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Prohibition, Prescriptions and the Rise of 'Medicinal' Booze · Ridiculous History

0:23
Speaker 1: The actor, vaudeville performer, cowboy and humorist Will Rogers once
0:28
Speaker 1: famously said that the American people will vote dry so
0:32
Speaker 1: long as they are able to stagger to the polls,
0:36
Speaker 1: voting dry meaning voting against legalized alcohol. Welcome to the show,
0:41
Speaker 1: and Ben, my name is No. That's really funny. Then
0:44
Speaker 1: that's a very good little loaded was it? What do
0:46
Speaker 1: you call it? It's like a pun a turn of phrase.
0:49
Speaker 1: I mean, uh yeah, sort of a that's sort of
0:51
Speaker 1: a double message, like it's like a hidden meaning. Voting
0:54
Speaker 1: dry to me would mean voting sober. But as long
0:57
Speaker 1: as they can stumble the polls implying voting drunk. There's
1:00
Speaker 1: a lot going on there. There's a lot of stuff.
1:02
Speaker 1: There's a lot of meaning. We've gotta unpack them. That
1:03
Speaker 1: that has to do with today's story, because, as we know,
1:07
Speaker 1: voting also has a history of drunkenness. Remember we did
1:10
Speaker 1: an episode about when people used to booze people up
1:12
Speaker 1: and at the polls and and then keep them hostage,
1:15
Speaker 1: keep them hostage and weird little you know speak easy
1:18
Speaker 1: booze dungeons. We're not talking about that today, exactly. We
1:21
Speaker 1: are talking about uh prohibition and a particular exception that
1:27
Speaker 1: was made for drinking alcohol during that time, right, right,
1:31
Speaker 1: and speaking of exceptional people and circumstances, let's give a
1:36
Speaker 1: shout out to our super producer, Casey Pegram Casey, just
1:42
Speaker 1: for the record to establish all three of us are
1:46
Speaker 1: not teetotalers. Right, yeah, it's correct. All have a drink now.
1:50
Speaker 1: And again I mean I'm no, no, definitely not. I
1:53
Speaker 1: love that expression though, teetotaler, teetotaler. It's it's fun to say,
1:56
Speaker 1: and it sounds like a test for people who have
1:58
Speaker 1: been drinking exactly if you pronounce it correctly. But yes, yes, no,
2:03
Speaker 1: you're right. Uh. Nowadays, when we think of prohibition, we
2:08
Speaker 1: think of you know, al capone, we think of some
2:11
Speaker 1: of us think of the origin of some race cars.
2:15
Speaker 1: But this was a very serious problem for thirteen years.
2:20
Speaker 1: The National Prohibition Act, otherwise known as the Volstead Act,
2:25
Speaker 1: attempted to keep people in the United States from drinking, transporting,
2:32
Speaker 1: even making any intoxicating beverage. How that work, though, man,
2:36
Speaker 1: How that work? Abstinence? Right? Oh boy, yeah, right, complete success.
2:42
Speaker 1: I'm gonna move this microphone because I like making that
2:44
Speaker 1: context with you. Can we keep that part in of
2:48
Speaker 1: course some Monday morning guys, it really is. But no,
2:52
Speaker 1: I mean I'm I'm obviously being a little sarcastic because
2:55
Speaker 1: as we know, when you when you make people, you
2:57
Speaker 1: tell people they can't do something, they just want to
2:59
Speaker 1: do it even more, don't they. Yeah, I absolutely agree
3:02
Speaker 1: with you. It's it's one of the hallmarks of you
3:06
Speaker 1: as a parent. No, reverse psychology is one of the
3:08
Speaker 1: hallmarks of any social dynamic, right, absolutely. And I mean
3:12
Speaker 1: I have learned that anytime I tell my kid not
3:15
Speaker 1: to do something or scold her about doing something, I
3:18
Speaker 1: can see the little glint in her eye of it,
3:20
Speaker 1: just the itch that she's got to scratch and he's
3:22
Speaker 1: got to do that thing. If I tell her not
3:23
Speaker 1: to play the drums on the dinner table with cutlery,
3:26
Speaker 1: then the moment I look away, she starts like kind
3:29
Speaker 1: of just itching to tap that fork on the table.
