The US government poisoned alcohol during Prohibition (2010)
slate.com
slate.com
That was also a severely misguided effort.
I totally don't understand why article tries to blame government for all those deaths when it was clearly mob trying to make money.
It just reduces the bad taste, still tastes pretty bad.
The redistillers' resolve to keep selling even if they couldn't renature their product and it would be deadly - should that be treated the same as a force of nature? When should people's decisions be treated as a fact we just have to adapt to?
In my experience, people mostly want their own decisions, or the decisions of the people they agree with, to be treated as facts of nature. But the decisions of people they disagree with, they want to treat as their own free decisions.
It still contains bittering agents, vomiting agents, and some other stuff that's nasty but won't kill you (I think some of it is denatured with petroleum as well at like 1%). Drinking it is gonna make you a bit crook, but it won't kill you any more than a bottle of vodka.
I guess the government decided that killing alcoholics isn't the best course of action.
The goal was never to kill alcoholics, but to prevent them from stealing industrial alcohol. I think the people behind it didn't think anyone would be stupid enough to try to drink or sell this stuff.
While it might be comforting to believe this, there's strong evidence that while directly killing alcoholics was not the goal, it was a known and acceptable collateral damage. Even after being confronted with the unprecedented number of deaths, the official response from Wayne Wheeler (the leader of the Anti-Saloon League and generally acknowledged architect of Prohibition) was that "The government is under no obligation to furnish people with alcohol that is drinkable when the Constitution prohibits it. The person who drinks this industrial alcohol is a deliberate suicide."
https://books.google.com/books?id=8gAtAgAAQBAJ&pg=PT173&dq=%...
Edit: Here's a political cartoon from 1927 attacking Wheeler for the deliberateness of his approach: http://archive.lib.msu.edu/DMC/tribune/trib00000000/trib0000...
See f.e. Martha Fernback, Anna Wood. I mean even if you die from water poisoning or heart attack (at the age of 15), that would not happen if you don't ingest MDMA beforehand.
That's not to say it's for everybody (people with heart defects probably shouldn't mess with it, and IIRC it can deplete serotonin in the long run if overused), but the main risks appear to come from those who take large doses and/or mix it with other drugs (through their own fault or by a dealer cutting it with something else).
If you take six pills of anything that exists in pill form and you die, then assuming one pill is something of a standard dose, that means that chemical has a low therapeutic index and is therefore dangerous.
Most combination meds try to get synergistic benefits - the combination allows you to use lower doses of both active ingredients. (This probably doesn't work, but that was the intent when the meds were created.)
You're just plain wrong here. Ecstasy is a dangerous drug that can cause overheating, dehydration, and other very serious conditions that can and do result in death. Further, the drug's effects discourage the behaviors, like eating and drinking water in reasonable quantities, that are essential to preventing those conditions. With their sense of hunger and thirst totally haywire, some people try to overcompensate and end up dying from too much water.
And as for the long-term effects of regular MDMA use: persistent brain damage and loss of cognitive function.
Citation needed.
Risk factors: Certain drugs. Medications that increase your risk of hyponatremia include thiazide diuretics as well as some antidepressants and pain medications. In addition, the recreational drug Ecstasy has been linked to fatal cases of hyponatremia. http://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/hyponatremia/b...
While staying hydrated can reduce the risk of heat stroke associated with MDMA, the drug can also cause the body to retain water, so drinking too much can lead to a potentially fatal electrolyte imbalance. http://healthland.time.com/2013/09/03/concert-deaths-five-my...
