Okla-homey
3/22/2006, 07:36 AM
March 22, 1933 FDR legalizes sale of beer and wine
Seventy-three years ago on this day in 1933, President Franklin D. Roosevelt signs the Beer and Wine Revenue Act. This law; 1) legalized and levied a federal tax on beverages containing up to 5 percent alcohol to raise revenue for the federal government and 2) gave individual states the option to further regulate the sale and distribution of beer and wine.
http://img115.imageshack.us/img115/4080/s20ad5qp.jpg (http://imageshack.us)
Beer was back, because as beer afficionados know, 3.2 "beer" is not really BEER!
In short, this new law made legal the production and sale of beer and wine containing less than or equal to 5 percent alcohol, but left the states then option of further regulating these beverages -- of course, as we know, Oklahoma stuck with the Volstead Act's 3.2 percent alcohol standard.
Fourteen years earlier in 1919 with the ratification the 18th Amendment and the passage of the Volstead Act which gave the prohibition amendment "teeth", temperance advocates in the US had finally achieved their long sought-after goal of prohibiting the sale of alcohol or “spirits.”
http://img115.imageshack.us/img115/8241/zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzpro.jpg (http://imageshack.us)
Together, the new laws prohibited the manufacture, sale or transportation of liquor and ushered in the era known as “Prohibition" The original Volstead Act defined alcoholic beverages as those containing greater than 5 percent alcohol. The Act was shortly later amended to lower that limit to 3.2 percent.
President Woodrow Wilson had unsuccessfully tried to veto the Volstead Act, which set harsh punishments for violating the 18th Amendment and endowed the Treasury Department and its Internal Revenue Service with unprecedented regulatory and enforcement powers.
http://img96.imageshack.us/img96/4443/zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzj.jpg (http://imageshack.us)
Woodrow Wilson, as president, he urged Congress not to pass the Volstead Act.
In the end, Prohibition proved difficult and expensive to enforce and actually increased illegal trafficking hardly cutting down on consumption at all. In fact, if anything, the Prohibition Era's most enduring legacy was organized crime and a host of American crime syndicates (some family-run) which rose to national prominence on the profits from illegal distribution of alcoholic beverages.
In one of his first addresses to Congress as president, FDR announced his intention to modify the Volstead Act with the Beer and Wine Revenue Act.
http://img96.imageshack.us/img96/2812/zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzfdr8wk.jpg (http://imageshack.us)
FDR...the guy who gave back beer to America!
No fan of temperance himself, FDR had developed a taste for alcohol when he attended New York cocktail parties as a budding politician. While president, FDR refused to fire his favorite personal valet for repeated drunkenness on the job. It was sort of like "Arthur" in reverse. The old valet had been with Roosevelt since FDR was crippled by polio in young adulthood and he didn't have the heart to can him simply because occasionally did his job of getting FDR up, bathed and ready for the day while still toasted from the night before.
A masterful politician, FDR flogged this new law he described as “of the highest importance” for its potential to generate much-needed federal funds -- thru federal taxation of the now legalized production and distribution of beer and wine containing < 5 percent alcohol for a cash-strapped Congress.
FDR knew (apologies to Will Rogers) that Congress "never met a source of new income it didn't like" and included it in a sweeping package of New Deal policies and proposed legislation designed to vault the U.S. economy out of the Great Depression.
The Beer and Wine Revenue Act of 1933 made law on March 22 was followed at Christmastime of that same year by the passage of the 20th Amendment which upon its ratification officially consigned Prohibition to the historic garbage pile of laws which purported to legislate morality but instead just gave crooks a dependable and extremely profitable source of revenue.
http://img142.imageshack.us/img142/5192/zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzrepeal.jpg (http://imageshack.us)
Advocates for repeal of prohibition's strongest argument was that legalizing alcohol would deny organized crime gangsters their principal source of income.
