuana and had brought the plant with them.\n\nHowever, the first state law outlawing marijuana did so not because of Mexicans using the drug. Oddly enough, it was because of Mormons using it. Mormons who traveled to Mexico in 1910 came back to Salt Lake City with marijuana. The church was not pleased and ruled against use of the drug. Since the state of Utah automatically enshrined church doctrine into law, the first state marijuana prohibition was established in 1915. (Today, Senator Orrin Hatch serves as the prohibition arm of this heavily church-influenced state.)\n\nOther states quickly followed suit with marijuana prohibition laws, including Wyoming (1915), Texas (1919), Iowa (1923), Nevada (1923), Oregon (1923), Washington (1923), Arkansas (1923), and Nebraska (1927). These laws tended to be specifically targeted against the Mexican-American population.\n\nWhen Montana outlawed marijuana in 1927, the Butte Montana Standard reported a legislator's comment: "When some beet field peon takes a few traces of this stuff... he thinks he has just been elected president of Mexico, so he starts out to execute all his political enemies." In Texas, a senator said on the floor of the Senate: "All Mexicans are crazy, and this stuff [marijuana] is what makes them crazy."\n\nJazz and Assassins\n\nIn the eastern states, the "problem" was attributed to a combination of Latin Americans and black jazz musicians. Marijuana and jazz traveled from New Orleans to Chicago, and then to Harlem, where marijuana became an indispensable part of the music scene, even entering the language of the black hits of the time (Louis Armstrong's "Muggles", Cab Calloway's "That Funny Reefer Man", Fats Waller's "Viper's Drag").\n\nAgain, racism was part of the charge against marijuana, as newspapers in 1934 editorialized: "Marihuana influences Negroes to look at white people in the eye, step on white men's shadows and look at a white woman twice." \n\nTwo other fear-tactic rumors started to spread: one, that Mexicans, Blacks and other foreigners were snaring white children with marijuana; and two, the story of the "assassins." Early stories of Marco Polo had told of "hasheesh-eaters" or hashashin, from which derived the term "assassin." In the original stories, these professional killers were given large doses of hashish and brought to the ruler's garden (to give them a glimps
293674
Article [XVIII].(See Note 16)\nSection 1. After one year from the ratification of this article the manufacture, sale, or transportation of intoxicating liquors within, the importation thereof into, or the exportation thereof from the United States and all territory subject to the jurisdiction thereof for beverage purposes is hereby prohibited. \n\nSection. 2. The Congress and the several States shall have concurrent power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation. \n\nSection. 3. This article shall be inoperative unless it shall have been ratified as an amendment to the Constitution by the legislatures of the several States, as provided in the Constitution, within seven years from the date of the submission hereof to the States by the Congress. \n\nProposal and Ratification \n\nThe eighteenth amendment to the Constitution of the United States was proposed to the legislatures of the several States by the Sixty-fifth Congress, on the 18th of December, 1917, and was declared, in a proclamation of the Secretary of State, dated the 29th of January, 1919, to have been ratified by the legislatures of 36 of the 48 States. The dates of ratification were: Mississippi, January 8, 1918; Virginia, January 11, 1918; Kentucky, January 14, 1918; North Dakota, January 25, 1918; South Carolina, January 29, 1918; Maryland, February 13, 1918; Montana, February 19, 1918; Texas, March 4, 1918; Delaware, March 18, 1918; South Dakota, March 20, 1918; Massachusetts, April 2, 1918; Arizona, May 24, 1918; Georgia, June 26, 1918; Louisiana, August 3, 1918; Florida, December 3, 1918; Michigan, January 2, 1919; Ohio, January 7, 1919; Oklahoma, January 7, 1919; Idaho, January 8, 1919; Maine, January 8, 1919; West Virginia, January 9, 1919; California, January 13, 1919; Tennessee, January 13, 1919; Washington, January 13, 1919; Arkansas, January 14, 1919; Kansas, January 14, 1919; Alabama, January 15, 1919; Colorado, January 15, 1919; Iowa, January 15, 1919; New Hampshire, January 15, 1919; Oregon, January 15, 1919; Nebraska, January 16, 1919; North Carolina, January 16, 1919; Utah, January 16, 1919; Missouri, January 16, 1919; Wyoming, January 16, 1919. \n\nRatification was completed on January 16, 1919. See Dillon v. Gloss, 256 U.S. 368, 376 (1921). \n\nThe amendment was subsequently ratified by Minnesota on January 17, 1919; Wisconsin, January 17, 1919; New Mexico, January 20, 1919; Nevada, January 21, 1919; New York, January 29, 1919; Vermont, January 29, 1919; Pennsylvania, February 25, 1919; Connecticut, May 6, 1919; and New Jersey, March 9, 1922. \n\nThe amendment was rejected (and not subsequently ratified) by Rhode Island. \n  LOOKS TO ME LIKE THEY WERE CONCERNED ABOUT LIQUOR/PROHIBITION.