More common, ecstasy has led to serious hyponatremia and hyponatremia-associated deaths. Hyponatremia in these cases is due to a "perfect storm" of ecstasy-induced effects on water balance. Ecstasy leads to secretion of arginine vasopressin as well as polydipsia as a result of its effects on the serotonergic nervous pathways. Compounding these effects are the ready availability of fluids and the recommendation to drink copiously at rave parties where ecstasy is used. The effects of ecstasy on the kidney as well as therapeutic measures for the treatment of ecstasy-induced hyponatremia are presented. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18684895
Additional risk factor: Poorly thought out radio contests:
"A 28-year-old woman found dead hours after taking part in a radio station's water-drinking contest died of water intoxication, the coroner's office said Saturday" [1]
[1] http://articles.latimes.com/2007/jan/14/local/me-water14
I can't speak to long term effects, I only took it a few times at intervals of a few months. In my experience, MDMA is the opposite of addictive - if you've had a good night on it, taking more will do nothing for you for a few weeks.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/dec/08/is-ecs...
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/law-and-order/4537874...
David Nutt has spoken widely and very entertainingly about drugs and their relative harms. This is an excellent lecture he has done a number of places on politics and drug policy:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gkcO_wJ9yKo&spfreload=10
Nutt also founded the Independent Scientific Committee on Drugs:
This is a very good source for accurate information about drug risks and harm reduction.
One of their experiments.
Denaturation is just a way of pleasing industrial users, while keeping the exorbiant profits from drinkers. If they could, they would tax the industrial users too.
It's a blood money because of artificially increased incetives for unsafe production of alcohol. Which killed and blinded people in the past. Even those who thought were buying the "good" taxed alcohol because of supply chain contamination.
Cynical view perhaps. Though when thinking about effective measures the government decision making is always contaminated by losing their precisous billions of $.
(non-US)
So no, the taxes are not blood money, though I suspect adding methyl alcohol to industrial alcohol is indefensible.
Fwiw: I do still drink, typically 1-2 drinks, no more than 1-2 days a week, so I'm not a particularly heavy drinker (i.e. this would cost me money, but not as much as it would cost some folks). I also believed this when I drank more than I do now.
> the taxes are not blood money Actually they are - here's the definition: http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/blood%20money
I personally would not want to live there as I value my freedom of choice too much, but it is an extremely "utopian" society in some ways.
"People poisoned alcohol during prohibition."
Once you get to that point, you realize that the lessons of history apply all around you. Basically, people are still people. And what happened before, is bound -- history demonstrates, very likely to -- happen again.
You learn to view everything with a critical eye.
I guess I can't avoid the meme: "Because people."
OTOH, this also means that the beauty and awe found in history is also to be found around you, every day. You don't have to leave your time and place to... "live in interesting times."
So, have a good Sunday (today)! :-)
You're right, but that's one of those realizations a person probably has to come to on their own. I doubt it matters what combination of words you use to express it.
"History will repeat itself" isn't very useful unless the aim is to soothe oneself into giving up hope.
You can't distill ethanol to 100%, only 95%. To get the last 5% of water out you typically add benzene or cyclohexane, which remains as a trace contaminant in the final product.
Also note that methanol (and other unsavory small molecules) normally contaminate distilled ethanol unless you actively take steps to remove them. For something you intend to drink, you need to carefully control fermentation to reduce the amount of methanol, toss out the early distillation fractions to remove as much methanol as you can, and then let your remaining distillate sit in an open tank for a couple of weeks to let whatever methanol remains evaporate off (along with some of your product).
If you're making ethanol as an industrial solvent or fuel, you don't need to do these things. It's not crazy that under prohibition, taking all those extra steps would be seen as evidence of an intention to violate the law and make drinkable spirits.
But whatever, Slate says it was a conspiracy to poison poor people, I'm sure that's the right explanation.
I don't think any of those are just natural byproducts of making high proof industrial alcohol. Or do you contest that claim?
The organic solvents (kerosene, gasoline, benzene, ether, chloraform, carbolic acid, acetone) would be used to break up the azeotrope during distillation to 100% ethanol. You can't make 100% ethanol without making it poisonous. It's still poisonous now that prohibition is over.