3:31
Speaker 1: It's a little paradidle, really, exactly. No, And it's the
3:34
Speaker 1: same with human nature in general. People don't like being
3:37
Speaker 1: told what they can and can't do, especially when it's
3:39
Speaker 1: something they've done freely for a long time. Yeah. Absolutely,
3:44
Speaker 1: it's easier to prevent someone from beginning habit or thing that,
3:48
Speaker 1: and it's much more difficult to get them to stop
3:52
Speaker 1: after they have already acclimated to it. And that's why
3:55
Speaker 1: prohibition was UH spoiler alert, ridiculous historians not completely successful.
4:01
Speaker 1: From nineteen twenty to nineteen thirty three, Uncle Sam gave
4:05
Speaker 1: it the old College try, but very very quickly doctors
4:10
Speaker 1: and politicians realized that some exceptions had to apply. This
4:15
Speaker 1: could not be an absolutist rule because you know, as
4:19
Speaker 1: you said, well, there were already people very well acquainted
4:23
Speaker 1: with drinking. Some of these people had become dependent on alcohol,
4:28
Speaker 1: so they would have painful physiological withdrawal systems if they
4:33
Speaker 1: weren't able to have access to that substance. Yeah, I
4:37
Speaker 1: mean the sheiks, the d t s, that stuff is real.
4:40
Speaker 1: If you are absolutely addicted to alcohol, you can experience hallucinations,
4:46
Speaker 1: all kinds of very disruptive things that can cause you
4:49
Speaker 1: to not go about your normal existence. And that's why,
4:53
Speaker 1: according to Daniel Okrint, the author of Last Call, The
4:57
Speaker 1: Rise and Fall of Prohibition, some if teen thousand doctors
5:03
Speaker 1: applied for permits during the first six months of the
5:06
Speaker 1: Volstead Act. UH. These permits would allow them to prescribe
5:12
Speaker 1: alcohol but not just like a I don't know, like
5:16
Speaker 1: a regular medicinal alcohol. It allowed them to prescribe uh
5:22
Speaker 1: specific types of alcohol, right yeah, rye whiskey, scotch um.
5:27
Speaker 1: Also I believe there were some clear ones on the
5:29
Speaker 1: list too, right, Oh yeah, I mean, why would you
5:32
Speaker 1: go to a doctor's office if you don't leave with
5:34
Speaker 1: a prescription for gin? You know what I mean? That
5:37
Speaker 1: applies in the in the modern day. Probably gin is
5:39
Speaker 1: interesting too, because I always think of jin as being
5:41
Speaker 1: sort of an herbal type tasting booze. It's probably the
5:46
Speaker 1: closest thing to like what you might have drunk for
5:50
Speaker 1: medicine anyway, right right, with a juniper berry basics. Right,
5:54
Speaker 1: So already we can see the opportunity for corruption it right,
6:01
Speaker 1: that lingers here because sure a lot of doctors during
6:05
Speaker 1: this time we're prescribing alcohol with nothing other than medicinal
6:12
Speaker 1: interest at hand. But also he can't walk away from
6:16
Speaker 1: the money because there wasn't much federal oversight of these doctors.
6:21
Speaker 1: You're a doctor, you write prescriptions as long as it's
6:23
Speaker 1: not illegal. You can write prescriptions for whatever you want,
6:27
Speaker 1: whenever you want. But it was illegal, not if you
6:29
Speaker 1: had the permit I see got it. You know, that
6:32
Speaker 1: reminds me of very obvious parallel in our modern day
6:36
Speaker 1: UM with marijuana prohibition, and that tide kind of turning.
6:40
Speaker 1: There was a while where it was a little easier
6:44
Speaker 1: maybe than it should have been, to get a medical
6:47
Speaker 1: marijuana card or prescription, and that was the case with
6:50
Speaker 1: this situation as well. It became um see if there's
6:54
Speaker 1: a great story about Winston Churchill, Uh a case study
6:57
Speaker 1: kind of where he got hit by a car while
6:59
Speaker 1: doing a a lecture at the Brooklyn Academy of Music UM,
7:03
Speaker 1: and he got a cut on his forehead, and he
7:05
Speaker 1: bruised his chest and had a sprained shoulder, and he
7:10
Speaker 1: was prescribed uh kind of carte blanche access to alcohol
7:14
Speaker 1: where he had a doctor's note more so than a
7:17
Speaker 1: prescription um signed by doctor otto see pick art. That said,
7:20
Speaker 1: this is to certify that the post accident convalescence of
7:24
Speaker 1: the Honorable Winstones Churchill necessitates the use of alcoholic spirits,
7:28
Speaker 1: especially at meal times. The quantity is naturally indefinite, but
7:32
Speaker 1: the minimum requirements would be two fifty cubic centimeters. And
7:35
Speaker 1: then there's a handwritten note on the top under this
7:38
Speaker 1: guy's letter head this doctor from New York saying keep
7:40
Speaker 1: on hand. So basically this was just a get out
7:44
Speaker 1: of jail free car for Wizard Churchill to be able
7:46
Speaker 1: to drink as he typically did, which we know Churchill
7:49
Speaker 1: was fond of his spirits. I love the phrase they're
7:52
Speaker 1: naturally indefinite. It's just he was walking around with this
7:58
Speaker 1: doctor's note on his person whenever he wanted to buy alcohol,
8:04
Speaker 1: and whenever. I don't think this would happen very often
8:08
Speaker 1: because it's Winston Churchill, but whenever maybe an authority figure
8:12
Speaker 1: stopped him and said, hey, you you absolute lush. Put
8:17
Speaker 1: this down. You're supposed to be in charge of the country.
