Economic Impact Of Prohibition
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The economic impact of prohibition was immense as the US government was unable to collect taxes from an industry that generated billions of dollars in revenue. In addition, prohibition occurred during the Great Depression and with the closure of all the breweries thousands of people lost their jobs and had to struggle to make ends meet.
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The main of prohibition was to prevent people from drinking and thereby bringing down the rates of crime, death, and poverty in the country. However, when the 18th amendment was implemented, instead of having a positive effect on the society and country, the opposite occurred. Prohibition allowed organized crime to flourish at an exponential rate and it also saw an increase in consumption of liquor and bootlegging. Corruption among government officials increases and also more murders were being committed in the country.
While exporting, importing and producing liquor was banned in the country, the government could not do much to prevent bootleggers from smuggling liquor into the country from Canada and other countries. The law enforcement did not have the means to control smuggling and hence, liquor was still available for people to drink. In addition, prohibition saw closure of breweries and people just got laid off with no alternative means of income. Hence, many resorted to crime and illegal jobs. While some of the breweries diversified into out food products, such as ice cream, root beer, corn syrup and malt extract, many others could not. When the Great Depression occurred, it just did not make sense not to legally tax breweries when the country was going through severe economic recession.
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At the stroke of midnight on 16th January 1920, prohibition started in the US. The route to prohibition started many years earlier when the Anti Saloon League and Women's Christian Temperance Union joined hands to ensure that government enacted prohibition. They blamed liquor consumption to all the evil present in the society, like domestic violence, child abuse and lowered labor productivity. Hence, those who supported this believed that by making liquor consumption and production illegal, it would help to reduce crime, corruption and also help in making the immigrants more American.