U.S. government poisoned alcohol during Prohibition, with deadly consequences | Hacker News Reader

U.S. government poisoned alcohol during Prohibition, with deadly consequences

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128 pointsyummyfajitas50 comments

Something similar is in place now with medications containing codeine derivatives (such as Percocet). In the US, they invariably contain a high dose of acetaminophen, specifically included to deter abuse. This guarantees that anyone trying to take a large recreational dose of painkillers is risking liver failure.

It looks like the FDA may have finally decided this is a terrible idea: http://www.cnn.com/2009/HEALTH/06/30/acetaminophen.fda.heari...

That linked article does not say acetaminophen is an intentional poison, but that its is an active drug that now appears to have side effects, and they also want to remove it from medicines where it is the primary ingredient.

"Analgesic nephropathy is the direct result of the DEA's deliberate policy of using APAP as a denaturation agent for narcotics, in the same way methanol was used to denature ethanol that wasn't meant to be drunk"

http://yarchive.net/med/anti_inflammatories.html

IANAD (am not a doctor), but codeine is allegedly more effective at smaller doses when paired with other painkillers. Smaller doses = less potential to develop an abusive dependency.

It's fun to see sinister intentions in government policies, and maybe they are sinister, I don't know. But there's nothing sinister about arranging things so that significantly less dangerous are more widely available to the public than are doses of straight codeine. That some druggies destroy their livers with Vikes/Percocet is tragic, but it's strange that the usually libertarian-leaning Hacker News would be so opposed to making good painkillers available by prescription. There is something nanny-state-ish about removing a relatively safe painkiller from the market because of what abusers might do with it.

Also, the doctor you quoted seems rather paranoid...

Thanks for the link, idlewords. Cynicalkane, who on this thread said codeine should be removed from the market? I inferred from the articles that acetaminophen and "poisons" should be removed from codeine, so people who need the painkiller aren't paying a cost with their livers because others might abuse the drug. The first nanny state move was limiting access to codeine and the sinister move was adding poison (assuming it's all true).

Based on the same yarchive link I cited, the risk seems to be twofold - acute damage to liver or kidneys by recreational users who takes too many pills at once (and don't know enough to separate out the acetaminophen with cold water), as well as chronic kidney damage in people who are legitimately taking the drug for prolonged periods of time.

I should stress that there aren't any additional 'poisons' added to opiate drugs. Rather, it's the toxic effects of acetaminophen at high doses that are being exploited in a misguided attempt to deter abuse.

Additives are still added to make alcohol poisonous and unpalatable, in addition in many countries a coloring is added. Traditionally, the main additive is 10% methanol, giving rise to the term methylated spirit. See also http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Denatured_alcohol

The article was sensational in 1926 and probably still is.

Usually it's the other way around: unpalatable additives are added to already poisonous substances, to prevent them from being consumed. The usual example is cleaning alcohol: it already contains methanol (because it is cheaper than ethanol and because it has different properties, which makes for better cleaning alcohol) and the coloring, smelling and vomit-reflex-inducing substances are added to prevent poor, ignorant slobs from going blind and paralysed (and eventually dead) by drinking it.

Not really! see (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Denatured_alcohol). Since normal alcohol (ethanol) is highly taxed (sin tax), additives are added to stop people from using it other than for industrial or medical use or even to make it difficult to distill again, hence they add methanol and the additives. The tax man has protected himself very carefully :)

Yes, really. Pure ethanol is more expensive than methylated alcohol (which has both ethanol and methanol) even before taxes are applied. Denaturing existing pure ethanol with methanol is wasteful, as the constituants are more valuable separated. In Poland, alcohol is by law denatured only with safe, taste-altering substances, and so their denatured alcohol is more expensive than in other countries because industrial manufacturers have to produce the stuff methanol-free.

Please read the customs regulations for the uk http://customs.hmrc.gov.uk/channelsPortalWebApp/channelsPort... , as the US is a couple of volumes thick!

Quoting:

Excise duty is not charged on spirits used for industrial or scientific purposes, so long as it has been contaminated ('denatured') to make it undrinkable. At present the relief is managed through the Methylated Spirits Regulations 1987 (MSR), which require spirits purchased for non-drinkable uses to be made unsuitable for drinking prior to delivery to the end user. MSR allows for 3 different formulations of denatured spirits.

