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The US tried to ban it and it just led to gangs becoming super powerful because they sold people illegal alcohol.
So it's not really a policy choice like "this is safe enough, this is not safe enough" it's legal because making it illegal doesn't work.
US didn't really ban it because they didn't like it. While there was a women's group protesting against the alcoholism in the country, I don't think it would have had any traction were it not for the anti union push.
Saloons were a great meetup spot to make unions. Everyone from work was already there. If companies could make saloons illegal, it would make it harder to make unions. But there was a problem. The US got a lot of its tax revenue from alcohol taxes.
So they pitched the idea of replacing alcohol tax with income tax, making the budget balance (in fact much improve!). So it got passed to benefit the US government budget, and help the union situation for companies.
It was not prohibited for long. As you stated, it quickly went awry. But it didn't matter. The US government now gets its income tax, plus alcohol tax now. Saloons became less popular since they were gone long enough for habits to change.
It's still the same situation with illegal drugs, but America outsourced the production and supply chain largely underground (and to other countries as they are much easier to smuggle than alcohol.) So same problems and empowering gangs, but happening outside Americas borders, and thus not America's problem. Most present day issues with drug cartels are a derivative of America trying to control peoples' access to substances and driving them from the open market to the black market... seems to have done a lot more harm to the world and peoples lives than good (as an opinion).
Kinda like....