Prohibition was introduced in 1920 as part of an amendment to the Constitution of the USA. It was introduced for a variety of different reasons including a wartime concern for preserving grain for food rather than for brewing and distilling.

chance to succeed however there were more to say that it was likely to fail. Alcohol was already successfully banned in 23 out of the 48 American states, which led people to believe that a national ban would have the same effect as the local bans were having in individual states. However, the areas in which it was successfully banned were mainly situated in ‘Bible Belt’ America where people lived according to the teachings in the Bible. One of these teachings was that alcohol and its effects were evil so people in the ‘Bible Belt’ did not consume alcohol anyway so the bans there meant no change for the majority of the citizens so of course a ban on alcohol would work there. Another factor that could have led to prohibition succeeding was the issue that it was German-Americans who were mainly responsible for brewing and distilling so the Anti-Saloon League used this fact to stir up patriotic feelings against the Germans at a time when America was at war with Germany. They said that buying alcohol would benefit the Germans and you would be being disloyal to your country to purchase something that would benefit the ‘enemy’. Nevertheless, this would not stop the large population of German-Americans buying the alcohol along with many other Americans who had come to America from other countries. An additional consideration that led people in the belief that prohibition would succeed was the cost of alcohol so people may have used the law as an opportunity to give up alcohol without seeming odd to others. Moreover, this problem would not prevent wealthy Americans from trying to purchase alcohol because they had the money to do it without sending their family into the downwards spiral of poverty. Also, to begin with the level of enforcement for the law was so high that even if people did not support the law, the prohibition commissioners could have worked hard to dispose of alcohol whilst gathering support. However, this hard work soon ended when the commissioners, along with the police, politicians, magistrates, party officials and clerks, began to accept bribes from gangsters and the owners of speakeasies to ignore the activities that were taking place around them. Even though there are many reasons that say that prohibition could have succeeded there are always more reasons that say that it was likely to fail. Perhaps the most important factor involved was the fact that unless a law is supported by the majority of the public then it is highly unlikely to succeed.         The failure of prohibition was likely because the ‘law went against the customs, habits and desires of so many American Citizens’. The ‘Bible Belt’ is an area of America where people live by what the Bible says; it says that alcohol and its effects are evil, so this is where nearly all of the support for prohibition originated from. So was the law introduced in an attempt to gain votes from this area? Its chance of succeeding was also restricted by gangsters, such as Dutch Schulz and Al Capone, producing alcohol because they felt that ‘Prohibition is a business, all I do is supply a public demand’. So the gangsters over-exploited prohibition because it produced them a lot of money. If the gangsters were stopped then the supply of alcohol would have been much less than the demand so people would have been unable to drink however this was prevented by the acceptance of bribes all over American as shown by the cartoon ‘The National Gesture’. The arrests that were made for alcohol related offences increased during prohibition, which shows that people were willing to break the law, and that alcohol was still readily available. This made failure likely because it demonstrates how people did not listen to nor care about the law and intended to ignore it whatever the consequence.         The sources present more reasons why the failure of prohibition was inevitable even though they do also say that there was a chance of it succeeding. It was the strength of the movement , which was based in ‘Bible Belt’ America, that was also its weakness because the urban areas did not share the values of ‘Bible Belt’ America which led to the inevitable, according to the sources, failure of prohibition.