OP is correct. Prohibition, though not perfect, had many beneficial effects.

It did reduce the amount of alcohol consumed by Americans per capita, and this decrease remained even post-prohibition. The problem that caused prohibition was workers going out and blowing their paychecks on booze at the saloons/taverns on Friday leaving their families no money to survive on.

Booze wasn’t completely illegal. You could brew beer and wine at home and consume it until you were as drunk as a lark. Beer companies started making beer making kits. All completely legal. Hard liquor was legal if your doctor gave you a prescription for medicinal reasons.

Organized crime was already an issue prior to prohibition. Gangs have existed, usually formed by ethnic enclave, throughout history. Haven’t you ever heard of The Gangs Of New York. Sure, some crime syndicates made money on illegal hooch but to be fair Capone and other would’ve been doing some other scam had booze still been legal. And some famous criminals from the same era, Bonnie and Clyde, were not selling booze but just robbing banks. The proliferation of radio broadcasting in the 1920’s is likely more responsible for making these gangs famous than prohibition.

Most people who wanted alcohol could get it and weren’t really punished. Like I said some forms of booze were legal to make and consume. Liquor was still widely available and some really popular families (the Kennedy’s) made some money running Canadian rum into the USA.

But despite the problems we can rest assure that prohibition did, in fact, lower alcohol consumption which likely had many positive effects down the road. —