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US Government Poisoned Alcohol During Prohibition
Hugh Pickens writes "Pulitzer Prize-winning science journalist Deborah Blum has an article in Slate about the US government's mostly forgotten policy in the 1920s and 1930s of poisoning industrial alcohols manufactured in the US to scare people into giving up illicit drinking during Prohibition. Known as the 'chemist's war of Prohibition,' the federal poisoning program, by some estimates, killed at least 10,000 people between 1926 and 1933. The story begins with ratification of the 18th Amendment in 1919, which banned sale and consumption of alcoholic beverages in the US. By the mid-1920s, when the government saw that its 'noble experiment' was in danger of failing, it decided that the problem was that readily available methyl (industrial) alcohol — itself a poison — didn't taste nasty enough. The government put its chemists to work designing ever more unpalatable toxins — adding such chemicals as kerosene, brucine (a plant alkaloid closely related to strychnine), gasoline, benzene, cadmium, iodine, zinc, mercury salts, nicotine, ether, formaldehyde, chloroform, camphor, carbolic acid, quinine, and acetone. 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 to stop the poisoning program. But an official sense of higher purpose kept it in place, while lawmakers opposed to the plan were accused of being in cahoots with criminals and bootleggers. The chief medical examiner of New York City during the 1920s, one of the poisoning program's most outspoken opponents, liked to call it 'our national experiment in extermination.'"
Nice how much hate exists among our democracy. (Ok, Representative democracy)
From TFA:
"The government knows it is not stopping drinking by putting poison in alcohol," New York City medical examiner Charles Norris said at a hastily organized press conference. "[Y]et it continues its poisoning processes, heedless of the fact that people determined to drink are daily absorbing that poison. Knowing this to be true, the United States government must be charged with the moral responsibility for the deaths that poisoned liquor causes, although it cannot be held legally responsible."
Breakfast served all day!
The penalty for drinking untaxed alcohol is still death or blindness.
Very much like the US still poisons its opiates by adding acetaminophen to them to ensure that they cannot be taken in very high doses? Ah, the war on drugs!
If the goverment is also reaponsible for poisining MDMA pills and heroin?
One might observe the very real actions of the FDA, approving EXPENSIVE dangerous new drugs, that should never have been released, and disparging other treatments that still work better (older generics, supplements). Some estimates are that several hundred thousand per year die because of such federally approved/mandated poisoning, millions more are injured.
Had a parent injured by several modern malpractices and pharmacides, turned out the way to survive was doing some older things that made simple biochemical sense. Much, much better now and I have objective measures to demonstrate it.
In TFA: Charles Norris.
Because back in the day, he was just a medical examiner. He got the nickname "Chuck" from his ability to punch someone so hard they essentially became very similar to ground chuck.
Denaturing alcohol is a common practice even today to prevent tax dodging, perhaps the best mass-scale denaturing occurring today is in Ethanol plants.
do the rest of a world a favor and either kill yourself or get some education and find out what a preservative is.
keep your stupidity home.
It's a good thing we no longer do things like that. You know, like add tylenol (APAP) to opiate painkillers so that if you abuse them you die of liver failure. Cause that wouldn't be cool at all.
If you are reading my words with disbelief, I suggest that you visit the Web link that I have provided. The TSE was real and was an atrocity committed by the American government against its own citizens.
President Bill Clinton ultimately apologized to the victims and their families.
It's not like the government kept this a secret. The bottles were even marked "poison". If stupid people chose to drink poison...
So what's going to happen to all those "at least we aren't killing our own people" arguments offered in defence of various despicable actions carried out in Iraq by armed forces of the United States?
The liver damage caused by the acetaminophen supposedly keeps a lid on abuse of all those oxy/hydro/codeine combos that take away the give a shit from all the hurt. Lets hope the new regs keep out the bad without killing off any chances for those needing pain management. But I don't expect good policies in the drug area or much else these days.
Sounds similar to the "War on Drugs" - bound to fail, waste a lot of money and kill a heap of people in the process. What a waste.
I think the home brewing and other do-it-yourself alcohol production communities would beg to differ with you. You only run into any real risk when you start distilling anyway.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
"Prohibition will work great injury to the cause of temperance. It is a species of intemperance within itself, for it goes beyond the bounds of reason in that it attempts to control a man's appetite by legislation, and makes a crime out of things that are not crimes. A Prohibition law strikes a blow at the very principles upon which our government was founded."
Abraham Lincoln (1809-65), U.S. President.
Speech, 18 Dec. 1840, to Illinois House of Representatives (http://deoxy.org/prohib1.htm)
End prohibition.... support your local cannabis organization that is championing the removal of restrictions on cannabis.
Educate Yourself.... then Educate Your Neighbor!
(http://www.archive.org/details/Michael_Badnarik)
The BATF has a list of approved formulas which must be used to render ethanol undrinkable in order to avoid federal excise taxes. The list is available here:
http://www.access.gpo.gov/nara/cfr/waisidx_03/27cfr21_03.html
The denaturants used range from simply nasty-tasting, to nausea-inducing, to downright lethal.
Apparently, Uncle Sam would rather you be dead or blind than getting driunk without paying the booze taxes...
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People are going to call you paranoid for that but it's pretty much true. Sodium Nitrite's one of the first that comes to mind.
Sodium Nitrite has medical uses but to get the chemical approved for use as a treatment it has to go through a ton of tests.
It is also used as a food preservative. For use in food the chemical is allowed until it is proven harmful.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sodium_nitrite
Wait wait wait...we're talking about "poisoning" methanol? Which is already extremely toxic?
I don't really see the purpose, but I definitely don't see a reason for outrage. Denatured alcohol (ethanol poisoned with methanol) is still produced, largely for taxation purposes I believe.
Let's keep it going:
Eugenics Board of North Carolina
Emp. added via bold on the interesting parts:
The Eugenics Board of North Carolina (EBNC) was an agency of the U.S. state of North Carolina created in 1933 after the state legislature authorized the practice of eugenics by state officials four years earlier.
In 1971, an act of the legislature transferred the EBNC to the newly created Department of Human Resources (DHR), and the secretary of that department was given managerial and executive authority over the board. Under a 1973 law, the Eugenics Board was transformed into the Eugenics Commission. Members of the commission were appointed by the governor and included the director of the Division of Social and Rehabilitative Services of the DHR, the director of Health Services, the chief medical officer of a state institution for the feeble-minded or insane, the chief medical officer of the DHR in the area of mental health services, and the state attorney general. In 1974 the legislature transferred to the judicial system the responsibility for any sterilization proceedings against persons suffering from mental illness or mental retardation.
The Eugenics Commission was formally abolished by the legislature in 1977.
The board sterilized about 7,600 people, many of them against their will, between 1929 and 1974, in an attempt to remove mental illness and "social misbehaviour" from the gene pool. Among the victims were 2000 young people, some as young as ten years old.
Gotta love the government.
That had people spewing up blood after one toke over the line. DEA, Uncle Sam, and some guy named Bill are but a few to blame.
As others above have noted, this program continues today. 'Denatured' alcohol is just poisoned alcohol. This is a legal mandate, and was kept on after prohibition in order to support high alcohol taxes.
Ethanol is very cheap to produce and is used by industry as a solvent or antiseptic. The main additive is methanol, which causes blindless before it kills you -- classy.
That is some nasty hyperbole you've got there.
Sigs are too short to say anything truly profound so read the above post instead.
They still do this stuff. It's called denatured. You're not supposed to drink industrial solvents. That's why they're industrial. No one complains that we poison antifreeze with ethylene glycol - BECAUSE YOU'RE NOT SUPPOSED TO DRINK ANTIFREEZE. Stuff meant for consumption is taxed at a higher rate and undergoes a lot of inspections to make sure it's fit for human consumption. If it's not meant for human consumption, they don't get taxed as heavily and don't undergo inspections. How do you prove your stuff isn't meant for humans? You poison it and LABEL IT AS SUCH. Industrial solvents are labeled poisonous because they are. We're not poisoning the masses, we are providing them solvents at cheaper rates.
Google: "All your data are belong to us."
That had people spewing up blood after one toke over the line. DEA, Uncle Sam, and some guy named Bill are but a few to blame.
"However, independent bodies have studied paraquat in this use. Jenny Pronczuk de Garbino,[9] stated: "no lung or other injury in marijuana users has ever been attributed to paraquat contamination". Also a United States Environmental Protection Agency manual states: "... toxic effects caused by this mechanism have been either very rare or nonexistent. Most paraquat that contaminates marijuana is pyrolyzed during smoking to dipyridyl, which is a product of combustion of the leaf material itself (including marijuana) and presents little toxic hazard.""
Yes, the Government's unscrupulous poisoning of the feeble minded is an outrage, and a threat to innocent drinkers of antifreeze throughout the nation. THEY maintain that their hands are clean by pointing out that the containers all bear clear labels of "poison" upon them, but that is merely a clever cover-up for their nefarious plans.
But the truly dangerous conspiracy, the greatest threat that few date to speak about, are the horrors lurking behind the innocuously named hydrogn dioxide. I urge you to look into the threat that substance presents, despite the Government's outrageous self-serving assurance about how harmless it is.
Sodium Nitrite was of concern because in the acidic environment of your stomach, its acidified form is transient HNO2 which while not every stable, can react with amines to form nitrosamines which are now known to be carcinogenic to some degree. Bisphenol A is also of note as it mimics estrogen and as such has been put under the spotlight.
eh... not quite.. The regulations for food and herbal remedies are lax by comparison to drug regulations but it isn't quite the wild wild west.
Sigs are too short to say anything truly profound so read the above post instead.
Psilocybin Mushrooms are a safe & legal way to expand your mind & have a good time...not alcohol.
http://nathanlindsell.blogspot.com/
I once nearly took a job at a distillery that produced alcohol for mixing with gasoline. It used some special Union Carbide pellets, pressure and high heat to chemically strip the water from the alcohol molecules, so efficiently that they had to add water to get it down to 190 proof. Even though the proofing house was refrigerated, you could get a good buzz on from just inhaling the air in the room much less drinking it (surprisingly it was very smooth); it was potent stuff. Anyway, before the 190-proof stuff could be shipped, it had to be rendered non-potable by, surprise, adding a small amount of gasoline.