305009
Slave owners in the south exercised even more control over their slaves because they were afraid of another uprising. \nIn the north, anti-slavery petitions were sent to Congress and, to appease the south, the Gag Rule was implemented.  That is, the petitions would be automatically tabled without being read.  All of served to widen the gap between north and south and fuel the fire.
418570
Fantastic idea I'm sure.\nNow tell me how you are going to have this prohibition enforced? If you could actually find a way to do that, you would have managed to create the most perfect dictatorship I could possibly imagine.
5479
An amendment, duly approved by congress and ratified by the various states, by definition, cannot be unconstitutional. That is the whole point of amendments.\n\nEdit: I just wanted to point out that an amendment does not have to specifically repeal provisions in the original document. Only one amendment ever has, when prohibition was repealed, but every amendment has changed something in the original.
691175
Increased organized crime, especially in the cities.  You can argue that higher percentage of people were breaking the law because many people used even their own bathtubs to make alcohol in their home.  Speakeasies is the term used for places that were making it illegally.
488866
No, and ill tell you why. Long ago when drugs were actually legal and many of our forefathers used them everyone started using them. This was the time when slavery had just been abolished. They started outlawing drugs using the excuse that black men were using drugs and raping all the white women. I think that they still use stupid excuses these days, like it supports terrorism, etc. Give me a break. sorry, sometimes the things in politics really confuse me.
278622
By making drugs illegal, the government makes them more expensive and more difficult to obtain. The newspaper Chicago Sun Times had done a series of articles years ago that suggested that Prohibition was not as ineffective as is normally accepted. In fact, by making alcohol illegal the government was not able to stop the consumption or alcohol completely, but was definitely able to dramatically lower the per capita consumption of alcohol. This was a direct result of alcohol being more expensive and more difficult to obtain.\n\nOne need only look at the practices of modern sales and advertising for legal but unhealthy items to see what the legalization of drugs would do to harm the US. Advertising and marketing of items like alcohol, fast food, over the counter stimulants, pornography, along with their ease of acquiring, leads to the overconsumption of these items. This overconsumption leads to horrendous national problems such as a generally unhealthy lifestyle, shortened life spans, loss of productivity, increases in health care costs, and indirectly to the further erosion of the family, increases in the rate of bankruptcy, etc.\n\nAs the magazine THE ULTIMATE UNKNOWN has stated, the legalization of recreational drugs would lead to their legitimization, and that would lead to their general acceptance and overindulgence by everyone.
923613
Because the government makes a lot of money from them. Alchohol actually has some health benefits in moderation. Tobacco is just a big money maker
1186745
1919: 18th Amendment and the Volstead Act were passed that year. Some say, however, that Prohibition officially began the following year, 1920, when the 18th Amendment went into effect.
1027531
The 21st amendment was ratified in December 1993 and it repealed the 18th amendment.   I am a not aware of it having another name, but it end what is commonly called the Prohibition Era.
351581
In the United States, Prohibition was accomplished by means of the Eighteenth Amendment to the national Constitution (ratified January 16, 1919) and the Volstead Act (passed October 28, 1919). Prohibition began on January 16, 1920, when the Eighteenth Amendment went into effect. Federal Prohibition agents (police) were given the task of enforcing the law.
363049
The reason was alcohol poisoning
357063
The 21st Amendment repealed or "undid" the 18th Amendment. The 18th Amendment was referred to as Prohibition, and basically made it illegal to buy, sell, make, transport or possess alcohol (beer, wine, liquor). The 21st Amendment made it legal again to have alcohol but also applied some regulations and laid the groundwork for licensing and taxing alcoholic beverages.
781509
None.  It was enacted as a response to the searches carried out by England which were the primary reason for the revolutionary wat.  England was issuing "writs of assistance" to customs officers to combat the growing problem of smuggling to avoid taxes paid to England.
702093
This all grew out of the 19th century prohibition movements which themselves grew out of enormous alcohol abuse in the early part of the industrial revolution.   The IR made the production & transport of beer & spirits very cheap & allowed centarlized sales in bars & pubs.  Workingmen would often get off their mining or factory jobs & head straight for the local pub, spending their wages & staggering home drunk to beat their wives.  There was no welfare in those days:  If the wage earner spent the family funds, the family starved.  Prohibitionists & progressives supported closing hours to limit the problem.  WWI provided the perfect opportunity; Britain's Parliament cut day-time & evening hours, ostensibly to reduce absenteeism from defense factories & many US states did the same.  "Wartime prohibition," became popular even in Germany & in Russia where Vodka production was an important source of government revenue.  The US even made flat out prohibition the law from 1921 to 1932.  After the war & after prohibition ended in the US, most governments never went back to the old laissez-faire days.  These days,  the main argument for limiting hours is reduction of noise & crime & drunk driving, though many argue that mandatory closing times actually increase such problems.