Crime rates soared in the States during prohibition and gave rise to opportunists. Mexico’s Gulf Cartel got its start during this time when its founder Juan Guerra started smuggling whisky, rum and tequila across the Texas border.
However, according to the 1920 Anti Saloon League yearbook, some towns were so convinced that crime would disappear with prohibition that they actually sold their jails.
While prohibition gave tequila a boost in popularity in America, the English were the first to apply it to cocktails. The picador, invented in London around the end of prohibition, bears a remarkable similarity to a margarita without the salt rim, though it predates it by at least ten years.
A collection of tequila-based cocktails.