In a dark but little-known chapter of U.S. history, the
federal government ordered the poisoning of alcohol supplies to deter and punish those who
sought to flout Prohibition-era bans.
Starting in 1906, the United States began requiring manufacturers of industrial ethanol to
put the chemical through a process to distinguish it from the identical substance found in
alcoholic beverages. After the manufacture, sale and transportation of alcohol was banned
by the 18th Amendment and the government cracked down on smuggling operations, bootleggers
turned to chemistry to keep their customers supplied. A simple process was used to extract
toxic chemicals from the industrial alcohol used in paints, solvents, fuels and medicine,
and this relatively clean alcohol was then used to make beverages. By the mid-1920s, an
estimated 60 million gallons of industrial alcohol were being stolen per year.
In response, the administration of President Calvin Coolidge ordered industry to add
higher levels of more difficult-to-remove poisons to their alcohol, including acetone,
benzene, cadmium, camphor, carbolic acid, chloroform, ether, formaldehyde, gasoline,
iodine, kerosene, methyl alcohol, mercury salts, nicotine, quinine and zinc. Shortly after
the institution of this campaign, 31 people were poisoned to death over the course of the
Christmas holiday in New York City alone. Historians estimate that a total of 10,000
people were killed by the program before Prohibition ended in 1933.
The poisoning program was no secret, as the government hoped that knowledge of it would
deter people from drinking -- although consumption of alcohol was not itself illegal.
"The government knows it is not stopping drinking by putting poison in alcohol,"
said New York City medical examiner Charles Norris. "[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." Sources for this
story include: http://www.slate.com/id/2245188/pag....
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