"Lips that touch liquor, shall not touch ours!"

If you were alive during Prohibition and came upon the following poster... I mean seriously, would you quit drinking?

In the United States, the term "Prohibition" refers to the period 1920 to 1933, during which the sale, manufacture, and transportation of alcohol for consumption were banned nationally as mandated in the Eighteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution. Prohibition of alcohol can also refer to the antecedent religious and political temperance movements calling for sumptuary laws to end or encumber alcohol use.

Following significant pressure on lawmakers as a result of the temperance movement, the United States Senate passed the Eighteenth Amendment on December 18, 1917. The "Volstead Act," the popular name for the National Prohibition Act, passed Congress over President Woodrow Wilson's veto on October 28, 1918 and established the legal definition of intoxicating liquor as well as providing for enforcement of Prohibition. The 18th Amendment was certified as ratified on January 29, 1919, having been approved by 36 states, and went into effect on a Federal level on January 29, 1920. Some state legislatures had already enacted statewide prohibition prior to the ratification of the Eighteenth Amendment.

As Prohibition became increasingly unpopular during the Great Depression, especially in large cities, "Repeal" was eagerly anticipated. On March 23, 1933, President Franklin Roosevelt signed into law an amendment to the Volstead Act known as the Cullen-Harrison Act, allowing the manufacture and sale of certain kinds of alcoholic beverages. The Eighteenth Amendment was repealed with ratification of the Twenty-first Amendment, on December 5, 1933.