The federal prosecutors who are issuing cease-and-desist orders to medicinal marijuana clinics in California would have done well to watch the recent Ken Burns documentary on Prohibition, the failed government attempt to protect individuals, families and society at-large from the devastating effects of alcohol abuse.

The notion that government can simply stop people from consuming substances that they clearly wish to consume was tested most extensively from 1920 to 1933, when the manufacture, sale or transportation of alcohol in this country was officially made illegal. The result of Prohibition should have been instructive: People tended not only to drink more and more highly alcoholic beverages, but they also tended to lose their respect for the law in general. As for the mafia bootleggers and smugglers who supplied the alcohol that fueled the Jazz Age of the 1920s, they tended — in the absence of sensible regulation — to become exceedingly violent and vastly wealthy and powerful.

A devastating failure, Prohibition was repealed, alcohol was legalized, regulated and taxed in this country, and Americans collectively hoisted their glasses and toasted each other with cheers.

In 2009, California vintners shipped 467.7 million gallons (196.7 million cases) of California wine to the U.S. wine market. The estimated retail value of these sales was $17.9 billion.

Annually, more than 70,000 college students between the ages of 18 and 24 are victims of alcohol-related sexual assault in this country; 73 percent of all violent felonies are alcohol-related as are 67 percent of child-beating cases, 61 percent of rape cases, 80 percent of wife-battering, 72 percent of stabbings, and 83 percent of homicides. On college campuses, virtually 100 percent of all violent crime is alcohol-related. (Conversely, virtually none of the crime on college campuses is marijuana-related.)

The position of federal prosecutors that medicinal marijuana clinics significantly undermine their efforts to keep California communities safe is ludicrous.

So now, federal prosecutors maintain that the state’s medical marijuana law is being “perverted” by “profiteering drug dealers.”

Newsflash to the Feds: California’s unemployment rate is 12.3 percent. California has a severe tax revenue problem. If you want to create jobs, reduce unemployment and significantly raise California tax revenues — if you want to undercut the Mexican drug cartels and end the drug war in Mexico while saving billions in law enforcement, court and incarceration costs on this side of the border — then you want to legalize, regulate and tax marijuana.

Marijuana is California’s No. 1 cash crop: $16 billion per annum. (Try selling raisins for $400 an ounce.)

The movie “Reefer Madness” was released 75 years ago, and all government attempts to prevent people from using marijuana since have utterly failed. The war on marijuana has not worked, nor will it ever: It is a fatally flawed effort that wastes billions of tax dollars and continues to clog our jails, our prisons and our court system unnecessarily.

In the second decade of the 21st century, it’s time we face the facts, stop demonizing users and embrace the sensible legislation and regulation of marijuana. Cheech and Chong smoked marijuana. So did Barack Obama, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, Newt Gingrich, Jimmy Carter and John F. Kennedy. John Mackey, the CEO of Whole Foods Market, smoked pot, and so has Mark Zuckerberg.

Legalization of marijuana would by no means be a panacea, but it would solve a lot more problems than it would create.

It was once unthinkable that we would ever legalize, regulate and tax the sale of alcohol. We must dare to think about unthinkable things, for when things become unthinkable, thinking stops, and actions become mindless.

TODD DWYER teaches economics at Saratoga High School. He wrote this for this newspaper.