Life without Prohibition - what would be different today?

There’s no evidence that Joe Kennedy got rich from prohibition, and your timeline is off. His wealthy endeavors in the film industry and stock market pre-dated prohibition. Also, Jack Kennedy was a very sickly man, so there’s no good reason to believe he’d live to a ripe old age, even if he was not shot and killed and 1963.

There’s also no (or at least a lot less) need for the FBI or J Edgar Hoover. That’s going to be a pretty big change.

The FBI was originally set up (as the Bureau of Investigation) to keep track of political radicals. Hoover considered pursuing organized crime figures as a distraction from what he saw as the more important mission.

The 21st Amendment, which repealed Prohibition states in Section 2:

This seems to imply that such smuggling would be a Federal issue, although I’m not sure how much in the way of resources the national government has been willing to expend in this effort. A few years before Prohibition came into effect, the Webb-Kenyon Act was passed. The section I quoted above seems to acknowledge that Webb-Kenyon was to remain in force. But as the Wikipedia article points out, the lack of any stated punishment somewhat diminishes the effect of the law. I suspect that the purpose of the section is merely to say that anyone convicted of smuggling into a dry state would not be able to appeal to the Federal courts.

One thing that’s not often recognized is that Prohibition did considerably lower drinking in the US. Folks in the United States were champion drinkers, especially of whiskey – there was a reason for all of those temperance unions and folks like Carrie Nation. There may have been a lot of clandestine drinking under Prohibition, but it did cut down considerably on the per capita consumption. If Prohibition hadn’t existed, I suspect there still might have been some sort of social action to restrict alcohol.

As mentioned above, Prohibitoion gave rise to mixed drinks, but according to this paper, it also resulted, through pop culture, in a more positive attitude towards drinking. It was a complete about-face from the Temperance culture that had prevailed. Without Prohibition, would we have had Nick and Nora Charles?

http://ajph.aphapublications.org/cgi/content/full/96/2/233