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The US government poisoned alcohol during Prohibition (2010)

163 points by leksak 10y ago

greenyoda 10y ago
Denatured alcohol (e.g., ethanol with added methanol to render it undrinkable) is still used today for industrial purposes since it's much cheaper than pure ethanol, which is heavily taxed: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Denatured_alcohol https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Denatured_alcohol
- mamon 10y ago
  And yet some people (mostly homeless and addicts) find a way to drink it anyway, with such strange methods like filtering through bread crusts. I totally don't understand why article tries to blame government for all those deaths when it was clearly mob trying to make money.
  - meddlepal 10y ago
    Does the bread filtering thing actually work? I just don't see how that could possibly work...
    - aaron695 10y ago
      Burnt bread, AKA charcoal. It just reduces the bad taste, still tastes pretty bad.
  - hyperpape 10y ago
    If you take an action and know that there is a direct consequence that will kill people who have not done anything that could justify death (i.e. almost anything short of murder), you can't ignore that consequence. The only way to justify it is to say that for some reason, not acting would be unacceptable. And that is a high bar to clear, one that is obviously not met by the prohibition policy.
    - vintermann 10y ago
      But it's not a direct consequence, that's the point. It's an indirect one, completely dependent on other people trying to renature it and drink it - ignoring warning labels like this one: http://www.gettyimages.co.uk/detail/news-photo/warning-label-from-a-pharmacy-bottle-of-denatured-alcohol-news-photo/146438213 http://www.gettyimages.co.uk/detail/news-photo/warning-label...
      - hyperpape 10y ago
        I should have avoided the word 'direct', because of that potential for confusion. What I meant is predictable.
        vintermann 10y ago
        But there's a big difference between consequences that are predictable because of nature (i.e. if I kick this rock it will hurt) and consequences that are predictable because of people's decisions. The redistillers' resolve to keep selling even if they couldn't renature their product and it would be deadly - should that be treated the same as a force of nature? When should people's decisions be treated as a fact we just have to adapt to? In my experience, people mostly want their own decisions, or the decisions of the people they agree with, to be treated as facts of nature. But the decisions of people they disagree with, they want to treat as their own free decisions.
- toomanybeersies 10y ago
  Denatured alcohol in New Zealand specifically doesn't contain methanol or any other super toxic substances (except ethanol of course), despite being called methylated spirits. It still contains bittering agents, vomiting agents, and some other stuff that's nasty but won't kill you (I think some of it is denatured with petroleum as well at like 1%). Drinking it is gonna make you a bit crook, but it won't kill you any more than a bottle of vodka. I guess the government decided that killing alcoholics isn't the best course of action.
  - Houshalter 10y ago
    Well they used that in the US too. The issue was the criminals were hiring chemists to remove it. So they had to try other chemicals that were more difficult to remove, but also had worse effects. The goal was never to kill alcoholics, but to prevent them from stealing industrial alcohol. I think the people behind it didn't think anyone would be stupid enough to try to drink or sell this stuff.
    - nkurz 10y ago
      I think the people behind it didn't think anyone would be stupid enough to try to drink or sell this stuff. While it might be comforting to believe this, there's strong evidence that while directly killing alcoholics was not the goal, it was a known and acceptable collateral damage. Even after being confronted with the unprecedented number of deaths, the official response from Wayne Wheeler (the leader of the Anti-Saloon League and generally acknowledged architect of Prohibition) was that "The government is under no obligation to furnish people with alcohol that is drinkable when the Constitution prohibits it. The person who drinks this industrial alcohol is a deliberate suicide." https://books.google.com/books?id=8gAtAgAAQBAJ&pg=PT173&dq=%22The+government+is+under+no+obligation+to+furnish+people+with+alcohol+that+is+drinkable+when+the+Constitution+prohibits+it.+The+person+who+drinks+this+industrial+alcohol+is+a+deliberate+suicide.%22&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwj-mvasgffOAhUOHGMKHbaRCSgQ6AEIHjAA#v=onepage&q=%22The%20government%20is%20under%20no%20obligation%20to%20furnish%20people%20with%20alcohol%20that%20is%20drinkable%20when%20the%20Constitution%20prohibits%20it.%20The%20person%20who%20drinks%20this%20industrial%20alcohol%20is%20a%20deliberate%20suicide.%22&f=false https://books.google.com/books?id=8gAtAgAAQBAJ&pg=PT173&dq=%... Edit: Here's a political cartoon from 1927 attacking Wheeler for the deliberateness of his approach: http://archive.lib.msu.edu/DMC/tribune/trib00000000/trib00000000578.jpg http://archive.lib.msu.edu/DMC/tribune/trib00000000/trib0000...
