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

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