N.Y. State Police frisk car occupants for bottles and booze. Prohibition in the United States was a nationwide Constitutional ban on the sale, production, importation, and transportation of alcoholic beverages that remained in place from 1920 to 1933. It was promoted by dry crusaders movement and coordinated by the Anti-Saloon League. Prohibition was mandated under the 18th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. Enabling legislation, known as the Volstead Act, set down the rules for enforcing the ban and defined the types of alcoholic beverages that were prohibited. Anti-prohibitionists, known as wets, criticized the alcohol ban as an intrusion of mainly rural Protestant ideals on a central aspect of urban, immigrant, and Catholic life. Nationwide Prohibition ended with the ratification of the 21st Amendment, which repealed the 18th Amendment, on December 5, 1933. No photographer credited, undated.