bambax 10y ago
> 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." One of their experiments.
astrodust 10y ago
The alcohol used as torpedo propellant was that was often used by sailors to make "torpedo juice" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Torpedo_juice https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Torpedo_juice) so that ended up being tainted as well to render it undrinkable. That was also a severely misguided effort.
- meddlepal 10y ago
  I'm always kind of amused by the effort people will put into getting drunk throughout history.
  - Pica_soO 10y ago
    Mysterious, mysterious indeed- one can only imagine why those fools did that- they could have had so much fun with there servants and enjoying the full life.
  - astrodust 10y ago
    If you're on a boat that's likely to fire torpedoes at the enemy then you're in one that's likely to be blown to pieces by the enemy at any moment without warning. In a situation like that I can empathize with people wanting to take the edge off.
taneq 10y ago
Just like there are regularly reported "MDMA deaths" in the mainstream media despite MDMA never having been reasonably blamed for any death (beyond crazy "took 50x recommended dosage" or disingenuous "took something they thought was MDMA but was actually ketamine" cases).
- tpm 10y ago
  That's not really true, MDMA in high doses does have dangerous acute effects which can be deadly (hyponatremia, hyperthermia). See f.e. Martha Fernback, Anna Wood. I mean even if you die from water poisoning or heart attack (at the age of 15), that would not happen if you don't ingest MDMA beforehand.
  - taneq 10y ago
    OK, if you're a 45kg woman and you take six pills in an evening and then drink 10 liters of water, you'll die. If you get crushed in a crowd surge, you might die. Blaming those on MDMA specifically is usually fatuous though, even if it was a precursor. It's like saying that eating McDonalds is implicated in street racing deaths because some people who die in street races do so with McDonalds wrappers in the car.
    - pyre 10y ago
      If I take a drug that induces me to drink 10 litres of water, am I at fault for drinking 10 litres of water or does the drug have some culpability?
      - oldmanjay 10y ago
        Drugs can't bear fault. They have no means of moral expression. The person who took the drug bears all culpability.
      - loeg 10y ago
        I don't think you can blame MDMA for drinking 10L of water. I think that's entirely a socialized overreaction to the typical side effect of MDMA (not noticing you're overheating from constant activity in a crowded space).
SSLy 10y ago
Who would poison our liquor without government?
- DanBC 10y ago
  Criminal gangs selling bootleg liquor will sometimes sell contaminated product.
  - jeremyjh 10y ago
    Due to incompetence/apathy. They have no motivation to kill their paying customers.
    - sitkack 10y ago
      Let the market decide.
    - dalke 10y ago
      They do have motivation to undercut the competition and make short term profits. With many middlemen, the bootlegger's customer is rarely an end user. The end-user doesn't know who on the supply chain has adulterated the alcohol for a quick buck, and the lack of enforceable trademark protection and brand loyalty means a distiller will have less oversight on the distribution.
  - haroldp 10y ago
    There's no such thing as a criminal gang selling bootleg liquor without a government prohibition.
    - DanBC 10y ago
      Of course there is. No matter what price alcohol is sold at it will always be cheaper for a criminal gang to sell it cheaper. There's no need for any government intervention for this to be true.
- dclowd9901 10y ago
nxc18 10y ago
Although this had unfortunate consequences, and would be unthinkable in today's enlightened world, I'm not sure the line of reasoning here was unreasonable. The idea that manufacturers would be allowed to produce vast quantities of a partially illegal substance, without putting in efforts to prevent illegal use, seems unreasonable. Imagine the outcry if it turned out Phizer was manufacturing all the heroin. (They and their friends are manufacturing the heroin addicts, but the doctors are equally to blame here) It seems reasonable the government would act to stop it. The understanding of human behavior was not developed enough in the 1920s to really expect a perfectly safe program. You could argue that the government should have been serving, rather than fighting the people, but a democracy, even a republican one like the US's is subject to the whims of an easily frightened electorate.
- lenzm 10y ago
