Are there any lingering effects in the U.S. drinking statistics from the Prohibition Amendment? Do we drink less, more or about the same as we would had Prohibition never been passed?

Not sure about percentages of people who drink, pre-Volstead and now. Prohibition did make two pretty big changes, though. One was somewhat temporary: that it was cool to be seen drunk. Beforehand, this was mostly considered disgraceful. You can see the change from this in the 1920's not only in the sad lives of people like Dorothy Parker ,Robert Benchley, and many of the Algonquin Round Table, but in a plethora of movies from the 1930's, '40's, 50's, where whiskey decanters are always out and people are always pouring themselves a drink, and drunks are witty and amusing, like William Powell in The Thin Man. The Drunk Comic became a nightclub standard act, and comics like Red Skelton and Jackie Gleason had their own drunk characters. That has changed: to observe the rules here, it is difficult to think of a drunk act even 20 years ago; by then, people were admired who had sobered up.

The other change has lingered: more women also became drunks. Pre-Volstead, the saloon had been a place for men only- a woman was considered a prostitute if she was seen there. But the nightclub and speakeasy were open to everyone, and alcoholism soon became a disease of women as well as men. Perhaps that would have happened eventually anyway- the same society that let women vote and own property and get hired probably would have let them into a bar, also.

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