Prohibition in the United States lasted 13 years, 10 months, and 18 days. The federal ban on alcohol took effect on January 17, 1920, and ended on December 5, 1933, when the Twenty-First Amendment repealed it.1U.S. House of Representatives: History, Art & Archives. The Ratification of the Twenty-first Amendment That figure covers the nationwide constitutional ban only. Several states kept their own prohibition laws in force well after 1933, and hundreds of local jurisdictions are still dry today.
Why Prohibition Started in 1920, Not 1919
The Eighteenth Amendment was ratified on January 16, 1919, once three-quarters of state legislatures approved it.2Congress.gov. Eighteenth Amendment – Ratification Deadline Ratification did not start the clock on enforcement. The amendment’s own text delayed the ban until “one year from the ratification of this article,” giving the alcohol industry twelve months to shut down.3Congress.gov. U.S. Constitution – Eighteenth Amendment That grace period expired on January 17, 1920, and from that date the manufacture, sale, and transport of intoxicating liquor for beverage purposes became a federal constitutional violation.
Congress had already passed the National Prohibition Act, known as the Volstead Act, in 1919 to define and enforce the ban. It set the legal threshold at any beverage containing 0.5 percent alcohol by volume or more.5Congress.gov. Amdt18.5 Volstead Act
How Prohibition Ended in 1933
Full repeal came on December 5, 1933, when Utah became the thirty-sixth state to ratify the Twenty-First Amendment, hitting the three-quarters threshold needed to change the Constitution.4U.S. House of Representatives: History, Art & Archives. The Ratification of the Twenty-first Amendment The Twenty-First remains the only constitutional amendment approved through state ratifying conventions rather than state legislatures, a route chosen to sidestep lawmakers seen as more sympathetic to dry interests than the general public.6Congress.gov. U.S. Constitution – Twenty-First Amendment
Section 2 of the amendment handed alcohol regulation to the states and prohibited transporting alcohol into any state in violation of that state’s own laws.7Congress.gov. Twenty-First Amendment Section 2 The federal ban was gone, but states were free to stay dry.
The First Crack: Beer Returned in April 1933
The absolute ban ended before full repeal. President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed the Cullen-Harrison Act on March 22, 1933, redefining “intoxicating liquor” to exclude beer and wine containing no more than 3.2 percent alcohol by weight.8GovTrack. 48 Stat. 16 – An Act to Provide Revenue by the Taxation of Certain Nonintoxicating Liquor The law took effect on April 7, 1933. Chicago alone saw an estimated $5 million in beer sales that day. Spirits and full-strength alcohol stayed illegal at the federal level until December, but for breweries and low-alcohol winemakers the ban was already over.
What Prohibition Never Actually Banned
Drinking itself was never illegal under federal Prohibition. The Eighteenth Amendment reached the manufacture, sale, and transport of intoxicating liquors and said nothing about possessing or consuming them.3Congress.gov. U.S. Constitution – Eighteenth Amendment Alcohol purchased or stored before January 17, 1920 could legally be consumed at home throughout the dry years. The law targeted the supply chain, not the drinker.
How Long Prohibition Lasted at the State and Local Level
The 13-year count applies only to the federal ban. Because the Twenty-First Amendment left alcohol policy to the states, repeal reached different places at very different speeds.
Kansas voters rejected a 1934 referendum to legalize liquor and kept the state ban until 1948, when a constitutional amendment finally authorized the legislature to regulate alcohol sales. That amendment still declared the “open saloon” to be “forever prohibited.”
Mississippi held out the longest. Voters turned down repeal in 1934 and again in 1952, and the legislature took up the question without resolution in 1960 and 1964. The state had been taxing illegal alcohol sales at 10 percent since 1944, collecting revenue on a product it still banned. Statewide Prohibition was finally repealed in 1966, making Mississippi the last state to do so. The new law let counties set their own policies.
That county-by-county pattern is still with us. Hundreds of jurisdictions across the country, concentrated in the South and Midwest, restrict or completely prohibit alcohol sales at the local level. For residents of those places, some version of Prohibition never ended.