  It is still done today. Prescription opiods are loaded with acetaminophen that will make you far sicker sooner than the opiods will.
  - marcoperaza 10y ago
    And the recent widespread availability of Oxy, which doesn't have acetaminophen (i.e. tylenol), is thought to be responsible for the current opiate epidemic.
    - TelmoMenezes 10y ago
      Yes, I'm sure it has nothing to do with pharmaceutical companies rewarding doctors for over-prescribing it, and in essence mobilizing them as drug dealers.
      - marcoperaza 10y ago
        It's definitely over-prescribed, especially by "pain clinics" that hand them out like candy. But in contrast, pain clinics handing out vicodin prescriptions like candy would be a much less serious issue because the acetaminophen limits the abuse potential.
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
tn13 10y ago
Why is this a surprise ? US government sells child porn to catch child porn consumers, US government sells prohibited weapons to drug dealers, US government sells weapons to terrorists. US government has too much of money that is the problem.
tn13 10y ago
How many americans die each year because FDA has taken too much of time to approve drugs ?
- Symmetry 10y ago
  This is the only collection of research on the topic I've seen but if anybody has evidence for a lower number I'd be happy to see it. http://www.fdareview.org/05_harm.php http://www.fdareview.org/05_harm.php Specifically: [T]he benefits of FDA regulation relative to that in foreign countries could reasonably be put at some 5,000 casualties per decade or 10,000 per decade for worst-case scenarios. In comparison, it has been argued above that the cost of FDA delay can be estimated at anywhere from 21,000 to 120,000 lives per decade
tomohawk 10y ago
Not sure what the answer is, but alcohol is involved in around 88,000 deaths in the US each year. https://www.niaaa.nih.gov/alcohol-health/overview-alcohol-consumption/alcohol-facts-and-statistics https://www.niaaa.nih.gov/alcohol-health/overview-alcohol-co... Despite what the popular press says, Prohibition had some beneficial effects, and not all of the negative effects attributed to Prohibition actually arose out of Prohibition. http://www.nytimes.com/1989/10/16/opinion/actually-prohibition-was-a-success.html http://www.nytimes.com/1989/10/16/opinion/actually-prohibiti...
- wellbehaved 10y ago
  Lots of rotten prohibitions would have "beneficial effects." If we prohibit medical treatment for people over 65, the rate of Alzheimer's will go down. If we prohibit driving except to and from work, traffic accidents will decrease dramatically. Etc.
  - Turing_Machine 10y ago
    "Lots of rotten prohibitions would have "beneficial effects." Yep. Outlaw sex -> fewer STDs (use artificial insemination with tested sperm for reproductive purposes). Make everyone wear hockey goalie gear all the time -> fewer concussions and other injuries.
todd8 10y ago
Reminds me of the poison baked-bean menace :) Start here: http://www.animationresources.org/pics/fosdickbeans01-bigz.jpg http://www.animationresources.org/pics/fosdickbeans01-bigz.j... Rest of cartoon strips: http://animationresources.org/biography-al-capp-2-a-cappital-offense/ http://animationresources.org/biography-al-capp-2-a-cappital...
megous 10y ago
OTOH, governments sure love alcohol. Consumption and VAT tax adds to 50% on hard alcohol. There's a lot of profit to be made. Gov makes many times more than the actual producer. Denaturation is just a way of pleasing industrial users, while keeping the exorbiant profits from drinkers. If they could, they would tax the industrial users too. It's a blood money because of artificially increased incetives for unsafe production of alcohol. Which killed and blinded people in the past. Even those who thought were buying the "good" taxed alcohol because of supply chain contamination. Cynical view perhaps. Though when thinking about effective measures the government decision making is always contaminated by losing their precisous billions of $. (non-US)
- hyperpape 10y ago
  The thing is, alcohol taxes are too low. There are huge social costs of alcohol use and alcoholism, ranging from direct health risks, to drunk driving and assault. The taxes on alcohol (unlike the taxes on cigarettes) do not even come close to matching the social costs of alcohol. For references, look at Mark Kleiman's work. So no, the taxes are not blood money, though I suspect adding methyl alcohol to industrial alcohol is indefensible. Fwiw: I do still drink, typically 1-2 drinks, no more than 1-2 days a week, so I'm not a particularly heavy drinker (i.e. this would cost me money, but not as much as it would cost some folks). I also believed this when I drank more than I do now.
  - mgleason_3 10y ago
