Flutterby™! : 75 years since the 21st Amendment

San Francisco celebrates 75 years since the end of (alcohol) prohibition:

The repeal of Prohibition was the end of an infamous era in the United States, when the whole nation seemed to turn its back on the law. When booze became illegal, gangsters took over the booze business, and it became fashionable to break the law. Although President Herbert Hoover famously observed that Prohibition was "an experiment noble in purpose," prohibiting liquor made drinkers of nearly everyone.

The rest of the article has some interesting anecdotes about San Francisco's attitudes towards prohibition, and I just re-read Crookedest Railroad in the World(Ob: "that's not a Harriman line") where the advantages of a tavern that was difficult to reach by anything other than private railroad with relatively easy access to the bootlegging port of Bolinas were apparent (some background on that railroad here).

Corollaries to the impact on use of various psychoactive substances from current laws are left as an exercise to the reader.