TIL during the Prohibition, the U.S. government poisoned alcohol, killing as many as 10,000 people
Frustrated that people continued to consume so much alcohol even after it was banned, federal officials had decided to try a different kind of enforcement. They ordered the poisoning of industrial alcohols manufactured in the United States, products regularly stolen by bootleggers and resold as drinkable spirits. The idea was to scare people into giving up illicit drinking. Instead, by the time Prohibition ended in 1933, the federal poisoning program, by some estimates, had killed at least 10k
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“Frustrated that people continued to consume so much alcohol even after it was banned, federal officials had decided to try a different kind of enforcement. They ordered the poisoning of industrial alcohols manufactured in the United States, products regularly stolen by bootleggers and resold as drinkable spirits. The idea was to scare people into giving up illicit drinking. Instead, by the time Prohibition ended in 1933, the federal poisoning program, by some estimates, had killed at least 10,000 people.
Although mostly forgotten today, the ‘chemist’s war of Prohibition’ remains one of the strangest and most deadly decisions in American law-enforcement history.”
Read the full story here.
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Don't forget all the people that died thru bootlegging and law corruption during those days. The prohibition was so stupid on so many levels.
Yeah, it also reminds of something that the government is doing right now. It looks like these people dont learn from their mistakes.