    > ...alcohol taxes are too low Citation needed - seriously. Mark Kleinman the "War on Alcohol guy"?!? Arguments about taxation could go on for a very long time. Is the tax having the effect we wanted. Should taxes be used for social engineering? Is the govt even using the money to cure the social ills they promised theyd solve - apparently not for cigarettes because smokings coming back in a big way. > the taxes are not blood money Actually they are - here's the definition: http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/blood%20money http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/blood%20money
    - deleted 10y ago
known 10y ago
To protect your liver take a HEPAMERZ pill before consuming alcohol
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
azeotropic 10y ago
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Azeotropic_distillation https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Azeotropic_distillation You can't distill ethanol to 100%, only 95%. To get the last 5% of water out you typically add benzene or cyclohexane, which remains as a trace contaminant in the final product. Also note that methanol (and other unsavory small molecules) normally contaminate distilled ethanol unless you actively take steps to remove them. For something you intend to drink, you need to carefully control fermentation to reduce the amount of methanol, toss out the early distillation fractions to remove as much methanol as you can, and then let your remaining distillate sit in an open tank for a couple of weeks to let whatever methanol remains evaporate off (along with some of your product). If you're making ethanol as an industrial solvent or fuel, you don't need to do these things. It's not crazy that under prohibition, taking all those extra steps would be seen as evidence of an intention to violate the law and make drinkable spirits. But whatever, Slate says it was a conspiracy to poison poor people, I'm sure that's the right explanation.
- loeg 10y ago
  > 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. I don't think any of those are just natural byproducts of making high proof industrial alcohol. Or do you contest that claim?
  - azeotropic 10y ago
    Formaldehyde could happen by accident during the process (it's the aldehyde form of methanol). The organic solvents (kerosene, gasoline, benzene, ether, chloraform, carbolic acid, acetone) would be used to break up the azeotrope during distillation to 100% ethanol. You can't make 100% ethanol without making it poisonous. It's still poisonous now that prohibition is over. The rest are primitive bitterants of one form or another to make poisonous denatured alcohol less palatable-- they're there to save lives by making it so disgusting that you spit it out instead of swallowing it. We still add bitterants to denatured alcohol (and to rubbing alcohol, and nail polish, and spray cans), but they're way more bitter than any of those. You're just freaking out because the chemicals sound scary. The author goes out of his way to mention strychnine just to scare you about brucine, but it's still used as a bitterant. Look I don't doubt some people callously said people who died or went blind drinking denatured alcohol or wood alcohol got what they deserved because they shouldn't have been drinking it anyway. I do doubt that these things were put in industrial alcohol to kill people. The bitterants are there for the exact opposite reason.
pasbesoin 10y ago
We need to decrease focus on "the U.S. government" in such history and reporting. "People poisoned alcohol during prohibition." Once you get to that point, you realize that the lessons of history apply all around you. Basically, people are still people. And what happened before, is bound -- history demonstrates, very likely to -- happen again. You learn to view everything with a critical eye. I guess I can't avoid the meme: "Because people." OTOH, this also means that the beauty and awe found in history is also to be found around you, every day. You don't have to leave your time and place to... "live in interesting times." So, have a good Sunday (today)! :-)
- charlesism 10y ago
  > the lessons of history apply all around you. You're right, but that's one of those realizations a person probably has to come to on their own. I doubt it matters what combination of words you use to express it.
- mindslight 10y ago
  "Government" is the term we use to describe a type of structure that "people" form. This type of structure usually ends up doing these sort of things. "History will repeat itself" isn't very useful unless the aim is to soothe oneself into giving up hope.
Zigurd 10y ago
What's shocking to me is the extent to which some people think this is OK. This is why we will never run out of prison camp guards and executioners. They're on a continuum with the sort of people who will formulate a product to conduct mass murder. It's a sanitary mass killing. They're addicts, after all. I've got qualified immunity as a DEA agent if I'm formulating opioid painkillers with a drug that will give you liver failure so you have plenty of time for a slow painful death, denied a transplant due to "drug abuse." It takes a special kind of ghoul.

