ALCOHOL PROBLEMS: AMERICA'S RESPONSE TO ALCOHOL PROBLEMS
Drinking in the colonies was largely a family affair and remained so until the beginning of the nineteenth century. With increasing immigration, industrialization, and greater social freedoms, drinking became less a family affair. Alcohol abuse became more open and more destructive. The opening of the West brought the saloon into prominence. The old and stable social and family patterns began to change. The frontier hero took to gulping his drinks with his foot on the bar rail. Attitudes began to intensify regarding the use of alcohol.
These developments hold the key to many modern attitudes toward alcohol, the stigma of alcoholism, the wet-dry controversy. Differing views of alcohol began to polarize America. The legal and moral approaches reached their apex in the United States with the growth of the temperance movement and the Prohibition amendment in 1919.
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