With All the Best Intentions

I find the ludicrous effect of the 21st amendment on the sale and distribution of alcohol in the United States fascinating.

When I went to look up the exact working of the 21st amendment, I was surprised by how short it was. Initially frustrated, I thought I was dealing with websites getting cute and truncating the notorious second section, but this is all there is: 

The transportation or importation into any State, Territory, or Possession of the United States for delivery or use therein of intoxicating liquors, in violation of the laws thereof, is hereby prohibited.

State control is a funny thing. I remember being shocked the first time I visited California and saw bottles of wine and liquor in a convenience store. It never occurred to me that the laws that prevented such an occurrence in New York were local ones. For those of you who don’t know, hard liquor and most can only be bought in liquor stores or wine shops. Grocery and convenience stores can carry beer and very bad “wine” that usually isn’t more than 5 or 6% ABV. I’m still slightly caught off-guard when I see the piles of wine bottles at my local CVS.

I’m struck by the parallels the 21st amendment has to the 13th, and how a succinct collection of words creates a strange legacy for the modern world. Section one of the 13th reads:

Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.

The consequence of this is modern day slavery. Prisoners can be compelled to labor without the protections that other workers have, and for little to no compensation. While the crafters of this amendment lived in a time when they may have thought this was a justifiable punishment for crime, a much smaller proportion of the nation was arrested and convicted then. And if we remember that some percentage of incarcerated people did not commit the crimes for which they were imprisoned, we must contend with the fact that there are innocent people who are legally enslaved in 21st century America. 

Given the difficulty of changing the constitution, should enforcement mechanisms and loopholes really live there rather than in laws?