so always I thought that Prohibition was, like, a year or so long. surely that's how long it would take the nation to come to its senses, surely the limit on American shenanigans is two years. no it was thirteen years.

well it only applied to alcohol, not other things, and was selectively enforced, and there were still lots of 'workarounds' built and created and run so like. it was dumb as hell but it wasn't like the country was sober for 13 years

the Ken Burns documentary on prohibition is incredible if it's streaming somewhere you can access

it is absolutely bonkers how badly prohibition failed

"surely cider that is 1% alcohol that field workers drink to avoid being poisoned by their drinking water is fine, and a good christian amount of table wine is fine, and we're only talking about prohibiting, like, whiskey"
"no that's a slippery slope, all alcohol is banned"
"...wait what"

and now the average ABV is like 50% higher than before prohibition

FASCINATING.

looks like rn it's on prime with a pbs subscription or trial, sometimes it's on either prime or netflix vanilla tho

yeah... it was an entire amendment. That's something not even the supreme court can overrule. And President Hoover didn't want to overturn it, and his opponent in 1928 Al Smith who ran on overturning prohibition didn't get elected. (He was catholic and anti-catholic sentiment was high, plus other things like no great depression yet.)

this one's good too if it's news:

Prohibition - OverSimplified