This is a Cato Special Podcast. I'm Caleb Brown. It's been 75 years now since President Roosevelt pushed Congress to legalize beer, but it happened many months before the official end of prohibition.

Brandon Arnold, the Cato Institute's Director of Government Affairs explains.

FDR came in as what they would call a wet. He wanted to repeal prohibition, but obviously

that process takes time. He thought a quicker way to bring beer to the masses would be in addition to a push to for in addition to supporting a push to repeal prohibition.

He wanted to amend the Volstead Act, which is the enforcement arm of the 18th Amendment,

amend it to include low alcohol content beer, essentially legalizing some types of beer.

So almost immediately after being inaugurated,

FDR was pushing very aggressively for Congress

to amend the Volstead Act.

The Volstead Act basically said,

the 18th Amendment, of course course made alcoholic beverages or intoxicating beverages illegal,

but Congress had to pass the Volstead Act to define what intoxicating beverages were. They defined it at 0.5% alcohol.

FDR decided that Congress should pass an amendment to that which would up the amount of alcohol from 0.5% to 3.2% alcohol by weight,

thus allowing basically the majority of beers that were popular in that time, lighter,

beers similar to today's Budwise, lighter type of beer.

Why 3.2% that seems incredibly arbitrary.

It does seem somewhat arbitrary.

Interestingly enough, when prohibition was first passed in 1919, even into 1920, that percentage, the percentage of permissible beer was litigated.

It was debated heavily and litigated. It was debated heavily and litigated. A lot of people wanted an exemption on beer that was 2.7% alcohol or lower.

Of course they were unsuccessful.

So you fast forward to when Congress was amending the Volsett Act in 1933,

they came up, the House came up with a 3.2% exemption which they essentially took off the page of some some

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