Why the fuck did American ban alcohol in the 20s?

Why the fuck did American ban alcohol in the 20s?

Like what the fuck

You'll hear a lot of ad hoc reasons but the bottom line was that men in industrialized countries were turning into miserable drunks and so there was a crackdown on alcohol all throughout the West in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. It was the War on Drugs of its day.
In France they famously focused on absinthe, they just attributed it all the ills of alcoholism and ignored other liquors.

fucking women mang

Yea but banning it? Just tax the shit out of it

Too many drunks + democracy + protestant women

Women voted for it in a landslide after they sent the men off the Great War.

Suffrage was not otherwise reevaluated.

That would only encourage people to drink their pay away and let their families starve.
You don't understand what drug epidemics do to slum-dwellers. See Djibouti's khat problem for a pretty similar situation to 19th century prole districts.

protestant men are cucked

Alcohol abuse was and is a huge social problem. Banning it didn't solve the problem, of course, but it's not like it's a crazy idea.

Yeeeeaaaaa, keep your lips dolls.

Alcohol isn't as addictive as drugs at all and alcoholics are a lot rarer.

It's pretty destructive to abusers, and its proliferation throughout western culture means that proportionally smaller addiction rates are still huge in a vacuum.

did the ban included beer and wine or only distilled stuff?

America has always been the land of memes, they just do the first thing that springs to mind without really thinking about it.

Progressivism.

Everything. Only exceptions were for medications and communion wine.

>More drug addicts than alcoholics

I dunno man.

>Alcohol isn't as addictive as drugs at all and alcoholics are a lot rarer.

Bullshit.

Everything. But you were allowed to make 200 gallons of "non-intoxicating" wine/cider at home per year. And wine could still be used for religious purposes and whiskey could be prescribed by doctors.

If I remember correctly one of the woman who had a big presence in the movement to ban alcohol said that men would drink alcohol and then go home and beat their wives because they were so drunk. I think she herself was beaten by her husband which was why she was so up in arms against it.

Largely the result of a strain of American Christianity that was anti alcohol as part of a larger emphasis on thrift and work ethic as what demonstrated one was worthy of salvation and/or among the elect. Those ideals spread through society gar beyond the religious groups. Although alcohol wasn't banned nationally local and state regulati6dated back to the 1850s and earlier. There was also a largely anti immigrant sentiment, as Anglo American sobriety and work ethic (or at least the fact that they drank in private at home) were contrasted with the beer drinking habits of Irish and German immigrants.

define 'drugs', and i'm pretty sure alcoholics have the number two spot of abusers after smokers.

This is the reason I've always heard for why women were overwhelmingly in favor of prohibition. The Christian arguments never made sense to me considering Jesus once turned water into wine at a wedding so that folks would have a good time. You'd think that denominations which pride themselves on their knowledge of the Bible would see this as endorsement of recreational drinking but evidently not. Wonder what rhetorical jiggerypokery they used to get around that.

>its not additive bro, its all natural bro
-t every druggie EVER

>There was also a largely anti immigrant sentiment, as Anglo American sobriety and work ethic (or at least the fact that they drank in private at home) were contrasted with the beer drinking habits of Irish and German immigrants.

Oh yeah, the KKK was hugely in favor of prohibition because of that, and they were also terrified of "negroes getting high on whiskey." And obviously there's the anti-catholic connection with the sacramental wine and so on.

They, and the Women's Christian Temperance Union, were some of the last groups supporting prohibition when the Volstead act was repealed.