"I believe in Karma. That means I can do bad things to people all day long and I assume they deserve it." : Dogbert
The situation today is not that different. For example, deaths in the US and Mexico arising from heroin generally fall into two classes: (1) deaths because importing and selling heroin often involves violent criminal gangs, and (2) deaths because illegal heroin is impure. Both categories of deaths are purely government-inflicted, in the sense that the US government could end them tomorrow if it chose to legalize heroin.
Category #1 is pretty obvious: no more drug-related shootings if the stuff is being grown, imported, refined, packaged, and sold legally.
Category #2 is less well known to most people. When opiates were legal, people would generally just smoke opium. It had some bad health effects (e.g., constipation), but nothing all that deadly. People weren't overdosing from it. If you smoked too much, you fell asleep. Opium was legal in the US until around the turn of the 20th century. During most of the 20th century in the US, people were using extremely impure heroin. The impurities had two effects. One was that if it was maybe 10% heroin and 90% other ingredients, you couldn't get high from smoking or snorting it, so you had to inject it. AIDS transmission through shared needles wouldn't exist if heroin wasn't so impure that it had to be injected. The other was that the impurities themselves (often really nasty, random stuff like Ajax cleanser) could have devastating health effects. When you see a heroin addict who's lost all his teeth, it's because of the impurities, not the drug itself.
More recently, people have started to use black tar heroin imported from Mexico. Here is a series of articles about black tar heroin from the LA Times. This stuff is much cheaper than traditional heroin, so you don't get as many property crimes because druggies are stealing to support their habits. However, the black crud tends to cause collapsed veins and other problems. Also, a lot of people are overdosing because the black tar is stronger than they're used to. If heroin were legal, people would be able to look at the packaging and get accurate information about its strength.
Let's legalize heroin in the US tomorrow. Mexico could pull back from being on the verge of becoming a failed state. People in the US would stop dying. Violent and nonviolent crime would be reduced. The prison population would be greatly reduced. The US has one of the highest rates of incarceration in the world, due almost entirely to the failed war on drugs. Keeping all those people in jail is extremely expensive. E.g., California spends more on prisons than on higher education.
Find free books.
Look up the MK ULTRA project.
Considering some other things the gov't has done to the people.
That which does not kill me only postpones the inevitable.
Our Enemy the State
pdf
audio
So basically the bootleggers were defrauding the drinkers during prohibition by replacing the cheap (but legal for industrial uses) Methanol which can lead to blindness and ultimately death. The underground market was defrauding and poisoning people wholesale. So in effect, the Methanol was only safe to be used in industrial products as it was and would never have poisoned people if it had not been fraudulently added to alcoholic beverages in the first place. That isn't to say the government wasn't wrong, it most certainly was as is the entire concept of a drug war in of its self, it is that these underground markets were knowingly putting tainted Methanol into their products and killing drinkers as a result.
Sigs are too short to say anything truly profound so read the above post instead.
I knew about the denatured alcohol, but not the additives to opiates.
It might be worth adding that making industrial alcohols poisonous is mostly for taxation.
For instance you can (with a supposedly easily obtained permit) make alcohol for fuel, but it must be made in-consumable, however if you use that to drive on public roads you still need to pay a tax on it.
Same old story... The "do gooders" insist on the rules and the bureaucrats, criminals and middle men capitalize on it.
Eric C Williams E-Builders, LLC
Yet now days anyone mentioning a "death panel" is mocked...
Are they really that unthinkable considering these sort of events?
Prohibition passed congress under the administration of a Republican president (Teddy Roosevelt). It then went to the desk of a Democratic president (Wilson) who vetoed the measure. The congress in their infinite wisdom then overturned his veto. Then in 1933, under another Democratic president (Franklin Roosevelt) prohibition was repealed.
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
in order to protect people from themselves, they poisoned people. Oh, how logical that is!
I've been touting this idea for years: when drugs are seized, they should be poisoned and sold back on the streets and the money put back into the War on Drugs. And don't make a secret of it either: hold a press conference, with the chief of police saying "We seized a ton of pot last night. It's now in circulation with a shitload of toxin in it. Good luck, suckers!"
I mean, it's a fucking WAR on Drugs, right? The news channels need a body count. Then, after a few senators' daughters drop dead, maybe we can reconsider the rationale for it all.
"I guess the moral of the story is, don't paint your airship with rocket fuel." -- Addison Bain
Hey, I have an idea. Let's let the government run our health care system!
Go green: turn off your refrigerator.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
It may not be the government doing it directly, but are there not still Federal laws and policies in place requiring that manufacturers of certain products containing ethanol and methanol be "poisoned"?
This isn't really so shocking when viewed from a global and historical perspective. Don't forget, it also wasn't just German institutions that advocated and implemented various forms of eugenics. In California in the 1920s, it was policy to sterilize patients in sanitariums, lest they be allowed to spread their imperfections further in the gene pool.
Something like this poisoning program is guaranteed to happen again. The only thing more imperfect than our gene pool is our implementations of democracy. It has always been so, because unfortunately there's no such thing as "set it and forget it" democracy; you have to keep after it constantly and aggressively. Ethical and political entropy sets in VERY quickly if you look away - or turn a blind eye - for even a moment.
With cannabis prohibition, weed gets adulterated with tiny glass beads, sugar, other drugs, even gravy mix. People turn to JWH and similar untested research chems because the same high from a plant humans have used for millenia is illegal. Cannabis prohibition means people choose between Alcohol or Nicotine mainly, both of which can kill you.
And the Drug Czar says, "The science isn't in yet, I am against legalizing anything."
Nevermind the fact that his job description by law says he must oppose legalization, this guy apparently doesn't even understand the concept of a drug's therapeutic index (ratio of an effective dose : a lethal dose).
So a lot of us keep going to gangs and criminals and giving them inordinate amounts of money for a damn flower. Kids from the suburbs are zero degrees of separation away from gangs. Dealers don't card. And they don't all only sell weed. Just sayin'.
It's fckn' TWENTY TEN, GUYS. How far have we really come?
It makes you wonder if they are doing this with pot and other illicit drugs.
Funny, I learned it the other way around...
I learned that bootleggers were trying to put more 'kick' into their corn juice, so they added things like acetone, methyl, etc, and this was widespread because society barely understood certain chemicals were hazardous. In the same time period, smoking was considered healthy...
Just saying, I'd take this article as a good propaganda piece until facts are double checked.
I have it from high authority that the government laces the narcotics with a mix of high fructose corn syrup, nutra sweet, MSG and margarine!
Well.. maybe. Or Maybe not. But Definitely not sort of.
No they weren't poisoning methanol! They were poisoning industrial ethyl alcohol WITH methanol, up to 10% (plus other stuff). It is the methanol that was added that was the real killer (the lethal dose is around 20 ml or so).
Read TFA. In the fine tradition of /. summaries, it is an inaccurate condensation of the article.
Starships were meant to fly, Hands up and touch the sky - Nicky Minaj
Some hydraulic equipment in the Soviet Union, especially on aircraft, had to operate on ethanol or other alcohol variants in order to avoid freezing at very low temperatures. Not surprisingly, there was often a shortage of it because airmen drank it out of the hydraulic fluid reservoirs. One solution was to, indeed, mix in toxic substances into "technical" alcohol to prevent its unintended uses. Polar airmen discovered a trick for purifying such "technical" alcohol from its toxic additives: let the mixture flow over a highly cooled (e.g. using outside air, to -30 or -40C) long metal rod. The alcohol would run freely and drip off the end, whereas most toxic additives would freeze onto the rod itself.
They studied men who already HAD the disease, and allowed it to progress untreated to see what would happen.
Still completely unethical, and one of the more atrocious chapters in US medical history. But claiming that the patients were intentionally infected with syphilis by gov't docs is simply wrong, and gives ammunition to those who would deny that the whole thing ever happened.
OTOH, the government did intentionally inject people (including mentally retarded children) with radioactive isotopes to see what the effects of nuclear fallout would be.
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It's not a matter of not being able to believe the government would ever do such a thing. It's laughed at because the same people who would call a government review board a "death panel" fully support the private "death panels" each insurance company has.
... it [the government] decided that the problem was that readily available methyl (industrial) alcohol — itself a poison — didn't taste nasty enough.
The article got it right:
Industrial alcohol is basically grain alcohol [ethyl alcohol] with some unpleasant chemicals mixed in to render it undrinkable. ... Some 70 denaturing formulas existed by the 1920s. Most simply added poisonous methyl alcohol into the mix.
It's not as if you would ever need to denature methanol. Denatured alcohol is typically ethanol with 10% methanol (a toxin) added. Such a formulation is also called methylated spirits.
--
I find it amusing that one of the antidotes used to treat methanol poisoning is ethanol.
And this has what to do with my rights online, again?
What could possibly go wrong?
"The defense of freedom requires the advance of freedom" - George W Bush
nt
They're called 'insurance companies'.
when the government demands that all medical marijuana be tested for toxins
they will just be adding the toxins
by government, religion, etc. please note one small detail:
there is no greater destruction of freedom in the history of mankind than drug addiction
you take a mind that contemplates history or philosophy or art and replace it with one that is only concerned where its next fix comes from
so the most autocratic fascist fundamentalist brutal regime you can possible imagine is but a wall flower in comparison to the bars of the mind that represents the freedom destruction done by drugs
which makes two ironic points possible: government declares a war on drugs perhaps out of professional jealousy. and some people fight the government telling them what to do... so they can choose themselves to be slaves
either way, what i fear the most is the government that ACTIVELY PROMOTES the use of drugs, for example, heroin. when some evil mastermind figures out he doesn't have to fight drugs, but actually use them to supplicate and dominate, as a LITERAL opiate of the masses... at that point, mankind is genuinely screwed
actually drugs have already been used with this effect in warfare: the british forcing the chinese to take opium, the settlers of north america neutralizing the red man with "fire water", etc.
all i'm asking is that while y'all busy demonizing the freedom destruction of government and religion, that you don't forget the most successful freedom destroyer of them all: drugs
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
government run health care seems to work well everywhere it's been tried. I get to vote for the idiot who appoints the moron who denies me medical care. I might only have a small chance to fix the problem, but the guy in office remembers me when he makes his choices. how about in a free system? Oh right, only the rich (shareholders) get a vote.