The rest are primitive bitterants of one form or another to make poisonous denatured alcohol less palatable-- they're there to save lives by making it so disgusting that you spit it out instead of swallowing it. We still add bitterants to denatured alcohol (and to rubbing alcohol, and nail polish, and spray cans), but they're way more bitter than any of those.
You're just freaking out because the chemicals sound scary. The author goes out of his way to mention strychnine just to scare you about brucine, but it's still used as a bitterant.
Look I don't doubt some people callously said people who died or went blind drinking denatured alcohol or wood alcohol got what they deserved because they shouldn't have been drinking it anyway. I do doubt that these things were put in industrial alcohol to kill people. The bitterants are there for the exact opposite reason.
I naively walked around this planet giving the benefit of the doubt to anything and everything as well, for a long, long time.
Your chemistry is solid, but your argument depends on the poisons being a natural fermentation byproduct rather than an federally mandated addition done at extra cost to the producer. In fact, the government increased the required level of methanol with the explicit goal of making it too difficult to remove completely. They did this conscious of the fact that those who drank the improperly purified product would be blinded or killed, and justified this by pointing out that the consumption was illegal.
But whatever, Slate says it was a conspiracy to poison poor people, I'm sure that's the right explanation
Slate published the article, but the author is extremely well credentialed: Pulitzer Prize, director of the Knight Science Journalism program at MIT, author of a recent book on the topic: http://deborahblum.com/Author.html. You can read the introduction to relevant chapter from the book here: https://books.google.com/books?id=O2HqmJtFkDIC&pg=PT76&lpg=P...
Start here:
http://www.animationresources.org/pics/fosdickbeans01-bigz.j...
Rest of cartoon strips:
http://animationresources.org/biography-al-capp-2-a-cappital...
http://www.fdareview.org/05_harm.php
Specifically:
[T]he benefits of FDA regulation relative to that in foreign countries could reasonably be put at some 5,000 casualties per decade or 10,000 per decade for worst-case scenarios. In comparison, it has been argued above that the cost of FDA delay can be estimated at anywhere from 21,000 to 120,000 lives per decade
US government has too much of money that is the problem.
The idea that manufacturers would be allowed to produce vast quantities of a partially illegal substance, without putting in efforts to prevent illegal use, seems unreasonable.
Imagine the outcry if it turned out Phizer was manufacturing all the heroin. (They and their friends are manufacturing the heroin addicts, but the doctors are equally to blame here) It seems reasonable the government would act to stop it. The understanding of human behavior was not developed enough in the 1920s to really expect a perfectly safe program.
You could argue that the government should have been serving, rather than fighting the people, but a democracy, even a republican one like the US's is subject to the whims of an easily frightened electorate.
I could see if it was mixed it with something that made you harmlessly sick in larger quantities. But acetaminophen won't give you the negative consequences until much later when your liver is damaged.
Or am I missing something?
PS: this, of course, not getting into the obvious immorality of lacing a drug to harm addicts. Only a mentally sick society could think otherwise in 2016.
It's not to harm addicts. It's to discourage recreational use in the first place. If you're prescribed Vicodin and are warned about the harmful effects of taking more than the prescribed amount, you are less likely to act on the "what the hell, might as well pop 3 or 4 and get a buzz" thought that pretty much anyone prescribed these drugs could reasonably have at some point. So you never start on the path to becoming a self-destructive addict.
Yes, discourage recreational use of some specific highly-addictive drugs and not others, at the expense of providing some addicts with a slow agonizing death. As I said, sick.
Denatured ethanol comes up more at the hardware store.
And at most CVS's: http://www.cvs.com/shop/health-medicine/first-aid/antibiotic...
"I don't want somebody doing something I don't like. Therefore, I have the right to kill them."
So, nearly no law - and in fact no law in countries without the death penalty?
> which country...
