Prohibition In The Roaring 20’s

5 Pages 1142 Words

When you think of the roaring 20’s, you think about people having a good time and partying, but most often people don’t think about what was going on behind that. Prohibition was started in 1920’s and was named “the noble experiment”. Though it was a failure, it was meant for good. They thought the banning of alcohol would reduce crime rates and improve health, among other things. It was such a big failure in fact, it raised the amount of alcohol people drank in the end. It also led many drinkers to start on other drugs such as opium, marijuana, cocaine and other harmful substances. It was not very likely that they would have used these drugs if Prohibition had never occurred. It makes you think how different things would be if Prohibition never became a law. Would the use of drugs be as prevalent as it is today? This was truly an age of downfall for all of America.
It is so hard to tell whether prohibition was a good thing or a bad law to pass, but either way people found a way to get around it. It all started because the people who originally started prohibition found the drinking behavior of Americans to be a problem. They didn’t want it to spread all around and grow with the immigration of Europe. With good intentions, they believed banning alcohol would make better workers and in the end, more productivity. They also believed it would decrease violence. So on January 12, 1920 America went dry officially. In the next twelve years, complete corruption, violence, and other scandals occurred. You would think after this alcohol would be very hard to get, but it was just the opposite. It became much easier to get alcohol then ever because so many people made a profit bootlegging. Alcohol was such an easy thing to come by, and believe it or not, during prohibition it was much easier to get.
Since this law wasn’t enforced as much as it should have been, crime grew even larger. People were willing to ...