It's cheaper to grow and cure your own tobacco, and probably much more healthy than trusting what big business is loading your cigarettes with:
http://www.coffinails.com/forums/
I am not a doctor, this is not medical advice, I am not a lawyer, this is not legal advice. I am not a vulture, but I do like hemp seeds.
There's no reason to pay such heavy taxes on tobacco when you can legally grow your own - check your local laws.
Care to share the structural formula for that one, before you head out to claim your Nobel in chemistry?
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This is still going on today with other illegal substances. The US has, for example, been poisoning marijuana fields with paraquat for decades.
StoneCypher is Full of BS
A lot of medicines are poisonous at high doses. That's why you're supposed to listen to your doctor.
And how come no one is complaining about the bootleggers who were using denatured alcohol without properly distilling it? But for their actions, nobody would've been poisoned by this.
Worse, drug dealers still do that today, too, just to make a buck, when they cut their drugs with other poisonous substances and the government sure isn't forcing that upon them.
has nothing to do with recreational self-destruction
you are not self-medicating when you are an addict
i don't know how you can equate the two concepts
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
I'm always puzzled by all those so-called crimes that have no victims: alcohol, drugs, certain religions in certain countries... Or rather, where the only potential victim is the criminal him/her-self.
To me, those are what more clearly mark the difference between freedom and tyranny. It really bothers me when western democracies engage in such repressive behaviour, and set such a bad example.
The Cloud - because you don't care if your apps and data are up in the air.
I do not understand the desire to dress up outrages to enhance their shock value. There is no need for the unsubstantiated FUD of "Doctors paid by Washington injected syphilis into unsuspecting indigent Americans ..." The infections were naturally acquired. But they were kept untreated for decades, and allowed to progress and be spread to the wives and children of the men. The men were deceived as to the purpose of the study and the procedures they underwent, kept in ignorance of their infection and its progression, and actively obstructed if they tried to access treatment elsewhere. The facts are damning enough.
There was a special on it on PBS Nova, which is well worth watching.
These days we call this stuff 'preservatives' and add them to everything from frozen pizza to Entenmann's snack cakes.
I think I speak for all of us when I say that kerosene pizza is delicious. What do YOU want on your Tombstone(tm)? <evil laugh />
I'm not sure you can lay all the blame for the temperance movement upon christianity, substantial blame also rests with the women's right advocates. Ironically, woman's rights has generally been an astounding atheistic movement throughout the last two centuries, with the temperance movement being uniquely both religious and disastrous.
That said, authoritarian and/or religiously motivated men were the ones who imposed and implemented the poisoning. So yes you may lay these 10,000 deaths at the feet of authoritarianism and christianity.
The Christian religion has been and still is the principal enemy of moral progress in the world. -- Bertrand Russell
Isn't even mouthwash that contains alcohol deliberately made unsafe to drink? This article seems to be mostly a big kdawson scare and not really news in any meaningful sense.
Few more marks for the already incalculable body count of Christianity and organized religion.
Is anyone really surprised that they'd poison people in the name of their fucked up, righteously incorrect morality?
Confirmed 10000 people over the period of 7 years...shocker.
Now, when consumption-grade ethanol is perfectly legal in the US, it kills more than 10000 people annually, taking into account only alcohol-related road accidents. Worse, those aren't only idiots killing themselves via doing something stupid. I'm sure there are also some other alcohol-influenced deaths, as well as serious crime. Plus toll of long-term ailments.
Where's the story?
Is this some pathetic hidden reference to dangers of socialised healthcare?
One that hath name thou can not otter
Yikes! Playing god indeed. How quickly those in charge forget the original intentions behind their regulations: to protect the well-being of the people (protecting the right to life and liberty having been ignored from the get-go) . Gotta love those good intentions. The idea of poisoning alcohol is like if the government recruited people infected with HIV/AIDS to work as prostitutes pushing unprotected sex, probably would directly kill more people than it would deter ... I suppose one can't break the law once dead though.
I'm not saying the government is behind the weed found with lead in it, but after reading this I wouldn't be surprised. http://stopthedrugwar.org/reader_blogs/2008/apr/18/marijuana_lead_laced_pot_newest_
Youre absolutly right, i want someone looking at how much its gonna cost them before they sent me away to die.. you know the type of people with share holders.. they have more to gain the the govmint.. i choose lesser of two evils
"Nevermind the fact that his job description by law says he must oppose legalization,"
Why would the People want or need the governments's opinion on what should or should not be legal? It doesn't really matter. As long as drugs are illegal, the 'drug czar' has a job to do, not an opinion. I don't want his opinion, because he is the government. The People are to drive government policy/law, not the other way around.
So in the 1920s the Government poisoned people for moral reasons.
Today they still poison methylated spirits (aka denatured spirits) to maximize their tax revenue.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Denatured_alcohol
It's laughed at because the same people who would call a government review board a "death panel" fully support the private "death panels" each insurance company has.
Totally. That's what's bugged me about the whole "death panel" fubar from the beginning - we've ALREADY got them and the only people who aren't beholden to death panels are the uninsured.
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
It used some special Union Carbide pellets, pressure and high heat to chemically strip the water from the alcohol molecules
Google seems to indicate that the "special pellets" you refer to were probably silicalite. This is not a "chemical" process per se, since an ethanol mash is a solution of mostly ethanol in water. The molecules are not chemically bound. The pellets undergo a physical process to selectively adsorb ethanol within their molecular structure, leaving the water behind. When the water is drained, the ethanol can be evaporated out of the pellets at very high concentrations. This process would be more efficient than a typical distillation plant, since only the ethanol would need to be heated, and could be accomplished with fewer stages.
"I assumed blithely that there were no elves out there in the darkness"
In some states (and all U.S. military bases) you can get something called Everclear. It's available in 151 and 190 proof varieties.
We used to use it in our "jungle juice" parties, and I know a sweet old lady in upstate New York who uses it to make some fantastic Limoncello.
"Poisonous alcohol still kills--16 people died just this month after drinking lethal booze in Indonesia, where bootleggers make their own brews to avoid steep taxes--but that's due to unscrupulous businessmen rather than government order."
Wait, so unscrupulous businessmen making their own deadly booze to avoid taxes is the fault of 'unscrupulous businessmen', but unscrupulous businessment stealing industrial alchohol which I'm sure was labelled as such, and most likely labelled as poisonous, and then presumably putting it into other bottles (and possibly mixing it with other stuff to make it 'palatable' and/or dillute it for increased profit) somehow is NOT due to unscrupulous businessmen.
Sounds to me like the government didn't pour this stuff down people's gullets or trick them into drinking it. It sounds to me EXACTLY like 'unscrupulous businessmen' in the USA in the 1920's did something they knew would poison people, just to make a quick buck. I don't at all blame the government, as long as the original poisoned alchohol supplies were labelled as such. After that, it's not the goverment's fault if someone serves poison to other people. You wouldn't blame the government if ANY OTHER industrial chemical ended up in people's drinks because of criminals, would you?
The article author, with that statement, sure makes herself look kind of foolish, in this article. I particularly liked this quote: "I never heard that the government poisoned people during Prohibition, did you?" I kept saying to friends, family members, colleagues."
They didn't poison *people*. They 'poisoned' an industrial chemical that wasn't being manufactured, sold, or labelled for human consumption. Bootleggers poisoned people.
I want to make it clear I don't blame the poisoning victims in this. I squarly blame the bootleggers that sold them the poisoned drinks.
As for prohibition, no, I don't agree with it, and I wouldn't bring back that ammendment, but the government is *supposed* to follow the Constitution, and it was legally ammended by the Congress and the States, so the goverment is bound to uphold the Constitution. Poisoning the industrial alchohol seems a *perfectly* reasonable step in that situation, so long as everyone knows it has been poisoned.
There, fixed that for you.
To get you to stop drinking I'll put nicotine in your drink!
Why are you still drinking!?
Denatured alcohol wasn't the only poisonous alcohol people drank. Some people drank wood alcohol (methanol), which is itself poisonous. I remember hearing of a concoction called "smoke" that was wood alcohol mixed with water. The people who drank it were called "smoke hounds". It could make them blind and kill them, but they drank it anyway. I once heard of a blind musician who had become blind by drinking smoke when he was in prison.
Some people are crazy enough to drink anything, poison or not.
shit this is no surprise they've been messing with my weed for year!
Just a small off-topic hint: use capitalization and punctuation to make your posts readable, or stick to the formal haiku rules.
I'd rather you rationally disagree than irrationally agree.
Do you really think folks like those in charge of Wall Street would do any better?
Mainframe/UNIX Bit Twiddler and long time Windows/Linux Hobbyist.
The Theorem Theorem: If If, Then Then.
I hate to burst your bubble, but presidents have nothing to do with Constitutional amendments
You are correct on that part. However, prohibition did not actually prohibit anything until the passage of the Volstead Act which actually defined what (product) was being prohibited. And that act was vetoed by Wilson.
This was a progressive (socialist/fascist/communist/liberal) idea
If you group socialism, fascism, communism, and liberalism all under the same umbrella, you need to actually read up on those four very different philosophical structures. There are profound differences between those four ideals, both in theory and in application.
However equally important is to realize that there was nothing "progressive" about repealing the sale of "intoxicating beverages". Indeed, it would be better viewed as a regressive act, as it was in no way empowering for the lower socio-economic classes.
Unfortunately, progressivism had it's claws in both parties, but is mostly gone from the Republican party.
You have a strange view of "progressivism". It is no small wonder you posted as an anonymous coward.
This comment is going to get modded to hell.
Being as there is no moderation for "factually inaccurate", you are safe from reasonable moderation. Although some may consider your post to be far enough removed from reason to be trolling.
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
Wow the government sure was crazy back then, glad they would never do anything to intentionaly hurt people anymore!
WRONG! The DEA spray a strong poison called paraquat on outdoor marijuana plants now! It can cause death and injury to humans.
if it's just a friggin' plant, then why are people so attached to smoking it?
Who cares?
you can add other nasties, but 10% methanol is now mandatory, before it used to be 1% methanol mandatory, but now its 10% (more lethal)
You can do many things, right now, that are both harmful and still legal. Lets see, you could chew mouthful after mouthful of tobacco. You can suck down as many cigarettes as you possibly can. You could take as many OTC medications as you wish. You could drink yourself into a coma, etc.
