每日外刊丨0122 - 历史上喜好“酗酒”的美国，为啥会禁酒？

美国宪法第十八修正案 (Eighteenth Amendment；Amendment XVIII) 宣告酒类酿造、运输和销售是违法的（但是可以私下拥有和私下饮用），实质上颁布了酒类饮料的禁制令。第十八修正案在1919年1月16日达到足够数量的州认可，并于1920年1月17日生效。在修正案生效后，警察、法院和监狱被禁酒令相关的新案件淹没；组织犯罪以倍数成长，收贿贪污在执法人员间快速的扩散。最后，第十八修正案于1933年第二十一修正案生效后被废除，是至今唯一被废除的宪法修正案。

We're all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.

A century ago Friday, the 18th Amendment came into effect, outlawing the production, importation and sale of alcoholic beverages. Ever since, that day has been celebrated — or mourned — for formally ushering in the Prohibition Era. Contrary to popular imagination — including recent coverage of the amendment’s centennial — there was no mad dash for hooch on the night of Jan. 16, 1920, no “going out of business” liquor store sales on Prohibition Eve.

That the final triumph of prohibition was met with shrugs, rather than the outraged street protests we tend to imagine, says less about prohibition back then and more about our inability to understand it today. The entire idea of prohibition seems so hostile to Americans’ contemporary sensibilities of personal freedom that we struggle to comprehend how our ancestors could have possibly supported it.

For decades now, popular histories have concocted false stories that the majority of the public had never supported prohibition, or that prohibition was conceived by a “radical fringe” of Bible-thumping, rural evangelicals trying to codify their Puritan morality. We use the same language to vilify prohibitionists as we do to describe ISIS or Al Qaeda: calling them “deeply antidemocratic,” “extremists” and “zealots.”