8:20
Speaker 1: And this doctor's note from Churchill is dated January nineteen
8:24
Speaker 1: thirty two, which, as we know, was on the tail
8:27
Speaker 1: end of prohibition, which wrapped up in nineteen thirty three
8:30
Speaker 1: in earnest, but by this point, according to a fantastic
8:34
Speaker 1: Atlas Obscure article by Paula masia Um, the doctors were
8:39
Speaker 1: becoming much more like the modern day equivalent of marijuana
8:42
Speaker 1: dispensaries than they were doctor's offices, where they were stocked
8:46
Speaker 1: with every type of booze you could imagine. They were
8:49
Speaker 1: almost more like an off the book's liquor store than
8:52
Speaker 1: even a doctor's office. Because they were cleaning up doing this,
8:55
Speaker 1: they were able to like make good money and have
8:58
Speaker 1: a legal loophole of prohibition. Absolutely, as you find in
9:03
Speaker 1: a great article on How Stuff Works by Michelle Konstantinowski.
9:07
Speaker 1: Pretty much right after prohibition began and doctors realized they
9:12
Speaker 1: could get these permits, they also realized that alcohol was
9:16
Speaker 1: a useful treatment for no less than twenty seven separate
9:20
Speaker 1: medical conditions. This included stuff like cancer, incurable cancer, anxiety,
9:26
Speaker 1: but it also included diabetes, snake bites, and even lactation problems.
9:32
Speaker 1: So you're you're a nursing mother and you're having issues lactating,
9:37
Speaker 1: you know what you need? Uh? Some of Grandpa's leg medicine,
9:40
Speaker 1: which is a weird I think Tennessee term for whiskey.
9:43
Speaker 1: That's actually my favorite brand. Grandpa's like medicine. Oh maybe
9:48
Speaker 1: I'm thinking of moonshine. I smell a T shirt and well,
9:52
Speaker 1: I think that's a great It's a great T shirt, right,
9:54
Speaker 1: Grandpa's like medicine. I can picture that within like an
9:57
Speaker 1: old timy label with like xxx on it, you know,
10:00
Speaker 1: And then ridiculous History written really small on the bottom. Yeah,
10:03
Speaker 1: I'm fine with that. I mean, I have no problem
10:05
Speaker 1: with us advertising alcohol as long as it's our own
10:08
Speaker 1: fake alcohol exactly. Speaking of which, just to take a
10:11
Speaker 1: quick pause from today's topic, have you seen the amazing
10:15
Speaker 1: Casey on the case t shirts that are now available
10:17
Speaker 1: in the T public store. Saving it for the end,
10:21
Speaker 1: but I'm glad you brought it up. I just want
10:23
Speaker 1: to make people make sure ye stop what you're doing.
10:26
Speaker 1: You can go to our website Ridiculous History show dot com,
10:29
Speaker 1: or you can go directly to our store t public
10:32
Speaker 1: dot com slash Ridiculous History and check out our newest shirt,
10:37
Speaker 1: which I pulled it up because I love I love
10:40
Speaker 1: looking at this. We we've revealed this on air right
10:43
Speaker 1: that Casey used to be a child model. Okay, so,
10:46
Speaker 1: uh so Casey, can you tell us about how this
10:50
Speaker 1: how this all came to be? Yeah, well, there was,
10:53
Speaker 1: you know, kind of a grassroots campaign to uh have
10:56
Speaker 1: my face on a T shirt. I really didn't like
10:58
Speaker 1: the idea at first, but I apologize. I kind of thought,
11:02
Speaker 1: you know, we could kind of kill two birds with
11:04
Speaker 1: one stone here. We could finally deliver those modeling picks
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Speaker 1: from my youth and my face on a T shirt,
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11:15
Speaker 1: I agree, So check it out. It's it's worth your worth,
11:18
Speaker 1: your worth, your dime for sure. Casey on the case,
11:28
Speaker 1: we are exploring the story of Prohibition, and as you
11:33
Speaker 1: have pointed out, Man, there are quite a few modern parallels,
11:38
Speaker 1: especially when we talk about the purpose for a prescribed substance.
