Latest / Ridiculous History / CLASSIC: Angry Feds and Deadly Booze: The Story of the Chemists' War

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CLASSIC: Angry Feds and Deadly Booze: The Story of the Chemists' War · Ridiculous History

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: Fellow Ridiculous Historians, we are returning to you with a
• 0:04
  Speaker 1: classic episode.
• 0:06
  Speaker 2: Uh.
• 0:07
  Speaker 1: Look, Nolan and I did use to party. Uh we
• 0:11
  Speaker 1: don't party as much anymore, but we are we do.
• 0:16
  Speaker 3: We like our booze non poisoned. Yeah, yeah, yeah yeah.
• 0:20
  Speaker 3: Tell us about this one.
• 0:21
  Speaker 4: Oh man, I remember that time that the government, the
• 0:24
  Speaker 4: federal government tried to poison people to keep them from
• 0:27
  Speaker 4: drinking alcohol.
• 0:28
  Speaker 3: That was a good one, man. How that work out?
• 0:32
  Speaker 1: We'll see in this classic episode.
• 0:34
  Speaker 3: Let's roll it.
• 0:38
  Speaker 1: Ridiculous History is a production of iHeartRadio. Welcome to the
• 1:06
  Speaker 1: show everyone, I'm Ben Nol. Have you ever seen a
• 1:09
  Speaker 1: moonshine still kind of.
• 1:10
  Speaker 3: Looks like a glorified sort of fancy teakettle kind of right.
• 1:14
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it depends really on the parts that the bootleggers
• 1:18
  Speaker 1: or moonshiners are working with. They're pretty common. It's got
• 1:22
  Speaker 1: a curly cue part for distillation. They were more common
• 1:27
  Speaker 1: during the area of prohibition, but you can still see
• 1:29
  Speaker 1: a lot of old ones out in the mountains now.
• 1:31
  Speaker 1: They would use any available part to make us still.
• 1:36
  Speaker 1: For instance, car carburetors were used in moonshine distillation operations,
• 1:43
  Speaker 1: often to the detriment of the people who ultimately drank
• 1:47
  Speaker 1: the shine.
• 1:48
  Speaker 3: I wonder where that is. Yeah, what I'm.
• 1:50
  Speaker 1: Saying here is that due to prohibition, a lot of
• 1:54
  Speaker 1: quality control just took a dive.
• 1:57
  Speaker 4: Wait a minute, So you're saying that totally ban and
• 2:00
  Speaker 4: outlawing a substance doesn't just make people automatically magically stop
• 2:04
  Speaker 4: wanting to consume said substance.
• 2:06
  Speaker 1: I know it sounds like a broad brush, right, but
• 2:09
  Speaker 1: history has shown prohibition largely aside from any you know,
• 2:15
  Speaker 1: moral arguments, prohibition of a substance just doesn't work.
• 2:20
  Speaker 3: Speak of history, we.
• 2:21
  Speaker 1: Have to give a shout out to one of our
• 2:24
  Speaker 1: favorite parts of the show, super producer Casey pegram Casey.
• 2:29
  Speaker 3: Bootleg pegram Casey is history personified.
• 2:33
  Speaker 4: Yes, yeah to someone what you just said, though, Ben,
• 2:34
  Speaker 4: the heart wants what the heart wants.
• 2:37
  Speaker 3: Sure, sure, and Uncle Sam can't stop the heart from wanting. Right.
• 2:41
  Speaker 1: Well, governments have very very little luck suppressing a chemical
• 2:46
  Speaker 1: substance of any sort, and alcohol is no different. Today's
• 2:51
  Speaker 1: story takes us to the world of prohibition, and I
• 2:57
  Speaker 1: think everybody across the planet and it is aware in
• 3:01
  Speaker 1: some vague way of the US's experiment with the Eighteenth
• 3:06
  Speaker 1: Amendment and the prohibition of alcohol. Right, people are vaguely
• 3:09
  Speaker 1: aware of that.
• 3:10
  Speaker 4: I think they're vaguely aware of it. But let's make
• 3:12
  Speaker 4: them intimately aware of it, shall we?
• 3:14
  Speaker 3: Ben sure? Sure?
• 3:15
  Speaker 1: So the eighteenth Amendment to the Constitution, which was ratified
• 3:20
  Speaker 1: in nineteen nineteen, said the following the manufacturer, sale, or
• 3:24
  Speaker 1: transportation of intoxicating liquors, within the importation thereof into or
• 3:29
  Speaker 1: the exportation thereof from the United States, and all territory
• 3:33
  Speaker 1: subject to this jurisdiction thereof for beverage purposes. So it
• 3:37
  Speaker 1: prohibits all of that, and it goes into effect on
• 3:40
  Speaker 1: January seventeenth, nineteen twenty, and people thought the people who
• 3:44
  Speaker 1: thought this was a good idea were like, there's a
• 3:47
  Speaker 1: brand new America on the way.
