
How the U.S. government poisoned alcohol during Prohibition (2010) - calcsam
http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/medical_examiner/2010/02/the_chemists_war.html
======
JasonCEC
I debated this ~4 years ago on the Penn State University Parliamentary Debate
team. During the practice session I tried to use this as an argument against
the claimed moral high ground of the prohibitionists.

It failed; our coach and the rest of the team we're able to prove to me, with
a more careful reading of the article (and checks from other primary source
material) that there was never a "Federal Poisoning Program" and that most of
the deaths resulted from a lack of communication with those looking to drink
while alcohol was illegal.

On both of those points:

\- 1) Only industrial alcohol was legal to produce during prohibition.
Industrial alcohol contains methanol, a compound that can cause blindness and
death. It takes a good amount of skill and refinement to remove all traces of
methanol from alcohol to make it ready for human consumption - a step that the
legal distillers had no reason at the time to take (and would have in fact had
them closed down for bootlegging)

\- 2) The Federal Government never added poison (methanol) to alcohol made by
bootleggers - had they found the bootleggers, they would have destroyed their
stills and jailed them, not poisoned their stock, brought it to market, and
sold it. I believe[citation needed] only about 10% of the alcohol produced by
the bootleggers was contaminated in any way, and even less caused 'permanent
damage' beyond what you would expect from people drinking alcohol.

\- 3) The order to add methanol to industrial alcohol is historically
dubious... All of the citations I can find for it in the searchable web (read:
Google) links back to the original Slate article. Supposedly, the article is
based on this Article in Nature[1]. From the abstract, it is more likely that
the mass of laws and policies that followed the ratification of the 18
amendment included an understanding that industrial alcohol should be exempt
but rendered _purposely_ undrinkable - which it already was.

I am personally against prohibition, and against the government attempting to
mandate morality; but I fear that this article is popular because of its anti-
government attitudes - but you could only come to the conclusion that there
was ever a "Federal Poisoning Program" if you give perfect foresight agency to
every policy the government passes....

[1]
[http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v463/n7279/full/463299a...](http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v463/n7279/full/463299a.html)

~~~
maxerickson
There is a reason that it's called "denatured alcohol". It's because something
is added to it to make it unsuitable for consumption. The Volstead Act
(establishing prohibition) makes repeated references to "bonded denaturing
plants":

[http://www2.potsdam.edu/alcohol/Controversies/Volstead-
Act.h...](http://www2.potsdam.edu/alcohol/Controversies/Volstead-Act.html)

It also mentions 'Denatured alcohol or denatured rum produced and used as
provided by laws and regulations now or hereafter in force.', so I'm sure
there is some text somewhere describing the processes.

There is often methanol in fermented mash, but if you have a working still,
the sophisticated method of getting rid of it is to discard the early fraction
of the distillation. It probably isn't a large amount of methanol (but there's
probably other assorted things not to drink).

Edit: Here's the IRS guidance issued in association with the 1906 law that
created "industrial alcohol" by not taxing denatured alcohol:

[http://books.google.com/books?id=AA7ZAAAAMAAJ&lpg=PA23&ots=B...](http://books.google.com/books?id=AA7ZAAAAMAAJ&lpg=PA23&ots=BWkzvxsMii&dq=1906%20acts%20of%20congress%20alcohol%20denatured&pg=PA1#v=onepage&q=1906%20acts%20of%20congress%20alcohol%20denatured&f=false)

This page talks about adding methyl alcohol "in the presence and under the
direction of an authorized Government officer":

[http://books.google.com/books?id=AA7ZAAAAMAAJ&lpg=PA23&ots=B...](http://books.google.com/books?id=AA7ZAAAAMAAJ&lpg=PA23&ots=BWkzvxsMii&dq=1906%20acts%20of%20congress%20alcohol%20denatured&pg=PA5#v=onepage&q=1906%20acts%20of%20congress%20alcohol%20denatured&f=false)

Apparently for use in cars, because it was cheaper than gasoline.

~~~
JasonCEC
Right!

Though: Heads and tails recycling of the mash is more complicated than simply
'discarding' the heads to avoid methanol.

Bootleggers usually weren't using a fractional still, and thus would have
needed precise temperature and timing to even attempt to measure methanol
concentrations.

Furthermore their supply of grain, being an illegal operation, was (probably)
sub-par; any rot or mold on grain to be distilled greatly increases the
chances of producing methanol.

