There were many things I was told that lead me to the philosophy I possess about the United States, most were good. Before I go on let me tell you, I love my country and believe in the core values of the nation. I love being born at the time I was, and consider my nation a great nation. That being said, I have also learned much about the things that have gone on throughout our history that embarrass me. One of them is the story about the government poisoning alcohol.
The prohibition in the U. S. was a period from 1920-1933 where it was against the law to manufacture, store in barrels, and store in bottles, transport or sell liquor to the American people. Legally the country was dry. There was however a whole illegal industry that provided liquor, from bootlegging, to the speakeasy pubs.
After WWI, the country spurred by a temperance movement and ratified the 19th amendment. The amendment banned the production and sale of booze. Again the ban was to law abiding citizens. To make sure this was enforced the Volstead Act was enacted. The Volstead Act had a provision that made it legal to poison liquor. The government believed this would deter people from drinking. The act:
- Prohibited drinking intoxicating beverages
- Regulated the manufacturing, transporting and sale of liquor
- Ensured a supply of alcohol and promoted its use in scientific research and in the development of fuel, dye and other lawful industries and practices, such as religious rituals. (1)
They took regular, drinkable alcohol and added chemicals like quinine and methyl alcohol to make it industrial. It is a term called ‘denatured alcohol’. It was undrinkable at that point. The government actually gave manufacturers tax breaks if they denatured their alcohol.
On New Year’s Day in 1927 New York City hospitals filled with people that were dying from drinking the poisoned alcohol. So the government poisoned the people, “to keep them safe from the abuses of alcohol”. 41 people died in NYC from the poisoned alcohol. In the 1920’s a total of 10,000-50,000 people died as a result of poisoned alcohol and the government’s policies.
The government made no attempt to pretend that increasing the denaturing formula wouldn’t lead to deaths. Seymour M. Lowman, Assistant Secretary of the Treasury in charge of Prohibition, even told citizens that the fringes of society that drink were “dying off fast from poison ‘hooch’” and that if the result was a sober America, “a good job will have been done.” (2)
The whole embarrassing episode reads like a conspiracy theory. The populace started to rebel against prohibition, and organized crime was the real winner of the day. The 21st amendment repealed prohibition in 1933 and the whole poisoned alcohol period was tucked away like an ugly piece of clothing. Well that is until the internet and the “Freedom of Information Act”.
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Subtitle of the act,http://www.druglibrary.org/schaffer/Library/studies/wick/wick1.html National Commission on Law Observance and Enforcement Report on the Enforcement of the Prohibition Laws of the United States Dated January 7, 1931 National Prohibition.
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Rothman, Lily, The History of Poisoned Alcohol Includes an Unlikely Culprit; The U.S. Government, Time Magazine, http://time.com/3665643/deadly-drinking/
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Wedler, Carey, The Time the Government Purposely Poisoned Thousands of Americans, Antimedia, September 9, 2015, http://theantimedia.org/that-time-the-us-government-purposely-poisoned-thousands-of-americans/
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