• 3:49
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 3:49
  Speaker 4: I mean, there's no question that it was kind of
• 3:50
  Speaker 4: a puritanical way of looking at things, And it was
• 3:52
  Speaker 4: sort of this slightly misguided notion that getting rid of
• 3:56
  Speaker 4: the devil's juice was going to all of a sudden
• 4:01
  Speaker 4: make everyone into good people.
• 4:03
  Speaker 1: Getting rid of Lucifer's sippons would make people inherently better
• 4:08
  Speaker 1: and prevent the dissolution of the nation's moral character and
• 4:13
  Speaker 1: they would paint pictures of rampant crime, juke joints. I
• 4:17
  Speaker 1: don't know if they use the phrase juke joints at
• 4:19
  Speaker 1: that point, and alcoholism. They said, we will increase the
• 4:26
  Speaker 1: success of our economy, we will raise the moral character
• 4:30
  Speaker 1: of the nation, and will make the innocent people of
• 4:34
  Speaker 1: the country safe again.
• 4:36
  Speaker 4: Because we were also just getting out of a war,
• 4:38
  Speaker 4: and there was a sense that society may well be
• 4:42
  Speaker 4: on the brink of utter chaos. So you know, let's
• 4:46
  Speaker 4: let's get rid of people's thing that kind of makes
• 4:48
  Speaker 4: them feel better, right, right, So I'm not trying to
• 4:52
  Speaker 4: advocate for using alcoholic to numb yourself against the pains
• 4:55
  Speaker 4: of the world, but man, the world was full of
• 4:57
  Speaker 4: some pain around this time.
• 4:58
  Speaker 3: Things were pretty rough.
• 5:00
  Speaker 4: A lot of poverty and a lot of divide between classes,
• 5:04
  Speaker 4: and the topic of today's story specifically affects the lower
• 5:10
  Speaker 4: classes almost exclusively.
• 5:13
  Speaker 1: Yeah, this is a story of victimization and socioeconomic divides.
• 5:20
  Speaker 1: It's also a story wherein Uncle Sam is probably the
• 5:26
  Speaker 1: bad guy, the closest thing we have and to an antagonist.
• 5:29
  Speaker 3: Right, uncle Sam is such a jerk.
• 5:32
  Speaker 1: So here we are in prohibition. We found this excellent
• 5:35
  Speaker 1: article on Vox. I don't know if we should do
• 5:37
  Speaker 1: the title yet because it might be a little bit
• 5:39
  Speaker 1: of a spoiler by German Lopez. So in this article,
• 5:44
  Speaker 1: Deborah Bloom, the author of the Poisoner's Handbook, Murdering the
• 5:48
  Speaker 1: Birth of forensic Medicine and jazz Age New York, explains
• 5:51
  Speaker 1: how even before Prohibition, the government had some particular requirements
• 5:57
  Speaker 1: for industrial alcohol manufacturers.
• 6:01
  Speaker 3: Yeah, this is pretty cool.
• 6:02
  Speaker 4: It was actually a regulation that required these additives to
• 6:07
  Speaker 4: make this industrial alcohol unpotable, but it also separated them
• 6:12
  Speaker 4: from the potable alcohols, which were taxed differently. So I
• 6:18
  Speaker 4: think originally it was just an additive called methanol, which
• 6:22
  Speaker 4: is a wood alcohol that is, you know, in certain
• 6:25
  Speaker 4: doses toxic when consumed by humans.
• 6:27
  Speaker 1: Sure, yeah, absolutely, And we see I think you did
• 6:31
  Speaker 1: a great job outlining this. We see a couple of
• 6:35
  Speaker 1: concurrent motivations for this. Right, let's make sure that we
• 6:39
  Speaker 1: still get paid and we can separate the different types
• 6:42
  Speaker 1: of alcohol. But as prohibition was enacted and continued, First off,
• 6:50
  Speaker 1: the people who argued in favor for prohibition were completely wrong.
• 6:53
  Speaker 1: At least in this case, the economy was not helped
• 6:57
  Speaker 1: in any shape fashion.
• 6:58
  Speaker 3: Or form.
• 6:59
  Speaker 1: I'm sure law enforcement received some more money as they
• 7:02
  Speaker 1: were trying this impossible war on drugs mission, but the
• 7:06
  Speaker 1: moral character didn't exactly improve either because people kept drinking.