Again, I think only ~10% of the alcohol by bootleggers was contaminated.
Distilling has been around for a long time, but the effects of driving it
underground greatly reduced quality and increased the chances of going blind
or dying due methanol poisoning.

~~~
maxerickson
I think I'm railing against _It takes a good amount of skill and refinement to
remove all traces of methanol from alcohol to make it ready for human
consumption - a step that the legal distillers had no reason at the time to
take (and would have in fact had them closed down for bootlegging)_.

The legal distillers (or distributors, whatever) were actively adding
significant amounts of methanol, not just avoiding some process for removing
it.

~~~
lotharbot
> _" actively adding significant amounts of methanol"_

That's the claim currently being debated. The parent claims to have researched
and been unable to find any legitimate source, and further claims to have
uncovered where the misunderstanding came from. If you wish to refute him,
you'll need to do better than merely _assert_ your position -- you'll need to
provide a legitimate source, with specific quotes and page numbers / paragraph
numbers / other citation markings so we can see exactly where the "actively
adding" claim comes from.

~~~
maxerickson
Read my initial comment! I edited it some, but that was well before you
weighed in here.

I already did what you asked for, providing a link to an IRS document from the
1910s or so describing adding methanol in the presence of an authorized
government agent.

~~~
lotharbot
You linked to a book that's over 50 pages and contains hundreds of laws.
Provide specific quotes and page numbers, please.

The one quote you seem to be basing your argument on basically said that
already-produced beverage-grade alcohol could be sold if it was mixed with
something else to make it undrinkable. That doesn't imply (as you seem to
think it does) that newly-made alcohol was being mixed with methanol, only
that previously-distilled alcohol could be reused instead of destroyed.

And that definitely doesn't imply that the government was intentionally
poisoning bootleg alcohol.

~~~
maxerickson
The first paragraph of my last link is wildly specific, referencing a law
about denatured alcohol passed in 1906. I read it as talking about freshly
distilled alcohol having stuff added to it, with a specific mention of methyl
alcohol. Maybe explain how you _don 't_ see that there.

I responded to the obvious confusion in the initial post about what
"industrial alcohol" is. I'm not trying to establish that the government
ramped up the poisons during prohibition (although I wouldn't be surprised if
people involved with the denaturing were intentionally using nasty shit with
no official government program backing it).

~~~
lotharbot
Ahh, I now understand the specifics of your claim.

It appears you are correct that (prior to prohibition) one could produce
alcohol and then intentionally add non-drinkable substances that matched its
industrial use and therefore not be taxed for producing drinkable alcohol.
And, as you say, this doesn't establish anything specific to prohibition, such
as an intentional ramping up of poisons.

Which means the initial claim of the article still appears to be completely
unsupported.

------
danelectro
The "Federal Poisoning Program" is still in force currently in 27 CFR 19 - 21
as posted by esbranson.

Industrial alcohol can contain numerous optional denaturants other than
methanol, here is the latest regulation according to Cornell, showing specific
denaturants and their applicable formula Nos.:

[http://www.law.cornell.edu/cfr/text/27/21.151](http://www.law.cornell.edu/cfr/text/27/21.151)

Among these are the SD Alcohols (SDA or Specially Denatured Alcohols) seen in
shampoos and other cosmetics.

Many of these denaturants are intended to be nearly impossible to remove from
the product, others not as difficult or costly to separate.

The federal government did not need to add poison to alcohol made by
bootleggers, it was already present in the hijacked SDAs and CDAs the
bootleggers were using as raw material.

Depending on sophistication, bootleggers (sometimes) were removing (some of)
the denaturant before clandestinely distributing their material for beverage
use.

EDIT: I have single-handedly tested billions of dollars worth of industrial
alcohols, and methanol is one of the big ones around here. Today methanol
purity (assay) is performed internationally according to the instrumental
technique that I personally developed on my own decades ago and held in
confidence for years before it "leaked" from the lab.

Purty good at beverage grade too, considering work for a craft distiller
presently.

Also lived in two counties with borders delineated by rivers such that an
island in the river was not in either county, which allowed plausible
deniability for local law enforcement during prohibition. One of these islands
at one time being owned by Al Capone.

------
kungfooey
If you find this interesting, I highly recommend the book "Last Call: Rise and
Fall of the Prohibition" by Daniel Okrent. There is a PBS documentary as well,
but I found it difficult to watch (narration with lots of panning over still
photos).

