Bureau of Prohibition Established to Enforce Eighteenth Amendment

The Eighteenth Amendment took effect on January 17, 1920, and Congress created the Bureau of Prohibition within the Treasury Department to enforce the Volstead Act's ban on alcohol production and distribution. The bureau, reorganized as the Alcohol Tax Unit in 1934 after Prohibition's repeal, retained Treasury jurisdiction and focused on alcohol tax enforcement — a mission that would later expand to include tobacco taxes and, beginning in 1942, firearms. This organizational lineage directly produced the modern ATF.