How Alcohol Prohibition Was Ended :: essays research papers

You saved the veryfoundation of our Government. No gentlemans gentleman can tell where wewould have gone, or to what we would have fallen, had notthis rustle been brought about. -Letter to the VCL, 1933This is a story about a small, remarkable group of lawyerswho took it upon themselves, as a self- appointedcommittee, to propel a revolution in a drug policy the rustle of the 18th Amendment. In 1927, nine grownupNew York lawyers associated themselves under theintentionally-bland name, "Voluntary Committee ofLawyers," declaring as their purpose " to stay fresh the spiritof the Constitution of the get together States by bringingabout the repeal of the so-called Volstead performance and theEighteenth Ammendment." With the modest platform theythus commanded, reinforced by their meaning(a) stature inthe legal community, they undertook first to draft andpromote repeal resolutions for local and advance barasssociations. Their success culminated with the AmericanBar connective calling for repeal in 1928, after scores ofcity and state bar associations in all regions of the countryhad spoken unambiguously, in quarrel and ideas cultivated,shaped, and sharpened by the VCL. As it turned out, thissuccesswas but prelude to their stunnung effectseveral years later. Due in large to the VCL"s ludicrouswork, the 18tg Amendment was, in less than a year,surgically struck from the Constitution. Repeal was areality. The patient was well. People could drink. Here ishow it happened. Climaxing decades of gathering hostilitytowards salloons and moral breach over the generaldegeneracy said to be flowing from bottles and kegs, theCocstitution of the United States had been amended,effective 1920, to progibit the manufacture and sale of"intoxicating liquors." the Volstead Act, the federal statuteimplementing the prohibitionamindmint, progibited affair in beer as well. At first prohibition was popularamong those who had suppored it, and tolerated by th eothers. But before long, unmistakable grumbling was heardin the cities. To control the uninterrupted demand for alcohol,there sprang up bathtub ginworks and basement stills, mischievousand discrete illegal supply networks, and speakeasiessecret, illegal bars remembered chiefly directly as where, forthe first time, women were seen smoking in public.Commerse in alcohol plunged underground, and concisely fellunder the control of thugs and gangsters, whoseorganizations often acquired their merchandise legally inCanada. Violence aften settled commercial differences-necessarily, it might be said, as suppliers and distributorswere denied the service of lawyers, insurance companies,and the civil courts. On the local level, widesspreaddisobedience of the progibition laws by otherwiselaw-abiding citizens produced numerous arrests. Courtswere badly clogged, in large part because tight alldefendents demanded jury trials, confident that a jury of