National Prohibition Takes Effect in the United States

On January 17, 1920, the Eighteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution took effect, beginning nationwide Prohibition. Ratified one year earlier, the amendment prohibited the manufacture, sale, and transportation of intoxicating beverages for beverage purposes, as well as their importation into and exportation from the United States. The National Prohibition Act, better known as the Volstead Act, supplied the definitions and enforcement provisions, classifying beverages containing more than 0.5 percent alcohol by volume as intoxicating and thereby including ordinary beer. National Prohibition profoundly disrupted the American brewing industry. Breweries could no longer legally produce conventional beer and were forced to close or seek alternative products such as near beer, soft drinks, malt extract, ice cream, and other foods. Some brewing companies survived the thirteen-year prohibition period, but many disappeared permanently, accelerating the consolidation of American brewing before legal beer returned in 1933.