Eighteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution Eighteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution The Eighteenth Amendment (Amendment XVIII) of the United States Constitution established the prohibition of "intoxicating liquors" in the United States. The amendment was proposed by Congress on December 18, 1917, and was ratified by the requisite number of states on January 16, 1919. The Eighteenth Amendment was repealed by the Twenty-first Amendment on December 5, 1933. The Eighteenth Amendment was the product of decades of efforts by the temperance movement, which held that a ban on the sale of alcohol would ameliorate poverty and other societal issues. The Eighteenth Amendment declared the production,
Eighteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution its ratification. That clause of the amendment was challenged, with the case reaching the US Supreme Court. It upheld the constitutionality of such a deadline in "Dillon v. Gloss" (1921). The Supreme Court also upheld the ratification by the Ohio legislature in "Hawke v. Smith" (1920), despite a petition requiring that the matter go to ballot. This was not the only controversy around the amendment. The phrase "intoxicating liquor" would not logically have included beer and wine (as they are not distilled), and their inclusion in the prohibition came as a surprise to the general public, as well as wine