11:44
Speaker 1: So this medicinal alcohol, sort of like medicinal marijuana, becomes
11:49
Speaker 1: a popular loophole. Funny thing is, before Prohibition was in effect,
11:55
Speaker 1: doctors knew the score. They knew that alcohol was not medicine.
11:59
Speaker 1: But during Prohibition, the American Medical Association or a m
12:03
Speaker 1: A changed its opinion. And the weird thing is that
12:08
Speaker 1: the US Treasury Department backed them up. They authorized doctors
12:12
Speaker 1: to write prescriptions for alcohol, and they were given the
12:15
Speaker 1: doctors were given these government prescription forms to prescribe quote,
12:19
Speaker 1: medicinal whiskey at pharmacies. But this was so corrupt and
12:24
Speaker 1: was so open to abuse because we're not just talking
12:28
Speaker 1: about people stealing prescription pads. We're talking about people making
12:32
Speaker 1: counterfeit prescription pads and then using that to like pass
12:37
Speaker 1: around with their friends. And let's just point out that
12:40
Speaker 1: the pharmacies did not ask as many questions as they
12:43
Speaker 1: should have. Oh, certainly not, certainly not. And it's like
12:46
Speaker 1: I said, with the whole comparison to the modern day
12:49
Speaker 1: marijuana prescriptions, you could kind of just go in and
12:52
Speaker 1: say you had it got to the point eventually, as
12:55
Speaker 1: a pretty recently where you can kind of just say
12:57
Speaker 1: you have a little back pain, or you have maybe
12:59
Speaker 1: you got an eye twitch, and that's about all it takes.
13:03
Speaker 1: And you have a seat on a couch, talk to
13:05
Speaker 1: somebody behind a desk, answer these few questions. You know
13:08
Speaker 1: what they're looking for, so you just give it to them,
13:10
Speaker 1: give them what they want, and they don't really ask
13:12
Speaker 1: any question. They certaly don't run any tests or require
13:14
Speaker 1: any real burden of proof. And that was exactly the
13:17
Speaker 1: case with these with these these pharmacies giving out these
13:20
Speaker 1: booze prescriptions a vague sense of unease, that's right, walking
13:26
Speaker 1: in and saying I don't trust my elbows and there's
13:29
Speaker 1: nothing I could do about it. Well, the funny thing
13:31
Speaker 1: is that isn't that why people drink in the first
13:32
Speaker 1: place to combat that vague about life from the world.
13:38
Speaker 1: So this leads us to an interesting, an interesting story
13:43
Speaker 1: because we're emphasizing the rule of the doctors, but we
13:46
Speaker 1: haven't talked a lot about the pharmacist, and the pharmacists
13:50
Speaker 1: are part of this supply chain. Historians have suspicions about
13:54
Speaker 1: one famous pharmacist, Charles Walgreen of the Walgreen Walgreens, of
13:59
Speaker 1: the Wall Green Walgreens, the very same Throughout the nineteen twenties,
14:03
Speaker 1: the Walgreen's pharmacy change encountered tremendous growth. They expanded from
14:07
Speaker 1: twenty stores to five hundred and twenty five. For a
14:12
Speaker 1: long time, people would credit the introduction of the milkshake
14:18
Speaker 1: to the pharmacy's success, but it sounds like alcohol may
14:22
Speaker 1: have played a more prominent role. In an interview, Charles
14:25
Speaker 1: Walgreen Jr. Said that while his father worried about the
14:30
Speaker 1: danger of stores catching fire, he always wanted the fire
14:33
Speaker 1: department to get in and out as quickly as possible
14:37
Speaker 1: because whenever they came in, the fire department would steal
14:41
Speaker 1: a case of liquor from the back. So this we
14:45
Speaker 1: we know that there was a lot of money to
14:47
Speaker 1: be had. I mean organized crime had a bonanza with this, right.
14:52
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, sure, you got your al capones, you got
14:54
Speaker 1: your bootlegging, Tommy gunn Toten gangsters, you know, running those
14:58
Speaker 1: speakeasies and all the flapper girls and all that thing.
