Back in the 1920s the United States embarked on a bold experiment to put an end to a longstanding social curse.
Alcoholism was a serious problem. US citizens at the time were by and large not the sort of drinkers who took a glass of wine with their meals. They favoured hard liquor, and heavy drinking was widely considered manly, a practice closely associated with frontier life.
There was a strong anti-drinking lobby in the temperance movement with its Pledge (never to drink again) but its most ardent supporters wanted more. They had clout in Congress and took the short cut with a measure known as the Volstead Act - the US would go dry. The sale of alcohol was thus prohibited.
The results were disastrous. Gangsters took over the business of supplying alcohol and thrived on it. They used the proceeds to build efficient networks in other criminal activities and corrupted police forces everywhere. The US still suffers from the mob organisations founded in those days.
Prohibition did not cure alcoholism. What figures are available suggest that alcohol consumption actually rose where previously the temperance movement had had some success in bringing it down. Making drinking a furtively practised crime had made it worse. Congress eventually saw the light and repealed the Volstead Act.
Financial Secretary Donald Tsang Yam-kuen reportedly became a little irate on radio the other day when he was accused of encouraging another social evil, gambling, by announcing in his Budget speech that he would consider whether to allow football pools to operate legally.
His critics (your correspondent did not catch the broadcast) apparently pinned on him the motive of seeking only to maintain fiscal revenues from gambling.