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History: Prohibition Of Alcoholic Beverages, Los Angeles, California, United States
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It is not clear whether Prohibition reduced per-capita consumption of alcohol. Some historians claim that alcohol consumption in the United States did not exceed pre-Prohibition levels until the 1960s; others claim that alcohol consumption reached the pre-Prohibition levels several years after its enactment, and have continued to rise. Cirrhosis of the liver, normally a result of alcoholism, dropped nearly two thirds during Prohibition. In the decades after Prohibition, Americans shed any stigma they might have had against alcohol consumption. According to a Gallup Poll survey conducted almost every year since 1939, some two-thirds of American adults age 18 and older drink alcohol.
Prohibition and pietistic Protestantism
Prohibition in the early to mid-twentieth century was fueled by the Protestant denominations in the United States. Pietistic churches in the United States sought to end drinking and the saloon culture during the Third Party System. Liturgical ("high") churches (Catholic, Episcopal, and German Lutheran) opposed prohibition laws because they did not want the government redefining morality to a narrow standard and criminalizing the common liturgical practice of using wine.
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