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The Price of Prohibition

Abstract

Conventional wisdom holds that the Twenty-first Amendment's repeal of the Eighteenth Amendment's prohibition of alcohol was in response to changes in public attitudes toward prohibition. The authors of this Essay argue, in contrast, that Congress passed the Eighteenth Amendment on the assumption that income-tax revenues would more than compensate for liquor-tax revenues lost to prohibition. When the Great Depression sent income-tax revenues plunging, Congress proposed the Twenty-first Amendment to restore its tax base through liquor taxation. Thus, revenue considerations, rather than pure public sentiment, drove the repeal of prohibition.

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36 Ariz. L. Rev. 1 (1994)

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Authors

Donald J. Boudreaux (Clemson University)
A. C. Pritchard (United States Department of Justice)

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