Prohibition was the great national experiment in temperance that was enacted into law in 1919 and repealed a dozen years later. Prohibition was a national law, but prohibition movements had been attempting to change the law state-by-state for some time before 1919. California was a state much involved in this effort, and the way California treated the issue mirrored the way the rest of the country did:
Although a "wet" state alcoholically speaking, California joined the stampede to ratify the Eighteenth Amendment to the Constitution--and then enthusiastically ignored its prohibitions (Lavender 371).
Certain Californians had pursued prohibition as a political goal for some time, and there had been votes on the issue from 1913 to the time of the Eighteenth Amendment. After that, Californians
not only continued to consume alcohol as did much of the country, but factions regretted Prohibition because of the damage it did to the budding wine business in the state. Many of the histories of the period emphasize the way prohibition movements developed in California and how the affected voting in the era from 1910 to 1920.
Prohibition was created with a constitutional amendment--the Eighteenth Amendment--in 1919, and this came after more than a century of agitation by temperance groups over the social costs of alcoholism. The efforts actually began in an earlier era when saloons were associated with debauchery and degradation. The passage of the national act also came after a century of local regulation. It was also adopted at a time when a majority of the people in the United States wanted Prohibition to be passed, though many may not have understood that this meant that all alcoholic beverages would be banned. The law was intended to be a reform and not a social experiment. It was passed to improve the quality of American life. One of the reasons for its passage at the time was the increasing problem of public drunkenne...