1
00:00:00,200 --> 00:00:03,080
Speaker 1: Are you with me on this? We all love those

2
00:00:03,120 --> 00:00:07,320
Speaker 1: stories that glorify the Roaring twenties when folks whispered a

3
00:00:07,360 --> 00:00:11,520
Speaker 1: magic password to get into speakeasies and gin joints for

4
00:00:11,600 --> 00:00:15,400
Speaker 1: some illicit partying during Prohibition, But it wasn't all a

5
00:00:15,520 --> 00:00:20,320
Speaker 1: roaring good time. Would our government purposely poison the public

6
00:00:20,640 --> 00:00:24,680
Speaker 1: to try to stop them from drinking? Guess what? Turns out?

7
00:00:24,720 --> 00:00:29,000
Speaker 1: The FEDS ordered industrial alcohol makers to add poison to

8
00:00:29,080 --> 00:00:32,920
Speaker 1: what they sold to scare the public to death, maybe

9
00:00:33,000 --> 00:00:36,680
Speaker 1: killing as many as fifty thousand and blinding or paralyzing

10
00:00:36,880 --> 00:00:42,520
Speaker 1: hundreds of thousands more. I'm Patty Steele dying for a drink. Literally.

11
00:00:43,080 --> 00:00:50,640
Speaker 1: Next on the backstory, We're back with the backstory. Okay,

12
00:00:50,800 --> 00:00:54,200
Speaker 1: do you know much about Prohibition? When the government outlawed

13
00:00:54,240 --> 00:00:58,240
Speaker 1: alcohol for thirteen years starting in nineteen twenty, did you

14
00:00:58,360 --> 00:01:03,360
Speaker 1: know the FEDS mandated that industrial alcohol makers add poison

15
00:01:03,680 --> 00:01:06,800
Speaker 1: to what they made to keep people from drinking it.

16
00:01:06,800 --> 00:01:10,520
Speaker 1: It killed as many as fifty thousand and maimed hundreds

17
00:01:10,560 --> 00:01:13,880
Speaker 1: of thousands. We've kind of seen what that world looked

18
00:01:14,000 --> 00:01:17,440
Speaker 1: like in movies like The Untouchables and The Great Gatsby,

19
00:01:17,800 --> 00:01:22,200
Speaker 1: and also on TV shows like Boardwalk Empire. Prohibition era

20
00:01:22,360 --> 00:01:26,840
Speaker 1: gangsters included al Capone, who took in sixty million dollars

21
00:01:26,840 --> 00:01:29,760
Speaker 1: a year during those years. But one of the most

22
00:01:29,760 --> 00:01:34,039
Speaker 1: amazing and not so well known stories about Prohibition is

23
00:01:34,080 --> 00:01:37,800
Speaker 1: how the FEDS tried to control access to alcohol for

24
00:01:37,880 --> 00:01:41,240
Speaker 1: folks who just wanted to party. When the government wants

25
00:01:41,280 --> 00:01:44,039
Speaker 1: to control us, they have all sorts of crazy ways

26
00:01:44,080 --> 00:01:48,560
Speaker 1: to enforce laws, right, but during Prohibition it got way

27
00:01:48,680 --> 00:01:56,240
Speaker 1: dark again. Their approach left by some accounts, fifty thousand

28
00:01:56,240 --> 00:02:02,120
Speaker 1: dead and possibly hundreds of thousands permanent impacted by conditions

29
00:02:02,160 --> 00:02:06,480
Speaker 1: like paralysis and blindness. Now, how the heck did that happen?

