Prohibition actually worked relatively well.

It reduced harm until it started to increase harm.

At the end of the day human vice isn't going away.

It's not useful to judge prohibition in a single dimension of "work well" to "didn't work". Sure, cirrhosis rates went down significantly but organized crime (a disease of its own) was gifted a torrent of money to fuel other activities.

It was a "loud minority" type of thing. The average person simply stopped drinking, which was fine.

In today's market, 10% of the drinkers consume 90% of the alcohol. So the efforts of the 10% and the people serving the 10%, and the efforts of law enforcement to stop them, resulted in many very high profile, violent events, which made it seem like it wasn't worth the effort.

Full disclosure, I'm an alcoholic in recovery and I'd be fine with alcohol being illegal. My main beef is that the laws are not internally consistent: THC is by far a milder drug than alcohol but alcohol is legal while THC is still mostly illegal in the US (federally).

Either legalize THC completely or ban alcohol if you want to be consistent.

Also worth noting, THC (at less than 0.3% which is plenty for gummies) and many very very close, but naturally occurring (in infinitesimal amounts) are technically legal federally and companies like 3CHI are exploiting those loopholes. You can buy a vape containing things like HHC, THC-P, THC-O, etc which is virtually indistinguishable from Delta-9 THC, so obviously the days of THC being illegal are numbered.

But the people who are the problem drinkers still end up finding a source of alcohol. So now moderate drinkers have been prevented from having their drink or two, alcoholics are drinking just as much, but are more likely to be poisoned, and you’ve created a massive cash cow for organized crime. How is that anything but a total failure?

There are even better loopholes than that.

If anyone can explain the THCA loophole, it'd explain how they are shipped directly to consumer.

It's the wild west but across the US. How is this possible, and will it be open until it's legalized federally?

"Why even get a license" is the incentive this creates.