‘Moonshiners’ brewed their own alcohol and spirits in the countryside where they could not be easily found. The problem with the alcohol they made was that often, they got the distillation wrong and the alcohol that was produced turned out to be highly poisonous, sometimes causing blindness. Nevertheless, people were not worried about such things; as long as they could get their alcohol, they were happy.
The introduction of Prohibition brought about a rise in gang crime. Gangs saw the business opportunity in selling alcohol illegally to the public, knowing that it would be popular. One of the top gang leaders of the time was the infamous Al Capone.
Al Capone was seen to the public as a normal man, despite his crimes. He was often seen pictured on the front covers of popular magazines, smiling. It seemed that no one ‘cared’ about the things he and his gang did. Among others, some of their businesses were prostitution, drug trafficking and running ‘speakeasies’. The public didn’t care that his gang machine-gunned several members of their rival gang led by Bugs Moran. Gang warfare never directly affected the public; they would go out of their way not to. Al Capone and many of the other gangs at the time were thought of as providing a ‘service’.
Prohibition also saw an increase in corrupt policemen; many of the authorities were bribed by owners of ‘speakeasies’ and gang members to ‘turn a blind eye’ to their criminal deeds. The lack of reliable police officers and the sheer number of people breaking the new laws meant that keeping an eye on, let alone bringing to trial, the criminals, was extremely hard for the government.
The 18th Amendment to the Constitution stated that alcohol for medical or religious purposes was allowed. Many people abused this and during the first two years of Prohibition, consumption of sacramental wine rose by 800,000 gallons and thousands of people rushed to their doctors for subscriptions to medicinal alcohol, most of which did not actually need the medicine in the first place.
Prohibition was originally brought into place to cut down on the amount of drink-related crime. Although it could be argued that in that respect, it succeeded, Prohibition generally failed. Gang crime was on the way up, there were thousands of illegal bars that could not be shut down by the authorities, due to the sheer number of them, and the majority of the public failed to keep the new laws put in place.
In 1933, after many months of debate that the new President Roosevelt and Congress introduced the 21st Amendment that declared Prohibition annulled.
