Feds poisoned Prohibition era alcohol

[MikeDC]

I'd never heard about this, and I've read a fair amount about Prohibition and the Great Depression era

Frustrated that people continued to consume so much alcohol even after it was banned, federal officials had decided to try a different kind of enforcement. They ordered the poisoning of industrial alcohols manufactured in the United States, products regularly stolen by bootleggers and resold as drinkable spirits. The idea was to scare people into giving up illicit drinking. Instead, by the time Prohibition ended in 1933, the federal poisoning program, by some estimates, had killed at least 10,000 people.

Although mostly forgotten today, the "chemist's war of Prohibition" remains one of the strangest and most deadly decisions in American law-enforcement history. As one of its most outspoken opponents, Charles Norris, the chief medical examiner of New York City during the 1920s, liked to say, it was "our national experiment in extermination."

Even better, we have the economically striking image of the government taking increasingly drastic steps to poison folks and organized crime gangs working to protect their customers.

To sell the stolen industrial alcohol, the liquor syndicates employed chemists to "renature" the products, returning them to a drinkable state. The bootleggers paid their chemists a lot more than the government did, and they excelled at their job. Stolen and redistilled alcohol became the primary source of liquor in the country. So federal officials ordered manufacturers to make their products far more deadly.

By mid-1927, the new denaturing formulas included some notable poisons—kerosene and brucine (a plant alkaloid closely related to strychnine), gasoline, benzene, cadmium, iodine, zinc, mercury salts, nicotine, ether, formaldehyde, chloroform, camphor, carbolic acid, quinine, and acetone. The Treasury Department also demanded more methyl alcohol be added—up to 10 percent of total product. It was the last that proved most deadly.

The results were immediate, starting with that horrific holiday body count in the closing days of 1926. Public health officials responded with shock. "The government knows it is not stopping drinking by putting poison in alcohol," New York City medical examiner Charles Norris said at a hastily organized press conference. "[Y]et it continues its poisoning processes, heedless of the fact that people determined to drink are daily absorbing that poison. Knowing this to be true, the United States government must be charged with the moral responsibility for the deaths that poisoned liquor causes, although it cannot be held legally responsible."

His department issued warnings to citizens, detailing the dangers in whiskey circulating in the city: "[P]ractically all the liquor that is sold in New York today is toxic," read one 1928 alert. He publicized every death by alcohol poisoning. He assigned his toxicologist, Alexander Gettler, to analyze confiscated whiskey for poisons—that long list of toxic materials I cited came in part from studies done by the New York City medical examiner's office.

Norris also condemned the federal program for its disproportionate effect on the country's poorest residents. Wealthy people, he pointed out, could afford the best whiskey available. Most of those sickened and dying were those "who cannot afford expensive protection and deal in low grade stuff."

 

[MrJayremmie]

Yeah I never knew about that.

 

[Eastoff]

maybe someone is dumb, and didn't realize that methanol was used as industrial spirits.

 

[MikeDC]

maybe someone is dumb, and didn't realize that methanol was used as industrial spirits.

Read the article closely

What was going on was the methanol wasn't originally used in industrial spirits. It was added due to tax consequences, and then it and other poisons were added by order of the government to kill people who tried to filter out the methyl and other poisons.

It was basically an arms race, in which the government sought every stronger means of poisoning industrial spirits and bootleggers sought means of filtering out the poisons.

 

[EL PRESIDENTE]

Hey, if it was illegal, take your risks! Just like those viruses on MP3s from torrents!


Caveat Emptor!

 

[barfo]

And we thought paraquat was evil...

barfo

 

[PtldPlatypus]

I think everyone missed the most significant portion of that article. Let me refresh and highlight:

"The government knows it is not stopping drinking by putting poison in alcohol," New York City medical examiner Charles Norris said at a hastily organized press conference.

Chuck Norris was kicking ass back in the 20's as an ME in NYC, and he's still kicking ass today. I gotta get me a Total Gym...

 

[MARIS61]

And we thought paraquat was evil...

barfo

Same thing.

 

[jlprk]

And we thought paraquat was evil...

Paraquat was a herbicide the US government sprayed on marijuana fields in Mexico in the 70s, like Agent Orange in Vietnam in the 60s-70s. The grass that survived would get sold in the US, killing smokers. I remember in the late 70s on the local Seattle TV station for either CBS, NBC, or ABC, the guy (was he the station's VP?) who spoke the editorials at the end of the local newscasts advocated that the government continue poisoning American drug users in order to poison and kill us. A year later, the SOB ran for US Senator. He lost.

 

[ehizzy3]

so were the feds the first to lace weed?

 

[MikeDC]

Paraquat was a herbicide the US government sprayed on marijuana fields in Mexico in the 70s, like Agent Orange in Vietnam in the 60s-70s. The grass that survived would get sold in the US, killing smokers. I remember in the late 70s on the local Seattle TV station for either CBS, NBC, or ABC, the guy (was he the station's VP?) who spoke the editorials at the end of the local newscasts advocated that the government continue poisoning American drug users in order to poison and kill us. A year later, the SOB ran for US Senator. He lost.

There was a time, a time before cable. When the local anchorman reigned supreme. When people believed everything they heard on TV. This was an age when only men were allowed to read the news. And in San Diego, one anchorman was more man then the rest. His name was Ron Burgundy. He was like a god walking amongst mere mortals. He had a voice that could make a wolverine purr and suits so fine they made Sinatra look like a hobo. In other words, Ron Burgundy was the balls.