The18th and 21st Amendments are a prime example of historical revisionism in a single, relatively short time period.

Let's break it down.

First off, the 18th Amendment was super popular at the time it was passed. It gained steam over the course of a hundred years. Even before that, people generally knew alcohol could be a problem. It's no coincidence that the first armed insurrection against the U.S. government had the word "Whiskey" right there in the title.

At the time, a lot of people thought that if it was illegal to get alcohol, then the social ills caused by alcohol would go away. People would stop getting into drunken fights, stop beating their wives and children, and generally stop behaving like jerks. It's an understandable mode of thought, right? Right.

What they didn't realize is that making alcohol illegal wasn't going to suddenly get rid of the desire to drink it. It might have even increased that desire. After all, the whole "forbidden fruit" concept—where humans want something we can't have—has been known since the Bible. Which was written, like, forever ago. So now you had a commodity people really wanted, was cool and glamorous, but hard to get.

What's next?

If you said "organized crime," congratulations, you've been paying attention. The black market that sprung up almost overnight was worth crazy amounts of money. Like Bill Gates levels of money. With all that money on the line, criminals were willing to kill each other over it.

Immutable? Nah.

By the time the '30s rolled in with the Great Depression, the U.S. had a bad case of buyer's remorse. It was time to call the grand experiment a failure. Essentially you have two Constitutional Amendments that do absolutely nothing now. They're like legal tonsils just hanging onto the document as visible evidence of the country's change of heart.

They remain an important part of the document for two reasons, though.

The first is that they are the best demonstration that the Constitution is in fact a living document. Granted, the Founders said as much when they called the Bill of Rights a bunch of "amendments" (as in, "changes") and included provisions for changing their words. But in this case, you have one Amendment that exists only to disallow another Amendment.

So yes, change is totally in play.

The second reason it's important is that it shows that prohibition, in this case of alcohol, was tried and in the eyes of the people, failed harder than a dog trying to help you with trig homework and therefore needed to be reversed. The question is, does this apply to modern prohibition of other drugs? Should everything be illegal? Should nothing? Should some things, and if so, which things?

The Ghosts of Prohibition

The conventional wisdom is that Prohibition was an epic fail. It wasn't hard to get a drink during Prohibition at any one of a zillion illegal establishments, and you could still make wine and beer at home if you knew how and didn't sell it or take it to a party. And yes, gangland crime escalated and enforcement of the Volstead Act was a disaster for the most part.

And yet…

Drinking did decrease substantially—some estimates  put it at 30%—during the '20s, and stayed that way for decades. Hospitalizations for alcohol-related conditions decreased. Public drunkenness became less acceptable. Alcohol abuse was understood as the real public health issue that it is. The Temperance Movement highlighted the connection between alcoholism and family violence. Those were positive effects of the 18th Amendment, but it was probably hard to appreciate that when you were dreaming of a cold beer or hiding from the Capone gang.

After Prohibition, control over alcohol—where and when you could buy it, how old you had to be to drink it, etc.—was turned back to the states. States still control those things, and none of them think you should be able to buy it everywhere, all the time, no matter how old you are. (Nevada comes close, though. There's a reason that Las Vegas is called "Sin City.") Nobody seems to want a national ban on alcohol, but we're heirs to the Prohibition idea that you shouldn't have totally free access to the stuff.

Most of us get our info about Prohibition from novels, TV shows, and the movies—and there are a ton of them. The Great Gatsby, Boardwalk Empire, Scarface, The Untouchables…even Homer Simpson gets into the act. They're all proof that the Prohibition Era still has a lock on the American consciousness.

Just leave out the Amendments, please.