15:01
Speaker 1: You know, this is the neighbor were high times underground,
15:04
Speaker 1: but I didn't really realize that this was happening above
15:08
Speaker 1: ground as well, completely legally, and that Walgreens played a
15:13
Speaker 1: huge part in that. I mean, there's an article on
15:15
Speaker 1: vine pair dot com called the seventy five billion dollar
15:18
Speaker 1: business that was built selling whiskey during Prohibition legally by
15:22
Speaker 1: Emily Bell, and it shows a fantastic shot of behind
15:27
Speaker 1: what behind the counter situation at Walgreens would have looked like.
15:30
Speaker 1: And that you know, you've got your apothecary type bottles
15:32
Speaker 1: and you know things with a little plastic you know,
15:35
Speaker 1: glass stoppers in it, but a lot of it is
15:37
Speaker 1: straight up booze. That's right. This was a business. Every
15:42
Speaker 1: ten days, patients could pay about three dollars for a
15:46
Speaker 1: prescription and another three or four dollars to have it filled,
15:50
Speaker 1: and they would get about a pint of booze and
15:55
Speaker 1: that's not necessarily beer. Of course, this was again medicinal liquor.
16:00
Speaker 1: So ultimately, according to Okrint, the guy I mentioned earlier
16:05
Speaker 1: in last call, according to him, what this really functioned
16:09
Speaker 1: as was a new revenue stream for physicians and pharmacists.
16:14
Speaker 1: You know, every ten days you're getting three bucks, the
16:17
Speaker 1: pharmacy is getting three or four bucks, and multiply that
16:21
Speaker 1: out by the number of patients you have. Not to
16:24
Speaker 1: put too dark as spin on it, but similar circumstances
16:27
Speaker 1: have occurred recently in the last few years, not just
16:29
Speaker 1: with marijuana, but with opioids. The so called is tough
16:34
Speaker 1: for my Tennessee accent, the so called pill mills, Yeah,
16:37
Speaker 1: exactly where again, it doesn't take much burden of proof
16:42
Speaker 1: to get a doctor to prescribe you whatever you know
16:47
Speaker 1: tickles your fancy as far as heavy opioid drugs are concerned. Uh.
16:51
Speaker 1: And there's also the whole idea of doctor shopping. If
16:54
Speaker 1: you've got multiple pill mill situations, you can go from
16:57
Speaker 1: one to the other and have none of them really
16:59
Speaker 1: know a about each other, and you can just be
17:01
Speaker 1: kind of swimming in this stuff. And that is one
17:03
Speaker 1: of the reasons, aside from laxness and utter irresponsibility on
17:09
Speaker 1: the part of big pharma that caused the opioid epidemic
17:12
Speaker 1: that is such a huge problem in our country. And
17:15
Speaker 1: we see the same sort of federal level corruption in
17:18
Speaker 1: the turn of the century prohibition days. There's a great
17:23
Speaker 1: example about you remember the Great Gatsby, right, jam Scott Fist. Yeah,
17:28
Speaker 1: So there's a real life guy named George Remus who
17:31
Speaker 1: inspired the Great Gatsby, and he figured out how to
17:35
Speaker 1: play the system. He thought medicinal whiskey was a bang
17:39
Speaker 1: up business model, So we bought a ton of distilleries
17:42
Speaker 1: which had these storage areas full of whiskey that could
17:47
Speaker 1: not be sold. So he bought pharmacies for the express
17:51
Speaker 1: purpose of distributing this whiskey. And then he bribed the
17:55
Speaker 1: Feds to allow more and more whiskey to sort of
17:58
Speaker 1: what they call it and retails stores. Shrinkage allowed whiskey
18:02
Speaker 1: to disappear from the official record, and so in a
18:06
Speaker 1: very short amount of time he made quite a bit
18:09
Speaker 1: of money. And let's let's get back to those justifications,
18:13
Speaker 1: because there is one great example from the Atlas Obscure
18:17
Speaker 1: article we mentioned earlier, Improvidence Rhode Island. One physician prescribed
18:22
Speaker 1: whiskey for a single condition debility and ability just means,
18:28
Speaker 1: by the way, physical weakness, just feeling down. It's sort
18:32
Speaker 1: of like a lighter version of being debilitated. I guess
18:35
Speaker 1: just of my debility, I'm gonna bring the ability back.