All of those, will give you a high of different levels and all can cause you trouble of different levels especially depending on dosage.
What makes my listed "drugs" worse than the ones on the government black list? You could argue potency. But frankly I've seen people high on pot as well as drunk and I'd much rather hang out with those that are high. They are just a lot more lucid and aware.
My point being, that a drug is a drug. Whether it is on a government black list or not, anyone can _choose_ to abuse them, use them in moderation, or stay clear.
If you're a person who needs a vice, you'll find one, I assure you. I don't care what the government says, you'll find a cure for your "need".
Drugs are all around us in different forms and _always_ have. They aren't bad and some are even good for you at different times. Labeling "drugs" as bad is just short sighted and, dare I say, ignorant.
When it comes down to it... Stupid people are stupid and if they are bent on finding something terrible to do until it kills them, well, that's what they are going to do. Drugs don't do _anything_ but grow and/or sit there. It takes a willing person to pick it up and abuse it to become "bad".
An insurance company can't prevent you from being treated for a condition.
Total, unfiltered denial of reality.
If a medical procedure costs $400,000 and I have $400 in my bank account, and my insurance company says "We're not going to cover it." they are essentially PREVENTING me from being treated. If the treatment would save my life, they are effectively a "private death panel".
This isn't even the tip of the iceberg of all the crap the government has done to us and they never face the music. The government is not for the people, they're for themselves and all their large corporate and banking bed fellows. And the moment we the people try to change that we will be labled terrorists and stripped of what little rights we have left.
Okay, first off, I agree with everything you've said here. But why has it become so common these days to call people with different or even incorrect information "liars"? Isn't it enough to just call them wrong and point out why? Why attribute deliberate deception to them without any proof? All that does is foster hostility and blind them to the point you are trying to make.
caffeine is not heroin
a drug has to be inebriating AND addictive to destroy lives. if its only addictive, like nicotine, you can still work/ have a relationship. if its only inebriating, like LSD, you can still work/ have a relationship. but if something combines a craving with an ability to blot out hours of your life, you no longer can keep a job/ relationship, you can no longer support yourself. at this point, damage is done. so you're talking about meth, cocaine, heroin. alcohol and marijuana are borderline: they have the capacity to destroy lives, but their addictive potential is much lower than say heroin, so they should be legal
but something like heroin, you can strap someone down in a room (anyone, this is about basic human biochemistry), drip it into their veins over a period of time, and release them later. and you tell them they can have that drip again, just go do "xyz": they'll go do it. they need that fix. you've created a slave. you create a biochemical need that usurps your free will: you spend all of your time craving that drug, you'd do anything for your next fix. you're a zombie, a shell of your former needs and wants and desires and dreams
this is why i say drugs are the greatest destroyer of freewill the world has known. where a mind might have done something useful, constructive, you instead have a pointless echo chamber that interrupts all other driving forces: "where's my next fix, my next fix, my next fix..."
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
In the US, you can't get codeine without acetaminophen. The government requires that all codeine preparations contain it.
The reason for this is NOT because acetaminophen makes it more effective, a better pain killer, safer, or anything at all.
The ENTIRE reason is because acetaminophen is toxic in high doses - so that the codeine cannot be abused.
This space available.
No one is forcing patients to take these drugs. Taking these drugs is a risk patients willingly take since, if they have a deadly disease, doing nothing itself has a high mortality rate.
Patients make decisions on the information they're given. Doctors inevitably give the patients the information that supports the drugs. After all, they're mainly trained by the pharma companies anyway. (do the research)
Deadly disease? Doctors give chemical Rx for everything under the sun... it's mass poison. Look up the side effects.
The combination of all these Rx and over the counter chemicals.... plus 20 years of use, pretty much equals a crappy health condition. Factor in the atrocity that people call nutrition these days and you'll completely overwhelm the healthcare system. Oh wait.... it's already happening. *sigh*
Physical damage to my body and mental damage to my mind is NOT an acceptable payment for the reduction of symptoms. Deadly diseases.... possibly, but they're an insignificant minority.... compared to the actual volume of chemicals being consumed.
Is that our government is willing to take a more direct approach, like flying military aircraft into world trade centers and cruise missles into their own buildings to try and cover it up
Fact.
There are two Americas.
Didn't ultimately work in the long term either.
They have done the right thing as alcohol is very injurious to health. http://www.articlesbase.com/health-articles/where-to-buy-ultimate-acai-max-risk-free-trial-1906131.html
Drink his stuff, it came from Canada at least.
From Wikipedia:
note: that passage is actually attributed to the US EPA, but found in the above link
Make sure everyone's vote counts: Verified Voting
It's not a matter of not being able to believe the government would ever do such a thing. It's laughed at because the same people who would call a government review board a "death panel" fully support the private "death panels" each insurance company has.
Remember, why do people do what they do... for profit.
Even though insurance companies can kill people indirectly, it still makes profit for those they don't kill. While government kills for fun, and harms itself in the process. Government makes less profit then all combined private organizations, since they spend money that is not theirs, and do not understand it is finite. A business understands this or dies out and destroys it's shareholders. A government will kill it's own people and then suicide itself in the same way.
the reason to legalize it is because it is safe
The reason we should legalize it is because typical use does not make one dangerous to others.
People should be free to indulge in pleasures that slowly kill them over time (not saying marijuana is one such), even though such pleasures are not "safe." As long as I am not slowly killing you over time, and am not driven into violent rages or whatever, then I should be free to choose to throw my own life away.
Just make it illegal to sell to kids and we are good.
drug addicts lose the ability to support themselves and maintain relationships. they begin to thieve, as their cravings don't go away. this the way in which your life is harmed by drug addicts. and if not directly like that, then via support programs and the need for a beefy police department to simply secure you from the drug zombies in your community
drug addiction requires one variable: exposure. expose more people to more of a highly addictive substance, more of them become addicts. so you need to minimize their exposure to certain drugs. this creates all of the negatives of the drug war you allude to:: stronger mafia, dodgy supply, increased marginalization of users, etc. negatives i agree with you completely
and for some drugs, like marijuana or alcohol, nicotine, even lsd (nonaddictive), the negatives of the war itself is worse than the negatives of the drug itself, since those drugs aren't particularly life destroying. but some drugs: meth, cocaine, heroin, simply making these products more widely and freely available makes more addicts with basketcase lives. makes worse negatives than the war itself
"In a free society the person who takes the risks should suffer the consequences of their actions not punish everyone because a few people can't control themselves."
yes, that's a lovely fiction isn't it
as if the legions of those who are zombies now who can't maintain a job or a relationship, out on the streets, have no effect on your life. you suffer the consequences of other people's actions, especially in regards to them becoming drug addicts. so you need to understand and accept that simple truth: you need to minimize the availability of some substances themselves to minimize the creation of legions of addicts, since simple exposure is the overriding variable. you need to control the drugs themselves, with all the negatives of the drug wars that come with that, simply because for some drugs: meth, cocaine, heroin, the effects of the drugs itself are worse than the effects of the war
and what are you really doing in the end? preventing some people from becoming addicts, ie, increasing their free will, and your free will: less addicts for you to navigate your life around. there's a cost, either in legions of addicts, or a war on drugs. pick your cost, but there is no such thing as no cost at all, in the real world
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
how about a heroin junkie or a crack whore
and you're telling me the effort to stop people from becoming these things is worse than these states of being
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
it is not your free will that is doing that, but a biochemical compulsion. you are not choosing to do anything, a choice is being made for you
if you are a room trying to write a story, and your roommate is blaring music at maximum volume, are you free?
now you know what it is like in the mind of an addict to be "free"
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
The only people who aren't beholden to them are the seriously rich. Even the uninsured get hit by insurance review boards because the uninsured pay for all the stuff the insurance co's don't pay for or don't pay enough for.
Somehow I don't think you would respond to any logical counter argument, since you're so far removed from making a logical one yourself.
By the mid-1920s, when the government saw that its 'noble experiment' was in danger of failing, it decided that the problem was that readily available methyl (industrial) alcohol -- itself a poison -- didn't taste nasty enough.
Not quite. Methanol is very poisonous all on its own and the gov't was't worried about people drinking it because it would kill anyone who did.
The gov't decided that industrial ethyl, not methyl, alcohol didn't taste nasty enough. In fact, they eventually decided that there was no such thing as "tasting nasty enough" when it came to ethanol and that actual poison needed to added to kill people who dared to defy prohibition. One of the poisons that they specified to be added was, yep, methanol because it had been proven to be so effective at killing people who drank it.
Haha... America!
I hope I love in about 50 years, when some random USA military official who was serving around 2001 comes out and states that in that time they were doing some minor "RC-flying" tests with commercial airlines.
Oh, and they needed to start a war to get oil.
It does not sounds as "conspiracy theorehtical" when you put it in perspective with... you know, stuff that your government has already done :(
Ubuntu is an African word meaning 'I can't configure Debian'
you are not self-medicating when you are an addict
You haven't got the slightest clue what you're talking about. Drug addiction is very much about self-medication. Drug addicts almost invariably have mental problems or insecurities of one form or another - many have histories of childhood abuse. It is not at all a rarity to find a drug addict who was sexually abused as a child. These are considerable psychological burdens, and from the point of view of someone who finds himself struggling with deep-rooted insecurity and traumatic memories on a daily basis, the allure of opiates - capable of taking away not only physical pain but mental pain as well - is powerful. Throw in some other circumstances, such as being impoverished or uneducated (or both), and drug abuse is practically inevitable. No, it is not the ideal form of self-medication - far from it. But to say that it's not a form of self-medication at all is blatantly wrong and shows a fundamental lack of understanding of the nature of drug abuse.
A programmer is a machine for turning pizza into code.
http://www.ecosmartfire.com/en/about-the-fireplaces/what-is-the-fuel
Ethanol is denatured before it leaves the factory because it is so muchcheaper than store alcohol. Watch the modern marvels corn episode for details. (industrial alcohol is still denatured)
Whoever modded that funny has a sick sense of humor.
I wasn't trying to convince him or make a point to him. Liars need to be refuted, not convinced.
But why has it become so common these days to call people with different or even incorrect information "liars"?
Because we're tired of them getting away with it. Because being nice and pretending they're mistaken just communicates uncertainty and weakness and lack of resolve. Because pretending they're mistaken is, itself, deceptive.
