PROHIBITIONISM. – In its modern sense, it designates legislation aimed at prohibiting the consumption of alcoholic beverages through bans on sale and, at times, on production and transport, with the purpose of addressing the manifold individual and social problems created by intemperance.
Australia, Canada, Denmark, Iceland, Norway, New Zealand, Russia, South Africa, Sweden, and Turkey resorted to this method with more or less radical forms of prohibition. The most complete and important application of this method, however, was that carried out by the United States of America, which adopted it on a national (federal) scale for 14 years, following nearly a century of local and state-level prohibition.
The history of American prohibition dates back to the early 19th century. Initially, it was a temperance movement led by numerous associations that, especially in New England, drew attention to the often irreparable disasters caused by the abuse of alcoholic beverages. The movement had a predominantly religious inspiration and guidance: in this first phase, it sought to address the problem of alcoholism through personal regeneration. However, the limited practical results led it in another direction: that of consolidating its organization within individual states and then, within a span of about twenty years (1826–44), creating three federations of national scope, using the resulting political influence to obtain legal restrictions and controls on production and sale. The weight and action of the temperance movement in this new phase led to a first wave of prohibitionist laws, adopted in several states around the mid-century; but within a few years, most of these were repealed, both because they lacked the support of a united public opinion and because the leaders of the movement were then engaged in the struggle against slavery, and finally because producers and sellers had managed to form an organized opposition.
A prohibitionist party (1869), which as such had no influence, and a women’s temperance union (1874), after the Civil War, promoted a second wave of prohibitionist laws in about half of the states of the Union in the last decade of the century; however, only in five states was prohibition incorporated into their respective constitutions, and in only three of these was it maintained after 1903.
The movement changed its tactics and, seeing in taverns the primary cause of alcoholism, set out to secure their suppression. In 1893, the Anti-Saloon League was founded, which obtained the adoption on a large scale of local prohibitionist laws and the closure of taverns across much of the national territory. The initiative, however, proved ineffective because a prohibitionist community could not exclude alcoholic beverages prohibited by law if neighboring centers tolerated them. Consequently, recourse was again had to state-level prohibition, which was applied on a large scale, particularly in the southern and western states. Moreover, since state-level prohibition proved insufficient—given that interstate commerce fell under federal jurisdiction and prohibitionist states could not control shipments sent directly from non-prohibitionist states to consumers—the movement worked to secure federal intervention and to have a prohibitionist provision incorporated into the national constitution. Thus, after a series of increasingly restrictive measures, on January 5, 1920, the Eighteenth Amendment to the Constitution was ratified, making nationwide total prohibition the law of the land.
The debate surrounding prohibition deeply divided the country, both before and after the ratification of the Eighteenth Amendment: the rural element was inclined to adopt prohibition voluntarily, while the urban element opposed it, even when imposed by law; employers strongly supported it, seeing in it a factor of productivity, whereas the working classes opposed II. From the outset, enforcing the law proved extremely difficult, especially in cities. The strong hostility to the measure fostered the work of bootleggers (smugglers), pioneers of gangsterism, and led to the creation of clandestine bars and taverns (speakeasies). Illicit distillation and direct fermentation were resorted to, and true clandestine industries were set up to meet the constant demand for alcoholic beverages. Even the authorities, faced with an overwhelming task, proved willing to engage in corruption and often ended up allied with lawbreakers. Prohibition did not achieve the desired effects: it reduced alcohol consumption among the less affluent but did not appear to significantly alter consumption among other groups. Opposition to the Eighteenth Amendment for a decade yielded no results, as the economic prosperity of the country during that period redounded to the benefit of prohibitionist forces, which attributed part of the credit to their initiative, citing as proof the increase in savings, the large sums channeled into other purchases, improvements in public health, the reduction in accidents, and so on. But the advent of the economic crisis marked a decisive shift in public opinion in favor of the anti-prohibitionist movement. It was argued, among other things, that the alcoholic beverage industry would constitute a rich source of revenue for the state. The presidential campaign of 1932 resolved the issue with the defeat of prohibition, which was repealed on December 5, 1933. The American experiment demonstrated that the problem of intemperance, even when addressed on a collective or national scale, remains a moral and psychological issue and thus must be resolved through methods of persuasion and personal therapy rather than through absolute legal bans.