On This Day in History: December 5

The end of prohibition

Subscribers please go to the home page to find today’s audio version.

Who likes getting fucked up? Answer: lots of people. Beginning in 1920, the United States tried to get people to stop drinking with the 18th Amendment, prohibiting alcohol. And everyone was immediately all “Oh, booze is against the law? As good citizens we shall refrain!” Yeah, no. They kept right on punishing those livers, and after 13 years the government said fine fuck it have your damn booze.

--On This Day in History Shit Went Down: December 5, 1933--

I wonder how many hangovers I could have avoided, or at least ameliorated, if I’d known at a younger age about drinking Gatorade before going to bed. Alcohol overindulgence is no joke. In the U.S. about 90,000 people die each year from over-imbibing, and roughly a quarter trillion dollars is lost each year, mostly in terms of hindered workplace productivity; I know I’ve put in some lackluster days due to day-after drain bamage. It’s also costly in terms of health, domestic violence, criminal behavior, and vehicle crashes. Temperance movements were well aware of the societal costs of getting fucked up, and they wanted to fuck up everyone’s good (and bad) times by making the devil’s drink illegal. And they succeeded.

But freedom tho.

With the implementation of the no-more-booze-for-you amendment, most people were no fuck you don’t take my booze. Actual consumption of alcohol wasn’t against the law, but the problem was getting your hands on the stuff, what with production, transport, and sale being illegal. The amendment had a modest effect in decreasing alcohol consumption, mostly in rural areas. But in cities it was all “Let’s motherfuckin’ partay!” like Republicans during Covid. And this was a boon for organized crime. Many historians assert prohibition created the mafia. Oops.

In 2015 in Canada one of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s election platforms was legalizing weed, and we voted for that handsome mofo and he kept his promise. In 1932 Franklin Roosevelt included in his platform bringing back the booze. It was the Great Depression, and people were depressed, and they were all fuck yeah let’s guzzle depressant by the gallon. Well, it was more about job creation and taxes, but whatever. FDR kept his promise too, and eight months after taking office, on December 5, 1933, the 21st Amendment saw the repeal of the 18th, the only amendment to be completely repealed.

Hey, Second-Amendment-loving ammosexuals. Just FYI that altering/repealing amendments is a thing that can be done. Cry about it.

Anyway, FDR acted even faster than that. He took office on March 4, 1933, and by March 22 he’d repealed the Volstead Act prohibiting sale of booze. But the highest concentration beer you could get until the 18th was actually repealed was 3.2%, which was a percentage someone pulled out of a posterior orifice. And that’s where all those jokes about American beer being like making love in a canoe come from.

Subscribe for access to cool shit:

Get both volumes of ON THIS DAY IN HISTORY SH!T WENT DOWN