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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.'"
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?
Hey, I have an idea. Let's let the government run our 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."
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.