163 points by leksak 10y ago

Denatured alcohol (e.g., ethanol with added methanol to render it undrinkable) is still used today for industrial purposes since it's much cheaper than pure ethanol, which is heavily taxed: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Denatured_alcohol https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Denatured_alcohol

mamon 10y ago
And yet some people (mostly homeless and addicts) find a way to drink it anyway, with such strange methods like filtering through bread crusts. I totally don't understand why article tries to blame government for all those deaths when it was clearly mob trying to make money.
- meddlepal 10y ago
  Does the bread filtering thing actually work? I just don't see how that could possibly work...
  - aaron695 10y ago
    Burnt bread, AKA charcoal. It just reduces the bad taste, still tastes pretty bad.
- hyperpape 10y ago
  If you take an action and know that there is a direct consequence that will kill people who have not done anything that could justify death (i.e. almost anything short of murder), you can't ignore that consequence. The only way to justify it is to say that for some reason, not acting would be unacceptable. And that is a high bar to clear, one that is obviously not met by the prohibition policy.
  - vintermann 10y ago
    But it's not a direct consequence, that's the point. It's an indirect one, completely dependent on other people trying to renature it and drink it - ignoring warning labels like this one: http://www.gettyimages.co.uk/detail/news-photo/warning-label-from-a-pharmacy-bottle-of-denatured-alcohol-news-photo/146438213 http://www.gettyimages.co.uk/detail/news-photo/warning-label...
    - hyperpape 10y ago
      I should have avoided the word 'direct', because of that potential for confusion. What I meant is predictable.
      - vintermann 10y ago
        But there's a big difference between consequences that are predictable because of nature (i.e. if I kick this rock it will hurt) and consequences that are predictable because of people's decisions. The redistillers' resolve to keep selling even if they couldn't renature their product and it would be deadly - should that be treated the same as a force of nature? When should people's decisions be treated as a fact we just have to adapt to? In my experience, people mostly want their own decisions, or the decisions of the people they agree with, to be treated as facts of nature. But the decisions of people they disagree with, they want to treat as their own free decisions.
toomanybeersies 10y ago
Denatured alcohol in New Zealand specifically doesn't contain methanol or any other super toxic substances (except ethanol of course), despite being called methylated spirits. It still contains bittering agents, vomiting agents, and some other stuff that's nasty but won't kill you (I think some of it is denatured with petroleum as well at like 1%). Drinking it is gonna make you a bit crook, but it won't kill you any more than a bottle of vodka. I guess the government decided that killing alcoholics isn't the best course of action.
- Houshalter 10y ago
  Well they used that in the US too. The issue was the criminals were hiring chemists to remove it. So they had to try other chemicals that were more difficult to remove, but also had worse effects. The goal was never to kill alcoholics, but to prevent them from stealing industrial alcohol. I think the people behind it didn't think anyone would be stupid enough to try to drink or sell this stuff.
  - nkurz 10y ago
    I think the people behind it didn't think anyone would be stupid enough to try to drink or sell this stuff. While it might be comforting to believe this, there's strong evidence that while directly killing alcoholics was not the goal, it was a known and acceptable collateral damage. Even after being confronted with the unprecedented number of deaths, the official response from Wayne Wheeler (the leader of the Anti-Saloon League and generally acknowledged architect of Prohibition) was that "The government is under no obligation to furnish people with alcohol that is drinkable when the Constitution prohibits it. The person who drinks this industrial alcohol is a deliberate suicide." https://books.google.com/books?id=8gAtAgAAQBAJ&pg=PT173&dq=%22The+government+is+under+no+obligation+to+furnish+people+with+alcohol+that+is+drinkable+when+the+Constitution+prohibits+it.+The+person+who+drinks+this+industrial+alcohol+is+a+deliberate+suicide.%22&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwj-mvasgffOAhUOHGMKHbaRCSgQ6AEIHjAA#v=onepage&q=%22The%20government%20is%20under%20no%20obligation%20to%20furnish%20people%20with%20alcohol%20that%20is%20drinkable%20when%20the%20Constitution%20prohibits%20it.%20The%20person%20who%20drinks%20this%20industrial%20alcohol%20is%20a%20deliberate%20suicide.%22&f=false https://books.google.com/books?id=8gAtAgAAQBAJ&pg=PT173&dq=%... Edit: Here's a political cartoon from 1927 attacking Wheeler for the deliberateness of his approach: http://archive.lib.msu.edu/DMC/tribune/trib00000000/trib00000000578.jpg http://archive.lib.msu.edu/DMC/tribune/trib00000000/trib0000...

