What would've changed in the US if Prohibition of Alcohol never happened?

What would've changed in the US if Prohibition of Alcohol never happened? Always been wondering this but have never saw a thread about this.
 
Interesting question. Perhaps much criminal infrastructure may not have happened? Where does that lead us? Perhaps even different US Presidents? I'm sure there are also many other important divergence in the time line. Ripples running out from the center. World wide effects.
 
No Prohibition has a implication that morale crusaders & do-gooders were less organized and influential. If that is the case then there is a different social and legal trajectory into the mid 20th Century. If it fails to be enacted simply through a few votes short & assorted parliamentary and political deals then the moralists will be active suppressing 'Immorality' other ways. The revival Klan of 1915-1923 were supporters of Prohibition and the enforcement arm were active against distillers and bootleggers. Lacking national Prohibition some or many of the Klaverns could have been active against the legal alcohol business. Fire bombing low Saloons, distilleries, & interdicting bootleg shipments. Similar to what they tried in the early Prohibition era.

As has been mentioned many times elsewhere, the trajectory of organized crime is very different. The mob, gangs, mafia, syndicates, whatever made themselves rich during prohibition and became powerful enough to finance pumping up narcotics & other businesses that used a similar plan or operating system as bootlegging.

In general US history it avoids or alters a embarrassing failure of the great experiment.
 
As HB suggests, criminal organizations would have had less incentive to become involved in bootlegging, speakeasies, rum-running, and the whole network of related activities that go along with drinking. Mind you, LESS incentive, not no incentive; there still would have been money in alcohol, but less of it.

On a cultural/cuisine note: there would have been a lot more diversity (and dare I say quality?) in American beer and wine production throughout the mid-20th century. Beer brewing was struck hard by Prohibition, and a lot of smaller breweries making styles of ales, porters, or other varieties went out of business. So we lost not only the legacy of dozens of styles brought over from more than a dozen European cultural traditions, but also dozens if not hundreds of varieties that had been developed in the US since the 1700s.
I don't mean that we lost the recipes in an absolute sense, since home-brewing and really local crafts likely preserved them in some fashion. Rather, I mean that the small breweries lost their commercial hold, and when Prohibtion was finally repealed, it took a lot of effort and capital to get that marketshare back. Big breweries were always going to take a large chunk of American market just due to advances in production, marketing, distribution, and refrigeration....BUT without Prohibition, smaller breweries could have kept stronger hold on local and regional markets.
 
As HB suggests, criminal organizations would have had less incentive to become involved in bootlegging, speakeasies, rum-running, and the whole network of related activities that go along with drinking. Mind you, LESS incentive, not no incentive; there still would have been money in alcohol, but less of it.

On a cultural/cuisine note: there would have been a lot more diversity (and dare I say quality?) in American beer and wine production throughout the mid-20th century. Beer brewing was struck hard by Prohibition, and a lot of smaller breweries making styles of ales, porters, or other varieties went out of business. So we lost not only the legacy of dozens of styles brought over from more than a dozen European cultural traditions, but also dozens if not hundreds of varieties that had been developed in the US since the 1700s.
I don't mean that we lost the recipes in an absolute sense, since home-brewing and really local crafts likely preserved them in some fashion. Rather, I mean that the small breweries lost their commercial hold, and when Prohibtion was finally repealed, it took a lot of effort and capital to get that marketshare back. Big breweries were always going to take a large chunk of American market just due to advances in production, marketing, distribution, and refrigeration....BUT without Prohibition, smaller breweries could have kept stronger hold on local and regional markets.

The same is true for wineries where it is probably more important. Prohibition did a real number on the US wine industry to the point where people were surprised with the 1976 Judgement of Paris that US was making world class wine.
 
I once saw a documentary about the prohibition and one of the effects mentioned was the decline in respect and, willingness to obey, law and law enforcement officers. So you would see less of the we against the police mindset of American culture.

An other point they made was, that many first thought prohibition would only concern hard liqueurs and not beer and wine. When the laws that regulated prohibition didn't make the distinction support for prohibition went down.
 
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An other point they made was, that many first thought prohibition would only concern hard liqueurs and not beer and wine. When the laws that regulated prohibition didn't make the distinction support for prohibition went down.

The real killer was Prohibition did not deliver the social benefits promised, Alcoholics continued at all their dysfunctional habits in the same numbers. Badly made toxic distillations continued to poison tens of thousands of people, at minor and major levels. Income, wealth, hours or days of peoples lives were still expended on excess drinking. Proving again you cant legislate morality with a purely punitive law.
 
