On December 5, 1933, the United States ratified the Twenty-first Amendment, officially ending Prohibition. After nearly 14 years of nationwide alcohol bans under the Eighteenth Amendment, Americans could legally brew, sell, and drink again — and the federal government could finally step away from policing what was in your glass.

Prohibition had been launched with moral ambition and wartime momentum, but the country it created was something else entirely: booming black markets, speakeasies as social lifelines, and organized crime growing richer by the minute. Repeal didn’t instantly solve those problems, but it marked a national admission that the experiment had cracked under its own weight.

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The TTC Team

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