Welcome to the Nanny State: A Post-Soda Ban Look At New York City’s Biggest Crackdowns
Prohibition
This is easily the biggest, most famous, and least successful of our our city’s attempts to police the lives of its residents, so we’ll keep it short. In accordance with the rest of the country, booze was illegal in New York from 1920 until it was voted down eight-to-one 1933. In the interim, organized crime skyrocketed, 100,000 speakeasies popped up to meet demand, and fedora-wearing dweebs of the future were given a cultural moment to fetishize.
A failure all-around.