Prohibition in the United States
Research shows that prohibition reduced overall alcohol consumption by half during the 1920s, and consumption remained below pre-Prohibition levels until the 1940s, suggesting that Prohibition did socialize a significant proportion of the population in temperate habits, at least temporarily. Rates of liver cirrhosis "fell by 50% early in Prohibition and recovered promptly after Repeal in 1933." Criticism remains that Prohibition led to unintended consequences such as a century of Prohibition-influenced legislation and the growth of urban crime organizations, though some scholars have argued that violent crime did not increase dramatically, while others have argued that crime during the Prohibition era was properly attributed to increased urbanization, rather than the criminalization of alcohol use. As an experiment it lost supporters every year, and lost tax revenue that governments needed when the Great Depression began in 1929.
Jury nullification in the United States
During the 19th and 20th centuries, especially in the 1950s and '60s civil rights movement era, some all-white juries acquitted white defendants accused of murdering blacks; however, the problem according to some scholars was: "...not in jury nullification, but in jury selection. The jury was not representative of the community..." During Prohibition, juries often nullified alcohol control laws, possibly as often as 60% of the time because of disagreements with the justice of the law. This resistance is considered to have contributed to the adoption of the Twenty-first Amendment repealing the Eighteenth Amendment which established Prohibition.