bambax 10y ago

> 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." One of their experiments.

astrodust 10y ago

The alcohol used as torpedo propellant was that was often used by sailors to make "torpedo juice" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Torpedo_juice https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Torpedo_juice) so that ended up being tainted as well to render it undrinkable. That was also a severely misguided effort.

meddlepal 10y ago
I'm always kind of amused by the effort people will put into getting drunk throughout history.
- Pica_soO 10y ago
  Mysterious, mysterious indeed- one can only imagine why those fools did that- they could have had so much fun with there servants and enjoying the full life.
- astrodust 10y ago
  If you're on a boat that's likely to fire torpedoes at the enemy then you're in one that's likely to be blown to pieces by the enemy at any moment without warning. In a situation like that I can empathize with people wanting to take the edge off.

taneq 10y ago

Just like there are regularly reported "MDMA deaths" in the mainstream media despite MDMA never having been reasonably blamed for any death (beyond crazy "took 50x recommended dosage" or disingenuous "took something they thought was MDMA but was actually ketamine" cases).

tpm 10y ago
That's not really true, MDMA in high doses does have dangerous acute effects which can be deadly (hyponatremia, hyperthermia). See f.e. Martha Fernback, Anna Wood. I mean even if you die from water poisoning or heart attack (at the age of 15), that would not happen if you don't ingest MDMA beforehand.
- taneq 10y ago
  OK, if you're a 45kg woman and you take six pills in an evening and then drink 10 liters of water, you'll die. If you get crushed in a crowd surge, you might die. Blaming those on MDMA specifically is usually fatuous though, even if it was a precursor. It's like saying that eating McDonalds is implicated in street racing deaths because some people who die in street races do so with McDonalds wrappers in the car.
  - pyre 10y ago
    If I take a drug that induces me to drink 10 litres of water, am I at fault for drinking 10 litres of water or does the drug have some culpability?
    - oldmanjay 10y ago
      Drugs can't bear fault. They have no means of moral expression. The person who took the drug bears all culpability.
    - loeg 10y ago
      I don't think you can blame MDMA for drinking 10L of water. I think that's entirely a socialized overreaction to the typical side effect of MDMA (not noticing you're overheating from constant activity in a crowded space).

SSLy 10y ago

Who would poison our liquor without government?

DanBC 10y ago
Criminal gangs selling bootleg liquor will sometimes sell contaminated product.
- jeremyjh 10y ago
  Due to incompetence/apathy. They have no motivation to kill their paying customers.
  - sitkack 10y ago
    Let the market decide.
  - dalke 10y ago
    They do have motivation to undercut the competition and make short term profits. With many middlemen, the bootlegger's customer is rarely an end user. The end-user doesn't know who on the supply chain has adulterated the alcohol for a quick buck, and the lack of enforceable trademark protection and brand loyalty means a distiller will have less oversight on the distribution.
- haroldp 10y ago
  There's no such thing as a criminal gang selling bootleg liquor without a government prohibition.
  - DanBC 10y ago
    Of course there is. No matter what price alcohol is sold at it will always be cheaper for a criminal gang to sell it cheaper. There's no need for any government intervention for this to be true.
dclowd9901 10y ago

nxc18 10y ago

Although this had unfortunate consequences, and would be unthinkable in today's enlightened world, I'm not sure the line of reasoning here was unreasonable. The idea that manufacturers would be allowed to produce vast quantities of a partially illegal substance, without putting in efforts to prevent illegal use, seems unreasonable. Imagine the outcry if it turned out Phizer was manufacturing all the heroin. (They and their friends are manufacturing the heroin addicts, but the doctors are equally to blame here) It seems reasonable the government would act to stop it. The understanding of human behavior was not developed enough in the 1920s to really expect a perfectly safe program. You could argue that the government should have been serving, rather than fighting the people, but a democracy, even a republican one like the US's is subject to the whims of an easily frightened electorate.

