We have all heard of the prohibition era. Popularly, it refers to the period from 1920-1933 during which it was illegal to sell, transport, and import alcohol in the US. National prohibition was enacted by the 18th amendment and repealed by the 21st amendment. That’s the basic picture.
But did you know that there were state alcohol prohibitions prior to the national one? In fact, there were 3 major waves of state alcohol prohibitions. The first was in the 1850s, the 2nd was in the 1880s, and then the 3rd preceded the 18th amendment. The image below illustrates the number of states that had statewide dry policies. You can see the first two waves and then the tsunami just prior to 1920.
There are two other things worth noting in the graph: 1) The majority of states never had statewide prohibition prior to 1917. It was mostly a small minority of rural states. 2) States that did enact their own prohibitions often repealed it after only a short stint of their experiment. Teetotalers paved the way for national prohibition. But history wasn’t exactly optimistic about prohibition’s durability as a policy.
Indeed, there is a similar patchwork of reversals after national prohibition. Some states kept prohibition, some allowed counties to be dry, and some prohibited county prohibition. Almost all kept complex and diverse systems of taxation and regulation. That’s were we get the silly alcohol laws that many states still have today.
Economist Writing Every Day 