The prohibition of alcohol was a mistake—a historic policy gaffe and a political fi asco. In the language of policy studies, it was a “suboptimal” policy option: a bad idea when compared with the more effective alternatives available. Novelist, historian, and social critic H. G. Wells famously lampooned “the crowning silliness of making prohibition a part of the Constitution of the United States” as the Eighteenth Amendment begot rampant corruption, bootlegging, and crime, eroded respect for law, and eliminated a valuable stream of government revenue by decimating an entire industry while miserably failing to achieve its purported aims of national sobriety, economic productivity, and communal moral salvation