Commercial Vices The commercial vices are drugs. The appeals of the commercial vices are so strong and widespread that attempts to prohibit them in western countries have always failed. The evils of these vices are threefold: Those who practice them suffer, the criminals who sell them prosper, and the enforcement organizations are expensive, unsuccessful, and often corrupt. Drugs is one of the three commercial vices — gambling and prostitution — accepted as unstoppable, but there evils have been minimized by legalization and regulation. The United States attempted to prohibit alcohol and failed. The Mafia made its money by bootlegging alcohol. The gangsters of the twenties and thirties were in the alcohol business just as the drug peddlers of today are in the drug business. When alcohol prohibition was repealed and sale by licensed dealers was instituted, the Mafia went out of the liquor business and the revenue agents assigned to stop the illegal business went out of business too. The quality of regulated liquor became assured and taxed, revenue not high enough to motivate bootlegging. It became a source of public revenue. In conclusion, the government should take any law they can't enforce and turn it around in order to make and save money. But they are also making fewer jobs for the police and other law enforcement agencies. I believe that in the end this way of doing things will be more likely feasible. The Mafia went out of the liquor business,