‘Prohibition’s successes outweighed its failures in the...

The prohibition era was the period in the US when the manufacture, sale and transportation of liquor were banned. To completely eliminate alcohol from society was always going to be an impossible task due to the limited amounts of prohibition officers and the easy manner in which illegal alcohol could be made and old, so in that aspect of its ambition it failed. However it was able to reduce alcoholism, and as a result of prohibition fewer arrests for drunkenness were recorded. With those thoughts in mind, it is important to remember that whist some positives came from Prohibition, the negatives that came from the policy were far greater and more significant, so therefore it becomes nigh on impossible to call it a success. The†¦show more content†¦The government and federal enforcement also experienced moderate success in the attempt to uphold the laws of prohibition, with agents such as Izzy Einstein and Moe Smith making over 4000 arrests and seizing over 15m dollars’ worth of illegal liquor. With the only access to alcohol being through gangster organisations and speakeasies, many people turned to soft drinks as a new social drink. Consequently this lead to a boom in the soft drink industry with companies In an alternative aspect, there were several reasons as to why the success of Prohibition was limited. Firstly, there were huge logistical problems to the policy, with America having 18,700 miles of coastline and land border. This meant that bootlegging became a big issue with 215m dollars’ worth of alcohol being transported across the land border between Detroit and Canada, and thus ultimately the supply of alcohol coming into the country was never restricted and so the American public still had access to a plentiful supply of alcohol. The fact that before prohibition Washington DC had 300 bars, but by the mid-1920s it had over 700 speakeasies, substantiates the point that alcohol supply actually increased during prohibition. The same