Repeal of the Eighteenth Amendment

by Franklin Roosevelt

Whereas the Congress of the United States in 2nd Session of the 72nd Congress, begun at Washington on the fifth day of December in the year one thousand nine hundred and thirty-two, adopted a resolution in the words and figures following: to wit—

JOINT RESOLUTION

Proposing an amendment to the Constitution of the United States.

``Resolved by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled (two-thirds of each House concurring therein), That the following article is hereby proposed as an amendment to the Constitution of the United States, which shall be valid to all intents and purposes as part of the Constitution when ratified by conventions in three-fourths of the several States:

ARTICLE

``Section 1. The eighteenth article of amendment to the Constitution of the United States is hereby repealed."

``Section 2. The transportation or importation into any State, Territory, or possession of the United States for delivery or use therein of intoxicating liquors, in violation of the laws thereof, is hereby prohibited."

``Section 3. This article shall be inoperative unless it shall have been ratified as an amendment to the Constitution by conventions in the several States, as provided in the Constitution, within seven years from the date of the submission hereof to the States by the Congress.´´

Whereas Section 217(a) of the Act of Congress entitled ``An Act to encourage national industrial recovery, to foster competition, and to provide for the construction of certain useful public works, and for other purposes´´ approved June 16, 1933, provides as follows:

``Section 217(a) The President shall proclaim the date of

(1) the close of the first fiscal year ending June 30 of any year after the year 1933, during which the total receipts of the United States (excluding public-debt receipts) exceed its total expenditures (excluding public-debt expenditures other than those chargeable against such receipts), or

(2) the repeal of the eighteenth amendment to the Constitution, whichever is the earlier.´´

Whereas it appears from a certificate issued December 5, 1933, by the Acting Secretary of State that official notices have been received in the Department of State that on the fifth day of December, 1933, Conventions in thirty-six States of the United States, constituting three-fourths of the whole number of the States had ratified the said repeal amendment;

Now, therefore, I, FRANKLIN D. ROOSEVELT, President of the United States of America pursuant to the provisions of Section 217 (a) of the said Act of June 16, 1933, do hereby proclaim that the Eighteenth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States was repealed on the fifth day of December, 1933.

Furthermore, I enjoin upon all citizens of the United States and upon others resident within the jurisdiction thereof, to cooperate with the Government in its endeavor to restore greater respect for law and order, by confining such purchases of alcoholic beverages as they may make solely to those dealers or agencies which have been duly licensed by State or Federal license.

Observance of this request, which I make personally to every individual and every family in our Nation, will result in the consumption of alcoholic beverages which have passed Federal inspection, in the break-up and eventual destruction of the notoriously evil illicit liquor traffic, and in the payment of reasonable taxes for the support of the Government and thereby in the superseding of other forms of taxation.

I call specific attention to the authority given by the 21st Amendment to the Government to prohibit transportation or importation of intoxicating liquors into any State in violation of the laws of such State.

I ask the wholehearted cooperation of all our citizens to the end that this return of individual freedom shall not be accompanied by the repugnant conditions that obtained prior to the adoption of the 18th Amendment and those that have existed since its adoption. Failure to do this honestly and courageously will be a living reproach to us all.

I ask especially that no State shall by law or otherwise authorize the return of the saloon either in its old form or in some modern guise.

The policy of the Government will be to see to it that the Social and political evils that have existed in the pre-prohibition era shall not be revived nor permitted again to exist. We must remove forever from our midst the menace of the bootlegger and such others as would profit at the expense of good government, law and order.

I trust in the good sense of the American people that they will not bring upon themselves the curse of excessive use of intoxicating liquors, to the detriment of health, morals and social integrity.

The objective we seek through a national policy is the education of every citizen toward a greater temperance throughout the Nation.

IN WITNESS WHEREOF, I have hereunto set my hand and caused the seal of the United States to be affixed.

FRANKLIN D. ROOSEVELT 

THE WHITE HOUSE,

December 5, 1933.