• 7:11
  Speaker 4: Well, not only did it not improve, it just kind
• 7:13
  Speaker 4: of fed the monster that is organized crime and all
• 7:18
  Speaker 4: of these underground distilleries and speakeasies and.
• 7:23
  Speaker 3: Just pure outright thievery.
• 7:25
  Speaker 4: Because that industrial alcohol we were talking about, that was
• 7:28
  Speaker 4: the stuff he needed to make the bootleg booze. So
• 7:32
  Speaker 4: you know, people were actively pulling off heists to get
• 7:36
  Speaker 4: this stuff. And here's the thing that's so cool, Ben,
• 7:39
  Speaker 4: this is something I didn't know. They call this this
• 7:41
  Speaker 4: topic of today's episode, the chemists wore, and it's for
• 7:44
  Speaker 4: good reason. It's because the methanol that was in that
• 7:46
  Speaker 4: industrial alcohol could actually be slightly removed or it could be.
• 7:52
  Speaker 3: Like redistilled, mitigating, mitigated.
• 7:55
  Speaker 4: And so that's what the chemists that the bootleggers or
• 7:58
  Speaker 4: the gangsters hired we're doing. And obviously they would pay
• 8:01
  Speaker 4: their chemist way better than the government chemist, so they
• 8:04
  Speaker 4: might attract better talent.
• 8:06
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 8:07
  Speaker 1: Absolutely, And we know there was this huge industry of
• 8:11
  Speaker 1: illegal alcohol manufacturing, transportation, and sale.
• 8:19
  Speaker 3: It booms very.
• 8:20
  Speaker 1: Very quickly after prohibition, and what we find is kind
• 8:24
  Speaker 1: of this proto breaking bad situation. This really is a
• 8:28
  Speaker 1: chemist war. In an essay written in the twenties called
• 8:33
  Speaker 1: Our Essay in Extermination by a doctor named Charles Norris,
• 8:37
  Speaker 1: who was a Chief Medical Examiner of New York City
• 8:39
  Speaker 1: at the time, he details the size of this trade.
• 8:44
  Speaker 1: He says the federal government admits that while eighty million
• 8:49
  Speaker 1: gallons of grain alcohol are manufactured yearly under permit, only
• 8:53
  Speaker 1: about seventy million gallons of it turn up again in
• 8:57
  Speaker 1: legally manufactured products. That means ten million gallons estimated per
• 9:02
  Speaker 1: year are being taken by these groups of gangsters, handed
• 9:06
  Speaker 1: to their like evil wizard chemists, and they're cleaning it
• 9:10
  Speaker 1: out or making it less lethal hopefully, and then they're
• 9:13
  Speaker 1: selling it, you know, in the back rooms as speakeasies
• 9:16
  Speaker 1: across the nation.
• 9:17
  Speaker 4: Yeah, and that's the thing too, Like, if you were
• 9:19
  Speaker 4: just an average workaday Joe trying to get your boose
• 9:22
  Speaker 4: fix on going one of these speakeasies, you didn't know
• 9:24
  Speaker 4: where it was coming from.
• 9:25
  Speaker 3: Yeah, you didn't know what.
• 9:26
  Speaker 4: The It's like buying illegal street drugs today, Like, you know,
• 9:30
  Speaker 4: you have no idea what additives or impurities are in it.
• 9:33
  Speaker 4: You are trusting in your supplier to not kill you.
• 9:38
  Speaker 3: Right, And even before.
• 9:40
  Speaker 4: The craziness let's loose that we're about to get into,
• 9:43
  Speaker 4: people were dying from alcohol poisoning because sometimes those chemists
• 9:47
  Speaker 4: didn't do a good enough job of getting this stuff
• 9:49
  Speaker 4: out of there, and it was always impure even if
• 9:52
  Speaker 4: they did do a decent job.
• 9:53
  Speaker 1: Absolutely, absolutely, And when we say the effected people's health,
• 9:58
  Speaker 1: we're talking about very dark stuff. People died, people encountered paralysis.
• 10:04
  Speaker 1: You know that old trope about drinking moonshine and going blind.
• 10:07
  Speaker 1: Some people did go blind. Yeah, not a whole ton,
• 10:10
  Speaker 1: but we have some spooky numbers for you.
• 10:13
  Speaker 4: Yeah, it's crazy that I found this article or some
• 10:16
  Speaker 4: blog post about something called ginger jake.
• 10:19
  Speaker 3: Ginger Jake was a medicine.
