Alcohol poisoning during Prohibition

[dhermann1]

Here's another story that will reinforce the feeling that the Golden Age, as charming as it may be to us today, is a place we'd rather visit than live in. Seems the US government poisoned industrial alcohol in the 1920's, leading to the deaths of thousands of people. From Slate:
http://www.slate.com/id/2245188

 

[Artie]

Go a little farther down in the article and if we didn't already know it, government stupidity is not restricted to any one era.

"I did, however, remember the U.S. government's controversial decision in the 1970s to spray Mexican marijuana fields with Paraquat, an herbicide. Its use was primarily intended to destroy crops, but government officials also insisted that awareness of the toxin would deter marijuana smokers."

 

[carebear]

It's for our own good.

 

[Fletch]

What's amazing is that there was no coverup. Medical examiners are quoted as speaking out very strongly against the measures. Yet public opinion either couldn't be mobilized or was just disregarded.

I suspect there's more to this story than a feature article could tell, and it has to do with the press, the pulpit, and a pre-electronic-media opinion climate that we no longer quite understand.

I know that altho a majority privately or de facto opposed Prohibition, it could be a social death sentence to speak out against it publicly in some places (Iowa being one of them).

 

[LizzieMaine]

My grandmother was a Prohibitionist to her dying day, as befits her grape-juice Methodist background, and when she and my grandfather were courting, she caught him with a bottle of hootch -- naturally enough, since his brother was the town bootlegger. She then proceeded to go Carrie Nation on him, beating him up and taking it away from him and pitching it into the river. YOU DAMFOOL, YOU WANNA GO BLIND??? Apparently there was a very notorious local incident of some local ne'er-do-well getting a snootful of "wood alcohol," and losing his eyesight in retribution for his sin. There was, indeed, a very real chance of getting the literal blind staggers from an illicit nip, even without Uncle Sam's help.

There was also the notorious "ginger jake" epidemic in the late twenties, in which a alcoholic patent medicine made with Jamacian ginger extract was laced with a toxic chemical to give it extra kick, resulting in hundreds of cases of paralysis.

That's why it paid to have a friend who was a doctor or a pharmacist. Prescriptions for "medicinal liquor" could easily be had for a small consideration, and no dealing with low characters or slotted doors.

 

[Atomic Age]

That's why it paid to have a friend who was a doctor or a pharmacist. Prescriptions for "medicinal liquor" could easily be had for a small consideration, and no dealing with low characters or slotted doors.

A week or two ago on the show Pawn Stars, someone brought in a bottle in the original box of "medicinal liquor". The bottle was still sealed and the stamps in place, with the doctors signature. I don't remember how much they paid him for it.

Doug

 

[Chas]

Pretty heinous. (what the Gov't did). The Volstead Act was the single most ill-advised event in US jurisprudence. All it really accomplished was to entrench organized crime in US society and to make dealing with the Great Depression even more difficult than it had to be.