Repeal Day

It’s December 5th.  It’s a special day around here.  For one, it’s my birthday.  Secondly, and more relevant to more people, it’s Repeal Day.

The 21st Amendment

Ratified December 5, 1933

Section 1. The eighteenth article of amendment to the Constitution of the United States is hereby repealed.

Section 2. The transportation or importation into any State, Territory, or possession of the United States for delivery or use there in of intoxicating liquors, in violation of the laws thereof, is hereby prohibited.

Section 3. This article shall be inoperative unless it shall have been ratified as an amendment to the Constitution by conventions in the several States, as provided in the Constitution, within seven years from the date of the submission hereof to the States by the Congress.

Today is an important day.  It is a day in history, in which liberty won out.  Liberty was chosen over the nanny state.  Today, we celebrate Repeal Day, the day in which the 21st Amendment to the United States Constitution was ratified by three quarters of the states.  It repealed Prohibition by repealing the 18th amendment.

During that dark period crime rose and the societal ills for which alcohol was blamed were not solved.  Breweries and distilleries across the nation closed down.  Prior to Prohibition, there were over 1400 breweries in the United States producing a variety of styles.  Prohibition was repealed by degrees.  First, the Volstead Act, defining “intoxicating liquors”, was amended in April 1933 by the Cullen-Harrison Act to provide that beer with a strength of up to 3.2% alcohol was not “intoxicating”, and thus not prohibited.  This paved the way for American light lager to dominate the beer landscape for decades thereafter.  But times change.  People are discovering the tremendous variety of beer available with craft beer.  This is were we are today:

Raise a glass, and toast to our freedom.