The Eighteenth Amendment prohibited “the manufacture, sale, or transportation of intoxicating liquors” but not the consumption, private possession, or production for one’s own consumption. In contrast to earlier amendments to the Constitution, the Amendment set a one-year time delay before it would be operative, and set a time limit (seven years) for its ratification by the states. Its ratification was certified on January 16, 1919, and the Amendment took effect on January 16, 1920.I t was repealed in 1933 by ratification of the Twenty-First Amendment. This was the one time in American history that a constitutional amendment was repealed in its entirety.
