The term "dry law" is usually called a ban (full or partial) turnover of alcohol-containing substances.
Dry law in the USA
Between 1920 and 1933, the United States banned the sale, transportation and production of alcohol. The dry law in America was introduced after the adoption of the Eighteenth Amendment to the US Constitution. Outlaws were declared both possession of alcohol and its consumption. The attitude to the ban on alcohol in American society was twofold. On the one hand, the adherents of the law perceived it as a victory of morality and health. Undoubted success was the decrease in alcohol consumption in half in the 1920s, which remained below the level corresponding to the period preceding the ban, until 1940. On the other hand, opponents of the law ("wet") criticized the ban, calling it the invasion of rural Protestant ideals into various aspects of the lives of citizens, immigrants and Catholics. Despite the positive results of the prohibition legislation, the negative consequences for the country were immeasurably greater, which allowed the opponents of the law after 13 years to ratify the Twenty-first Amendment to the Constitution, abolishing the unpopular dry law in America. One of the sad results was a significant increase in the number of criminal groups. About itself for the first time declared the American mafia. Numerous criminal organizations profit from smuggling, illegal production and distribution of alcohol. Antialcoholic measures negatively affected the country's economy. The times of the dry law were marked by rampant corruption in the ranks of the police and among politicians.
The sad experience of forced sobriety in the USSR
The anti-alcohol campaigns conducted in the USSR were extremely unpopular with the government's measures aimed at reducing alcohol consumption. The last campaign was preserved in the people's memory under the name "Gorbachev's dry law". Mikhail Sergeevich initiated the beginning of the struggle against drunkenness immediately after coming to power. The situation that emerged in 1985 in Soviet society required decisive action, since alcoholism in the country reached the scale of a national catastrophe. Restraining measures were taken, as a result of which a sober population significantly improved demographic indicators, the life expectancy of the male population of the country increased, and the number of crimes committed in a state of intoxication decreased . But the prohibition of alcohol in the Soviet Union, as well as the dry law in America, led to economic decline. The lack of profit from the sale of alcoholic products in a short time led to a deficit budget. Legislators expected, of course, a different effect, but they got kilometer queues in stores, numerous cases of poisoning with alcohol-containing chemicals, flowering of brewing, underground production of alcohol. In the mass consciousness, the anti-alcohol campaign was perceived as an absurd decision of the authorities directed against the "common people", forced by all means to "get" alcohol, still available to the party-economic elite. However, the leaders of the country were aware of what disappointing results led the dry law in America and Finland. It remains a mystery why the initially limited failure of alcohol consumption by administrative measures to the head of state seemed to be the only correct solution to the problem of alcoholism.