DBWI: What if the Prohibition amendment had been ratified?

Back in 1917 the Temperence movement enjoyed it's greatest success when Congress passed a constitutional amendment banning the sale & manufacture of alcoholic beverages on a national scale (many states had already enacted similiar measures), but it was never ratified by the required 3/4 of the states (one of the few amendments Congress passed that's gone unratified). What if it did get ratified? How would that effect American history? I know it sounds absurd (especially considering the last dry states went wet in the '60s), but could Prohibition last until the present day? After all we've never repealed constitutional amendment. What conditions would be needed for it to be ratified in the first place? More dry states (oddly legislatures in several wet states ratified it)? Earlier and more widespread women's suffrage (though women did have the vote in state's that rejected it)? Could it have even be enforced on a national scale?
 
:mad::mad::mad::mad: SACRELIGE!! :mad::mad::mad::mad::p

Seriously, though, ASB. Even if ratified it'd be as unenforceable as Pot laws. Even here in VA, one of the last States to end the "dry" experiment, everyone knows someone who knows someone with a still. Hell, Franklin County measures corn yields in gallons per acre! ;)
 
There's certainly the possibility that organized crime, similar to what sprung up in Europe at the time, could have become real powerhouses in American cities, from Chicago to New York to L.A.

That's of course not to say that we don't have organized crime these days in the U.S., but with something as lucrative as Prohibition coming into effect, there's no way in hell they'd stay as small and as fractured as it exists today in the United States.
 
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