• 10:22
  Speaker 4: It was actually got around prohibition because it was sold
• 10:25
  Speaker 4: as a medicine and it had something in it called
• 10:29
  Speaker 4: tricrestal phosphate that actually helped kind of trick the government's
• 10:34
  Speaker 4: tests into, you know, seeing it as being a pure
• 10:37
  Speaker 4: alcohol or you know, having no medicinal value whatsoever. But
• 10:40
  Speaker 4: essentially it was just ginger flavored alcohol. But apparently this
• 10:46
  Speaker 4: additive they used, unbeknownst to the company, I imagine, was
• 10:50
  Speaker 4: a very very slow acting neurotoxin, so it took time
• 10:57
  Speaker 4: for it to take hold, and then eventually it actually
• 11:00
  Speaker 4: started to cause all kinds of leg muscular pains and weakness,
• 11:05
  Speaker 4: and it caused a type of paralysis. According to this uh,
• 11:09
  Speaker 4: this post would actually have a very distinctive walk associated
• 11:13
  Speaker 4: it with it where people would have to like lift
• 11:15
  Speaker 4: their legs up entirely, sort of like the Ministry of
• 11:18
  Speaker 4: Silly Walks from the Monty Python Show, you know, the Jakewalk,
• 11:22
  Speaker 4: the Jake Walk exactly, and we actually have a song.
• 11:25
  Speaker 4: The interesting thing about this is it was apparently baffling
• 11:28
  Speaker 4: to doctors and toxicologists in the US, but it was
• 11:32
  Speaker 4: actually a couple of blues singers who identified the source
• 11:37
  Speaker 4: of this in two different songs, one by Isham Bracy
• 11:42
  Speaker 4: called Jake Liquor Blues.
• 11:44
  Speaker 3: Hear a little clip of that.
• 12:02
  Speaker 2: Money.
• 12:17
  Speaker 4: And then we also have Tommy Johnson who kind of
• 12:21
  Speaker 4: figured out the source of this condition in his Tongue
• 12:24
  Speaker 4: Alcohol and Jake Blues.
• 12:26
  Speaker 3: When do a clip of that? Yes, please nog ho.
• 12:34
  Speaker 1: Y do no.
• 12:36
  Speaker 2: Fill? Let me that b Martin no home look you man,
• 12:47
  Speaker 2: let it one man, Oh, don't kid.
• 12:53
  Speaker 1: No. So they're part They're not neurologists, obviously, but they
• 13:03
  Speaker 1: are part of the community where the people encounter this
• 13:08
  Speaker 1: stuff on a regular basis.
• 13:09
  Speaker 4: That's right, Because you know, the rich, the swells, the
• 13:12
  Speaker 4: high society types, who weren't these kind of Bible thumping
• 13:15
  Speaker 4: prohibition pushers, they were able to get imported booze from
• 13:22
  Speaker 4: places like Europe or the Caribbean. You can get rum,
• 13:26
  Speaker 4: very expensive. You had to know people, but it could
• 13:29
  Speaker 4: be done. But the lower class had to rely on
• 13:32
  Speaker 4: this super cheap, dangerous street bootleg stuff.
• 13:37
  Speaker 3: Right.
• 13:38
  Speaker 1: Absolutely. People would also buy things that were counterfeit spirits.
• 13:47
  Speaker 1: They were advertised perhaps as whiskey or they were advertised
• 13:51
  Speaker 1: as vodka, but instead.
• 13:54
  Speaker 3: They were.
• 13:56
  Speaker 1: You know, they were tarted up industrial alcol products, and
• 14:01
  Speaker 1: they contained a lot of terrible stuff, not just the neurotoxins,
• 14:06
  Speaker 1: which this was a really interesting story about Jake. I
• 14:09
  Speaker 1: think they didn't figure out the neurological damage it's capable
• 14:14
  Speaker 1: of until what the seventies.
• 14:16
  Speaker 4: Yeah, and I think it was even worse than they
• 14:18
  Speaker 4: originally had even thought. Turns out that it actually damaged
• 14:22
  Speaker 4: the movement control neurons in the brain or the upper
• 14:26
  Speaker 4: motor neurons.
• 14:27
  Speaker 3: And thankfully, you know, this is about.
• 14:29
  Speaker 4: Fifty years later, but they had of course tracked down
• 14:32
  Speaker 4: all of the offending stuff and it was outlawed and gone.
• 14:35
  Speaker 4: But this is interesting because this is a company that's
• 14:38
  Speaker 4: doing this. This is a company that's trying to make
• 14:40
  Speaker 4: a buck by cheating the system during prohibition.
• 14:44
  Speaker 1: Right, right, And they're not the only one. This also
• 14:48
  Speaker 1: affects pharmacies. They were allowed to dispense whiskey with a prescription,
• 14:52
  Speaker 1: So who runs the prescription pad? Right?
• 14:54
  Speaker 3: Interesting?
