Tag Archives: United States

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Prohibition, the so-called “Noble Experiment,” was enacted in 1920 with the ratification of the 18th Amendment of the Constitution. Its aim was to enforce total abstention from alcohol by making its manufacture, sale and transportation illegal, and thus create overnight a teetotaling, morally upright nation. Its actual outcome was to boost organized crime, smuggling and, perversely, alcoholism. The 18th Amendment was repealed in 1933, and Prohibition is now generally considered an utter failure.

What I did not know about Prohibition, until I read this article in Slate, was that making alcohol illegal was only part of the experiment. The U.S. Government, seeing that alcohol use did not decrease as expected, also experimented with poisoning alcohol to enforce abstention. At the time, bootleggers were purchasing industrial alcohol and renaturing it to make it drinkable. The government, knowing that this was happening, required that toxic chemicals be added to industrial alcohol. They reasoned that if people knew the alcohol could kill them, they would stop drinking it. That didn’t happen, and an estimated 10,000 people died from drinking the poisoned spirits.

Prohibition — and the poisoning of alcohol by the federal government as a part of it — demonstrates what can happen when ideals turn into fanaticism. Prohibition was intended to protect the moral fiber and health of citizens by getting them to stop drinking alcohol. That goal was seen as so critical that law enforcement was willing to actually kill citizens in order to protect them.

Given our 30-year-long “War on Drugs,” which has resulted in over-crowded prisons, an epidemic of violent crime in some cities and Mexico, and no sign of drug use decreasing, perhaps its time to take the lessons we should have learned from Prohibition to heart.

The Chemist’s War (Slate)
Prohibition in the United States (Wikipedia)
Prohibition: How Dry We Ain’t (Life Magazine)