Go Get Wasted for America!

Did you know that yesterday marked the 75th anniversary of prohibition’s repeal? Alcoholics & social drinkers rejoiced nationwide on December 5th, 1933 when the 21st Amendment was ratified & it repealed the highly unpopular 18th Amendment, which banned the sale & distribution of alcoholic beverages in the U.S. It all began innocently enough back in the early 1900’s, when temperance groups gained popularity preaching about the evils of booze. They had a few good points. Drunks were sometimes violent asses, beating wives & children, and saloons were hot beds of seedy activity involving gambling, prostitution, and violence.

Unfortunately, legislating morality rarely works & prohibition of alcohol was no different. Organized crime blossomed in the era of the bootlegger (as did NASCAR) and the people were not happy trading drunks for gangsters. Also, where there is a will there is a way & boozehounds found means of getting fucking up regardless of the constitutional amendment. Stronger liquors & narcotics gained popularity, making those that drank really annoying to deal with since they were Fucked up (rather than fucked up, in the lower case). Bootleggers stilled their alcohol with lead-based chemicals or embalming fluid, leading to poisoning deaths and disabilities all over the country.

This nation built on the profits of colonial Rum was not about to go “dry” & the big cities held speakeasies, where binge drinking was all the rage. When the problems of prohibition became clear, everyone was on board to bring back legal booze. President Franklin Delano Roosevelt would later refer to it as "The damnable affliction of Prohibition." The Rockefellers, the Democrats, the Republicans, and slews of former temperance advocates loudly supported the repeal, along with an estimated 3/4 of American voters and 46 state legislatures. After the passage of the 21st Amendment, some states continued to prohibit boozing within their boarders, but in 1966 the last dry state, Mississippi, fell to the power of the buzz.

In conclusion, it is your patriotic duty get your drink on. Have a brew in celebration or at least in appreciation. People literally died for your right to get piss-ass wasted, Damn it! They died for your freedoms! Salut!