Unfortunately for us, as a legacy of the Prohibition Era, the 20th Amendment gave the states broad powers to regulate the production, distribution and consumption of alcohol within their borders and Oklahoma to this day distinguishes between 3.2 beer as a "non-alcoholic" beverage (per the Prohibition era's amended Volstead Act) and thus legally sold in grocery stores from the stronger stuff now legal but which Oklahoma still insists must be sold warm in liquor stores. :mad:
http://img100.imageshack.us/img100/2583/insane7zo5lf.jpg
Seventy-three years ago on this day in 1933, President Franklin D. Roosevelt signs the Beer and Wine Revenue Act. This law; 1) legalized and levied a federal tax on beverages containing up to 5 percent alcohol to raise revenue for the federal government and 2) gave individual states the option to further regulate the sale and distribution of beer and wine.
http://img115.imageshack.us/img115/4080/s20ad5qp.jpg (http://imageshack.us)
Beer was back, because as beer afficionados know, 3.2 "beer" is not really BEER!
In short, this new law made legal the production and sale of beer and wine containing less than or equal to 5 percent alcohol, but left the states then option of further regulating these beverages -- of course, as we know, Oklahoma stuck with the Volstead Act's 3.2 percent alcohol standard.
Fourteen years earlier in 1919 with the ratification the 18th Amendment and the passage of the Volstead Act which gave the prohibition amendment "teeth", temperance advocates in the US had finally achieved their long sought-after goal of prohibiting the sale of alcohol or “spirits.”
http://img115.imageshack.us/img115/8241/zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzpro.jpg (http://imageshack.us)
Together, the new laws prohibited the manufacture, sale or transportation of liquor and ushered in the era known as “Prohibition" The original Volstead Act defined alcoholic beverages as those containing greater than 5 percent alcohol. The Act was shortly later amended to lower that limit to 3.2 percent.
President Woodrow Wilson had unsuccessfully tried to veto the Volstead Act, which set harsh punishments for violating the 18th Amendment and endowed the Treasury Department and its Internal Revenue Service with unprecedented regulatory and enforcement powers.
http://img96.imageshack.us/img96/4443/zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzj.jpg (http://imageshack.us)
Woodrow Wilson, as president, he urged Congress not to pass the Volstead Act.
In the end, Prohibition proved difficult and expensive to enforce and actually increased illegal trafficking hardly cutting down on consumption at all. In fact, if anything, the Prohibition Era's most enduring legacy was organized crime and a host of American crime syndicates (some family-run) which rose to national prominence on the profits from illegal distribution of alcoholic beverages.
In one of his first addresses to Congress as president, FDR announced his intention to modify the Volstead Act with the Beer and Wine Revenue Act.
http://img96.imageshack.us/img96/2812/zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzfdr8wk.jpg (http://imageshack.us)
FDR...the guy who gave back beer to America!
No fan of temperance himself, FDR had developed a taste for alcohol when he attended New York cocktail parties as a budding politician. While president, FDR refused to fire his favorite personal valet for repeated drunkenness on the job. It was sort of like "Arthur" in reverse. The old valet had been with Roosevelt since FDR was crippled by polio in young adulthood and he didn't have the heart to can him simply because occasionally did his job of getting FDR up, bathed and ready for the day while still toasted from the night before.
A masterful politician, FDR flogged this new law he described as “of the highest importance” for its potential to generate much-needed federal funds -- thru federal taxation of the now legalized production and distribution of beer and wine containing < 5 percent alcohol for a cash-strapped Congress.
FDR knew (apologies to Will Rogers) that Congress "never met a source of new income it didn't like" and included it in a sweeping package of New Deal policies and proposed legislation designed to vault the U.S. economy out of the Great Depression.
The Beer and Wine Revenue Act of 1933 made law on March 22 was followed at Christmastime of that same year by the passage of the 20th Amendment which upon its ratification officially consigned Prohibition to the historic garbage pile of laws which purported to legislate morality but instead just gave crooks a dependable and extremely profitable source of revenue.
http://img142.imageshack.us/img142/5192/zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzrepeal.jpg (http://imageshack.us)
Advocates for repeal of prohibition's strongest argument was that legalizing alcohol would deny organized crime gangsters their principal source of income.
Unfortunately for us, as a legacy of the Prohibition Era, the 20th Amendment gave the states broad powers to regulate the production, distribution and consumption of alcohol within their borders and Oklahoma to this day distinguishes between 3.2 beer as a "non-alcoholic" beverage (per the Prohibition era's amended Volstead Act) and thus legally sold in grocery stores from the stronger stuff now legal but which Oklahoma still insists must be sold warm in liquor stores. :mad:
http://img100.imageshack.us/img100/2583/insane7zo5lf.jpg