Al Capone fascinated the public. He appeared on the front page of Time, a leading American weekly magazine in 1930, looking confident, happy and proud of who he was. He was of celebrity status. He had taken control of the illegal alcohol industry and much more.
The participation of gangsters in the illegal alcohol industry was definitely a very major reason why it failed as it is also linked closely to public support and enforcement.
Prior to Prohibition the government made much money out of tax from alcohol and in 1929 the government needed money to deal with the horrific situation in the USA and to get the economy going again. They knew that alcohol was being consumed anyway, so abolished the law, so that they would receive much needed money in tax.
Nobody could argue that Prohibition had made the USA prosperous. Capone was sentenced to 11 years in jail on 24th October 1931 and in 1933 Prohibition was finally abolished.
The Wall Street Crash and the Depression was a short-term reason for Prohibition failing and this is a key reason for it ending when it did, but I think that Prohibition had failed before 1929
By the mid 1920's the failure was quite conclusive and it was obvious that the majority of the country still drank and were breaking the law.
It was the Depression that actually prohibited ordinary citizens from drinking, as many of them lost their jobs and simply could not afford food or homes, let alone alcohol, as well as the government being desperate for money. I think that the Depression was probably the last straw and the final factor which made the government abolish Prohibition, but was not a major reason.
I think that it was the lack of public support that was the origin of the failure of Prohibition, but a parallel reason to the lack of public support was the difficulty of law enforcement. The public relied on unreliable agents, who would accept bribes as they knew that only a very small percentage of agents were honest and reliable and so they carried on drinking.
But the group who contributed most to this difficulty along side the general public, in my opinion, were the gangsters.
The gangsters took control of the whole industry and made alcohol readily available to any American citizen who wanted it, although this part of the reason does combine closely with the lack of public support. I think that if it weren't for the gangsters then the problem would never have been as severe, as many members of the public would have had to go without alcohol and the Prohibition Agents' time could have been used more effectively and devoted to 'ordinary' US citizens, as opposed to gangsters, who were in the business for the money.
Overall, I think that the gangsters were the main reason why Prohibition failed, followed closely by (and linked closely to) the lack of public support. The reason behind my opinion is that the demand by the public for alcohol could not have been met without the powerful gangsters and once they had started to meet this demand they could not be stopped as the gangsters controlled and influenced many people who should have had influence over the gangsters and stopped them providing alcohol to the public.
