Distilled and fermented liquors were brought from Europe for many reasons. Alcohol was considered healthy and medicinal, used for killing pain and soothing indigestion. It was also known as a curative and invigorating beverage. Some people even preferred drinking cider or beer instead of drinking water, since water in America was muddy and dirty.

However, drunkenness was condemned and punished, a signal of weakness. It was associated with domestic violence, family neglection, unemployment, and psychologic problems. In that scenario, a movement flourished defending moderation or temperance. Many leaders came up in different states, all of them influenced by Benjamin Rush’s tract of 1785. At first, those movements were small and segmented, but in 1825 the American Temperance Society was formed and unified many of those small groups. It had the support of both Catholic and Protestant churches and, as the years passed by, it split along two lines: radicals who defended total abstinence, and moderates who allowed some drinking. The Society continued pushing the states’ legislatures to enact statewide prohibition of alcohol, reasoning that such prohibition would decrease the number of unemployment and violence, at the same time that it would increase productivity. Because of this pressure, in 1919 the Eighteenth Amendment was established, declaring the production, transport, and sale of intoxicating liquors forbidden.

The 18th Amendment was repealed in 1933 mainly because of the profit that the government could have by taxing imported wines, gin, rum, and whiskey.

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