lenzm 10y ago
It is still done today. Prescription opiods are loaded with acetaminophen that will make you far sicker sooner than the opiods will.
- marcoperaza 10y ago
  And the recent widespread availability of Oxy, which doesn't have acetaminophen (i.e. tylenol), is thought to be responsible for the current opiate epidemic.
  - TelmoMenezes 10y ago
    Yes, I'm sure it has nothing to do with pharmaceutical companies rewarding doctors for over-prescribing it, and in essence mobilizing them as drug dealers.
    - marcoperaza 10y ago
      It's definitely over-prescribed, especially by "pain clinics" that hand them out like candy. But in contrast, pain clinics handing out vicodin prescriptions like candy would be a much less serious issue because the acetaminophen limits the abuse potential.

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]

tn13 10y ago

Why is this a surprise ? US government sells child porn to catch child porn consumers, US government sells prohibited weapons to drug dealers, US government sells weapons to terrorists. US government has too much of money that is the problem.

tn13 10y ago

How many americans die each year because FDA has taken too much of time to approve drugs ?

Symmetry 10y ago
This is the only collection of research on the topic I've seen but if anybody has evidence for a lower number I'd be happy to see it. http://www.fdareview.org/05_harm.php http://www.fdareview.org/05_harm.php Specifically: [T]he benefits of FDA regulation relative to that in foreign countries could reasonably be put at some 5,000 casualties per decade or 10,000 per decade for worst-case scenarios. In comparison, it has been argued above that the cost of FDA delay can be estimated at anywhere from 21,000 to 120,000 lives per decade

tomohawk 10y ago

Not sure what the answer is, but alcohol is involved in around 88,000 deaths in the US each year. https://www.niaaa.nih.gov/alcohol-health/overview-alcohol-consumption/alcohol-facts-and-statistics https://www.niaaa.nih.gov/alcohol-health/overview-alcohol-co... Despite what the popular press says, Prohibition had some beneficial effects, and not all of the negative effects attributed to Prohibition actually arose out of Prohibition. http://www.nytimes.com/1989/10/16/opinion/actually-prohibition-was-a-success.html http://www.nytimes.com/1989/10/16/opinion/actually-prohibiti...

wellbehaved 10y ago
Lots of rotten prohibitions would have "beneficial effects." If we prohibit medical treatment for people over 65, the rate of Alzheimer's will go down. If we prohibit driving except to and from work, traffic accidents will decrease dramatically. Etc.
- Turing_Machine 10y ago
  "Lots of rotten prohibitions would have "beneficial effects." Yep. Outlaw sex -> fewer STDs (use artificial insemination with tested sperm for reproductive purposes). Make everyone wear hockey goalie gear all the time -> fewer concussions and other injuries.

todd8 10y ago

Reminds me of the poison baked-bean menace :) Start here: http://www.animationresources.org/pics/fosdickbeans01-bigz.jpg http://www.animationresources.org/pics/fosdickbeans01-bigz.j... Rest of cartoon strips: http://animationresources.org/biography-al-capp-2-a-cappital-offense/ http://animationresources.org/biography-al-capp-2-a-cappital...

megous 10y ago

OTOH, governments sure love alcohol. Consumption and VAT tax adds to 50% on hard alcohol. There's a lot of profit to be made. Gov makes many times more than the actual producer. Denaturation is just a way of pleasing industrial users, while keeping the exorbiant profits from drinkers. If they could, they would tax the industrial users too. It's a blood money because of artificially increased incetives for unsafe production of alcohol. Which killed and blinded people in the past. Even those who thought were buying the "good" taxed alcohol because of supply chain contamination. Cynical view perhaps. Though when thinking about effective measures the government decision making is always contaminated by losing their precisous billions of $. (non-US)

