Hello internet, and welcome to The Science They Don't Want You to Know. As I have mentioned in the first post of this series, I am doing research regarding the statistical viability of currently unconfirmed conspiracies (no leaked documents) by way of currently known conspiracies (documents have been leaked). The primary purpose of this initial research is to gather particular information, specifically how many people were involved in the actual conspiracies and the length of time which these conspiracies took place. If you have not read the first post, you should read it here.
Hello internet, and welcome to The Science They Don't Want You to Know. As I have mentioned in the first post of this series, I am doing research regarding the statistical viability of currently unconfirmed conspiracies (no leaked documents) by way of currently known conspiracies (documents have been leaked). The primary purpose of this initial research is to gather particular information, specifically how many people were involved in the actual conspiracies and the length of time which these conspiracies took place. If you have not read the first post, you should read it here.
When prohibition was legislated by the 18th Amendment on January 26th, 1919, people were more angry than surprised. Still, it would not go into affect for another year to give companies who sold alcohol the time to restructure their businesses to switch over to a "dry" model. A side affect of this one year leeway is the fact that ethanol bootleggers came into their own in the lucrative world of criminal activity.
Once bars locked their doors seemingly for good and store shelves dried up, the heads of business -- both legitimate and illegal -- were ready. While legitimate companies did take a financial hit, it was no where near as bad as it would have been if they had no time to prepare for the transition, while speakeasy's were thriving under the need for people to fulfill their need to drink. After all, under the 18th amendment, the act of getting drunk was not, in and of itself, illegal, so the patrons of these speakeasy's couldn't get arrested. Unless there was concrete proof that they were actually buying the alcohol which they consumed, they could not get in trouble.
Realizing that the 18th amendment wasn't performing the task it was supposed to -- and caused a skyrocket in crime, both violent and nonviolent -- the 21st amendment was ratified on December 5th, 1933. That is just under 14 years of legal prohibition of drinking alcohol in America.
On December 18th, 1926, the Senate Committee on the Judiciary held a congressional hearing hearing with Dr. J. M. Doran -- the head chemist of the Prohibition Unit -- about methods of curbing the amount of alcohol consumed at speakeasies. He had mentioned that the method they use is to contaminate all alcohol sold legitimately for non-consumption purposes with wood alcohol, which as any chemist them or now will tell you, is virtually impossible to cheaply remove from grain alcohol. To be fair to the government, they weren't too secretive about this conspiracy. They couldn't have been if that plan would have worked; at least not about the concept that ethyl alcohol (the grain alcohol we drink) has methyl alcohol (the wood alcohol which will make us go blind before killing us) in it.
Senator James Reed of Missouri was the main member of the attack against Dr. Doran, the prior senator making clear his stance that it is unconscionable that the government is poisoning alcohol, when it knows full well a significant percentage will fall into the hands of people who will drink it. Even though the obtaining of alcohol is illegal at this point is illegal under the 18th amendment (we're talking about 1926, remember), it is still not illegal to consume it. Dr. Doran responded that it is technically feasible for the layman to detect the wood alcohol, so it's morally okay to do it. He didn't mention that it was easy, just possible.
Dr. Doran mentioned that "almost 6 million [of the 60 million] gallons of denatured alcohol is drunk every year." (Denatured alcohol is the phrase used for wood alcohol added to the grain alcohol we drink, and typically the percent of alcohol content of this era is 90% grain to 10% wood alcohol.) The fact that he used this phrasing suggests that this has been going of for at least two years. So I did a little digging, and found what I believe is the first death which is confirmed as a result of this intentional denaturing process.
The first person to be named as dying from denatured alcohol is New Jersey Councilman, President of the Common Council, and acting Mayor of Butler, New Jersey Smith A. Decker. This death occurred on March 14th, 1920, just under 2 months after the the 18th Amendment was formally enacted in America. This is suspiciously quick for a government agency known for being slow to act. Realize, though, that while companies had a year after the passing of the 18th amendment to prepare, so did the government. No one expects preparation of criminal activity to occur, because we tend to view the government as incompetent. We then double over and come up with these elaborate government conspiracies which require the complete absence of incompetence. The truth is actually somewhere in the middle, as is the case with all the government conspiracies here in this series.
This came to a halt in 1933 when the 21st amendment was passed into law, at which point the Prohibition Unit and it's 4300 employees was absorbed into the Bureau of Investigation (later renamed the FBI). That was the end of the conspiracy, and this is one of the rare instances where the conspiracy legitimately appears to be dead with nothing even remotely suggesting that it continued. Please, if you have anything that suggests otherwise, post it below.
For those of you keeping track of the statistics, this does help considerably in finding a statistical average which we can use to find the probability of hypothesized conspiracies from legitimate conspiracies. That will come forth soon in a video series.
Take that as you will.
-K. Alan Eister
On December 18th, 1926, the Senate Committee on the Judiciary held a congressional hearing hearing with Dr. J. M. Doran -- the head chemist of the Prohibition Unit -- about methods of curbing the amount of alcohol consumed at speakeasies. He had mentioned that the method they use is to contaminate all alcohol sold legitimately for non-consumption purposes with wood alcohol, which as any chemist them or now will tell you, is virtually impossible to cheaply remove from grain alcohol. To be fair to the government, they weren't too secretive about this conspiracy. They couldn't have been if that plan would have worked; at least not about the concept that ethyl alcohol (the grain alcohol we drink) has methyl alcohol (the wood alcohol which will make us go blind before killing us) in it.
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| Come on, is this the face of a bad man? |
Dr. Doran mentioned that "almost 6 million [of the 60 million] gallons of denatured alcohol is drunk every year." (Denatured alcohol is the phrase used for wood alcohol added to the grain alcohol we drink, and typically the percent of alcohol content of this era is 90% grain to 10% wood alcohol.) The fact that he used this phrasing suggests that this has been going of for at least two years. So I did a little digging, and found what I believe is the first death which is confirmed as a result of this intentional denaturing process.
The first person to be named as dying from denatured alcohol is New Jersey Councilman, President of the Common Council, and acting Mayor of Butler, New Jersey Smith A. Decker. This death occurred on March 14th, 1920, just under 2 months after the the 18th Amendment was formally enacted in America. This is suspiciously quick for a government agency known for being slow to act. Realize, though, that while companies had a year after the passing of the 18th amendment to prepare, so did the government. No one expects preparation of criminal activity to occur, because we tend to view the government as incompetent. We then double over and come up with these elaborate government conspiracies which require the complete absence of incompetence. The truth is actually somewhere in the middle, as is the case with all the government conspiracies here in this series.
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| I is smart and I r honest! |
For those of you keeping track of the statistics, this does help considerably in finding a statistical average which we can use to find the probability of hypothesized conspiracies from legitimate conspiracies. That will come forth soon in a video series.
Take that as you will.
-K. Alan Eister
Relevant Entries:
Prohibition was actually targeting the farmer's ability to make their own biomass fuel...
ReplyDeleteThis is the first I am experiencing this argument. I doubt it's validity, as the use of ethanol with the specific purpose of non-drinking commerce was not made illegal, which is where the vast majority of the denatured alcohol comes from. Would you please provide further reading to support your argument?
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