18th Amendment
Eighteenth Amendment
Ratified January 16, 1919
Verbatim
Exact text as ratified.
Section 1. After one year from the ratification of this article the manufacture, sale, or transportation of intoxicating liquors within, the importation thereof into, or the exportation thereof from the United States and all territory subject to the jurisdiction thereof for beverage purposes is hereby prohibited.
Section 2. The Congress and the several States shall have concurrent power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.
Section 3. This article shall be inoperative unless it shall have been ratified as an amendment to the Constitution by the legislatures of the several States, as provided in the Constitution, within seven years from the date of the submission hereof to the States by the Congress.
Plain English
A translation that drops archaic words but keeps the meaning, including the parts courts still argue about.
Section 1. One year after this amendment is ratified, it becomes illegal to make, sell, transport, import, or export alcoholic beverages within the United States or any U.S. territory.
Section 2. Congress and the states share the power to enforce this amendment by passing appropriate laws.
Section 3. This amendment will not take effect unless ratified by three-fourths of the state legislatures within seven years.
Note: This amendment was repealed by the Twenty-First Amendment in 1933. It is no longer in effect but remains in the Constitution as part of the document's record.
About
The Eighteenth Amendment was ratified on January 16, 1919, and took effect on January 17, 1920. It established what became known as Prohibition, the nationwide ban on alcoholic beverages. The amendment was the culmination of a century of organized temperance movement activism and was passed during a period of significant social reform that also produced the Sixteenth, Seventeenth, and Nineteenth Amendments.
Prohibition was widely circumvented. The amendment did not ban the consumption of alcohol, only its production, sale, and transportation, which created a large illegal market. Organized crime grew rapidly during the period. Enforcement was difficult and unpopular. By the early 1930s, the political consensus had shifted, and the Twenty-First Amendment, ratified on December 5, 1933, repealed the Eighteenth.
The Eighteenth Amendment is the only amendment in the Constitution that has been fully repealed. Its presence in the document is part of the constitutional record, a textual reminder that the amendment process can be used to undo earlier amendments.