The spirits are only contaminated to ensure that they are not used for human consumption and thus avoid tax. They do not offer any advantages (actually fumes from methanol are toxic).

Well, it's both. As you state, they are required to add stuff to ethanol, to make it undrinkable. On the other hand, if something is already poisonous, they are required to add the same stuff. In the case of cleaning alcohol, the manufacturer would 'add' (or 'not remove', depending on the process) the methanol even if they weren't required to. As such, the cleaning alcohol is poisonous and they have to add the other stuff. My point was merely that that situation is actually more common than the first, because methanol is cheaper than ethanol.

Original title is more informative and less sensational: The little-told story of how the U.S. government poisoned alcohol during Prohibition with deadly consequences.

From the HN submit page:

Please make title < 80 characters.

"U.S. government poisoned alcohol during Prohibition with deadly consequences" (76 chars)

Is still much better than making stuff up. The government did not 'poison lawbreakers without trial'. It makes it sound like they took someone in custody and fed them poison.

Correct, it was murder from afar.

You are right, your proposed title would have been better.

But I disagree that my title was "making stuff up". The government did indeed poison lawbreakers without a trial, it just did not do so in the specific manner you describe.

The problem with saying that they "poisoned people without a trial" is much the same as the problem with saying that a police officer who shot a suspect brandishing a gun "shot the suspect without a trial." It's technically true, but it puts a totally unnecessary spin on the events, as a trial is neither expected nor required.

A trial is expected and required for allegedly consuming illegal substances.

A trial is required to execute someone (or imprison them, but I don't think anyone's talking about imprisoning anyone here) for allegedly consuming illegal substances (just like it is for anything else, including brandishing a weapon). The police officer is not executing the weapon-brandishing subject, he's defending himself and the public. Death is a likely consequence here, but it's not an execution. Likewise, the government wasn't executing people for drinking alcohol; they were making death a likely consequence of drinking alcohol, but they were not performing executions.

> Likewise, the government wasn't executing people for drinking alcohol; they were making death a likely consequence of drinking alcohol, but they were not performing executions.

It all depends on what you think is important, life or what the death certificate says.

If I engage in an act likely to result in someone's death, I'my guilty of manslaughter (or murder) except in certain circumstances. That's true whether or not I'm ever brought up on charges.

Right, you'd be guilty of murder. It wouldn't matter if anyone caught you, or whether you targeted specific individuals or random ones. For example, I'm old enough to remember the Tylenol murders of 1982:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chicago_Tylenol_murders

In that case, the murderer was never positively identified.

Except it isn't, by a long stretch. If it was required, we'd probably have to hire all of China to handle the trial workload.

Unless someone pleads guilty, I don't understand how this can be remotely correct.

It's a long way from 'allegedly' to trial or even a charge. How can 'allegedly using an illegal substance requires a trial' be even remotely correct? Hitting the bong in your mom's basement requires no trial. Neither does me telling your mom about it (allegedly). See also:

http://www.cnn.com/2009/CRIME/02/16/michael.phelps/index.htm...

Note lack of trial or charges.

Sigh. This thread was all about punishment. A trial is required for the government to punish someone for committing a crime.

"U.S. government poisoned alcohol during Prohibition"

Now that I'm reading "People's history of the United States" by Howard Zinn, I'm not surprised by anything anymore. I guess all governments do this kind of stuff (and worse) on a routine basis.

I'm not familiar with that work, but I was also going to say this is an illustration of how you can never really trust governments to always do the right thing.

I guess all [illegitimate] governments [murder their own citizens] (and worse) on a routine basis.

There. Fixed it for ya.

This is pretty terrible journalism. It discusses deaths from people drinking denatured alcohol when it was first introduced in 1920s prohibition USA, but doesn't provide any context.

Denatured alcohol is still widely sold today, without any controvresy. It has poisonous additives, but is cheaper because it's not taxed.

There's a genuine public health issue here, which the article also ignores. Drinking is a massive problem in some parts of the world where alcohol is poorly controlled. Half of all premature deaths of working age Russian men are due to alcohol consumption. And while many of those come from drinking poisonous alcohols, the majority are from plain old vodka.

In most US states, methylated alcohols, along with most household cleaners and automotive fluids, are required to contain substances like bitrex to make them so extremely unpalatable that the risk of consumption is negligible. In some countries in Europe, denatured alcohol is required by law to not contain any methanol (thus raising its price) and is denatured only by bitrex, which has no health risks beyond its flavor.