18:42
Speaker 1: So legally speaking, these physicians could get their licenses revoked
18:48
Speaker 1: if they were found to be distributing medicinal liquor for
18:54
Speaker 1: anything less than medical purposes. However, what that really translated to,
18:59
Speaker 1: if we're being this is they were either super blatant
19:03
Speaker 1: about what they were doing or they didn't bribe the
19:05
Speaker 1: right people. Only about a hundred and seventy doctors per
19:10
Speaker 1: year ever, had their licenses revoked. And here's the thing.
19:13
Speaker 1: I mean, it really wasn't as it progressed throughout prohibition.
19:18
Speaker 1: It really was not just a flash in the pan
19:21
Speaker 1: or like the exception to the rule. It kind of
19:23
Speaker 1: became the rule. And I don't I don't know, but
19:27
Speaker 1: I don't know if you can tell me this, but
19:28
Speaker 1: I did get a sense that the Winston Churchill example
19:32
Speaker 1: was kind of how it was. It was a little
19:34
Speaker 1: bit more something that was available to the privilege or
19:36
Speaker 1: people that had access to doctors that would work with them. Yeah,
19:41
Speaker 1: if you had the money, you could play ball, you
19:44
Speaker 1: know what I mean. So this is still this is
19:46
Speaker 1: still a time where there's a lot of institutionalized racism,
19:51
Speaker 1: there's class warfare. You know, it's the it's the Gilded Age,
19:55
Speaker 1: the Roaring twenties of inequality. This stuff was not necessarily
20:00
Speaker 1: cheap for the average person, but it was still a
20:03
Speaker 1: big business. Physicians wrote and estimated eleven million prescriptions per year,
20:10
Speaker 1: and the Prohibition Commissioner John F. Kramer cited anecdotally one
20:16
Speaker 1: doctor who wrote four hundred and seventy five prescriptions for
20:20
Speaker 1: whiskey in one day. Yeah, and uh, I believe the
20:25
Speaker 1: rough estimate um of the number of prescriptions written throughout
20:29
Speaker 1: this period when prohibition was the law of the land
20:32
Speaker 1: was around eleven million prescriptions. So while it certainly wasn't
20:36
Speaker 1: available to everybody, it was available to quite a few
20:39
Speaker 1: individuals that knew how to you know, milk. This particular loophole,
20:48
Speaker 1: and as we know, this was just one of several loopholes. Right,
20:55
Speaker 1: we already talked about in the past, the the hilarious
21:00
Speaker 1: practice of selling concentrated grape juice with very specific instructions
21:06
Speaker 1: on what not to do, because if you obeyed these instructions,
21:11
Speaker 1: you would accidentally make wine and you should turn that
21:15
Speaker 1: into the authorities if you happen to accidentally take these
21:18
Speaker 1: like three or four steps. So everybody was lying to
21:22
Speaker 1: themselves as individuals, as communities, as a nation, and the
21:27
Speaker 1: numbers spoke for themselves. Upper crust Americans would take advantage
21:35
Speaker 1: of French champagne, which was imported for medicinal use, so
21:40
Speaker 1: much so that imports skyrocketed by three hundred and thirty
21:45
Speaker 1: two percent in nineteen twenty alone. People who still have
21:50
Speaker 1: the drive to drink but maybe not the scratch to
21:53
Speaker 1: go to the pharmacy would make alcohol for themselves, using
21:58
Speaker 1: corn syrup to make moonshine. The moonshine would be counterfeited
22:02
Speaker 1: or adulter rated and supplied to speakeasies, which used to
22:07
Speaker 1: be cool. Speakeasies aren't really that cool anymore, right, am I?
22:10
Speaker 1: Old speakeasies cool? Yeah? When's the last time you went
22:13
Speaker 1: to a cool speakeasy I went to? I don't know.
22:15
Speaker 1: I mean, what makes what makes us speak easy? It's
22:18
Speaker 1: there's the there's the basement, right, It's like the whole
22:21
Speaker 1: story of you know, the whole dog and Pony show
22:24
Speaker 1: business of like you have to get to a specific thing.
22:28
Speaker 1: Noah Pass was like, I think that's fun, but people
22:31
Speaker 1: told me it's corny now maybe so I don't know.
22:34
Speaker 1: I mean, I'm I'm not saying I'm like the arbiter
22:35
Speaker 1: of cool or anything, but I did go to I
22:37
Speaker 1: think it was considered to Speak Easy couple months ago
22:39
Speaker 1: in New York and it was like a Japanese themed one,
22:42
Speaker 1: and all the drinks were like Machu powder and like
22:44
Speaker 1: different Japanese whiskeys, and it was good. I think another
22:46
Speaker 1: thing that makes us speak easy, Speak easy that it's
22:48
Speaker 1: very expensive. Dare I say over price? Dare you? I dare?