• 14:55
  Speaker 1: Yeah, And religious authorities that require or i should say
• 14:59
  Speaker 1: institute religious institutions that required alcohol or ceremonies also came
• 15:04
  Speaker 1: under the control of criminal organizations. And it was it's
• 15:09
  Speaker 1: similar to how when marijuana was legalized or decriminalized medically
• 15:14
  Speaker 1: first in California, a lot of people developed nebulous medical conditions. Yeah,
• 15:19
  Speaker 1: so they could get their prescriptions.
• 15:21
  Speaker 4: A hard time sleeping. Are you got you know, restless
• 15:23
  Speaker 4: leg syndrome or something?
• 15:25
  Speaker 1: And there were a lot more people claiming to be
• 15:27
  Speaker 1: adherents of certain churches or religious organizations.
• 15:32
  Speaker 3: People found Jesus, are you saying al Capone was running
• 15:34
  Speaker 3: communion line.
• 15:35
  Speaker 1: My man people like him were involved for sure, and
• 15:41
  Speaker 1: this this was helpful because these were sources of alcohol
• 15:46
  Speaker 1: that was less likely to be contaminated. But while this
• 15:51
  Speaker 1: was happening, the government realized that all the predictions they
• 15:55
  Speaker 1: had made were wrong. Turned out alcoholism and health problems
• 15:59
  Speaker 1: do true. Alcohol consumption were not going down, they were
• 16:05
  Speaker 1: going up, right, Like alcohol declined a little bit, but
• 16:08
  Speaker 1: a ton of restaurants closed because, as you know, many
• 16:11
  Speaker 1: restaurants make their largest amount of profit off of spirit sales. Sure,
• 16:16
  Speaker 1: and then the markup right right because of the markup,
• 16:19
  Speaker 1: and then the government figured out that there was a
• 16:23
  Speaker 1: massive leak they could not plug somewhere along the production
• 16:27
  Speaker 1: line of industrial alcohol manufacture and legal use, Like millions
• 16:34
  Speaker 1: of gallons were disappearing, and so they made a pretty brutal,
• 16:41
  Speaker 1: ruthless decision.
• 16:42
  Speaker 4: It really did ben So earlier we alluded to the
• 16:46
  Speaker 4: chemists War during Prohibition, and I would argue that's something
• 16:50
  Speaker 4: that was kind of ongoing even before this brutal move
• 16:54
  Speaker 4: we're about to talk about. But it really kicked in
• 16:56
  Speaker 4: the high gear when the US government decided to require
• 17:02
  Speaker 4: these industries manufacturers of this industrial alcohol to start adding
• 17:07
  Speaker 4: all kinds of horrible stuff to their product, and I guess,
• 17:13
  Speaker 4: to the government's credit, that's not really the right way
• 17:15
  Speaker 4: to put it at all. But they were transparent about it.
• 17:17
  Speaker 4: They wanted people to know. It was in the papers.
• 17:20
  Speaker 4: In fact, in the Vox article, the headline from a
• 17:23
  Speaker 4: clipping reads government to double alcohol poison content and also
• 17:27
  Speaker 4: add benzene smell warns drinkers, So they knew.
• 17:32
  Speaker 3: What people are doing. Yeah, they wanted them.
• 17:35
  Speaker 4: To know, we're gonna make this stuff even more poison
• 17:37
  Speaker 4: than it already is. And the assumption there was that
• 17:40
  Speaker 4: people were going to look out have some sort of
• 17:42
  Speaker 4: self preservation instinct, not the case. People already were showing
• 17:46
  Speaker 4: that they lacked that entirely when they were drinking this
• 17:49
  Speaker 4: stuff off the streets that was already very, very dangerous
• 17:52
  Speaker 4: and adulterated.
• 17:54
  Speaker 1: Yeah, this was in nineteen twenty six, and as you say, Noel,
• 17:56
  Speaker 1: to their credit, they were very public about this. But
• 18:00
  Speaker 1: the reason we call this a brutal, ruthless thing is
• 18:03
  Speaker 1: that it was clearly an indefensible, illogical statement. It was
• 18:08
  Speaker 1: both trying to punish people for a moral decision and
• 18:12
  Speaker 1: then also remove any perceived culpability from the inevitable consequences
• 18:17
  Speaker 1: of this terrible decision. Yeah, they put benzene in there.
• 18:21
  Speaker 1: They also put mercury in there, I.
• 18:23
  Speaker 3: Think a Canda Strych nine, I believe.
• 18:26
  Speaker 4: But the biggest one was that they doubled that methanol
• 18:30
  Speaker 4: that was in there. And the reason that that one
• 18:32
  Speaker 4: was the doozy is because it was so similar to
• 18:35
  Speaker 4: the alcohol itself atomically that it bonded with it in
• 18:40
  Speaker 4: a way that was very difficult for the chemists to
• 18:43
  Speaker 4: fully get rid of it by redistilling it or whatever.
