bureau of prohibition

The U.S Bureau of Prohibition or the Prohibition Service was a part of the Federal Government of the United States formed in 1927 to enforce the National Prohibition Act of 1919, commonly known as the Volstead Act, which enforced the Eighteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution by enforcing the prohibition of the manufacture, sale, possession and comsumption of alcohol. It was part of the US Department of the Treasury. Its personnel were called Prohibition Agents, and its most famous agent was Eliot Ness. The bureau was formed from personnel of the Alcohol Enforcement Office of the IRS (aka Revenuers) who had enforced Prohibition up to this point. Following the end of Prohibition in 1933, many of its 400 agents returned to whence they came and the bureau was later re-established as the Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs (which later became the Drug Enforcement Administration) and the Bureau of Drug Abuse Control, (which later became the FDA) of the US Department of Health, Education and Welfare.

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