Personally, I get tired of listening to hate campaigns. They hate all sorts of people and want them punished -- insurance companies in this case. There's a huge long list of the people you're supposed to hate: oil companies, religious people, CEOs and other executives, bankers, the "rich", etc., etc., etc. They want you to hate along with them. What's a good tool to drum up hatred? Lies.
Why attribute deliberate deception to them without any proof?
Why not? They are using falsehoods in the service of a hate campaign against insurance companies. The hate campaign is in the service of a government takeover of health care. Governments always force people to do things against their will.
They are using falsehoods to foster hatred to justify centralizing power and forcing people into a system against their will. You think that deserves the benefit of the doubt?
All that does is foster hostility and blind them to the point you are trying to make.
They are already hostile. They want to force people into a system against their will. They want to take even more money from people against their will. If you decline to pay them, they will imprison you. If you decline to go off to their prisons peacefully, they will send gunmen to your house. If you resist effectively, you will be killed. That's what government power is.
That power is already partly in play. They want to expand the use of that power. They want to wield that power against every doctor and every researcher and every patient so there's nowhere to hide.
I wonder if the guys running the Tuskegee Experiment were "hostile" when people questioned their actions? Or what about the researchers poisoning industrial alcohol? Were they "hostile" when their work was called "extermination"? Why can't we just get along with the experimenters and the poisoners?
Where do you think the money comes from, anyway? How is any of this a solution to anything? Am I the only one who sees how stupid this whole thing is? Forget about it, it won't work. You have to actually think about the real problem if you hope to do anything other than shuffle around worthless pieces of paper (or numbers in some computer somewhere). Don't ask me to explain myself, just think about it for a minute. You guys are basically arguing about which system won't solve the problem the best.
"and what are you really doing in the end? preventing some people from becoming addicts, ie, increasing their free will, and your free will: less addicts for you to navigate your life around. there's a cost, either in legions of addicts, or a war on drugs. pick your cost, but there is no such thing as no cost at all, in the real world"
Isn't it amazing how the simple absence of capitals can make a screed like this look like a rambling, incoherent rant from a quasi-religious recovering drug addict type? At least I think that's where the odor's coming from.
We know where leadership by an anti-intellectual "strongman" who scapegoats minorities and likes boisterous rallies goes
citation please. i know im a coward, but, still; for my sake, please explain how everyone adds methanol to my booze.
what other distilled stuff do i drink?
Sad thing is around the 30s social darwinism was all the rage and MANY people in and out of government thought it was a great idea
Alcohol is already poison.
Healthcare problem solved:
Put the prices above the check-in counters, McDonald's style.
Oh wait... you can't do that
oh well
Surely the point most comments here are missing is that *methyl* alcohol is already a poison. So it's a kindly thought, and not mere authoritarian wickedness, to put something in that makes it unpalatable, or truly vomitworthy. Denaturing *ethyl* alcohol is a different matter - if you have to, you want something both unpalatable and difficult to remove, but of course it shouldn't be poisonous of itself - just in case of abuse
It's not government vs. corporations that determines the capability for abuse. It's the degree to which people have choices.
Most people have no reasonable choice to walk away from their employer's health insurance plan. People with lots of money can go out-of-network, pay cash, buy individual insurance, etc., but most people only have one realistic option. Which is why it truly is devastating when an insurer denies coverage. When an insurer decides a condition was "pre-existing" after you've already received treatment (which seems absurd to me -- if an insurer wants to deny you coverage for something they should tell you before you sign up with them so you can make an informed decision to look elsewhere).
So the answer, of course, isn't the status quo, and it's clearly not a government takeover. It's decoupling your health insurance from your employer. Give people real choice. Allow individual insurance to work (a major reason that it doesn't is that employer insurance is heavily subsidized by the government).
Probably a side-effect of ingesting E 666, the Addidtive of the Beast.
Too bad you are modded troll. The statement you are makeing is exactly the same mistake as alcohol poisoning reasoning as TFA. That is not trolling, that is just a logic mistake that needs to be corrected with a reply or 10 weeks in a Education camp
By the way, stopping with smoking is not as simple as it sounds.
I always find it funny that people who risk jail time for a drug claim they haven't got a problem. "No sirree, I am not a drunk. Yes I am drinking industrial alcohol laced with rat poison for flavor sold to me by outragous prices and I could go to jail for it, but really, I got it all under control."
It is like watching a pot addict claim that pot is not addictive but boy, do not get between him and his fix. Here is a hint, if you been to jail 2 times and risk getting life if you get caught again and you still smoke for a short high regardless. YOU ARE AN ADDICT!
No, you are not fighting the system. You are not a rebel with a cause. Rebels do something worthwhile. Anon publishing documents people don't want the world to see is worthwhile stuff. Getting high is not. Hell, most drug abusers are very much in favor of control, as long as it suits them. The proof? How many alcohol addicts want a ban on pot? How many pot smokers agree that drink driving is bad but driving while high is okay?
But I got it easy I suppose. I do not have an addictive personality. No, that is not as much a blessing as you might think because it makes it hard to fit in with the rest of the world. I really can't see why you would want to drink industrial alcohol. To me, as I said, the very fact that you want to drink what is a poison, suggests that you got a problem and apparently society at times thinks it needs to protect people against themselves. Frankly, if you see what current drugs are doing in some areas, I can see the logic. You can't tell me the ghettos of this world wouldn't be better if there was no drug trade. Legalize it all? Sure, you could argue that with me, if your eyes weren't the size of saucers and you weren't twitching because you haven't had your fix yet.
But really, is this story so shocking to people? Don't you have "spiritus" in the US? A cleaning alcohol laced with poison to stop people from drinking it?
For those who want to discuss freedom in a democracy. Grow up. Democracy is the dictatorship of the majority voting group. There is no freedom when you got more then 1 person. Never can be. All you can do is make a large portion of the people not run into to many restrictions during their life. I am free? Fine, so I can piss on your carpet can I? Thought so.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
We discussed the chemists' war on Prohibition in high school history, and I always assumed it was common knowledge. Admittedly, that was back when dirt was new, but geez -- is this really news to people?
It seemed perfectly coherent to me, and I'm an atheist, openly hostile toward religion, who has never even been drunk in my life much less used an illicit drug of any kind.
Perhaps, idiotic attacks based on capitalization aside, people are simply allowed to have different experiences and different viewpoints than you? Could it be? Perhaps ridiculous ad hominem attacks based on nothing but supposition and a lack of capital letters makes one's argument stupider than anything that person is criticizing?
It's possible. You should give it some thought.
Do you have problems with people finding unfit purposes for other industrial chemicals?
Industrial ethanol is stolen because booze is so ridiculously expensive. Set the taxes for alcoholic drinks at the same level industrial chemicals are taxed and the problem will disappear.
I do wonder though, industrial alcohol kills whether or not poison is added to it (and home-brewed alcohol is even worse). You could actually formulate this very same policy as trying to get people not to drink the poison by making it taste bad.
The only statistics are the deaths caused by alcohol poisoning, not a single death case reports that the strychnine had anything to do with the death (any kid and his dog will clearly see the difference in a corpse between alcohol poisoning and strychnine poisoning. Someone dying from strychnine poisoning *will* have died in an extremely cramped position, all muscles totally stretched, while alcohol poisoning will slowly lead to multiple organ failure, in other words, they wouldn't have missed it). And every society that outlaws drinkable alcohol, whether or not they poison it, will have lots of dead people on it's hands.
Every large city in the middle east, excepting Israel, has between hundreds and thousands of dead on it's hands due to use of selfmade or industrial alcohol every year. Not 70-year old people dying from liver failure that "probably" was caused by long-term alcohol poisoning like sometimes happens in America (which is a very peaceful way to die, incidentally), but 20 year old, perfectly fit men and women dying painfully after arriving in the hospital. Ryadh, the capital of the saudi women-stoning "kingdom of madness", has over a 1000 dead from alcohol poisoning yearly (including the son of the police chief a few years back, guess he couldn't get the money for imported alcohol from daddy).
Drinkable alcohol is a purified form of ethyl-alcohol. Industrial alcohol is (mostly) Methanol. It has an LD50 of 0.4g/kg. Which means that drinking 70 cl whisky made with methyl-alcohol will kill 50% of the people who drink it.
A third of a bottle of orange juice with just enough methanol to make it taste more or less like a wine will also kill 50% of the poeple who drink it.
Perhaps it's just me, but these numbers could easily have caused 20000 deaths during the prohibition without any help from the government. It seems to me the government would have to have added quite a bit of poison to even match the natural poisonous nature of illegal alcohol, to raise it would very, very easily have resulted in contamination of the entire food chain, which obviously didn't happen. So perhaps it's time to give the benefit of the doubt here, and not blame the government for the deaths of people who were poisoning themselves.
Btw : who voted in these policies ? Well, prohibition :
64th Congress (1915-1917)
Majority Party: Democrat (56 seats)
Minority Party: Republican (40 seats)
Other Parties: 0
Total Seats: 96
Who voted in the poisoning policy ?
65th Congress (1917-1919)
Majority Party: Democrat (54 seats)
Minority Party: Republican (42 seats)
Other Parties: 0
Total Seats: 96
And who voted it out ?
66th Congress (1919-1921)
Majority Party: Republican (49 seats)
Minority Party: Democrat (47 seats)
Other Parties: 0
Total Seats: 96
(The grandfather of Al Gore had a lot to do with these policies, man, talk about a guy that just does not have a very good history)
No. But I think my doctors and I can do a great job of running my health care system.
Go green: turn off your refrigerator.
"I always find it funny that people who risk jail time for a drug claim they haven't got a problem. "No sirree, I am not a drunk. Yes I am drinking industrial alcohol laced with rat poison for flavor sold to me by outragous prices and I could go to jail for it, but really, I got it all under control."
Apparently we haha when someone offs them self doing something stupid like swimming with sharks with a bloody cut, but when someone does something Darwin like drinking poisoned alcohol, bust out the sympathy cards. Stupid is stupid and it's not going to get any smarter by justifying it.
Shai Schticks:"You don't make peace with friends, you make peace with enemies"
To be fair, they didn't _inject_ them with syphilis. But they did withhold a known treatment from men who already had syphilis. (as described in the very article you linked to.)
