The United States Prohibition of Alcohol - Essay Example

The law of prohibition does not include the consumption and carrying of alcohol. As a result of this prohibition, the era faced a difficult time which was full of social unbalances. The illegal alcohol became the high income commodity that lead to the black marketing business during that period. The business of the racketeer was rising without any limits, in which strong and powerful groups started corrupting the agencies responsible for the enforcement of law. The demand for alcohol got sky high as it showed great potential to get smuggled.

The amount required for the enforcement of forbidden law was quite much and there were little revenues generated from the taxes i.e. $500 million collection every year from the whole U.S. that inversely impacted the economy and government exchequers. In 1933, the law of prohibition of alcohol got reversed through the implementation of 21st Amendment in the constitution. The black market group ultimately lost their shares in the illegal activity in every state of U.S as each state was enjoying the right to place their own developed rules and laws to counter the use of alcohol and the legal stores were introduced to sell the economical priced alcohol.

The illicit criminal groups found it difficult to sustain their profits and started the more dangerous criminal activity by dealing in other products like narcotics and drugs. Not just the formal legal control over the use of alcohol, the colonial America had some informal majors of controlling the consumption of liquor at home and social grounds in the community by maintaining the ideals that use of alcohol is bad and not at all acceptable. It was quite clear in the minds of the people that alcohol is from the God but the negative aspects are derived from the devil along.

Therefore, anyone found guilty of consuming alcohol will be punished by God and it is condemned at a greater scale. In case of failure for informal controlling techniques, the legal method was used to counter the effects. The violation was no doubt happening in U.S but the normal sobriety of the people reveals the improvement of the controlling system from formal and informal levels for the population that intakes over 3 gallon of alcohol/ person each annum. This statistic is much higher than the current rate of using alcohol.

There were some details that were given by the medical experts. Dr Benjamin Rush, a psychiatrist of the 18th century stated that during the period of 1784, that high consumption of (r is harmful for the physical health as well as physiological health. His idea was related to the moderate consumption instead of complete forbidden (Gerritsen 165). Under the influence of the revelation of Benjamin rush, 200 farmers of Connecticut community created an association in 1789. Same kinds of formations were developed in other states like Virginia in 1800 and in network in 1808.

In the next ten years, other associations were formed in more than eight states of U.S. out of which there were some that were accepted to the state level. In 1840, the prohibition movement or dry movement was initiated and expanded by the pietistic religious dominations; the most important one was the Methodists (Gann 358). During the years of 1830 and 1840, most of the associations that were formed started believing in the fact that the only way to avoid the state