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What is the background and significance of the 18th Amendment?
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During the Progressive Movement, people wanted to make the moral standard of the United States a bit better. One way to do that was using Prohibition, or to stop the selling and/or manufacturing of alcohol or other intoxicating substance.
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The senate passed the amendment on December 18, 1917. The amendment was ratified on January 16, 1919, having been approved by 36 states. It went into effect one year later on January 16, 1920.. . When Congress submitted this amendment to the states for ratification, it was the first time that a proposed amendment had a provision that placed a deadline on ratification. The validity of the amendment was challenged on that basis in Dillon v. Gloss. The Supreme Court ruled on the case in 1921, upholding the constitutionality of such deadlines.. . The amendment was subsequently repealed by the Twenty-First Amendment on December 5, 1933, making it the only provision in the Constitution to be explicitly modified.. . The ramifications of the 18th Amendment, which will forever live on to be remembered as "Prohibition", have reached into today. The Amendment eternally changed the notion that localized crime could not evolve into a full-fledged mafia syndicate; while also removing the facade of a utopian society without alcohol (or any other drug, for that matter) in its veins, because it is just one of the many luxuries that make up the plasma in the American bloodstream. Prohibition changed the lives and roles of moonshiners and rum-runners, transforming them, along their product, into the lifeblood of American speakeasies and mob dons, forever revolutionizing the American dream and image
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