What We Learned

Our essential question was, “How has prohibition changed between the 1800’s and now?” Over the course of this project, we have come to answer this question and many more on the topic of prohibition.

We have learned many facts about the Temperance Movement and Marijuana prohibition through this project. For example, we learned that the temperance movement was a movement made primarily by churches and women to stop men from being drunk and sinning. We also learned that the 18th and 21st amendments of the constitution were on alcohol, though they contained very different materials on the matter. One of the things we learned that really interested us was that after alcohol was made illegal, the crime actually increased rather than decreased and that is why the 21st amendment was made to override the 18th amendment.

We also learned a lot about marijuana and its pros and cons during this project. Marijuana  has many positive medical benefits, but also helps the economy. We learned that Marijuana is actually not an addictive drug, but can be a gateway drug. Also, we realized modern day prohibition is almost the exact same as prohibition was in the 1800’s, except with a different substance. In both cases, people protested against a substance, it became banned, crime went up, and then the substance became legal again (or is starting to become legal again in the case of Marijuana).

Other than our essential question we wanted to know why they were banning alcohol. The women were trying to protect their families and children so that they wouldn’t get raised up by bad fathers. Overall, our research went really well, and we found out a lot about both topics. We are both a lot more informed than we were at the beginning.