22:55
Speaker 1: Because can you imagine in prohibition era? You know, it
22:59
Speaker 1: was basically it wasn't that wasn't Basically it was an
23:01
Speaker 1: illegal enterprise. So of course the markup was probably nuts
23:04
Speaker 1: because you couldn't get it right and you might not
23:07
Speaker 1: know exactly what you're buying if you haven't checked it
23:10
Speaker 1: out before. Check out our previous episode on the US
23:14
Speaker 1: government's plan to poison the heck out of hundreds of people, yeah,
23:20
Speaker 1: through adulterating the alcohol that was being sold illegally. This
23:25
Speaker 1: was not sustainable. There were other exceptions that we should
23:29
Speaker 1: list to be fair. Uh, there were religious exemptions. You know,
23:34
Speaker 1: if you were a priest administering communion or a rabbi,
23:39
Speaker 1: you had a you had the ability to create your
23:43
Speaker 1: own alcohol or obtain it for use in religious services.
23:48
Speaker 1: But these things were not as big of a business
23:53
Speaker 1: as the medical loophole, which seems like a no brand
23:58
Speaker 1: you know what. I know this is a history show,
24:00
Speaker 1: but I predict this kind of loophole will come up again.
24:03
Speaker 1: Whatever the next substance our nation attempts to prohibit is,
24:06
Speaker 1: we will find ourselves in a situation where someone says,
24:10
Speaker 1: I need a prescription for my debility, for my general unease,
24:15
Speaker 1: and nothing but quae ludes will will help. It's true,
24:18
Speaker 1: that's what I call it. That's where the quail comes from.
24:20
Speaker 1: And quai ludes because it's for quelling. That just generalized
24:23
Speaker 1: unease facts. These are facts. So as we know, prohibition
24:29
Speaker 1: ultimately came to an end. The twenty first Amendment was
24:35
Speaker 1: ratified in nineteen thirty three, ending the era of illegal
24:40
Speaker 1: booze and ending the financial windfall for a lot of
24:43
Speaker 1: pharmacies and a lot of doctors. And going back to
24:49
Speaker 1: what we said at the top about reverse psychology, Oxford
24:53
Speaker 1: University Press noted that alcohol enthusiasts actually drank more liquor
25:00
Speaker 1: during prohibition than before prohibition, and that it man telling
25:06
Speaker 1: you that tell me, you tell me what I can do,
25:09
Speaker 1: I'm gonna do. I'm gonna double down and say, oh,
25:11
Speaker 1: I can do it, and I will. An alcoholic consumption
25:14
Speaker 1: pre prohibition, so pre n had been trending toward beer,
25:19
Speaker 1: you know what I mean, Like, you get off work,
25:22
Speaker 1: you have a couple of beers with your buddies, right,
25:23
Speaker 1: and then you go home to dinner or you cook something.
25:26
Speaker 1: I don't know. But during the era of prohibition, seventy
25:30
Speaker 1: five of all alcoholic beverages we're liquor, because now people
25:36
Speaker 1: did They didn't just drink more, They went for the
25:38
Speaker 1: hard stuff because why risk of getting on the wrong
25:42
Speaker 1: side of the law over you know, a a Miller Lite,
25:47
Speaker 1: What's a what's another beer? I don't want to just
25:49
Speaker 1: name Miller Lite. There are other beers. There's another high Life,
25:52
Speaker 1: Miller high Life, the Champagne of the Champagne of beers.
25:55
Speaker 1: I believe Miller makes other products as well. I heard
25:59
Speaker 1: the phrase for Budweiser. I heard the phrase, Uh, you
26:03
Speaker 1: know bud light. We all know bud light. But I
26:05
Speaker 1: heard someone describe regular Budweiser is bud heavy. It seems
26:10
Speaker 1: like an awkward phrase. But uh, Now, if you are
26:14
Speaker 1: listening to this, uh, we hope that you enjoy the
26:19
Speaker 1: freedom to have a boozy cocktail, a nice cold beer,
26:24
Speaker 1: a glass of wine to your heart's content, as long
26:27
Speaker 1: as you are responsible about it. And hey, maybe maybe
26:32
Speaker 1: we end today's show on a question about modern prohibition.
26:37
Speaker 1: Do you believe that there are examples of prohibition working
26:41
Speaker 1: or is prohibition inherently doomed to fail due to that
26:46
Speaker 1: you know that reverse psychology trick that we were talking
26:51
Speaker 1: about earlier, or is it just a matter of what
26:54
Speaker 1: is most profitable for the government and the companies involved.
