Prohibition of 1920s

The temperance movement founded in Cleveland, Ohio, in 1874 was organized to encourage modernized consumption of liquor or its complete prohibition. The movement consisted mostly of women with their children who couldn't or didn't want to deal anymore with drinking habits of their spouses and fathers. In America the temperance movement crested in the year of 1920 when the officials decided to put an end to drinking by passing the Eighteenth Amendment which prohibited any consumption and …

…on alcohol by people was steadily reducing by itself. But the lesson is clear - no law can change the old habits of people, no matter how good and respectable those people are, and if they can't fight it they will find the way around it, just like they did during the Prohibition. This combined with very little effort by the government to enforce the new law resulted in very miserable failure on all accounts.