Speeding-up Prohibition Pursuing the summary methods which have done so
much to relieve the financial tension in the United States, President Roosevelt has in effect wiped out prohibition in a week by the simple expedient of persuading Congress to redefine the term "intoxicating liquor." By the XVIIIth amendment to the Constitution, which can only be re-amended with the concurrence of three-fourths of the forty-eight States, "the manufacture, sale or trans- portation of intoxicating liquors" within the United States was prohibited, and the Volstead Act in 1919 defined such liquors as those containing more than one-half of one per cent. of alcohol. That figure is now to be raised to 3.2 per cent. by a simple amendment of the Volstead Act, so that beers and light wines will at once be legal. Actually, therefore, prohibition of intoxicating liquors will be technically, in force still, but the consumption of liquors very definitely alcoholic will be permitted. There will, in fact, be a considerable degree of freedom and not much opportunity for intoxication.
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