30
00:02:07,240 --> 00:02:11,040
Speaker 1: Mass poisoning. Yeah, the government didn't just try to talk

31
00:02:11,080 --> 00:02:13,760
Speaker 1: people out at drinking, or even just find them or

32
00:02:13,760 --> 00:02:17,799
Speaker 1: put them in jail. They actually poisoned the legal industrial

33
00:02:17,880 --> 00:02:22,440
Speaker 1: alcohol being made that bootleggers were turning into hooh. Now,

34
00:02:22,520 --> 00:02:25,200
Speaker 1: imagine you're desperate for a drink, but there's none to

35
00:02:25,200 --> 00:02:28,880
Speaker 1: be had. If you're really desperate, yeah, might even sip

36
00:02:28,960 --> 00:02:32,880
Speaker 1: a little bit of rubbing alcohol. Yuck. So the FEDS

37
00:02:32,919 --> 00:02:37,040
Speaker 1: decide to mandate that all industrial alcohol had to be

38
00:02:37,160 --> 00:02:42,680
Speaker 1: denatured by adding iodine chloroform, even gasoline and kerosene to

39
00:02:42,760 --> 00:02:46,560
Speaker 1: make it really nauseating and in some cases deadly. Now,

40
00:02:46,639 --> 00:02:49,560
Speaker 1: if you were a bootlegger, you saw a big market

41
00:02:49,639 --> 00:02:54,519
Speaker 1: for illegal booze, so you'd hijack trucks transporting the industrial

42
00:02:54,600 --> 00:02:57,640
Speaker 1: stuff and try to make it more drinkable taste wise,

43
00:02:57,919 --> 00:03:01,120
Speaker 1: by adding all sorts of chemicals to the flavor. And

44
00:03:01,160 --> 00:03:03,560
Speaker 1: they did a little boiling to try and remove the

45
00:03:03,639 --> 00:03:07,160
Speaker 1: bad stuff, but you simply couldn't remove all the poison.

46
00:03:07,639 --> 00:03:12,480
Speaker 1: People still drank it, making gangsters like al Capone impossibly rich.

47
00:03:13,000 --> 00:03:15,239
Speaker 1: He was just twenty six years old when he got

48
00:03:15,280 --> 00:03:19,320
Speaker 1: started and was soon taking in sixty million bucks a year.

49
00:03:19,800 --> 00:03:23,639
Speaker 1: Guess what, that's well over a billion dollars in today's world.

50
00:03:24,360 --> 00:03:28,320
Speaker 1: Experts say Prohibition led to the rise of really powerful

51
00:03:28,520 --> 00:03:32,720
Speaker 1: organized crime syndicates. They were obviously raking in money like

52
00:03:32,760 --> 00:03:37,840
Speaker 1: nobody's business, and that organized crime world never really recovered

53
00:03:37,920 --> 00:03:42,600
Speaker 1: economically after the end of Prohibition killed off their cash cow.

54
00:03:47,760 --> 00:03:51,640
Speaker 1: He was the Roaring twenties. Everybody wanted to party. Where

55
00:03:51,640 --> 00:03:55,040
Speaker 1: did they go? Well, guess what? There were thirty two

56
00:03:55,240 --> 00:03:59,160
Speaker 1: thousand speakeasies in New York City alone. By the way,

57
00:03:59,280 --> 00:04:02,840
Speaker 1: speakeasies got their name from how quietly you had to

58
00:04:02,880 --> 00:04:06,680
Speaker 1: whisper the password to get in, so nearby cops couldn't

59
00:04:06,720 --> 00:04:09,080
Speaker 1: hear you and figure out how to get in themselves.

60
00:04:13,520 --> 00:04:17,200
Speaker 1: And those speakeasies would also add things to improve the flavor,

61
00:04:17,480 --> 00:04:21,479
Speaker 1: like ginger ale, coca cola, sugar, and lemon, which gave

62
00:04:21,600 --> 00:04:25,960
Speaker 1: rise to cocktails. Before that, drinkers were just doing straight shots,

63
00:04:25,960 --> 00:04:30,240
Speaker 1: I guess, and get this. Before speakeasies, most folks went

64
00:04:30,279 --> 00:04:33,520
Speaker 1: to bars and taverns, but most of them didn't allow

65
00:04:33,600 --> 00:04:38,000
Speaker 1: women in as customers, just as entertainment. But speakeasies were