• 18:47
  Speaker 4: I'm not an alcohol chemist, but whatever they went there
• 18:49
  Speaker 4: to do, it was hard.
• 18:51
  Speaker 1: Yeah, because it was so closely intertwined with the drinking alcohol. Right.
• 18:57
  Speaker 1: And Charles Norris, who we mentioned earlier in that essay,
• 19:02
  Speaker 1: he and Alexander Gettler, who was the chief toxicologist of
• 19:06
  Speaker 1: New York at the time, they both told the government
• 19:08
  Speaker 1: not to do it. The government did it, and instantly
• 19:14
  Speaker 1: people started dying. It was called this was called the
• 19:18
  Speaker 1: alcohol of the Country by Bloom because it was very
• 19:22
  Speaker 1: easily accessible stuff. We have a lot of information about
• 19:25
  Speaker 1: this in New York City especially, but we know that
• 19:28
  Speaker 1: at this time bootleggers had nationwide transit infrastructure. So this
• 19:33
  Speaker 1: stuff was going everywhere. And the estimates for the deaths
• 19:36
  Speaker 1: are a little bit fuzzy because some of the deaths
• 19:40
  Speaker 1: were were just the result of alcoholism. But the problem
• 19:44
  Speaker 1: is that at the time alcoholism like drinking oneself to
• 19:49
  Speaker 1: death from regular old alcohol that was listed as a
• 19:52
  Speaker 1: natural death in obituaries. This was something very different. This
• 19:56
  Speaker 1: was death by poison.
• 19:58
  Speaker 4: Yeah, and this got Charles Norris, who you read from
• 20:01
  Speaker 4: his essay earlier, who was the chief medical Examiner in
• 20:03
  Speaker 4: New York City, was just wholesale against this. He's like,
• 20:06
  Speaker 4: this is a really bad idea. Government, please don't do this.
• 20:09
  Speaker 4: And of course they didn't listen to him, and so
• 20:11
  Speaker 4: he referred to this and actually ties in with the
• 20:14
  Speaker 4: title of that essay, he referred to this as quote
• 20:17
  Speaker 4: our national experiment in extermination. So it really is almost
• 20:22
  Speaker 4: like this idea of like they call them souses, you know,
• 20:25
  Speaker 4: the drunks or whatever. It's almost like the government actively
• 20:29
  Speaker 4: wanted to kill them.
• 20:32
  Speaker 2: And in this.
• 20:34
  Speaker 4: Slate article, it describes an event that happened on Christmas
• 20:38
  Speaker 4: Eve of nineteen twenty six when a man goes into
• 20:43
  Speaker 4: Bellevue Hospital in New York and is terrified that Santa
• 20:47
  Speaker 4: Claus is coming after him to kill him with a
• 20:50
  Speaker 4: baseball bat. As it turns out, he was in fact
• 20:53
  Speaker 4: experiencing hallucination as a result of this poisonous stuff.
• 21:00
  Speaker 3: And again, you know the government knew, I mean, I
• 21:02
  Speaker 3: don't know.
• 21:02
  Speaker 4: It just seems like so ill informed, Like obviously prohibition
• 21:05
  Speaker 4: wasn't working.
• 21:06
  Speaker 3: They knew prohibition wasn't working.
• 21:07
  Speaker 4: They wanted up the anty by doing this, But did
• 21:09
  Speaker 4: they really think this.
• 21:11
  Speaker 3: Was going to stop people? They had to know people
• 21:14
  Speaker 3: were going to drink it.
• 21:16
  Speaker 1: The approach they appear to have taken here, or rather
• 21:19
  Speaker 1: the stance would be that you have to break a
• 21:23
  Speaker 1: few drunk eggs to make a sober omelet, or the
• 21:26
  Speaker 1: dangerous argument we've talked about before, the belief and the
• 21:29
  Speaker 1: greater good. But yeah, almost one hundred people died, as
• 21:34
  Speaker 1: you said, in December nineteen twenty six, the week of Christmas,
• 21:38
  Speaker 1: due to this, the same year that the government passed
• 21:40
  Speaker 1: these regulations, and hundreds would die in the following years.
• 21:46
  Speaker 1: This had intentionally been rendered fatal, and Calvin Coolidge was
• 21:52
  Speaker 1: the president at the time, and under his administration these
• 21:57
  Speaker 1: deaths were not seen as a problem. It was kind
• 21:59
  Speaker 1: of like shrug, things happen, but overall it is getting
• 22:04
  Speaker 1: drunks off the streets.
