Organized crime profits from providing illicit drugs, gambling, prostitution, and other goods and services proscribed by law or not met through legitimate businesses. As long as a significant minority of citizens will pay for these goods and services, organized crime will thrive. Organized crime resembles legitimate businesses in its structure, practices, and ideology. Profit is the ideology, the structure is designed for efficiency, and practices aim at maximum profit. The corrupting and harmful influences of organized crime will be countered only when the needs it meets diminish or alternative structures are developed to meet the needs. The diminishment of the needs met by organized crime requires large-scale social education, planning, and implementation. Constructive alternatives for meeting the needs requires government regulation rather than proscription of the trafficking in such goods and services as gambling, prostitution, and drug use. Such regulation should aim at reducing the social and economic harms caused by the satisfaction of these needs while providing a laboratory for research and action designed to reduce the need and market for these goods and services. 45 footnotes.