66
00:04:38,000 --> 00:04:41,840
Speaker 1: looking for as many customers as possible, so women were

67
00:04:41,880 --> 00:04:45,279
Speaker 1: totally welcome to come in to party and toss back

68
00:04:45,320 --> 00:04:52,240
Speaker 1: a few of those poisonous cocktails. By nineteen twenty three,

69
00:04:52,600 --> 00:04:55,880
Speaker 1: the government decided they had to make it even more poisonous,

70
00:04:56,279 --> 00:04:58,840
Speaker 1: so they ordered the folks that made the industrial stuff

71
00:04:59,000 --> 00:05:03,039
Speaker 1: to add four percent and wood alcohol, which is incredibly

72
00:05:03,080 --> 00:05:07,040
Speaker 1: poisonous to humans, even in really tiny amounts, but they

73
00:05:07,080 --> 00:05:11,520
Speaker 1: didn't mandate any warning labels. Again, people drank it, and

74
00:05:11,640 --> 00:05:14,800
Speaker 1: anywhere from ten thousand on up to fifty thousand or

75
00:05:14,839 --> 00:05:18,400
Speaker 1: more were killed because of it. In addition with hundreds

76
00:05:18,440 --> 00:05:23,120
Speaker 1: of thousands becoming blind or paralyzed. On fairness, not everybody

77
00:05:23,120 --> 00:05:26,400
Speaker 1: thought it was a good idea to poison alcohol. One

78
00:05:26,440 --> 00:05:30,159
Speaker 1: senator called it legalized murder, but a supporter from the

79
00:05:30,200 --> 00:05:33,760
Speaker 1: Anti Saloon League said legal alcohol had killed a lot

80
00:05:33,839 --> 00:05:37,640
Speaker 1: more people than the government's new program, and that quote

81
00:05:37,720 --> 00:05:40,800
Speaker 1: air quotes here, the FEDS were under no obligation to

82
00:05:40,839 --> 00:05:43,919
Speaker 1: supply people with safe alcohol when it had been banned.

83
00:05:44,400 --> 00:05:46,960
Speaker 1: He went on to say, the person who drinks this

84
00:05:47,080 --> 00:05:52,599
Speaker 1: industrial alcohol is deliberately committing suicide. And the government's lee

85
00:05:52,600 --> 00:05:55,920
Speaker 1: guy in the prohibition effort, Assistant Secretary of the Treasury,

86
00:05:56,000 --> 00:06:00,680
Speaker 1: Seemore Lowman, said publicly that the fringes of society that

87
00:06:00,880 --> 00:06:04,800
Speaker 1: drink we're dying off fast from poison hooch, and that

88
00:06:04,839 --> 00:06:08,200
Speaker 1: if the result is a sober America, a good job

89
00:06:08,400 --> 00:06:13,239
Speaker 1: has been done. Really wow, allowing maybe tens of thousands

90
00:06:13,279 --> 00:06:16,880
Speaker 1: of people to die and possibly hundreds of thousands to

91
00:06:16,960 --> 00:06:21,640
Speaker 1: be permanently disabled by poisoning our vices e yikes, And

92
00:06:21,720 --> 00:06:24,360
Speaker 1: we think the present day government is rough on us.

93
00:06:34,160 --> 00:06:37,880
Speaker 1: I'm Patty Steele. The backstory is a production of iHeartMedia

94
00:06:37,960 --> 00:06:41,680
Speaker 1: and Steel Trap Productions. Our producer is Doug Fraser. Our

95
00:06:41,720 --> 00:06:45,560
Speaker 1: executive producer is Steve Goldstein of Amplified Media. We're out

96
00:06:45,560 --> 00:06:48,719
Speaker 1: with new episodes twice a week. Thanks for listening to

97
00:06:48,760 --> 00:06:52,000
Speaker 1: the backstory, the pieces of history you didn't know you

98
00:06:52,120 --> 00:06:52,680
Speaker 1: needed to know.