"Half of all premature deaths of working age Russian men are due to alcohol consumption."

Color me skeptical on that. The average life expectancy of Russian males in 2008 was 61.83, whereas the retirement age in Russia is 60. I can't find statistics on working age males specifically, but the general breakdown of causes of death among Russians as a population suggests that cardiovascular disease and cancer (which could include conditions caused by alcohol consumption) would swamp deaths caused by alcohol consumption itself:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Russia#Health

I'd be genuinely curious to see any stats you have contradicting that analysis, however.

Have you ever been to Russia?

Walk the streets of Moscow at 7am, and you'll see businessmen on their way to work, halfway through their first bottle of vodka. It's hard to believe if you don't see it, but a significant fraction of the people there are drunk or drinking all the time.

So no, even though I haven't seen any hard numbers, I don't have any problem believing the grandparent's claim.

Yes, that's certainly fine anecdotal evidence, and I'm well aware of the "drunken Russian" stereotype, but I'm looking for hard numbers.

For example, alcohol consumption per capita (among those 15 years and older) in Russia is less than Spain, the UK, France, Germany, Switzerland, Austria, Portugal, Ireland, Nigeria, etc:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_alcohol_co...

I don't know the details, I just googled "Russia alcoholism deaths" to get that figure.

Ah, well that helped me track the 50% blurb down to this article in Lancet:

http://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-67...

Which was a study of one town in Russia. Their interpretation of the results includes this line:

"Almost half of all deaths in working age men in a typical Russian city may be accounted for by hazardous drinking."

From my brief research, it looks like most articles online replaced "typical Russian city" with "Russia", which seems unfounded given the research.

Nice catch. It's funny how it changes slightly with each retelling.

The war on vice is properly regarded as a private war fought within each individual.

(1926)

Were they lawbreakers if there was no trial? I'd say that you're innocent unless proven guilty.

That's the difference between the legal concept and the regular one. You're a lawbreaker when you break the law; you're guilty when a court procedure agrees.

I'd say that there's no difference between the legal concept and the regular one.

I don't know how in the US, but in Europe it is illegal to write publicly "Joe Average, a murderer", if the person had no trial, yet. Regardless of the widely available proofs.

After the fact - once the jury decided you are innocent - it is extremely hard to get your good name back.

> I don't know how in the US, but in Europe it is illegal to write publicly "Joe Average, a murderer", if the person had no trial, yet. Regardless of the widely available proofs.

Nope. The beauty of free speech is that it's only illegal if it's either untrue or you cant prove it (which are in essence the same thing in the eyes of the law) :)

Did you read the article? If they were innocent, how did the alcohol with the poison get inside them?

That's for the jury to decide. If the punishment for drinking alcohol is death, then it's very likely that the jury will nullify. Poisoning the alcohol removes this possibility. (There is a reason you have a right to a jury trial, after all.)

What's for the jury to decide? The alcohol wasn't poisoned to punish people. The goverment said "this alcohol is poisoned, don't drink it." People drank it anyway. Where does the jury enter the picture?

Not everyone drinking the alcohol knew it was poisoned. If they knew it was poisoned, they probably wouldn't have consumed it!

"Depraved indifference to human life" is murder. Putting poison in something you know someone will probably drink, even if you tell them not to, is depraved indifference to human life. Murder. You should go out of your way to not kill people -- this is the opposite.

Like I said, if the death penalty is the punishment for drinking alcohol, fine. But the death penalty doesn't mean you can just murder people. There is a procedure to follow -- a trial, evidence proving the case beyond a reasonable doubt, appeals, etc. You can't just kill someone that committed a crime; you have to prove it first. The government needs to be held to a higher standard than the average man, and if the average man did this, he would be in prison for murder. What the government did, in this case, is inexcusable state-sponsored mass murder.

(Thought experiment: you have a party, and have a punch bowl sitting out. Next to it is a small sign that says: "Poison: do not drink." A few guests drink it anyway, and by the end of the night you have a stack of five dead bodies. Do you really think that you won't be convicted of five counts of murder? A disclaimer doesn't mean you can try to kill people!)

Here's the obit for the chuck norris that was: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1965874/pdf/bull...

"As one of its most outspoken opponents, Charles Norris, the chief medical examiner of New York City..."

Is there anything Chuck Norris _can't_ do?

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