Multimedia Gallery

Beer is Back

April 7, 2013

You may Listen or download this story in .mp3 format or as a .wav file.

Profile America -- Sunday, April 7th. The years of Prohibition, from 1920 to 1933, were considered a noble experiment that failed, as the subsequent crime associated with bootlegging caused problems worse than the lone problem of drunkenness. The crumbling of the unpopular Volstead Act accelerated on this date in 1933 when Congress amended the act to permit beer of 3.2 percent alcohol to be brewed and sold. The beer permitted earlier under Prohibition contained only .05 percent. Called "near beer," and much disdained, one humorist declared that whoever named it was a poor judge of distance. Today, there are nearly 44,000 beer, wine and liquor stores in the U.S., with sales of over $38 billion. Profile America is in its 16th year as a public service of the U.S. Census Bureau.

Sources: www.beerhistory.com
2007 Economic Census, NAICS 445310
http://www.census.gov/econ/industry/hierarchy/i445310.htm