The darkest time in this countries great drinking history is without a doubt “Prohibition”. In 1919 the passage of the Volsted act (better known as the 18th Amendment) banned the sale and consumption of alcohol. “Prohibition” defined anything containing 0.5 percent alcohol by volume as illegal. President Woodrow Wilson had tried albeit unsuccessfully to veto the Voldsted act, which set harsh punishments for violating the 18th Amendment and endowed the Internal Revenue Service with unprecedented regulatory and enforcement powers.
Prohibition, however, proved difficult and expensive to enforce. By 1925, in New York City alone, there were anywhere from 30,000 to 100,000 speakeasy clubs. While Prohibition was successful in reducing the amount of Liquor consumed, it stimulated the proliferation of rampant underground, organized and widespread criminal activity. Many earl supporters were disenchanted with the rise of gangland crimes. The Saint Valentine’s Day Massacre was a last straw for many. On February 14th, 1929 Al Capone’s Southside gang executed seven members of the north side gang while dressed as police officers. This was one of the grizzliest crimes of the 20th century.
Four years later in March of 1933, President Franklin D. Roosevelt sings the Beer and Wine Revenue Act. This law levies a federal tax on all alcoholic beverages to raise revenue for the federal government and gives individual states the option to further regulate the sale and distribution of beer and wine.
FDR was no fan of temperance; he had developed a taste of beer and whiskey while attending New York cocktail parties as a budding politician. It is even said that he refused to fire his favorite personal valet for repeated drunkenness on the job. FDR considered the new law exteremely important as it had the potential to generate much-needed federal funds and included it in a sweeping set of New Deal policies designed to vault the U.S. economy out of the Great Depression.
The Beer and Wine Revenue act was followed, in December 1933, by the passage of the 21st Amendment, which officially ended Prohibition. So the next time you get upset that you have to pay tax on your six-pack of craft beer just remember, it could be way worse. You could be paying tax and not have any beer and that is pretty much the worst thing imaginable.
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