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The US government poisoned alcohol during Prohibition (2010)

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Re: The US government poisoned alcohol during Prohibition (2010)

#91

Post by woodman »

MaulingMonkey wrote: post #71
wtbob wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Every country with a police force has an unwritten law imposing the death penalty for law-breaking. In order to arrest someone and send him to a Norwegian country-club prison, the threat or use of force must occur. Force is, ultimately, lethal violence.

> Every country with a police force has an unwritten law imposing the death penalty for law-breaking. "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 emp…

>> Force is, ultimately, 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.

Re: The US government poisoned alcohol during Prohibition (2010)

#92

Post by woodman »

hughperkins wrote: post #67
wtbob wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Every country with a police force has an unwritten law imposing the death penalty for law-breaking. In order to arrest someone and send him to a Norwegian country-club prison, the threat or use of force must occur. Force is, ultimately, lethal violence.

its possible to use force without killing someone you know.

Not on a large scale. Imagine what would happen if you ignored a cop's orders, and failed to recognize his authority as he continued to escalate force.

Re: The US government poisoned alcohol during Prohibition (2010)

#93

Post by hyperpape »

wyager wrote: post #77
hyperpape wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The thing is, alcohol taxes are too low. There are huge social costs of alcohol use and alcoholism, ranging from direct health risks, to drunk driving and assault. The taxes on alcohol (unlike the taxes on cigarettes) do not even come close to matching the social costs of alcohol. For references, look at Mark Kleiman's work. So no, the taxes are not blood money, though I suspect adding methyl alcohol to industrial al…

The higher you push alcohol taxes, the more people turn to black markets, the more people get injured by improper distillation.

Definitely true, but the important point is that's a measurable effect, and one that can be weighed against the people being harmed by the effects of alcohol consumption under the status quo. At the moment, there are already some alcohol taxes, but relatively limited black market consumption. And odds are that you can push the taxes somewhat higher before black market consumption starts to negate the benefits.

Re: The US government poisoned alcohol during Prohibition (2010)

#94

Post by [deleted] »

maxerickson wrote: post #53
wildmusings wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We still do this. Don't drink a bottle of rubbing ethanol (not taxed as drinking alcohol) or you will get extremely sick: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rubbing_alcohol#US_legislation

The colloquial usage of 'rubbing alcohol' in the US refers to isopropyl alcohol and no reasonable person would think to drink it. Denatured ethanol comes up more at the hardware store.

[deleted]

Re: The US government poisoned alcohol during Prohibition (2010)

#95

Post by bfuller »

hyperpape wrote: post #48
megous wrote: post #42

OTOH, governments sure love alcohol. Consumption and VAT tax adds to 50% on hard alcohol. There's a lot of profit to be made. Gov makes many times more than the actual producer. 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 prod…

The thing is, alcohol taxes are too low. There are huge social costs of alcohol use and alcoholism, ranging from direct health risks, to drunk driving and assault. The taxes on alcohol (unlike the taxes on cigarettes) do not even come close to matching the social costs of alcohol. For references, look at Mark Kleiman's work. So no, the taxes are not blood money, though I suspect adding methyl alcohol to industrial al…

I think a good example of your point would be Singapore. It costs $20 minimum for a drink, but is one of the cleanest and most efficiently organized societies in history.

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.

Re: The US government poisoned alcohol during Prohibition (2010)

#96

Post by tpm »

montecarl wrote: post #88
tpm wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We can very well blame those deaths on MDMA, because the causality is clear. 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.

This is actually not that different from the therapeutic index of paracetamol (Tylenol)[1]. Paracetamol is a super safe drug when used exactly as directed (both dosage and not taking with alcohol), but taking any more than prescribed can be fatal. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paracetamol_toxicity

Exactly. Thankfully nobody is claiming that paracetamol is not killing people - quite clearly, it is. As is MDMA, even if it's quite safe (and fun) to use in most cases.

Re: The US government poisoned alcohol during Prohibition (2010)

#97

Post by erichocean »

DominikR wrote: post #49
nxc18 wrote: post #7

Although this had unfortunate consequences, and would be unthinkable in today's enlightened world, I'm not sure the line of reasoning here was unreasonable. 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…

> Although this had unfortunate consequences, and would be unthinkable in today's enlightened world, I'm not sure the line of reasoning here was unreasonable. 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…

> I'm an individual with personal interests and everyone should stay out of my business as long as I do not harm others.

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).

Re: The US government poisoned alcohol during Prohibition (2010)

#98

Post by DominikR »

erichocean wrote: post #97
DominikR wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Although this had unfortunate consequences, and would be unthinkable in today's enlightened world, I'm not sure the line of reasoning here was unreasonable. 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…

> I'm an individual with personal interests and everyone should stay out of my business as long as I do not harm others. 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 limitin…

Yes absolutely, I meant actions that directly harm others.

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.

Re: The US government poisoned alcohol during Prohibition (2010)

#99

Post by azeotropic »

loeg wrote: post #68
azeotropic wrote: post #60

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Azeotropic_distillation 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…

> By mid-1927, the new denaturing formulas included some notable poisons—kerosene and brucine (a plant alkaloid closely related to strychnine), gasoline, benzene, cadmium, iodine, zinc, mercury salts, nicotine, ether, formaldehyde, chloroform, camphor, carbolic acid, quinine, and acetone. I don't think any of those are just natural byproducts of making high proof industrial alcohol. Or do you contest that claim?

Formaldehyde could happen by accident during the process (it's the aldehyde form of methanol).

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.

Re: The US government poisoned alcohol during Prohibition (2010)

#100

Post by s_q_b »

tpm wrote: post #96
montecarl wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is actually not that different from the therapeutic index of paracetamol (Tylenol)[1]. Paracetamol is a super safe drug when used exactly as directed (both dosage and not taking with alcohol), but taking any more than prescribed can be fatal. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paracetamol_toxicity

Exactly. Thankfully nobody is claiming that paracetamol is not killing people - quite clearly, it is. As is MDMA, even if it's quite safe (and fun) to use in most cases.

Well... paracetamol is a modern day denaturing agent. Under DEA influence, paracetamol is included many opiate painkillers to "deter abuse."
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