The Eighteenth Amendment

The Text

Section 1. After one year from the ratification of this article the manufacture, sale, or transportation of intoxicating liquors within, the importation thereof into, or the exportation thereof from the United States and all territory subject to the jurisdiction thereof for beverage purposes is hereby prohibited.

Section 2. The Congress and the several States shall have concurrent power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.

What It Says

The manufacture, sale, transport, import, and export of alcoholic beverages is banned nationwide. Repealed by the Twenty-First Amendment in 1933.

What It Protects Against

Nothing. This is the only amendment that restricts private conduct rather than government power, and the only one ever repealed. It is here because it is the record of what happens when the amendment process is used to legislate behavior.

Protocol Media reading. Not sourced to a ratification-era document.

Problem Addressed

A decades-long temperance movement secured a constitutional ban on alcohol. Enforcement produced large-scale organized crime and widespread noncompliance, and the amendment was repealed fourteen years later.