Alcohol: A History

14. AFTER PROHIBITIONS, 1930–1945: Normalizing Alcohol

279 14 AfterProhibitions 1930–1945 normalizing alcohol The first two decades of the twentieth century saw more systematic restrictions placed on alcohol production and consumption than the preceding two millennia. They included the noble and not-so-noble experiments with prohibition in Russia/the Soviet Union and the United States and the quasiprohibition regimes in Canada, Scandinavia, and parts of Mexico. There was also the complex web of regulations enacted during the First World War in many countries to deal with particular challenges but maintained long after—regulations on production, drinking ages, and the serving hours of taverns and bars. In the following decades, from the mid-1920s to the 1960s, legislators in many countries wrestled with the tensions inherent in returning to more liberal alcohol regimes while simultaneously trying to restrain consumption in the interests of public health and order. Production and consumption sometimes reflected these policies, but they were also affected by economic cycles of depression and prosperity, the class- or race-based policies adopted by authoritarian states, and the Second World War. In December 1933, President Franklin D. Roosevelt announced that the Twenty-First Amendment to the Constitution, ending prohibition in the United States, had been ratified by the thirty-six states needed to carry it into force. But, not wanting to appear too jubilant that alcohol would flow freely again, Roosevelt drove a careful middle line, praising the amendment for restoring individual freedom but cautioning against the adoption of irresponsible alcohol policies. The amendment specified that the importation of alcohol in violation of state or territorial law was prohibited, effectively 280 after prohibitions, 1930–1945 giving individual states control over alcohol policy within their borders. But Roosevelt advised them against restoring what the antialcohol lobby campaigners considered the worst aspects of former policies. “I ask especially,” he said, “that no state shall, by law or otherwise, authorize the return of the saloon, either in its old form or in some modern guise.” In a further gesture to prohibition supporters, Roosevelt called for citizens to be educated to drink responsibly, to prevent the return of “the repugnant conditions” that had preceded prohibition.1 It was a careful statement that recognized the validity of prohibitionists’ concerns while rejecting their solution. Although alcohol policy was now squarely in the hands of the states, the federal government retained jurisdiction over matters such as interstate commerce in alcohol and the issuing of winery and brewery licenses. It established the Federal Alcohol Control Administration (FACA) to manage these and other issues, but that body (and its successors) largely adopted a handso ff position. The experience with prohibition had no doubt left the federal government with little appetite for driving alcohol policy. The first director of the FACA clearly hoped that public interest in alcohol issues would simply disappear. Much of the drinking during prohibition reflected the attraction of the illicit, he said, and once alcohol was freely available again, consumption would almost certainly decline. But officials must secretly have hoped that it would not decline too much or too quickly; the government badly needed tax revenues from alcohol to finance the public works projects that Roosevelt’s administration designed to help the country out of the economic depression. American citizens came through: taxes of $2.60 a gallon on distilled liquor and $5 a barrel on beer accounted for 13 percent of all federal tax revenues by 1936. The Twenty-First Amendment eventually produced the same patchwork of regulations as had existed before prohibition came into force. Some states were dry and others were wet, but each adopted its own licensing and consumption regulations. Many states that had adopted prohibition policies before 1920, however, chose to permit alcohol after prohibition was repealed. Clearly, the experience of thirteen dry years had soured many state legislatures on the wisdom of trying to choke off alcohol supplies entirely. Most of the dry states were in the Southeast; Mississippi, the last state to remain dry, went wet as late as 1966. While the legislators of some states did not hesitate to make alcohol available again, in other states the repeal of prohibition sparked renewed conflict as temperance organizations campaigned to halt any renewed flow of alcohol in their states. Florida, which had been more exposed to liquor smuggling than most other states and whose courts had been swamped by alcohol-related cases, is after prohibitions, 1930–1945 281...