On January 16, 1920, America became officially dry when the Volstead act prohibiting the manufacturing, transportation, of sell of alcohol went into effect. This act enforced the 18th Amendment which had been ratified a year earlier. For the next 13 years, the consumption of alcohol in America was illegal. However, the law did not prevent citizens from getting alcohol. Organized crime, which thrived during prohibition, quickly set up underground channels to transport booze all over the country, whether it was illegally manufactured in the US or transported from other countries.

Stills and Speakeasies opened all across the land, offering a sanctuary for those who which drink without worry of being caught by police. This illegal activity diverted much money from the US government into the pockets of criminals and other countries’ governments. Also, the large portion of the population who did not think alcohol was immoral saw the 18th amendment as an attack on their personal liberty. Eventually, the US government understood, that Prohibition, while it was a noble idea, could not work. Congress began to work on a solution.

On February 20, 1933, Congress passed the 21st amendment repealing prohibition. Unlike other amendments, which had called for state legislatures to ratify them, the 21st amendment mandated special conventions be created to vote on its ratification. Congress did this in hopes of getting the repeal pushed through the legal cogs faster than had it gone before state legislatures. Indeed this worked. On December 5 of the same year, the amendment became law. The 21st amendment read as follows:

Section 1. The eighteenth article of amendment to the Constitution of the United States is hereby repealed.

Section 2. The transportation or importation into any State, Territory, or possession of the United States for delivery or use there in of intoxicating liquors, in violation of the laws thereof, is hereby prohibited.

Section 3. This article shall be inoperative unless it shall have been ratified as an amendment to the Constitution by conventions in the several States, as provided in the Constitution, within seven years from the date of the submission hereof to the States by the Congress.

The first section repeals the eighteenth amendment. The third addresses the creation of conventions to ratify it. The second section, has been broadly interpreted. On the surface it prohibits the importation of alcohol into states which ban it. States had created their own laws dealing with alcohol long before prohibition, and this tradition still continues today. Many states, following the 21st amendment persisted on as dry states, with Mississippi sustaining prohibition until 1966. Today, many states still have alcohol regulation laws and many counties across the country, and especially in the South, retain the status of dry counties.