No Prohibition has a implication that morale crusaders & do-gooders were less organized and influential. If that is the case then there is a different social and legal trajectory into the mid 20th Century. If it fails to be enacted simply through a few votes short & assorted parliamentary and political deals then the moralists will be active suppressing 'Immorality' other ways. The revival Klan of 1915-1923 were supporters of Prohibition and the enforcement arm were active against distillers and bootleggers. Lacking national Prohibition some or many of the Klaverns could have been active against the legal alcohol business. Fire bombing low Saloons, distilleries, & interdicting bootleg shipments. Similar to what they tried in the early Prohibition era.

As has been mentioned many times elsewhere, the trajectory of organized crime is very different. The mob, gangs, mafia, syndicates, whatever made themselves rich during prohibition and became powerful enough to finance pumping up narcotics & other businesses that used a similar plan or operating system as bootlegging.

In general US history it avoids or alters a embarrassing failure of the great experiment.

I figure this would make the Klan look more like criminals and so on.

I do wonder if this means that we also avoid the calamity that was the Drug War...
 
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I do wonder if this means that we also avoid the calamity that was the Drug War...

Depends on if the 'disease' approach picks up. AA & other treatment regimes evolve and get more support and funds.

Also taxing peoples bad habits & addictions, as with tobacco & alcohol seems more cost effective than aggressive suppression that mostly beats up the users and does little against the people who exploit the situation.
 
In a way no Prohibition is a setback for womens rights. On a podcast I heard they mentioned how saloons were mainly for men and no women but with the 18th amendment speakeasies did allow women since the owners didn’t care the gender of the customer as long as they paid for the alcohol. This in turn caused more women to start questioning gender norms.
 
We simply see the State by State and County by County prohibition continue, instead of Prohibition being a unifying force for the Federal government and criminals, it remains a patchwork with crime more localized, more like backwoods moonshiners than industrial bootleggers. Federal police power is far less developed and in turn the organized criminal empires should be far less robust. Culturally I think wet versus dry remains a talking point, likely big cities are wet, rural America is dry, we see a hastened split between the conservative outlying communities and the liberalized urban centers, alcohol being wrapped into the politics since it is not so easily defined as failed morality policing. It might retard the supremacy of the Federal over State governance debate and balance. It might allow regionalism to remain more entrenched, America overall might be less homogeneous in many ways. And it might have other odds effects such as altering the federal fisc, alter the Depression or Women's rights as proposed already. It is an odd butterfly flying a wobbly course through America.
 
Odd tangent: I remember a high school class in which I proposed a modernisation of “The Great Gatsby” using Las Vegas and Los Angeles as West and East Egg, respecitvely. My astute teacher pointed out there wasn’t any modern equivalent to rum running for a modern Gatsby to make his money. Prohibition was a key part of that character because it gave Gatsby a profession illegal enough to be looked down upon by the elites but harmless enough that no one else cared. This was during the tail end of the “war on drugs” so a high school kid would never think of proposing drug dealing as a harmless source of income. All that is to say no prohibition likely has a huge impact in American literature, particularly in the 1920’s and 30’s.
 
The tax revenue generated by alcohol could change the early response to the great depression.
Strangely alcohol consumption lessened because of proabition , drinking took a little effort so the casual drinking dwindled.
The soft drink industry wouldn't have become as large as it is today.
 
Interesting question. Perhaps much criminal infrastructure may not have happened? Where does that lead us? Perhaps even different US Presidents? I'm sure there are also many other important divergence in the time line. Ripples running out from the center. World wide effects.

As an example the Irish Whiskey industry wouldn't have been shattered as it was OTL, remaining larger than the Scottish industry and thus the fledging Irish Free State would have a better economy with better rural employment and more tax revenue.
 
The same is true for wineries where it is probably more important. Prohibition did a real number on the US wine industry to the point where people were surprised with the 1976 Judgement of Paris that US was making world class wine.

By god if you like good german wine.. like Riesling or a Mosel. and you cant go to germany or afford it? go to Michigan. ( again the whole world stops and says .. Michigan? the home of Detroit? Rap? cars? poverty? led water and Kid rock? .. I'm like.. yes.. that Michigan.. ) The soil on the Lake Michigan side and climate is a perfect match and the wine is damn good
 
The tax revenue generated by alcohol could change the early response to the great depression.
Strangely alcohol consumption lessened because of proabition , drinking took a little effort so the casual drinking dwindled.
The soft drink industry wouldn't have become as large as it is today.
lol. tough choices here my friend.. liver.. diabetes .. I'm going to vote in favor of Wine.. best of both worlds ;)
 
I'm guessing the alcohol industry would still take a bit of a hit coming from the grain restrictions as a result of World War 1 though.

However, I am wondering how things would be in the Great depression with the dust bowl though... I reckon that would affect the alcohol
 
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