> I hope I love in about 50 years
I'm sure if you keep looking you'll find someone. Sexual intercourse amongst the elderly isn't all that uncommon, however distasteful the mental images it conjurs up.
we've ALREADY got them
I would engage in a discussion about limits-to-treatment policies for governments and insurance companies if the totality of Democrats hadn't collectively ridiculed and shitted on and made life unbearable for anyone claiming that government death panels would be needed. And now those same people rediscover that "oh, maybe there would be, but we already have private ones etc". If you AGREE that there would be government ones, why did you ACT IN SUCH A DICKISH WAY in the first place and DENY that they existed? Therefore, STFU and go to hell. I hope your retarded healthcare plan kills Obama.
Your government kills you and you do not react.
Your government kills your uncorrupted and morally decent leaders and you do not react.
Your government crashes planes into building to get public support for war on other countries for their resources and you believe them.
USA is the next Roman empire.
Long live the Eurasia alliance.
Yay for Slick Willy...I suppose we should forgive him for being a dick now?
And congratulations to you for turning this into a race issue.
You didn't have the good stuff. This was a lot like agent orange, and the gub'ment said the same thing about it. If you weren't exposed, right then, you were pefectly safe. Believe the Man sinec the Man is doing it all for your benefit.
Gotta love the government.
Gotta love the absolutely racist pre-Civil Rights Movement South.
Please don't generalize the entire United States, oh fellow AC. Please don't spin past events to demonstrate that the government can do whatever it wants when in reality this was deemed socially acceptable in the state.
nothing will change, this world is still sick. 2010 years of ignorance, another 10,000 years of pain. You're all slaves!
Hey, I have an idea. Let's let the government run our health care system!
Better idea: Stop electing fascists to run your government.
You can't take the sky from me...
...and home-brewed alcohol is even worse...
As far as better or worse I cannot say... but your implication that "home" distilled spirits are poisonous is misguided. Methanol tends to be present in many store bought booze as well as homemade booze. There are methods to reduce the amount you are getting.
And the sheep can't complain either, it was a democratic decision.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
It is like watching a pot addict claim that pot is not addictive but boy, do not get between him and his fix. Here is a hint, if you been to jail 2 times and risk getting life if you get caught again and you still smoke for a short high regardless. YOU ARE AN ADDICT!
Nope, that's a fallacy. Addiction is either a psychological or physical addition. But someone going to prison for something doesn't entail addiction.
In countries where people have been imprisoned for gay sex, are you going to tell me they have a medical condition of sex addiction? (Even for things which we agree should be illegal, this claim still doesn't make sense - we don't talk of people being addicted to say, burglary or committing traffic violations, just because they've done it and been punished for it more than once.)
No, you are not fighting the system. You are not a rebel with a cause. Rebels do something worthwhile. ... Getting high is not.
Who is claiming this? And this is a rather dubious claim - for any draconian law, it's not rebelling unless the act is something "worthwhile" (as opposed to simply harmless)? This would cover all sorts of things (including my example of gay sex). And this relates to your "Anon publishing documents people don't want the world to see is worthwhile stuff." - you sound like the kind of person who says he's against censorship, but then it turns out that's only for "worthwhile" stuff that the world wants to see, but would happily support censorship of say porn, films, computer games and books, that you don't consider "worthwhile".
But anyway, why is publishing things that people don't want the world to see, different to making available substances that people don't want the world to use?
Hell, most drug abusers are very much in favor of control, as long as it suits them. The proof? How many alcohol addicts want a ban on pot? How many pot smokers agree that drink driving is bad but driving while high is okay?
I'm not sure how people having inconsistent views on alcohol and other drugs proves your point. On the contrary, it's just further evidence of how stupid and inconsistent the drug laws are.
im opposed to fsc for various reasons, but i would like to know if there are any studies that show that people have the bad reactions that are stated.
because the only studies ive read show that they contain the same chemicals, some in slightly higher concentrations, eg 13% more napthalane. ok. but it does not logically follow that 13% more of a toxic substance is making them 13% more harmful or any significantly difference in the harm.
really, taste is one thing, and i would certainly agree that that should be a sufficient reason to not be forced to choose only fsc.
good luck with making people aware of the issue, and more importantly aware of the more general issues of self determination and freedom over your own body.
its very common to enact laws for monetary gain, who stands to benifit?
Sold under the trade name "Bitrex". Just a tiny amount of this stuff makes the antifreeze so bitter that kids and animals won't drink it.
http://www.bitrex.com/index.php?page=83
Unfortunately, unlike adding poisons to alcohol products, there is no government regulation requiring the use of this stuff in antifreeze. Such use is completely voluntary, and since it costs a few cents more to add, most manufacturers don't bother.
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Firstly, ethylene glycol is the active ingredient in antifreeze, as others have mentioned, not an additive for nefarious purposes. These days there are alternative antifreezes that people can use, but the ethylene glycol variety is not uncommon. Usually companies try to add brightly colored dyes and bittering agents to reduce the likelihood of consumption.
Secondly, one of the few things that would make antifreeze LESS dangerous is... ethanol. Yep.
Ethanol competes with ethylene glycol for alcohol dehydrogenase in the liver. Since the dehydrogenated product is the really dangerous part, ethanol prevents transformation into the deadliest form. Back before there was a readily available antidote in veterinary hospitals, the standard of care involved everclear and getting the patient totally sauced.
homebrewed alky is bad why? yeast doesnt really make anything toxic. bacteria might but then your doing it wrong.
perhaps you meant home distilled?
Straw man. He said "safer" not "safe".
E.g., I hope you never have sex, because that's the only way to be truly safe.
His point still remains. If you ever do one activity that I deem to consider risky, it's okay for me to cause harm to you against your will? I don't think so.
"Your honor, I know I cut the ropes of these mountain climbers. But climbing mountains isn't perfectly safe, clearly I should be let off!"
Your second sentence is a straw man, also.
this is not about the poisioning of drinkinng alcohol, ie Ethanol.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alcohol
its about the poisoning of other, induststrial alchohol that are NOT meant for human consumption. this is akin to the chemicals added to propane and natural gas to make them more readility detectable by smell.
anyone who drinks a toxic alcohol not meant for human consumption and dies from it falls into the darwin award category.
that is what this article is about: idiots who in an uneducated attempt to get around prohibition saw the word "alcohol", a chemical term, and drank something they weren't supposed to in the first place.
Alcohol is a family of chemicals. Only ONE type of alcohol is made for consumptions. ALL OTHER ALCOHOLS are extremely toxic to the body, whether it be methanol (wood grain), isopropyl (rubbing) or others.
Bad summary and bad title.
"An insurance company can't prevent you from being treated for a condition. Insurance is simply a payment mechanism."
With people this retarded its no wonder our government is so screwed up
Yeah, I'd heard that paraquat caused permanent lung damage, but that info seemed to be coming from the same source as the warnings about brain damage, so I didn't buy it. According to "them" now, it didn't cause any permanent damage, and coughing up that blood was probably unrelated, as are the chronic lung problems I've had since 1978. Just an unrelated anecdote, off-topic as usual.
The cost of that cleanup, of course, will be borne by taxpayers, not industry.
Holy SHIT ... W.T.F ???
Liver failure is NOT a "peaceful way to go" and for fuck's sake, no you do not "die of liver failure in your sleep".
The liver is the ONLY organ that can regenerate itself. As a result, the liver fails slowly, over a period of months or years, not overnight. And dealing with the symptoms of liver failure is goddamn living hell, man.
No, liver failure is not good times, and yes, alcohol (the shit you can buy in the grocery store) fucks it up royally. The price of a nice alcohol buzz in terms of health is simply staggering.
Marijana, on the other hand ... basically harmless (though smoking anything has long term effects if you do it often enough). But I'll be going to jail if the cops ever find weed on me, and you can get alcohol legally at any gas station. In fact there are several institutions in town, known to sell alcohol to underage kids, and everyone looks the other way.
What the fuck is wrong with our society?
I do wonder though, industrial alcohol kills whether or not poison is added to it (and home-brewed alcohol is even worse).
Industrial ethanol is very pure, unless deliberately adulterated to make it undrinkable. Home brewed alcohol, which I made plenty of during my time as a grad student, is no more poisonous than commercially produced alcoholic beverages. While we're at it, marijuana does not cause black men to rape white women, and does not drive ordinary white people into homicidal rage.
The only dangerous issue involved in home alcohol production is the possibility of highly flammable ethanol vapor leaking from your distilling apparatus. Yeast produce methanol primarily from the fermentation of fruit, and it boils off first. Typically you throw away the first distillates, however even if you don't it requires a serious, very deliberate effort to get a significant concentration of menthol even when distilling brandy.
Without sophisticated distillation equipment and deliberate effort you will not get a methanol-ethanol ratio that significant exceeds that in a bottle of (commercial or home made) red wine. Just as with wine, if you drink enough the ethanol will kill you long before the secondary toxins (methanol, etc.) do more than give you a nasty hangover.
The issues with "bath-tub gin" arise from deliberately adding industrially produced methanol to it to give more "kick". In commercial whiskey production the first distillates are usually added into the next batch to concentrate desirable flavours. This is the primary reason that you get a mean hangover from single malt.
The enabling legislation for prohibition, The Volstead Act, was passed by Congress on October 18 1919, and Wilson's veto overridden on 28 October 1919 . The vote in the Senate was 65-20 (38 Republicans and 27 Democrats voted for the measure. 9 Republicans and 11 Democrats voted against it.) and 176-55 in the house. The bill's sponsor, Andrew Volstead, was a Republican.
The 21st amendment was passed by Congress on February 20,1933. The Cullen Harrison Act, which legalized 3.2 % beer, passed congress in March 21, 1933. It passed the House by a vote of 316-97. Because of copyright restrictions, I can't easily find the roll calls, but congress was overwhelmingly Democratic.
Members of both parties advocated for and against prohibition-- it was not a "partisan" issue. If you seek a party to blame, however, be aware that the man ultimately responsible for supervising prohibition enforcement., Treasury Secretary Andrew Mellon, was a Republican.
, due to it's illegal status. Smoking is the method of consumption that gives the user the maximum effect from the minimum amount of pot. This is important when dealing with an illegal commodity that costs hundreds of dollars per ounce.