Any country in which overwhelming nonlethal police force is not unfailingly on hand everywhere... so every country. Consider it from the state's perspective: lose control of the population or kill an unsympathetic troublemaker? History shows us which option is most frequently selected. Good on England for showing restraint, but that doesn't change the fact that every command is suffixed with "... or else I'll kill you."
"for law-breaking" is an over-generalization, but okay, not "no law." Merely "no law on the books."
> In order to arrest someone and send him to a Norwegian country-club prison, the threat or use of force must occur.
Lots of punitive measures beyond arresting someone. Wage garnishment, for example. Given how many employers refuse to employ felons out of hand, it's likely no force against your employer was necessary to get them on board with garnishing your wages either. Merely having the government label you a criminal can be a grievous overreach, in my book, for breaking many minor laws.
Cops rarely want the hassle and danger involved in arresting people.
> Force is, ultimately, lethal violence.
I think you're overgeneralizing to the point of making these terms meaningless. And that's coming from someone who considers tasers to be "lethal violence".
>I think you're overgeneralizing...
The threat of violence only works when it is credible, and it is only credible when consistently applied. Cops will kill you if you frustrate them in their escalation of force, they have to - otherwise the jig is up and law enforcement gets very difficult. There are cases where the state will intentionally look the other way so long as it remains low profile, because the price for publicly maintaining the status quo is just too expensive.
It is only reasonable for people who believe in social engineering of society to achieve some kind of betterment, even if that includes use of force or actually killing thousands of citizens by poisoning them.
Let me be clear on this, these people that died as a result did nothing other than buying products in a free exchange. No alcohol or drug dealer put a gun to their head and forced them to buy and consume their products.
This is not to say that I believe drugs are a good thing, it's just not my business to tell anyone what he or she should desire or not.
There are many types of Collectivist ideologies out there that believe in engineering societal improvement and they all have one thing in common: They are authoritarian and disregard the free will of individuals. Some might poison products to kill off the undesired or use state force to prohibit certain products, some might send rebellious citizens that think "wrong" to re-education camps (Soviet Gulags) and some might even send them to extermination camps. (National Socialist from Germany)
I reject all of that, I do not care in the slightest about what these Collectivists believe would be an enlightened society and how to bring that about. I'm an individual with personal interests and everyone should stay out of my business as long as I do not harm others.
If you can convince me and others to freely restrict ourselves in a way that could improve society then I'm fine with that.
While I'm sympathetic, I believe you mean "do not directly harm others". Many of the arguments people have are actually about indirect harm—virtually no-one argues that people should be able to directly harm others without provocation or fear of retaliation.
And once you start talking about limiting or otherwise prohibiting/reducing "indirect" harms, things get MUCH more difficult to deal with and "live and let live" don't apply so much—again, assuming you want to do something about indirect harm at all (not everyone does).
The problem is that once you start going down the path to prohibit something that might indirectly cause harm you've basically given your government permission to ban anything they want to because they are always going to find some data that proves any action as indirectly harming someone somewhere.
Today we even police people that cause harm to the feelings of others by saying something that the person disagrees with.
Freedom of speech becomes pointless if you are only granting it to those who say things that do not offend anyone. That's the kind of freedom of speech that Stalin allowed in the Soviet Union. You may only say things that Stalin likes or that he isn't offended by.
That's why I'm principled about this. Let instead courts determine such issues. If you can successfully prove in a court of law that you have been harmed then you have the right to claim damages. Others will take note of the result and adjust their behaviour accordingly.
https://www.niaaa.nih.gov/alcohol-health/overview-alcohol-co...
Despite what the popular press says, Prohibition had some beneficial effects, and not all of the negative effects attributed to Prohibition actually arose out of Prohibition.
http://www.nytimes.com/1989/10/16/opinion/actually-prohibiti...
Yep.
Outlaw sex -> fewer STDs (use artificial insemination with tested sperm for reproductive purposes).
Make everyone wear hockey goalie gear all the time -> fewer concussions and other injuries.