Question

What part did bootleggers play in the failure of Prohibition?

Answer 1

Bootleggers sold illegal alcohol to consumers and helped to bypass the laws.

Answer 2

The Prohibition was a ban, introduced by the US Constitution at the national level, on the production, sale and consumption of alcoholic beverages, that remained in force between 1920 and 1933.

Bootleggers were alcohol smugglers, who enriched themselves by circumventing the Prohibition and by selling alcohol illegally, triggering the emergence of a large black market. Criminal mafias and gangs started to  control the supply of alcohol in cities and this delinquency that appared after the enactment of the Prohibition became one of the main arguments that detractors used to combat and claim against the ban.