• 22:05
  Speaker 4: Well, it's sort of like the is it the president
• 22:07
  Speaker 4: of the Philippines who basically advocates for murdering drug dealers
• 22:12
  Speaker 4: in the streets?
• 22:13
  Speaker 3: Similar vibe, only a little more roundabout way of doing it.
• 22:16
  Speaker 4: I mean, at least de Terte says what he means
• 22:18
  Speaker 4: and isn't trying to hide behind some kind of puritanical
• 22:21
  Speaker 4: curtain like these guys.
• 22:23
  Speaker 3: You know, it's very, very troubling.
• 22:31
  Speaker 1: Norris is walking a thin line on this prohibition issue
• 22:35
  Speaker 1: at the time, you know, because he is the chief
• 22:38
  Speaker 1: Medical Examiner, so he has street cred and he's I
• 22:41
  Speaker 1: think in a little bit of a safer place to
• 22:44
  Speaker 1: argue against prohibition. And he says that something must be
• 22:49
  Speaker 1: added to grain alcohol to prevent it being all drunk
• 22:52
  Speaker 1: away and thereby deny it to legitimate industry and business.
• 22:57
  Speaker 1: So he says, Okay, we have to add some kind
• 23:00
  Speaker 1: of contaminate, but methanol. Seriously, that's going to kill people.
• 23:06
  Speaker 1: He didn't really propose a different additive, or I couldn't
• 23:10
  Speaker 1: find a different additive that he proposed. But he also
• 23:14
  Speaker 1: he also mentioned something that was really powerful and pressing
• 23:17
  Speaker 1: it for his time. He revealed how the New York
• 23:23
  Speaker 1: administration of the twenties looked at certain populations as disposable alcoholics,
• 23:29
  Speaker 1: certain types of immigrants, the poor, as we mentioned at
• 23:33
  Speaker 1: the top of this episode, and there were a couple
• 23:37
  Speaker 1: of different rules, like two sets of rules, one for
• 23:40
  Speaker 1: the wealthy people who are drinking a lot and one
• 23:43
  Speaker 1: for the quote unquote degenerates. And Norris points out that
• 23:46
  Speaker 1: private physicians will rarely expose their deceased customers to the
• 23:52
  Speaker 1: indignity of a post mortem examination, and then they'll just
• 23:55
  Speaker 1: call those deaths those alcohol related deaths deaths by some
• 24:00
  Speaker 1: sort of natural cause. They still look upright and respectable
• 24:03
  Speaker 1: even in the afterlife.
• 24:05
  Speaker 4: Yeah, Ben, and I think there's this quote from the
• 24:07
  Speaker 4: Chicago Tribune that was cited in the Slay article. It
• 24:10
  Speaker 4: really sums up this whole problem that we're trying to
• 24:13
  Speaker 4: kind of wrap our heads around for nineteen twenty seven.
• 24:15
  Speaker 4: It says, quote, normally, no American government would engage in
• 24:18
  Speaker 4: such business as poisoning its own citizens. It is only
• 24:21
  Speaker 4: in the curious fanaticism of prohibition that any means, however barbarous,
• 24:27
  Speaker 4: are considered justified. So, I mean, I think that really
• 24:30
  Speaker 4: sums up the mindset of like this whole era some
• 24:33
  Speaker 4: moral crusade, a total moral crusade that did eventually come
• 24:37
  Speaker 4: to an end.
• 24:37
  Speaker 1: Yes, luckily, luckily for everyone involved. Teetotalers and boos enthusiasts.
• 24:44
  Speaker 1: A like, prohibition of alcohol was repealed in nineteen thirty three,
• 24:51
  Speaker 1: so it didn't last that long, just a span of
• 24:53
  Speaker 1: about thirteen ridiculous years now were there were there plus
• 25:00
  Speaker 1: to alcohol prohibition. Sure, for certain parties, it was great
• 25:05
  Speaker 1: for organized crime, right, Yeah, it was great for law enforcement,
• 25:09
  Speaker 1: that's job security because it's an unending war. But for
• 25:13
  Speaker 1: the majority of the country, it was demonstrably a bad thing.
• 25:18
  Speaker 3: Yeah, sure sounds like it to me. But I don't
• 25:19
  Speaker 3: really see too much of a silver lining here.
• 25:22
  Speaker 4: So, and it's interesting the way we're seeing this kind
• 25:24
  Speaker 4: of repeat with marijuana prohibition and the way the tide
• 25:29
  Speaker 4: is turning with that. It's really interesting to kind of
• 25:31
  Speaker 4: be quite a time to be alive just to see
• 25:34
  Speaker 4: these things kind of change and see the kind of
• 25:36
  Speaker 4: puritanical attitudes kind of making their way out of fashion.
