Let’s remember when Seattle got its booze back, on this day in 1932 (December 31)
By: Chris Burlingame
Tags: On This Day, Booze, Drinking, Seattle, Prohibition

I’ve blogged something every day in 2019, save for June 16 and I’m still not sure what happened there. This seemed like a good place to go out on and wrap up the series.

From HistoryLink and Phil Dougherty:

On December 31, 1932, medicinal liquor becomes available in Seattle after a 15-year hiatus. A state law that effectively prohibited medicinal liquor had been repealed by Washington voters in November 1932, and though the National Prohibition Act is still in effect at year’s end, it makes an exception for medicinal liquor if state law allows it. Seattle rings in 1933 in the wettest, happiest New Year’s celebration in years.

In the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries one could buy liquor in the state’s drugstores, usually in the patent medicines (which contained as much as 20 percent alcohol) that the stores commonly sold. But when people wanted a drink they generally didn’t think of their local drugstore — that’s what saloons were for. That changed when Prohibition took effect in Washington on January 1, 1916, and the saloons disappeared.

At first there was an exception to the new dry law that allowed medicinal liquor to be sold in drugstores under a permit system. Drugstores suddenly became more popular. They began popping up like mushrooms during the rainy season. Between January and March, 1916, 65 new drugstores opened in Seattle alone.

It didn’t last. In February 1917 Governor Ernest Lister (1870–1919) signed House Bill 4, otherwise known as the bone-dry law, which tightened restrictions on alcohol in the state. The law still allowed druggists to sell medicinal liquor if they had the required permit, but it prohibited the importation of liquor into the state. Since liquor wasn’t manufactured in Washington, this cut off the pipeline for alcohol into the state. Moreover, before the new state law even took effect, Congress passed similar federal legislation known as the Reed-Randall Bone Dry Act. This outlawed the shipment of liquor into any state that had dry laws as of July 1, 1917.

In a futile gesture, opponents of House Bill 4 — perhaps hoping the federal law would be amended or repealed — gathered enough votes to call a referendum on the state’s bone-dry law. The law appeared on the 1918 ballot as Referendum 10, but voters approved it by a 28-point margin. Ironically, the National Prohibition Act (also known as the Volstead Act), subsequently enacted in January 1920, did allow the importation of medicinal liquor into states that did not have their own laws prohibiting importation. This was a moot point in Washington, and the state stayed bone-dry for another 13 years.

By 1932 many had changed their minds about Prohibition. All but its most ardent supporters could see it had failed, and restrictions on alcohol began to crumble. In November 1932 Washington voters passed Initiative 61, repealing the state’s bone-dry law, with 62 percent of voters favoring repeal. Local ordinances that contained their own liquor restrictions were also quickly repealed, not only in Seattle but in locations as varied as Yakima and Aberdeen. Though national Prohibition was still in effect, it made an exception for medicinal liquor, subject to the restriction that a patient could only be prescribed one pint every 10 days. People soon began needing their medicine.