Description

It's Christmas Eve 1926, and New York City's Bellevue Hospital is overwhelmed. Sixty people are desperately ill, eight are dead—all from alcohol poisoning. But this isn't the work of bootleggers or impure moonshine. The culprit is the United States government. In a shocking attempt to enforce Prohibition, federal officials deliberately poisoned industrial alcohol with methyl alcohol and other deadly chemicals, knowing criminals would steal it and convert it into bootleg liquor for public consumption. The result: thousands of American deaths.

The 18th Amendment banned alcohol in 1920, shuttering 200 distilleries, 1,000 breweries, and 170,000 liquor establishments. But the ban only created a thriving black market. When bootleggers began stealing industrial alcohol and removing the denaturing chemicals to make it drinkable, the government escalated its tactics. Federal chemists crafted increasingly toxic formulas, culminating in the addition of methyl alcohol—a slow-acting poison that causes blindness, organ failure, and death. By 1926, over 5,000 Americans had died from the government's poisoned alcohol, with some estimates reaching 10,000 deaths. The wealthy could afford smuggled Canadian whiskey, but the poor drank from speakeasies serving government-poisoned industrial alcohol.

This episode explores one of American history's darkest chapters: when the government chose chemical warfare against its own citizens rather than admit Prohibition had failed. From the Anti-Saloon League's manipulation of post-WWI prejudices to the tragic death of jazz legend Bix Beiderbecke, discover how desperate policy created a public health catastrophe that foreshadowed modern drug war tragedies.

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In This Episode:

• Christmas Eve 1926: New York City hospitals overwhelmed with alcohol poisoning victims
• How the Anti-Saloon League used post-WWI anti-German sentiment to ban alcohol
• The Volstead Act of 1919 shutters America's massive alcohol industry overnight
• Bootleggers steal industrial alcohol and hire chemists to remove poisons
• Government escalates with methyl alcohol—causing blindness, organ failure, death
• The "Ginger Jake" paralysis epidemic among poor Southern drinkers
• 5,000+ Americans die in 1926 alone, a 600% increase from previous years
• Jazz legend Bix Beiderbecke's tragic death from poisoned alcohol
• Doctors sell liquor prescriptions during Prohibition's chaos
• The 1933 repeal of Prohibition after thousands of preventable deaths
• Modern parallels: Paraquat-sprayed marijuana fields in the 1970s

Key Figures:

• Wayne Wheeler - Anti-Saloon League leader who drove Prohibition passage
• Andrew Volstead - House Judiciary Committee Chairman, author of National Prohibition Act
• Bix Beiderbecke - Influential jazz soloist who died from poisoned alcohol in 1931
• Federal chemists - Designed increasingly lethal denaturing formulas

Timeline:

• 1893: Anti-Saloon League founded
• 1918: Wartime Prohibition Act passed using WWI patriotism
• January 1920: 18th Amendment and Volstead Act take effect nationwide
• 1921: Emergency Beer Bill attempts to control physician prescriptions
• 1926: Methyl alcohol added to industrial alcohol denaturing formula
• Christmas Eve 1926: New York City sees 60 poisoning victims, 8 deaths in one night
• 1926 total: 585 deaths in NYC, 5,000+ nationwide from poisoned alcohol
• 1928: Bix Beiderbecke drinks poisoned liquor in New York
• 1931: Bix dies from pneumonia after years of poisoned alcohol exposure
• 1933: 18th Amendment repealed, Prohibition ends
• 1970s: U.S. government sprays paraquat on Mexican marijuana fields