Prohibition

"We could never abolish the use of liquor, until we made reality into something people didn't want to run away from."

- Upton Sinclair, The Wet Parade, published in 1931 in response to Prohibition

From 1920 to 1933, US federal law prohibited the manufacture, transportation, and sale of beverages containing more than 0.49 percent alcohol. Charles H. Baker Jr., in his Gentleman's Companion of 1939, calls Prohibition "the ridiculous drought," President Herbert Hoover tagged it the "noble experiment" in a letter to Senator William E. Borah, and just about everyone agrees that the government's efforts during that time did little good.

Most imbibers just switched to bathtub Bootlegging became big business, and legal enforcement and teetotalers were thwarted by moonshiners, rumrunners, and so-called medicinal alcohols.

Although more than 300,000 lawbreakers were convicted under the Volstead Act, which enforced Prohibition at the federal level, Americans spent nearly US$40 billion on bootleg liquor, and the lineage of nearly all classic cocktails can be tracked to this time. On 5 December 1933, the United States decided to cash in on this lost revenue, and the 21st Amendment, repealing the 18th Amendment and thus ending Prohibition, was ratified.