Do we need laws that prevent us from running risks with our lives? If so, then perhaps laws are needed prohibiting the sale of cigarettes and alcoholic drinks. Both products have been known to kill people. The hazards of drinking too much alcohol are as bad as or worse than the hazards of smoking too many cigarettes. All right then, let’s pass a law closing the liquor stores and the bars in this country. Let’s put an end once and for all to the ruinous disease from which as many as 10 million Americans currently suffer alcoholism.
But wait, we’ve already tried that. For 13 years, between 1920 and 1933, there were no liquor stores anywhere in the United States. They were shut down abolished by an amendment to the Constitution (the 18th) and by a law of Congress (the Volstead Act). After January 20, 1920, there was supposed to be no more manufacturing, selling, or transporting of “intoxicating liquor”. Without any more liquor, people could not drink it, and if they did not drink it, how could they get drunk? There would be no more dangers to the public welfare from drunkenness and alcoholism. It was all very logical. And yet prohibition of liquor, beer, and wine did not work. Why?
Because, law or no law, millions of people still liked to drink alcohol. And they were willing to take risks of getting it. They were not about to change their tastes and habits just because of a change in the law. And gangs of liquor smugglers made it easy to buy an illegal drink. They smuggled millions of gallons of the outlawed beverages across the Canadian and Mexican boarders. Drinkers were lucky to know of an illegal bar that served Mexican or Canadian liquor. Crime and drunkenness were both supposed to decline as a result of prohibition; instead people drank more alcohol than ever — often poisoned alcohol.
On December 5, 1933, they repealed prohibition by ratifying the 21st Amendment to the Constitution.
1.Which of the following was Not a characteristic reason for the proposal of the 18th Amendment to the Constitution and the Volstead Act?
2.During prohibition, illegal alcohol was（）
3.When enacting the prohibition laws, people （）
4.When enacting the prohibition laws, government officials assumed that （）
5.It can be inferred from the passage that （）