• 25:40
  Speaker 1: Yeah, which is strange because in the current situation regarding marijuana,
• 25:45
  Speaker 1: especially in the US. There's some states where it's completely legal,
• 25:49
  Speaker 1: and there are some states where it's still a very
• 25:51
  Speaker 1: serious offense to what possess it carried around grow it.
• 25:56
  Speaker 1: And one of the huge factors in the turning tide
• 26:01
  Speaker 1: regarding marijuana legislation has honestly been not so much the
• 26:06
  Speaker 1: science behind the substance itself, but the economic benefit to
• 26:13
  Speaker 1: governments and businesses of making it legal.
• 26:15
  Speaker 3: Oh for sure, I mean that's certainly.
• 26:16
  Speaker 4: You see dollar signs in some of these formerly teetotalin officials,
• 26:21
  Speaker 4: right and yeah, And you would think that with all
• 26:25
  Speaker 4: this concern about the economy with this original prohibition, that
• 26:30
  Speaker 4: would have been a little bit more on people's minds
• 26:32
  Speaker 4: instead of just funneling all that money into the.
• 26:35
  Speaker 3: Abyss that is the black market, you know.
• 26:37
  Speaker 1: Right, right. And after prohibition on alcohol ended on the
• 26:43
  Speaker 1: federal level in December fifth of thirty three, some states
• 26:48
  Speaker 1: decided to stay dry states for up to a third
• 26:53
  Speaker 1: of a century longer.
• 26:54
  Speaker 3: Well, we still have dry counties in the US.
• 26:57
  Speaker 4: I know Blue Ridge, Georgia, which is a there's really
• 27:00
  Speaker 4: beautiful mountain cabins you can rent there.
• 27:02
  Speaker 3: That is a dry county. Oh, I didn't know that. Yeah,
• 27:05
  Speaker 3: and it's interesting too.
• 27:06
  Speaker 4: I want to point out there's something that I noticed
• 27:08
  Speaker 4: as a correction in one of these articles. I think
• 27:10
  Speaker 4: it was in the Slate article. They mischaracterized the eighteenth
• 27:14
  Speaker 4: Amendment as prohibiting the consumption of.
• 27:16
  Speaker 3: Alcohol that was not illegal.
• 27:18
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it was just the manufacturer, manufacturing, and distribution, right,
• 27:22
  Speaker 1: import exports.
• 27:23
  Speaker 3: It's an interesting distinction there.
• 27:25
  Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, right, it's kind of like the pursuit of happiness.
• 27:28
  Speaker 3: That's right, you can go after it. Yeah.
• 27:31
  Speaker 1: Currently, as we record here in the US, there are
• 27:34
  Speaker 1: still hundreds of dry counties across the country. About ten
• 27:39
  Speaker 1: percent of the country is still what would be considered dry,
• 27:42
  Speaker 1: and about eighteen million people or so live live in
• 27:46
  Speaker 1: that area.
• 27:47
  Speaker 3: Nobody knows how dry I am, Ben, No one.
• 27:50
  Speaker 1: Knows the dryness you've seen.
• 27:52
  Speaker 4: Isn't it weird that the always see drunk people singing
• 27:54
  Speaker 4: that song? I know I'm talking about like in cartoons.
• 27:58
  Speaker 3: Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, nobody nobody.
• 28:12
  Speaker 2: Right, don't story yourself, sir, Lari.
• 28:22
  Speaker 1: And on that note, feel free to send us your
• 28:25
  Speaker 1: favorite drunken single longs if you find them online. We
• 28:29
  Speaker 1: want to thank you so much for taking this strange
• 28:33
  Speaker 1: journey with us. If you would like to learn more,
• 28:36
  Speaker 1: we can recommend reading Charles Norris's essay and Extermination in full.
• 28:42
  Speaker 1: Deborah Blooms Poisonous Handbook is a great thing, and it's
• 28:45
  Speaker 1: not just about prohibition. Sure, if you liked our arsenic episode,
• 28:50
  Speaker 1: you'll also love Poisoner's Handbook absolutely.
• 28:53
  Speaker 4: And we would of course like to thank our super
• 28:55
  Speaker 4: producer Casey Pegram, Alex Williams, who composed our theme, our
• 28:59
  Speaker 4: research associate Christopher Hasiotis, who hiped us to today's topic.
• 29:03
  Speaker 3: And I want to thank you right well, you Ben,
• 29:05
  Speaker 3: I'm looking at you.
• 29:06
  Speaker 1: Oh, and thank you Noel.
• 29:08
  Speaker 3: See you next time.
• 29:17
  Speaker 4: For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
• 29:21
  Speaker 4: or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.