Ken Burn's 'Prohibition'

[Jim Johnson]

This Mini Series is totally awesome.  It is the future history of every prohibition in the United States.

http://movies.netflix.com/WiMovie/Ken_Burns_Prohibition/70281600?trkid=8133737

[Pat K]

This makes me cry.

[Jim Johnson]

People drank more during prohibition and a drink was easier to get.

[KBCraig]

They also switched to stronger stuff.

[Jim Johnson]

Mainly because it was more easily hidden.

[Jim Johnson]

I found it interesting that women complained of marital rape before prohibition and women were the driving force behind prohibition.
People drank more.
The clitoris was discovered by (shown to) American men in the mid 1920's.
Then women where the driving force behind anti prohibition.

[Tom Sawyer]

Prohibition led to more concentrated alcohol, more concentrated drugs, and raunchier porn. I wish middle America would realize their irrational fears and desire to regulate human behavior leads to worse conditions. Bloods and Crips in midwestern towns, crack cocaine and their kids embracing gangster rap and ghetto culture.

[KBCraig]

Mainly because it was more easily hidden.

Same as today. While I haven't touched the stuff in over 30 years, I understand today's pot will knock you on your ass compared to that of the '70s and '80s.

[MaineShark]

There's also the "in for a penny, in for a pound" effect.

If the penalty is the same if you get caught, why not get the most "benefit" for the potential risk...

That's the same way that mandatory minimum sentences drive up crime rates.  For example, folks will say that rapists should get mandatory life in prison, and I can understand why they would feel that way about such a disgusting crime... but if that were actually the case, how many rapists might say, "if I will get life in prison for rape, or life in prison for murder, then why not just kill my victim and avoid the risk that there will be someone who can testify against me?"

The response to a crime (whether that response be the current revenge-fueled nonsense, or something mroe civilized) should always be proportional to the crime; if a minor crime and a major crime both share the same potential penalty, many criminals will just go ahead and commit the major crime.

If you get X sentence for possessing alcohol, or some other drug, then why not possess the strongest possible form of that substance?  You don't need as much of it, so the risk is lower.  Hence, some teenager who might otherwise be happy to have one beer a day will, instead, go to a party and drink until he passes out.  Having one beer a day is safer, but it exposes him to more risk of getting caught.  He'll get "minor in possession of alcohol" for one drink of 20, so he might as well have the 20...

Prohibition doesn't just fail at preventing folks from possessing the prohibited item... it actually encourages reckless activities by shifting the risk/benefit point.

[Jim Johnson]

The United States Government poisoned liquor shipments; the deaths were termed 'deliberate suicide'.

[Free libertarian]

The United States Government poisoned liquor shipments; the deaths were termed 'deliberate suicide'.

Cough cough... paraquat...cough cough

[Tom Sawyer]

FACT: The government poisoned alcohol supplies to discourage comsumption during Prohibition

Frustrated that people continued to consume so much alcohol even after it was banned, federal officials had decided to try a different kind of enforcement...by poisoning the watering hole. They ordered the poisoning of industrial alcohols manufactured in the United States.

Most liquor in the 1920s was made from industrial alcohol, used in paints, solvents, and fuel. Bootleggers stole about 60 million gallons a year, redistilling the swill to make it drinkable. To drive rumrunners away, the Treasury Department started poisoning industrial hooch with methyl alcohol. But bootleggers kept stealing it, and people started getting sick.


When dealers noticed something wrong, they hired chemists to renature the alcohol, making it drinkable again. Dismayed, the government threw a counterpunch and added more poison...kerosene, gasoline, chloroform, and higher concentrations of methyl alcohol. Again, it didn't deter drinking; the booze business carried on as usual. Although mostly forgotten today, the 'chemist's war of Prohibition' remains one of the strangest and most deadly decisions in American law-enforcement history.

During Prohibition, the official sense of higher purpose kept the poisoning program in place. As the Chicago Tribune editorialized in 1927: "Normally, no American government would engage in such business. It is only in the curious fanaticism of Prohibition that any means, however barbarous, are considered justified." Others, however, accused lawmakers opposed to the poisoning plan of being in cahoots with criminals and argued that bootleggers and their law-breaking alcoholic customers deserved no sympathy.

In 1926, in New York City, 1,200 were sickened by poisonous alcohol; 400 died. The following year, deaths climbed to 700. These numbers were repeated in cities around the country as public-health officials nationwide joined in the angry clamor. Furious anti-Prohibition legislators pushed for a halt in the use of lethal chemistry.

Officially, the special denaturing program ended only once the 18th Amendment was repealed in December 1933. But the chemist's war itself faded away before then. Slowly, government officials quit talking about it. And when Prohibition ended and good grain whiskey reappeared, it was almost as if the poisonous measures taken to enforce it had never quite happened. The federal poisoning program, by some estimates, had killed at least 10,000 people.

[Tom Sawyer]

The United States Government poisoned liquor shipments; the deaths were termed 'deliberate suicide'.

Cough cough... paraquat...cough cough

Unintended consequence, kick started commercial domestic production.

[Jim Johnson]

FACT: The government poisoned alcohol supplies to discourage comsumption during Prohibition

Frustrated that people continued to consume so much alcohol even after it was banned, federal officials had decided to try a different kind of enforcement...by poisoning the watering hole. They ordered the poisoning of industrial alcohols manufactured in the United States.

Most liquor in the 1920s was made from industrial alcohol, used in paints, solvents, and fuel. Bootleggers stole about 60 million gallons a year, redistilling the swill to make it drinkable. To drive rumrunners away, the Treasury Department started poisoning industrial hooch with methyl alcohol. But bootleggers kept stealing it, and people started getting sick.


When dealers noticed something wrong, they hired chemists to renature the alcohol, making it drinkable again. Dismayed, the government threw a counterpunch and added more poison...kerosene, gasoline, chloroform, and higher concentrations of methyl alcohol. Again, it didn't deter drinking; the booze business carried on as usual. Although mostly forgotten today, the 'chemist's war of Prohibition' remains one of the strangest and most deadly decisions in American law-enforcement history.

During Prohibition, the official sense of higher purpose kept the poisoning program in place. As the Chicago Tribune editorialized in 1927: "Normally, no American government would engage in such business. It is only in the curious fanaticism of Prohibition that any means, however barbarous, are considered justified." Others, however, accused lawmakers opposed to the poisoning plan of being in cahoots with criminals and argued that bootleggers and their law-breaking alcoholic customers deserved no sympathy.

In 1926, in New York City, 1,200 were sickened by poisonous alcohol; 400 died. The following year, deaths climbed to 700. These numbers were repeated in cities around the country as public-health officials nationwide joined in the angry clamor. Furious anti-Prohibition legislators pushed for a halt in the use of lethal chemistry.

Officially, the special denaturing program ended only once the 18th Amendment was repealed in December 1933. But the chemist's war itself faded away before then. Slowly, government officials quit talking about it. And when Prohibition ended and good grain whiskey reappeared, it was almost as if the poisonous measures taken to enforce it had never quite happened. The federal poisoning program, by some estimates, had killed at least 10,000 people.

10,000 people dead... because of protestant fervor, in the name of the good lord.

[KBCraig]

And an estimated 30,000-50,000 paralyzed when tri-ortho cresyl phosphate was added to Ginger Jake.