hyperpape 10y ago
The thing is, alcohol taxes are too low. There are huge social costs of alcohol use and alcoholism, ranging from direct health risks, to drunk driving and assault. The taxes on alcohol (unlike the taxes on cigarettes) do not even come close to matching the social costs of alcohol. For references, look at Mark Kleiman's work. So no, the taxes are not blood money, though I suspect adding methyl alcohol to industrial alcohol is indefensible. Fwiw: I do still drink, typically 1-2 drinks, no more than 1-2 days a week, so I'm not a particularly heavy drinker (i.e. this would cost me money, but not as much as it would cost some folks). I also believed this when I drank more than I do now.
- mgleason_3 10y ago
  > ...alcohol taxes are too low Citation needed - seriously. Mark Kleinman the "War on Alcohol guy"?!? Arguments about taxation could go on for a very long time. Is the tax having the effect we wanted. Should taxes be used for social engineering? Is the govt even using the money to cure the social ills they promised theyd solve - apparently not for cigarettes because smokings coming back in a big way. > the taxes are not blood money Actually they are - here's the definition: http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/blood%20money http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/blood%20money
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known 10y ago

To protect your liver take a HEPAMERZ pill before consuming alcohol

deleted 10y ago

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azeotropic 10y ago

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Azeotropic_distillation https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Azeotropic_distillation You can't distill ethanol to 100%, only 95%. To get the last 5% of water out you typically add benzene or cyclohexane, which remains as a trace contaminant in the final product. Also note that methanol (and other unsavory small molecules) normally contaminate distilled ethanol unless you actively take steps to remove them. For something you intend to drink, you need to carefully control fermentation to reduce the amount of methanol, toss out the early distillation fractions to remove as much methanol as you can, and then let your remaining distillate sit in an open tank for a couple of weeks to let whatever methanol remains evaporate off (along with some of your product). If you're making ethanol as an industrial solvent or fuel, you don't need to do these things. It's not crazy that under prohibition, taking all those extra steps would be seen as evidence of an intention to violate the law and make drinkable spirits. But whatever, Slate says it was a conspiracy to poison poor people, I'm sure that's the right explanation.

loeg 10y ago
> 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. I don't think any of those are just natural byproducts of making high proof industrial alcohol. Or do you contest that claim?
- azeotropic 10y ago
  Formaldehyde could happen by accident during the process (it's the aldehyde form of methanol). The organic solvents (kerosene, gasoline, benzene, ether, chloraform, carbolic acid, acetone) would be used to break up the azeotrope during distillation to 100% ethanol. You can't make 100% ethanol without making it poisonous. It's still poisonous now that prohibition is over. The rest are primitive bitterants of one form or another to make poisonous denatured alcohol less palatable-- they're there to save lives by making it so disgusting that you spit it out instead of swallowing it. We still add bitterants to denatured alcohol (and to rubbing alcohol, and nail polish, and spray cans), but they're way more bitter than any of those. You're just freaking out because the chemicals sound scary. The author goes out of his way to mention strychnine just to scare you about brucine, but it's still used as a bitterant. Look I don't doubt some people callously said people who died or went blind drinking denatured alcohol or wood alcohol got what they deserved because they shouldn't have been drinking it anyway. I do doubt that these things were put in industrial alcohol to kill people. The bitterants are there for the exact opposite reason.

pasbesoin 10y ago

We need to decrease focus on "the U.S. government" in such history and reporting. "People poisoned alcohol during prohibition." Once you get to that point, you realize that the lessons of history apply all around you. Basically, people are still people. And what happened before, is bound -- history demonstrates, very likely to -- happen again. You learn to view everything with a critical eye. I guess I can't avoid the meme: "Because people." OTOH, this also means that the beauty and awe found in history is also to be found around you, every day. You don't have to leave your time and place to... "live in interesting times." So, have a good Sunday (today)! :-)

charlesism 10y ago
> the lessons of history apply all around you. You're right, but that's one of those realizations a person probably has to come to on their own. I doubt it matters what combination of words you use to express it.
mindslight 10y ago
"Government" is the term we use to describe a type of structure that "people" form. This type of structure usually ends up doing these sort of things. "History will repeat itself" isn't very useful unless the aim is to soothe oneself into giving up hope.

Zigurd 10y ago

What's shocking to me is the extent to which some people think this is OK. This is why we will never run out of prison camp guards and executioners. They're on a continuum with the sort of people who will formulate a product to conduct mass murder. It's a sanitary mass killing. They're addicts, after all. I've got qualified immunity as a DEA agent if I'm formulating opioid painkillers with a drug that will give you liver failure so you have plenty of time for a slow painful death, denied a transplant due to "drug abuse." It takes a special kind of ghoul.