It's not an exaggeration to think of late 19th century / early 20th century American society as somewhat besotted and awash in alcoholic spirits. The deleterious socio-economic effects of mass alcoholism that you cited above were all very real, and public concerns expressed at the time were quite legitimate.

Ironically, the successful passage on the 18th Amendment by Congress, as well as its summary ratification by the 36 of the 48 states themselves, was greatly facilitated by the April 1917 entry of the United States into the First World War on the side of the Allies. The declaration of war against the Central Powers had the immediate and practical effect of marginalizing politically the country's large German-American population, which had been a significant and particularly stubborn source of opposition to prohibitionist policies.

Proponents of temperance quickly seized upon the moment to avail themselves of the opportunity to recast the 18th Amendment's passage as something akin to a patriotic duty. The banning of alcohol was cynically equated by Prohibition's advocates with somehow striking a mighty blow against the Teutonic Hordes, and members of Congress soon succumbed to this political siren call in relatively short order.

No doubt, Prohibition-era policies did effectively curb the country's per capita rate of alcohol consumption by well over half during the 1920s and further, those rates of consumption didn't recover to their former levels until well after the Second World War. However, there was nevertheless a rather astonishing level of outright civil disregard and contempt of applicable Prohibition-related law by a substantial portion of the American populace. And as noted above, this had consequences.

Even as states and local municipalities lost a significant portion of their tax revenues which had heretofore been derived from the sales of alcohol, the continued public demand for alcoholic beverages after the federal ban took official effect in January 1920 soon gave rise to a flourishing underground economy and its accompanying distribution network for beer, wine and hard spirits.

Much of that illicit trade quickly fell under the control of well-organized and often ruthless criminal elements. The often shocking waves of associated criminal violence spiked accordingly, sharply and often, as those extra-legal elements constantly jockeyed for turf position and battled and market share. For the most part, Americans were repulsed by the resultant bloodshed and carnage.

Further, it should be noted that America's wealthy and well-to-do classes had availed themselves of the two-year window between the 18th Amendment's passage by Congress in December 1917 and its effective date of January 16, 1920 to accumulate some rather astonishingly vast stockpiles of alcoholic beverages for themselves.

But because nobody else really enjoyed any such luxuries of wealth, subsequent efforts by law enforcement agencies to implement and uphold Prohibition-era policies effectively and disproportionately targeted the country's poor, working and middle class communities. Not surprisingly, there soon developed a very serious and consequential backlash as opposition to these policies in those communities grew and organized.

There are any number of effective contemporary lessons which could be derived from our country's political and legal experiences during the Prohibition era, if only our country's public policymakers and law enforcement authorities took the time to study its history and come to understand the myriad of reasons for Prohibition's eventual failure and collapse as public policy.

From my own perspective as a student of American history, the foremost of these reasons is the constant historical evolution and progression of social attitudes in the United States. Simply put, the genesis of Prohibition was the Victorian Age, and the 19th century-era values of a once-primarily agrarian U.S. society had become increasingly quaint and obsolescent by the prevailing standards of the 1920s, as the country rapidly industrialized and urbanized.

In that regard, most progressives similarly offer that current drug policies, which are rooted primarily in the national experiences of the first half of the 20th century, have no practical relevance in our modern 21st century society, and therefore ought to be substantially amended to both reflect and meet the demands and contingencies of the present era.

Because just as much now as it was back then, morality has little or nothing to do with it. We need to live in the here and now, and not continue to dwell and wallow in the there and then.