It didn't take a long for Congress to realize that the 18th amendment was a huge mistake. Officially, prohibition started on January 17, 1920, exactly 98 years ago last Wednesday. It was repealed by the 21st amendment on December 5, 1933.
The guy who benefited the most from Prohibition was Al Capone, who was worth as much as $1.3 billion (in today's dollars) at the height of his "empire". However, he wasn't the only one who benefited. Here are a few quick facts:
During the first 13 years of Prohibition, the government appointed 17,971 people to the Prohibition Bureau. Ultimately, 13,588 were fined for bribery, extortion, theft, falsification, conspiracy, forgery, or perjury.
Convictions for liquor offenses rose from 35,000 in 1923 to 60,000 in 1932.
It is estimated that there were between 200,000 and 500,000 speakeasies in the United States.
In 1928, it is estimated that doctors had netted nearly $40,000,000 by writing prescriptions for whiskey.
Today, Jeff Sessions would like to reverse the decisions by a few states to legalize marijuana, which should remind us AGAIN how foolish it was to prohibit liquor a long time ago. Today's version of AL Capone is Pablo Escobar, who was worth an estimated $30 billion in the early 1990's (roughly $56 billion in today's dollars). The "war on drugs" has been a HUGE success for some people, but a disaster for most of us.
Go home , Jeff. We don't need your advice.