You need to study Prohibition. The enactment of the stupidest law ever, created a class of very wealthy and powerful criminals, and a class of very wealthy and corrupt politicians. When Prohibition was repealed, the criminals lost a huge source of income. Nevertheless, income from bootlegging enabled them to put that money to good use - they built Las Vegas. When Tennessee started enacting laws that enabled cities to regulate the legal selling of alcohol, it was the end of big time bootlegging.
My mother alway said that the only people against legal alcohol sales were preachers and bootleggers.
And did those measures of increasing public use of alcohol aid and enhance our society as a whole? No, it only created a much bigger problem that we are still dealing with today on an increasing level. It’s called Alcoholism and addictive behavior. The cost to the taxpayers has never really been fully revealed all in the name of revenue.
Legalized gambling, State Lottery’s, etc,,, are all taking a devastating toll on our society, let’s just have much more of IT! (Sort of like trying to tax/spend our way out this failing economy.)