The prohibition is a really great example of the unintended consequences of
(mostly well-intentioned) morality-by-legislation.

~~~
mratzloff
You mean the Ken Burns' documentary? Panning over still photos is sort of his
thing. iPhoto even has a slideshow mode called, appropriately enough, "Ken
Burns".

 _Prohibition_ is excellent, by the way, I recommend you give it another
chance.

------
microcolonel
“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.”

While I have a somewhat hard time believing the basic premise of this article
in general, this statement makes no sense.

What is the difference between a tax which is severe enough to have people
make deadly-bad decisions, and a policy which(granted in this case with
dubious proof) causes the exact same deadly-bad decisions?

~~~
malka
> What is the difference between a tax which is severe enough to have people
> make deadly-bad decisions

Well, for some people, that is any taxe above 0%.

------
trhway
>They ordered the poisoning of industrial alcohols manufactured in the United
States

reminded about "almost Prohibition" of 30 years ago in USSR which resulted in
many hard-drinking/alcoholics people extracting alcohol from various
industrial and domestic liquids containing it, up to and including shoe
polish, and moonshiners producing their product from unimaginable things
because of limited availability of various food-grade (or at least
looking/smelling like it) sugars/starches and adding things like domestic
insecticide for better "kick" (or "torgue" as it is said in Russian)

I think looking at the DNA of many Russians today, one can see what was drunk
back then by their parents :)

~~~
mnw21cam
Shoe polish? You had shoe polish? Honestly, some people don't know they're
born. When I were a lad, we used to make our vodka out of chairs.

[http://www.google.co.uk/search?q=samogon+taburetka](http://www.google.co.uk/search?q=samogon+taburetka)

(With apologies to a Russian friend of mine who said this about turnips.)

------
gus_massa
Previous discussion:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4964731](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4964731)
(147 points, 589 days ago, 97 comments)

------
refurb
The gov't still poisons alcohol. You can go to your local bardware store and
buy denatured alcohol. Since you can't drink, it's not taxed.

I think this article is making this into something sinister when it wasn't.

------
sentientmachine
Lets suppose some company hired scientists at great expense to make 10w30
motor oil incredibly addictive. Maybe they put some new chemical nobody heard
of into it. Anyway, people are drinking it and getting sick and dying from it
left and right.

The motor oil is normally for cars, but the increased sales as a recreational
drink is boosting sales. You try to prohibit people from drinking motor oil,
but they do it anyway. So you go to the motor oil factory and make the motor
oil significantly more poisonous.

People have been dying from this normally, but now faster than ever because
the motor oil makes you gag and puke, but they force it down anyway because
YOLO.

I find it hard to believe the guilty party here is the people who made the
poison more poisonous. Addiction increases cognitive dissonance, making people
adhere to incomplete and inaccurate models in order to justify making a
villian where none exists and making a victim where none exists.

~~~
fnordfnordfnord
So do you want to spray cannabis with poison?

How about genetically engineering cannabis so that consuming it causes a pink
polka dotted tumor to grow on your forehead to facilitate easy identification
of cannabis users?

Poisoning people is a perversion of science.

~~~
sentientmachine
It should be legalized and then if you take it, it goes on your record, so
next time you try to get a job the hiring company can decide based upon the
reputation of potheads, whether or not to hire you.

~~~
angersock
Why the fuck is it any of their business what I do in my free time?

~~~
sentientmachine
Because your sorry butt marches into our emergency room after you screw
yourself up. Taking away extra nice things that could have been. And since we
can't drop you off on a deserted island to get rid of you for damaging the
rest of us, the next best thing is to try to influence your behavior so you
don't damage yourself now.

Its the same thing you do when you find a skunk roaming the house, you either
get a broom and shoo it away, or restrict its freedom so at least it doesn't
spray anything. What the fuck gives you the right to put the skunk in a box?
The right of the others to remain un-sprayed by twitchy tailed skunk.

~~~
schrodinger
How exactly does smoking marijuana send you to the emergency room? Oh it must
be one of those super common overdoses we hear about.

~~~
couchand
Well, there was that misleading USA today chart [0] that pointed out there are
more ER visits related to marijuana than heroin.

Of course, when you adjust for the number of users the rate drops to lower
than the rate for alcohol (duh).

[0]: [http://www.vox.com/2014/8/2/5960307/marijuana-
legalization-h...](http://www.vox.com/2014/8/2/5960307/marijuana-legalization-
heroin-USA-Today/in/5452637)