26:58
Speaker 1: Let us know. You can find and us on our
27:00
Speaker 1: Facebook page, where we are ridiculous Historians. You can find
27:05
Speaker 1: us on Twitter. You can find our show on Instagram.
27:08
Speaker 1: But wait, as Billy Mays was wanting to say, there's more,
27:12
Speaker 1: you can find my co host and I on our
27:14
Speaker 1: own personal instagrams. It turns out we have lives. It's weird.
27:18
Speaker 1: We're not just locked in the shipping container twenty four
27:20
Speaker 1: hours a day, although we has a decent percentage of
27:23
Speaker 1: the day. I am at Embryonic Insider and I am
27:27
Speaker 1: at ben Bowland. Big thanks to our super producer, Casey Pegram. Again,
27:34
Speaker 1: if you if you thought that we were just blowing
27:36
Speaker 1: smoke about this Casey on the case T shirt, we
27:40
Speaker 1: really like we were over the moon about it. And
27:45
Speaker 1: we have had a pretty tough time not mentioning this
27:48
Speaker 1: on previous episodes because we didn't want anyone to know
27:51
Speaker 1: about it until it hit the store. Right, that's accurate.
27:55
Speaker 1: Casey is adorable, little Dickens, and it really has the
27:58
Speaker 1: appearance of some kind of eighties noir l a detective
28:04
Speaker 1: kind of thing. Where is this very stark, black and
28:06
Speaker 1: white image of young Casey and the text looks like
28:09
Speaker 1: dirty dancing or something like that. It's pretty fantastic. And
28:11
Speaker 1: his face is all power moves, very pensive, very power move.
28:15
Speaker 1: A lot going on behind those deep baby blue eyes.
28:18
Speaker 1: All you can't tell, I don't know are what color
28:19
Speaker 1: are your eyes? They are blue images black and white.
28:23
Speaker 1: You'd never know. Well that will have to wait for
28:25
Speaker 1: the next T shirt, But yeah, do check it out.
28:28
Speaker 1: We're ordering something for ourselves, which casey apologies in advance effect.
28:32
Speaker 1: It's weird. Uh. In the meantime, we'd also like to
28:34
Speaker 1: thank Alex Williams, who can post our track. We'd like
28:38
Speaker 1: to thank our research associate Gabe. And you know what,
28:43
Speaker 1: while we're while we're handing out thank you's, like they're
28:46
Speaker 1: booze prescriptions during prohibition. That should be a thing that
28:50
Speaker 1: needs to take off. We need to make that happen. Oh,
28:52
Speaker 1: handied out things? No, no, no, just just that as
28:54
Speaker 1: an expression sort of like selling selling you. I can
28:57
Speaker 1: sell something to a man. I could sell a catch
28:59
Speaker 1: up pop cycle to a man in white gloves. This
29:01
Speaker 1: idea of like Willy nilly, just giving things away, passing
29:04
Speaker 1: stuff out like booze prescriptions during prohibition. It helps. It rhymes, right,
29:08
Speaker 1: I like it. I would like to thank um, what
29:13
Speaker 1: was that band who did Level Terrorist apart again? Joy Division?
29:17
Speaker 1: I'd like to thank Joy Division. I I quite enjoy
29:19
Speaker 1: that song. I would like to thank a new Order
29:21
Speaker 1: who I kind of prefer Hot Take. No right, yeah no,
29:27
Speaker 1: I'm not picking battles of the bands. I'm just saying
29:30
Speaker 1: I like that song. There's a surprisingly wide variety of
29:33
Speaker 1: covers of that song as well. But I'd also like
29:37
Speaker 1: to thank you. No, Ben, I accept your thanks with
29:41
Speaker 1: an open heart, and I shoot it back at you
29:43
Speaker 1: care bear style, nice nice, nice care beers too scared
29:47
Speaker 1: the heck out of are you kidding? That green face
29:49
Speaker 1: in the book, And that was some devil worship stuff,
29:51
Speaker 1: my friend the way she like, I'll basically bewitched that
29:54
Speaker 1: young boy, the young wizards assistant. He she bewitched him
29:58
Speaker 1: and kind of like lured him into her ap caravan.
30:01
Speaker 1: And yeah, no, no, thank you made him evil. He
30:04
Speaker 1: had ability. You sure did, Ben, you sure did. We'll
30:07
Speaker 1: see you next time, folks,