Unintended Consequences Of The 18th Amendment Essay

Imagine thirsty and angry Americans scrambling through the streets to buy every last ounce of their final legal drinks from liquor stores and salons. Well, this is what the streets would have looked like on January 15, 1920, because the next day the 18th amendment would be passed. The Eighteenth Amendment made “the manufacture, sale, or transportation of intoxicating liquors” illegal. This time where buying, selling, and transporting alcohol was illegal, was known as the prohibition. It came with many unintended consequences, which impacted American society in the 1920s and 30s. Some of the unintended consequences during this time were organised crime beginning to flourish, the loss of tax revenue in the United States, and the making of unsafe
Since the 18th amendment outlawed manufacturing of alcohol, people who enjoyed a drink became a criminal for doing so. It was organised criminals that began to supply the booze to citizens. Bribing government officials began to become common and people began to vastly increase how crafty they with hiding their alcohol. They would put it in hollow out quenelles, fast books, and hip flasks. Even a whole black market was created around the selling and manufacturing of alcohol. Also, many underground clubs would purchase illegal alcohol and sell it to its patrons. Many of these establishments had to operate secretly and be kept hidden from the police. Bootleggers and mobsters, such as Al Capone, began to become the primary source that citizens would get there alcohol from. Al Capone was one of the most famous American gangsters and the leader of the Chicago Outfit during the prohibition. He made an estimated fortune of $100 million, which is around $1.3 million today. Capone became the crime czar of Chicago. He ran gambling, prostitution, and bootlegging rackets. Capone was later sent to Alcatraz Prison in 1934. Overall, one of the main unintended consequences of the prohibition was organised crime beginning to flourish, Al Capone being just one of the many example of
There was two ways you could buy alcohol during the prohibition years, the first option was to buy alcohol successfully smuggled over borders and into the United States, but the more inexpensive option was to make it homemade. Home-brewed beer tended to taste foul and have a sludge-like appearance. Also, homemade liquor could very well leave people paralyzed or even dead. These before they were often poisonous due to the high amounts of methanol used in the making process. Assistant Secretary of the Treasury Seymour M. Lowman said that “a good job will have been done if the fringes of society died off as a result of drinking poison hooch.” The government was overall doing nothing to prevent the deaths from happening. Overall, the making of alcohol during the prohibition was very sunsafe and usually resulted in