Well, actually, it depends on the definition of “work”.
Cirrhosis death rates for men dropped from 29.5 to 10.7 per 100,000.
Admission rates for alcohol psychosis dropped from 10.1 to 4.7 per 100,000.
Best estimates (whatever that means) puts the alcohol consumption rate declining somewhere between 30 and 50%.
No, it did not stop all alcohol consumption, but neither do murder laws stop all murder.
Having said all this - whether or not the drug war is “working”, such seizures of private property is completely immoral and symptomatic of a government gone power-mad.
http://www.nytimes.com/1989/10/16/opinion/actually-prohibition-was-a-success.html
What it DID do was create a huge influx of money for organized crime.
"consumption of alcohol actually rose steadily after an initial drop. Annual per capita consumption had been declining since 1910, reached an all-time low during the depression of 1921, and then began to increase in 1922. Consumption would probably have surpassed pre-Prohibition levels even if Prohibition had not been repealed in 1933. [6] Illicit production and distribution continued to expand throughout Prohibition despite ever-increasing resources devoted to enforcement. [7]"
"The Volstead Act, passed to enforce the Eighteenth Amendment, had an immediate impact on crime. According to a study of 30 major U.S. cities, the number of crimes increased 24 percent between 1920 and 1921. The study revealed that during that period more money was spent on po- lice (11.4+ percent) and more people were arrested for violating Prohibition laws (102+ percent). But increased law enforcement efforts did not appear to reduce drinking: arrests for drunkenness and disorderly conduct increased 41 percent, and arrests of drunken drivers increased 81 percent. Among crimes with victims, thefts and burglaries increased 9 percent, while homicides and incidents of assault and battery increased 13 percent. [42]"
http://object.cato.org/sites/cato.org/files/pubs/pdf/pa157.pdf