The Eighteenth and Twenty-first Amendments

XVIII
Section 1. After one year from the ratification of this article the manufacture, sale, or transportation of intoxicating liquors within, the importation thereof into, or the exportation thereof from the United States and all the territory subject to the jurisdiction thereof for beverage purposes is hereby prohibited.

Section 2. The Congress and the several States shall have concurrent power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.

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

XXI
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 The eighteenth article of amendment to the Constitution of the United States is hereby repealed.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 therein 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.

I have had doubts before about whether it makes sense to combine some of the amendments, but there was no doubt here. Together these two tell the story of the only amendment to be so completely revoked. Some legal aspects linger in the government controls on the sale of alcohol, but otherwise something that seemed important enough to require a constitutional amendment rather than any other type of legislation became thoroughly ready for removal within thirteen years.

There may be a few lessons to be learned here.

One interesting side note is that at the time, Prohibition was considered to be a very progressive idea. We understand the term differently now, but Progressivism started as the idea that as science and technology advanced it must be used to improve the human condition. That sounds reasonable enough, but science and technology often have some growing pains. Around the time of Prohibition, another popular ideas was eugenics.

Many people blame the rise of organized crime on Prohibition, and can see a continuation of that with existing drug laws. The Federal Bureau of Narcotics was created in 1930, toward the end of Prohibition. One might wonder at the apparent lack of learning; shouldn't we have figured out years ago that criminalizing certain things doesn't work?

That line of thought would be ignoring the purposes of the War on Drugs, which is an important subject but probably too much to take on here. What may be more to the point is that it is not reasonable to hold on to a mindset where legal equals good. There can be many behaviors that are destructive but where criminalization only creates more problems.

Alcohol can still be implicated in many social ills, but there are people who choose not to drink it, who only drink it in certain settings, and people who find they can't handle it and may need to seek help. We can have those discussions without thinking that the answer has to be making it illegal for anyone to drink, and I believe we can manage that with drugs as well.

I don't have any books to recommend on Prohibition at this time, but I can recommend two books on drugs and law:

The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness, by Michelle Alexander

Chasing the Scream: The First and Last Days of the War on Drugs, by Johann Hari