# ATF history timeline: the Prohibition entries, 1919-1933

Canonical: https://mobfiles.org/items/atf-history-timeline/

The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives' timeline of its legacy agencies. Its Prohibition entries cover the Volstead Act, the Prohibition Unit, the 1927 reorganization into the Bureau of Prohibition, the 1930 transfer to Justice, and the 1933 return to Treasury.

ATF's own timeline of its legacy agencies is undated; its Prohibition entries run from 1919 to 1933. They say that on October 28, 1919, Congress passed the Volstead Prohibition Enforcement Act, delegating responsibility for policing the Eighteenth Amendment to the Commissioner of Internal Revenue, and that both took effect on January 16, 1920, when the Prohibition Unit was created. They date the reorganization of the Unit into the Bureau of Prohibition to March 1927 (44 Stat. 1381), and the Bureau's transfer from Treasury to the Department of Justice to the Prohibition Reorganization Act of May 27, 1930. After repeal, the page says, the Bureau's functions, records and personnel returned to Treasury as the Alcohol Tax Unit.

Conflicts with other pages filed here: the timeline says Congress "ratified" the Eighteenth Amendment on January 19, 1919, whereas NARA's catalog gives January 16, 1919, with ratification by the states; and the FBI's history article says Congress moved enforcement to the Department of Justice in 1927, whereas this timeline puts the transfer in 1930. This page records both; the statutes would need to be read to choose. The timeline also quotes Lincoln C. Andrews's 1927 letter to the President of the Senate; that quotation has not been checked against the original letter. Its paragraphs on Capone and Ness are the agency's own account.

## Sources

- Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives: https://www.atf.gov/our-history/atf-history-timeline