Dry state

A dry state is a state in the United States in which the manufacture, distribution, importation, and sale of alcoholic beverages are prohibited or tightly restricted. While some states, such as North Dakota, entered the United States as dry states, others went dry after passage of prohibition legislation. Currently, no state in the United States remains completely dry, but some states contain dry counties.

Prior to the adoption of nationwide prohibition in 1920, state legislatures in the United States passed local option laws that allowed a county or township to go dry if it chose to do so.[1] The Maine law, passed in 1851 in Maine, was among the first statutory implementations of the developing temperance movement in the United States.[2] Following Maine's lead, prohibition laws were soon passed in the states of Delaware, Ohio, Illinois, Rhode Island, Minnesota, Massachusetts, Connecticut, Pennsylvania, and New York; however, all but one were repealed.[3] The debate over prohibition increased in the United States during the late nineteenth and early twentieth century as the drys, including the Woman's Christian Temperance Union (WCTU), the National Prohibition Party, the Anti-Saloon League, and others, continued to support temperance and prohibition legislation, while the wets opposed it.[3] By 1913 nine states had statewide prohibition and 31 others had local option laws, placing more than 50 percent of the United States population under some form of alcohol prohibition.[3]

Following two unsuccessful attempts at national prohibition legislation (one in 1913 and the other in 1915), Congress approved a resolution on December 18, 1917, to prohibit the manufacture, sale, transportation, and importation of alcoholic beverages in the United States.[4] The resolution was sent to the states for ratification and became the Eighteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. On January 8, 1918, Mississippi became the first state to ratify the amendment and on January 16, 1919, Nebraska became the 36th state to do so, securing its passage with the required three-fourths of the states.[5] By the end of February 1919, only three states remained as hold-outs to ratification: New Jersey, Connecticut, and Rhode Island.[3] The National Prohibition Act, also known as the Volstead Act, was enacted on October 18, 1919. Prohibition in the United States went into effect on January 17, 1920.[3] Nationwide prohibition was repealed in 1933 with the passage of the Twenty-first Amendment on February 20 and its ratification on December 5.[6]

Chronological list of dry states

This list is incomplete; you can help by expanding it.

This table lists the effective dates each state went dry and any dates of repeal that do not coincide with the end of national prohibition in 1933.

State Dry Date Repeal Date
Maine 1851 1856
Vermont 1853 1902
Kansas[7][8] 1880-11-23 1948
Iowa[9][10][11][12] 1882-07-27 1894
North Dakota[8] 1889-11-02 1932
Mississippi[8] 1908-12-31 1966
Alabama[8] 1915-07-01
Georgia[8] 1908-01-01
Oklahoma 1907-09-17 1959
North Carolina[8][13] 1909-01-01 1937
Tennessee[8] 1909-07-01
Oregon[8] 1916-01-01
West Virginia[8] 1914-07-01
Washington[8] 1916-01-01
Montana[8] 1918-12-31
South Dakota[8] 1917-07-01
Nebraska[8] 1917-05-01
Indiana[14] 1918
Michigan[8] 1918-04-30
Florida 1918-12-09
Kentucky[15] 1919-11[16]
Texas[17] 1919-05 1935
Virginia[8] 1916-11-01
South Carolina[8] 1915-12-31
Idaho[8] 1916-01-01
Colorado[8] 1916-01-01
Arkansas[8] 1916-01-01
Arizona[8] 1915-01-01

See also

Notes

  1. ↑ James H. Madison (1982). Indiana Through Tradition and Change: A History of the Hoosier State and Its People, 1920-1945. The History of Indiana 5. Indianapolis: Indiana Historical Society. p. 40.
  2. ↑ Henry Stephen Clubb (1856). The Maine Liquor Law: Its Origin, History, and Results, Including a Life of Hon. Neal Dow. Fowler and Wells, for the Maine Law Statistical Society. Retrieved 2013-10-23.
  3. ↑ 3.0 3.1 3.2 3.3 3.4 Jane McGrew. "History of Alcohol Prohibition". National Commission on Marijuana and Drug Abuse. Retrieved 2013-10-22.
  4. ↑ "Prohibition wins in Senate, 47 to 8" (PDF). New York Times. December 19, 1917. p. 6. Retrieved 2013-10-22.
  5. ↑ See U.S. Const. art. V.
  6. ↑ "Amendments 11-27". US National Archives.
  7. ↑ "Kansas Liquor Laws" (pdf). Kansas Legislative Research Department. February 24, 2003. Archived from the original on October 22, 2013. Retrieved September 24, 2014.
  8. ↑ 8.0 8.1 8.2 8.3 8.4 8.5 8.6 8.7 8.8 8.9 8.10 8.11 8.12 8.13 8.14 8.15 8.16 8.17 8.18 8.19 The Anti-Prohibition Manual: A Summary of Facts and Figures Dealing with Prohibition, 1917. Cincinnati, Ohio: National Association of Distillers and Wholesale Dealers. 1917. p. 8.
  9. ↑ "Prohibition Rule: Murder in Sioux City". Wild West Magazine. Retrieved 2013-03-27.
  10. ↑ "Original Gangsters: The Iowa City Beer Riots of 1884". Little Village Magazine. Retrieved 2013-03-27.
  11. ↑ "Sioux City's Prohibition Past Fascinates Historians". The Sioux City Journal. Retrieved 2013-03-27.
  12. ↑ "Beer Business Has Been In-and-Out Venture Here, but Whisky Has Flowed Freely Much of the Time". Sioux City Journal. Retrieved 2013-03-27.
  13. ↑ Patrick Horn, "The Temperance Movement in North Carolina"
  14. ↑ Passed in 1917, subsequent attempts to overturn the law failed in 1918, when a court ruled Indiana's statewide prohibition law as constitutional and the state went dry. See Jason S. Lantzer (2009). 'Prohibition is Here to Stay': The Reverend Edward S. Shumaker and the Dry Crusade in Indiana. Notre Dame, Indiana: University of Notre Dame Press. pp. 80–83. ISBN 978-0-268-03383-5.
  15. ↑ Jim Warren (2011-10-18). "Revisiting Prohibition: Kentucky was ahead of the times". Lexington Herald-Leader. Retrieved 2013-10-01.
  16. ↑ Date the state prohibition law was passed.
  17. ↑ The Anti-Prohibition Manual: A Summary of Facts and Figures Dealing with Prohibition, 1918. Cincinnati, Ohio: National Association of Distillers and Wholesale Dealers. 1918. p. 8.