If pot were legal, the costs would be more in line with what it is, a dried herb. This would allow users to ingest it in less efficient ways, such as putting it in food. Someone eating a brownie under your bedroom window isn't going to annoy you that much, is it?
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Isn't there a prescription "medicine" given today (in the last 20 years) to make alcoholics feel sick? It is not meant to be lethal, but make the person vomit. This kind of "aversion therapy" is still being applied.
It's a fair cop.
The cost of that cleanup, of course, will be borne by taxpayers, not industry.
Those are some cool stats. Can you also tell us how many seats each party had in each of those congresses, so we can see what proportion of each party voted?
Also, can you tell us more about the bad history that Al Gore's grandfather had?
If it's in you sig, it's in your post.
Nicotine is a pesticide that tabacco plants make to repel insects who eat their leafs. As a pesticide, nicotine is highly regulated to avoid poisoning to the crop workers and soil. It is not nearly regulated as a smoking product.
Skin contact to the leaf can result in poisoning. Even US slave tabacco harvesters were taught how to pick it safely. Modern tobacco has even more nicotine due to selective breeding and genetic engineering.
It may be the only recreational drug that has no medical use. Heroin is a pain killer used to treat end-stage cancer and 3rd degree burn patients. Alcohol is a wound disinfectant, and was an anesthetic.Yet, there is no safe tobacco product, medical or otherwise.
Both my parents died of tabacco-related cardiovascular disease. One died from heart attack & the other due to stroke. Each suffered not one, but three, events before dying.
Tylenol IV (acetaminophen and codiene) is available over the counter in Canada. Since codiene is an opiate, this means the great Canadian heath care system is also poisoning it citizens!
Drugs are never produced to treat disease. They exist to either make money or poison the infidels!
You sir, are a brainwashed right-wing monkey.
Just because you can make up ridiculous strawman arguments of imagined rules and guidelines that would also be imposed along with a government health plan doesn't make it real.
I had to go to the hospital in Canada (I'm a US citizen), and I was able to pay for everything I needed out of pocket, and guess what.. it cost me less than 1/2th of what it would have cost here in the US if I was not insured. The governments don't forbid paying doctors with cash, they forbid jacking up the price to an artificially high amount that you have no choice but to pay because otherwise you might die. Every other necessity is regulated by government price controls to prevent abuse (you know, because necessity means we HAVE to have it, regardless of the cost, so supply&demand capitalism doesn't work), yet a necessity that could directly result in your death if denied is allowed to be billed at whatever rate the industry wants.
Are the Democratic and Republican parties the same as they were about 100 years ago?
Are the Democrats the party of racists? Look up Dixiecrats. Are the Republicans really the same party as what Lincoln belonged to?
Hell the Republicans aren't the same party as even 30 years ago, I'm pretty sure that Reagan and Goldwater would be thrown out by the current Republicans.
Then again there isn't much difference between parties now and may there hasn't really ever been much difference.
Urm, you may not realize this, but the whole "death panel" thing was in relation to government provided insurance, don't you? That is, you would STILL have the "option" to pay for it out of pocket yourself, JUST LIKE WITH PRIVATE INSURANCE. The only difference is that unlike with private insurance, a government board turning you down would create a big media hornet's nest, so they will have far more incentive to allow the coverage.
The "death panel" people are using techniques right out of Orwell's 1984 and you swallowed it hook, line, and sinker.
There was a movie about this experiment... it's called Miss Evers' Boys... the experiment WAS real...
The most profitable thing for health insurers is to collect your money, month after month, pay out a few small things here and there to convince you they're on the level, and then dump you as soon as it looks like you could become expensive.
Generally, they "find something wrong" in your application and terminate you for "misleading" them.
That is, they charge you for being in a particular risk category, but they game the system by dumping the high end of the range as new information comes in. They have the advantage of being able to dump you as soon as a costly diagnosis is made (before paying anything out).
As long as they can tar anyone they dump with a fraud label and only dump a percentage rather than all, they can (and do) get away with it.
If you like private insurance that much, you should be fine, I haven't seen any proposals that would ban supplemental insurance (which would probably be a LOT cheaper) to cover anything the government won't.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicotine#Therapeutic_uses
Summary is inaccurate in two respects:
1.The 18th Amendment did not ban the consumption of alcohol, just the production, sale, and transportation of it.
2.According to the article, the industrial alcohol stolen by crime syndicates was grain (ethyl) alcohol, not methyl.
Seeing as how I oppose just about any increase in government involvement in the medical industry and in fact want it to back out from a lot of where its moved in over the last few decades, I think you are seriously confused. But thanks for demonstrating why so many people think the anti-obamacare people are incoherent idiots. You are really helping to make things right.
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
Oh, and you're preventing me from owning a sportscar, because you didn't give me one.
Certainly. Selective denial of access to resources - rather than the creation of wealth - is the true foundation of capitalism. You can't sell someone something they already have, so it's in your interest as a would-be supplier to make sure they can't get what they want except through you.
It's a happy accident that the physics of physical objects supports this business model cheaply, but there are often more effective ways - like threatening to take away what people already have.
If you invented a way to clone a Ferrari tomorrow, so everyone could have one for free? It'd be made illegal the day after, with serious men with guns appearing to make sure nobody got free stuff without 'earning' it.
Banks don't create money, remember. They create debt. Debt is a fancy word for servitude: take out a loan and now you're working for someone else.
Likewise, drug companies aren't in the business of making people healthy, and health insurers aren't in the business of paying out on claims. They're in the business of taking as much money and giving as little as possible as they can get away with. That's perfectly rational business thinking: maximising profit, minimising costs.
The problem is that rational business thinking is not necessarily the best way to do things in the world if what you care about is not making money, but providing access to resources.
But speculating along the lines of 'why don't we do what's good for everyone instead of what' benefits just us' is socialism and therefore unthinkable.
You are not a brain: http://books.google.com/books?id=2oV61CeDx-YC
"home-brewed alcohol is even worse"
It doesn't have to be. It is trivial to separate methanol and ethanol, just keep the temperature past the boiling point of methanol (65) but below ethanol (78) and discard it (or use it as a degreaser).
Do this for a few distillations and you end up with a very pure product. There is only ~50ml methanol to 3L of ethanol in my sugar wash, and I discard the first 100ml during each of the 3 distillations. I own a reflux still and have been producing booze for years (triple distill & carbon filter), the only difference is my stuff is cheap and so long as you remain well hydrated - it's almost hangover free.
I don't really understand the concept of bashing the government for poisoning a poison. Wood grain alcohol is already poisonous to humans. What's the big deal to make it more poisonous? Survival of the fittest. If you're stupid enough to drink wood grain alcohol, you deserve to be poisoned.
Your chemistry seems to have tripped up in the hallway there. Let me help you to pick things up again :
Methanol is the common name for the methane member of the alcohol series of homologous compounds ; it has the formula CH3.OH (which can be expressed in various ways).
Ethanol is the common name for the ethane member of the alcohol series of homologous compounds ; it has the formula CH3.CH2.OH (which can be expressed in various ways).
All members of the alcohol series of homologous compounds are toxic ; some are more toxic than others. The lethal dose of ethanol is slightly variable, figures of around 3450 mg to 7060 mg per kg of body weight are published (for mouse and rat respectively ; the lethal dose of methanol is cited as 1 mg per kg of body weight (http://emedicine.medscape.com/article/1174890-overview).
If you produced methanol and ethanol to the same standards of purity, their toxicities would remain as cited above ; toxicity is something that is inherent to the compound in question, not to the method of production. (Method of production can introduce other toxicities to that of the main production compound.)
"Industrial alcohol" is a common synonym for "denatured alcohol" ; in Britain it is commonly called "methylated spirits" to indicate that it is derived from (brewed) spirits mixed with methanol. (In fact, partial oxidation of ethane gas is a more common production method for both ethanol and methanol for industrial alcohols. The production of (mostly) ethanol by brewing also produces small amounts of many other compounds including the entire contents of the yeast that do the brewing, which makes it undesirable for chemical use.) Many other compounds can be used to "denature" alcohol that could otherwise be drinkable.
An effective denaturing compound would be one that is extremely difficult to remove from the ethanol that makes up the bulk of your product. Methanol is a good because it's chemical properties are similar (it's an alcohol, and only one step removed in the aliphatic series from the ethanol), and it's physical properties are very similar. Specifically, the boiling points are 65 and 79 centigrade respectively, which makes separation by distillation difficult. Not impossible, just difficult ; more difficult than making your pure ethanol by a different route. The big problem with using methanol to denature ethanol is that the denatured product is indistinguishable to the eye and taste bud from the un-denatured product, rendering the product easy to sell on as if it were pure ethanol. So other strong-tasting compounds or strongly-coloured compounds are added as markers for the denaturing. (In Britain, the norm is to use a purple dye in methylated spirits ; I've never experimented to try to remove the dye, but I'd be surprised if it was difficult ; but I know that that would not remove the more highly toxic methanol from the "meths") But the honest dishonest chemist doing this would know that they've only rendered the denatured alcohol palatable, not (relatively) safe to drink.
FYI : I used to run a home still, fed from various fruit wines that my brother-in-law made and which tasted horrible ; when I ran some of my product through analytic equipment (a GC, if anyone cares), then the methanol content was around 2ppm (parts per million). In the same batch of samples, along with my calibration standards I included another "unknown" mixture which showed itself to contain 5ppm of methanol. The second unknown was a commercial whisky ("Teachers", if anyone cares). This does not imply that was unsafe to drink - it's one of that countries better-selling brands ; merely that the methanol which had been produced in it's manufacture (probably by degradation of longer-chain conjoiners of the alcohol derived from the brewing, distillation or maturation processes) was at low enough concentration that its toxic effects would not become evident until after the drinker had consumed a more-than lethal dose of ethanol. Several tens or hundreds of times more than lethal. I still drink that commercial whisky (as long as there is nothing else around worth drinking, like paint-stripper, or coffee, or even dilute fish-piss).
Birds are not dinosaur descendants;birds are dinosaurs, for all useful meanings of "birds", "are" and "dinosaurs"
but your choice to remove your freedom often affects me. then i get a say in what you choose, simply so you don't choose to harm me out of your irresponsibility
people are constantly asserting self-determination in situations where they impair themselves to the point where they hurt others. therefore, the issue is not self-determination, but lack of responsibility. when you make choices that hurt others, i have a right to decide what you do
and if you choose to take something like heroin, and you therefore to threaten to wind up an addict who cannot take care of himself, then i have a right to try to prevent you from becoming an addict. because who is going to have to pay to house and feed you when you are a zombie?
