Alcohol is a substance that has been present for centuries. Evidence has been found in China, Egypt, India, Greece, and Babylon have proven the existence of alcoholic beverages for recreation and other aspects of society (such as religion) during the earlier periods of recorded history. In pre-Columbian America, civilizations throughout North and South America developed their own alcoholic beverages.
One of the primary uses of alcohol in the 16th century was medicinal. However, cheap, grain-distilled alcohol flooded the market in the 18th century after the British parliament passed a law encouraging the public to move forward with grain-based production. Alcoholism soon became widespread by the mid-18th century, with the annual consumption of gin, a clear alcoholic spirit, reaching 18 million gallons.
By the the turn of the century, attitudes toward alcohol were changing. It began to be seen as a vice, and soon the temperance movement was conceived, pushing for moderate alcohol use. This was due to an increase in poverty, especially in developing urban areas, and texts that linked alcohol-consumption with damages to one’s mental and physical health. The earliest of these texts had been written back in 1784 by Benjamin Rush, titled An Inquiry Into the Effects of Ardent Spirits Upon the Human Body and Mind.
The temperance mindset towards alcohol ultimately grew and grounded itself in the American Temperance Society, which was founded in 1826 by ministers Lyman Beecher and Dr. Justin Edwards. In the words of Dr. Edwards, its purpose was to promote temperance while allowing “[drunkards] die off and rid the world of ‘an amazing evil.’” Apparently many people agreed with this, and within a decade over 1.5 million members had joined ATS and pledged to stop drinking distilled spirits (a group of alcoholic beverages that doesn’t include beer or wine).
By 1920, this sentiment had increased enough to enable to passing of the 18th Amendment, which prevented the manufacturing, selling, and importing of alcohol in the United States. This was enforced by the National Prohibition Act, informally known as the “Volstead Act”.
Even though it had been supported by the ever-growing temperance movement, millions of Americans drank illegal alcohol through “bootlegging” (the highly profitable business of selling alcohol) and “speakeasies” (drinking establishments). The illegal nature of this time led to an increase in organized crime and the uprising of gangsters such as Al Capone, “Big Jim” Colosimo, and Johnny Torrio in New York City and Chicago, causing the purpose of the law in the first place to backfire. The bootlegging business skyrocketed with the stock market crash in 1929, prompting an investigation into Al Capone by the U.S. Department of Justice, leading to his arrest in 1932 for income-tax evasion.
During Herbert Hoover’s term as president from 1928 to 1932, the Prohibition era continued even with it’s acknowledged downfalls. However, when Franklin D. Roosevelt took office in March of 1933, one of his first motions was to sign the Cullen-Harrison Act. This amended the Volstead Act (which had enforced the 18th Amendment) to allow for the manufacturing and selling of “low-alcohol beer and wines”, specifically up to 3.2% alcohol by volume. By December of that same year, the 21st Amendment was ratified, repealing Prohibition at the federal level, though it could be preserved at the state and local levels of government.
States soon adopted minimum drinking age policies. At first, the majority of these policies set the minimum age to be 21 years old. After the 26th Amendment was passed to lower the voting age from 21 to 18, however, states buckled in their legislation and lowered the drinking age from 21 to 18-20 years old. Studies afterwards showed an increase in motor vehicle accidents attributed to alcohol consumption, and, in 1984, the National Minimum Legal Drinking Act was passed.
The National Minimum Legal Drinking Act required a minimum drinking age of 21 and threatened to take away 10% of all federal highway construction funds for the state. This pushed all of the states, territories, and national capital to comply with the act by 1995.