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
They probably raised the average IQ in North Carolina by 10 points by doing so.
I'm sure some communists say the same thing about Russia and China, but they are wrong too.
Actions define words like volunteer, murderer, etc. Status defines words like leader, stewardess, etc. Beliefs define stuff people believe.
Christian believe simply that Jesus was the Messiah prophesied in the Hebrew Bible, period. All those people voting against torturing Spanish jews into conversion or voting against gay marriage did so out of beliefs affiliated with their belief in Jesus. Pretty cut & dry.
The Christian religion has been and still is the principal enemy of moral progress in the world. -- Bertrand Russell
If people acquire power based upon their beliefs, like the Pope, Rick Santorum, or George Bush v2, then their actions speak volumes about the belief system granting that power.
Christianity has been violent, cruel, deceptive, selfish, and manipulative throughout the majority of the previous 2000 years (see Holy Roman Empire, Crusades, Spanish Inquisition, indulgences, etc.).
Yes, you may obviously read the original texts inspired by Jesus' life yourself, well see Protestantism. You know however that most people who pursue that are still voting for evil politicians, against gay marriage, etc.
The Christian religion has been and still is the principal enemy of moral progress in the world. -- Bertrand Russell
the whole system would be undermined.
Maybe it should be. Why should it be taxed at anything other than the sales tax rate?
Out of modpoints but really liked a post? 1BDkF6TtmmeZ3yqXbz9yhdYVqRYnwFoXDj
An insurance company can't prevent you from being treated for a condition.
Total, unfiltered denial of reality.
If a medical procedure costs $400,000 and I have $400 in my bank account, and my insurance company says "We're not going to cover it." they are essentially PREVENTING me from being treated. If the treatment would save my life, they are effectively a "private death panel".
If you have $400 in your bank account, you prevented yourself from being treated by being a good for nothing slack off. Don't blame an insurance company, or the U.S. taxpayers, for not fronting you $400,000. Go earn some money.
The first poster is correct. An insurance company CAN NOT prevent you from getting a treatment. They can simply refuse to pay for it, and it's up to you to find a way to fund it. You should try your local church. Their pretty good about funding the indigent.
It's true. I don't think it's fair to lay at the hands of Jesus actions which are against his teachings. But, he came to us and we crucified him. That's the point of the gospel, and that is what Paul means when he says we crucify him with our sin. I wish it were not so, but ultimately I am only accountable for my own actions. And I have made my own mistakes. I voted for prop 8. I wish I hadn't but I can't take it back now. Live and learn, I guess.
but your choice to remove your freedom often affects me. then i get a say in what you choose, simply so you don't choose to harm me out of your irresponsibility
Harm you how? Because society has seen fit to push these people into criminal enterprises necessary to support their habits? Remember, they don't care about money (or anything else). If they could get their heroin prescription filled at the corner drugstore cheap, how would you be hurt?
people are constantly asserting self-determination in situations where they impair themselves to the point where they hurt others. therefore, the issue is not self-determination, but lack of responsibility. when you make choices that hurt others, i have a right to decide what you do
So lets shut down the churches with this logic. Organized religion has caused society far more harm than heroin.
and if you choose to take something like heroin, and you therefore to threaten to wind up an addict who cannot take care of himself, then i have a right to try to prevent you from becoming an addict. because who is going to have to pay to house and feed you when you are a zombie?
Or these people are hopeless to begin with and heroin is just their way of dealing with it. Odds are that they'd be on the public dole even if they were clean.
Have gnu, will travel.
Damned right. If he had an ounce of initiative he'd shoot up a few banks and take what he needs.
I say that because jobs that pay enough for a person to have $400,000 in the bank are few and far between.
Just WOW. I point out that insurance companies have review boards who sometimes deny coverage and suddenly you have me lumped in with people giving deadly diseases to minorities and watching them die? Just WOW!
I guess that's to be expected from someone who somehow leaps from government provided health insurance to an inevitable total ban on private pay and supplemental insurance.
One day I want to meet you and read to you from Das Kapital. I've never seen someone blow out an aneurysm with enough force that blood actually shoots out of their ears before! If I video tape it, I can have that $400,000 in the bank we've been talking about.
I wonder if your insurance company will cover that?
Harm you how? Because society has seen fit to push these people into criminal enterprises necessary to support their habits? Remember, they don't care about money (or anything else). If they could get their heroin prescription filled at the corner drugstore cheap, how would you be hurt?
the drug itself pushes people desperate for a fix into criminal behavior, not society. the craven need for a fix is certainly stronger than the impulse to behave morally. meanwhile, if they could get their heroin prescription at the corner drug store, they would then lose that day zoned out and unproductive in relationship or work. so i need to support them. well, why do i have to support someone's drug habit? a drug habit is not necessary. so why don't i instead prevent you from taking heroin, force you to go clean, and make you support yourself. why do i have to support people who add nothing but only suck parasitically, unproductive in a stupor? or you are going to tell me someone high on heroin can work and carry on a healthy relationship? please don't make laugh. i don't have to support you, just because you are a drug addict. you are a drag on my freedom, so i will simply prevent you from getting that which turns you into a drag on my freedom
So lets shut down the churches with this logic. Organized religion has caused society far more harm than heroin.
i agree with you 100%. there's a reason why they call it an OPIATE of the masses
Or these people are hopeless to begin with and heroin is just their way of dealing with it. Odds are that they'd be on the public dole even if they were clean.
i agree with you again. but you can't imagine that heroin compounds their hopelessness? they are obviously trying to escape some great pain. some of that pain might be temporary, such as a relationship endin. heroin won't get them over that, it will just delay their painful day of reckoning. so heroin is a tax on their time and my time: they need to bit the bullet and get over it and stop turning to me to support them while they dither. if however they have some organic psychological inability to deal with reality, that simple life is that painful, then heroin might indeed be refuge for them. but again, it doesn't solve their problem, it just gives them temporary relief, then they have an addiction and a hangover PLUS their organic psychological deficit: clearly worse than simply being in pain at life all the time. so the onyl effect when they zone out is make their pain MY pain: i have to support them. why do i have to support them simply because they are in pain organically? it is not my fault. making it my pain is not fair to me. don't be angry with me, be angry with god or darwin or whomever, but don't force me to pay for your painful life, i have my own problems. no, the truth is, heroin as a coping mechanism fails because you take your organic pain, TEMPORARILY put if off, and then you wind up with the same old organic pain PLUS a hangover PLUS an addiction: you are worse off than when you were simply in pain
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Between 1979 and 1984, the researchers recruited pregnant women living in poor areas of Cincinnati, which had a high concentration of older, lead-contaminated housing, into the Cincinnati Lead Study. They measured the women's blood lead concentrations during pregnancy as an indication of their offspring's prenatal lead exposure and the children's blood lead levels regularly until they were six and half years old. They then obtained information from the local criminal justice records on how many times each of the 250 offspring had been arrested between becoming 18 years old and the end of October 2005. The researchers found that increased blood lead levels before birth and during early childhood were associated with higher rates of arrest for any reason and for violent crimes. For example, for every 5 g/dl increase in blood lead levels at six years of age, the risk of being arrested for a violent crime as a young adult increased by almost 50% (the "relative risk" was 1.48).
http://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/576717_sidebar1
http://toxicology.suite101.com/article.cfm/irreversible-effects-of-toxic-lead-brain-damage
I dont think industrial alcohol refers specifically to MeOH. Everyone knows already not to drink MeOH. Unless they don't mind going blind.
Adding stuff to EtOH to make it unfit to drink - denaturing it - is a common practice. And there are industrial uses for EtOH.
Because EtOH/water mixtures are azeotropes, if one wants to make 100% ethanol it's necessary to add some benzene to the mixture before distilling it in order to separate the alcohol and the water, and some benzene is invariably remains in the ethanol after distillation. So, it's denatured already.
Side note, what's the antidote for MeOH or ethylene glycol (antifreeze) poisoning? Ethanol. Drink up.
...the future crusty old bastards are already drinking the Kool-Aid.
no, it's the law, not the drug that does that.
whatever problems drugs cause (and true, they are not harmless) are magnified a million-fold by prohibition.
and to make it even worse, prohibition doesn't even make it harder to get drugs - it doesn't eliminate or even reduce either supply or demand. it increases both...supply because a black-market makes it far more profitable, and demand because taboo will always be popular.
you've chosen a particular bad drug to use as an example for this. you couldn't have chosen a worse example. many people with long-term heroin addictions manage to hold down very productive, highly paid, and extremely responsible jobs while they are addicts?
how? because they have access to a cheap, clean supply of heroin and other opiates.
it has been proven repeatedly, in study after study, over many years that it is the "junkie lifestyle" that is the problem, not the drug (note: i didn't say "it's the junkie lifestyle that fucks people up", because there's almost as much evidence that people who end up in the junkie lifestyle were pretty fucked up to begin with...the lifestyle just makes it worse and MUCH harder to get their shit together and get out of it)
maybe for the same reason that we don't ban thousands of other unneccesary things, or lock people up and ruin their lives for indulging in them. like driving a car, or mountain climbing or sky-diving, or swimming or football or other sports (note: all of these are far more dangerous and life-threatening activities than taking drugs)
yes. it's not at all uncommon. many doctors, nurses, and other people in the health-care professions have serious opiate addictions. they have a cheap (or free), clean supply so they don't have to obsessively worry about where their next fix is coming from, they know. it doesn't affect their work, because few are stupid enough to be stoned while at work. their biggest risk is getting caught. the worst health complication they might suffer is chronic constipation, and they also have access to laxatives.
if i needed surgery and i had a choice between a heroin-addicted surgeon and an alcoholic surgeon, i would WITHOUT ANY HESITATION whatsoever choose the heroin addict. and i'd be yelling in the strongest possible terms "keep that other drunken bastard the hell away from me". alcoholics get the shakes when they're not drinking. heroin addicts don't.
it's not humour. it's the truth.
Yes, because everyone knows that sick people never have any trouble earning money.
Ooh, CAPTCHA is pitiless, how appropriate.