April 2, 2019 • 30 mins
From 1920 to 1933, the United States was, technically speaking, a dry country. The National Prohibition Act made the manufacture, transport and sale of alcohol illegal for the vast majority of the population. However, there were several loopholes available for the enterprising alcohol enthusiast -- and doctors quickly realized they could make loads of cash prescribing booze for medicinal purposes. Join the guys as they explore the rise and fall of the medicinal alcohol industry.
Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.com
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:23):
The actor, vaudeville performer, cowboy and humorist Will Rogers once
famously said that the American people will vote dry so
long as they are able to stagger to the polls,
voting dry meaning voting against legalized alcohol. Welcome to the show,
and Ben, my name is No. That's really funny. Then
(00:44):
that's a very good little loaded was it? What do
you call it? It's like a pun a turn of phrase.
I mean, uh yeah, sort of a that's sort of
a double message, like it's like a hidden meaning. Voting
dry to me would mean voting sober. But as long
as they can stumble the polls implying voting drunk. There's
a lot going on there. There's a lot of stuff.
There's a lot of meaning. We've gotta unpack them. That
that has to do with today's story, because, as we know,
(01:07):
voting also has a history of drunkenness. Remember we did
an episode about when people used to booze people up
and at the polls and and then keep them hostage,
keep them hostage and weird little you know speak easy
booze dungeons. We're not talking about that today, exactly. We
are talking about uh prohibition and a particular exception that
(01:27):
was made for drinking alcohol during that time, right, right,
and speaking of exceptional people and circumstances, let's give a
shout out to our super producer, Casey Pegram Casey, just
for the record to establish all three of us are
not teetotalers. Right, yeah, it's correct. All have a drink now.
(01:50):
And again I mean I'm no, no, definitely not. I
love that expression though, teetotaler, teetotaler. It's it's fun to say,
and it sounds like a test for people who have
been drinking exactly if you pronounce it correctly. But yes, yes, no,
you're right. Uh. Nowadays, when we think of prohibition, we
think of you know, al capone, we think of some
(02:11):
of us think of the origin of some race cars.
But this was a very serious problem for thirteen years.
The National Prohibition Act, otherwise known as the Volstead Act,
attempted to keep people in the United States from drinking, transporting,
(02:32):
even making any intoxicating beverage. How that work, though, man,
How that work? Abstinence? Right? Oh boy, yeah, right, complete success.
I'm gonna move this microphone because I like making that
context with you. Can we keep that part in of
course some Monday morning guys, it really is. But no,
I mean I'm I'm obviously being a little sarcastic because
(02:55):
as we know, when you when you make people, you
tell people they can't do something, they just want to
do it even more, don't they. Yeah, I absolutely agree
with you. It's it's one of the hallmarks of you
as a parent. No, reverse psychology is one of the
hallmarks of any social dynamic, right, absolutely. And I mean
I have learned that anytime I tell my kid not
(03:15):
to do something or scold her about doing something, I
can see the little glint in her eye of it,
just the itch that she's got to scratch and he's
got to do that thing. If I tell her not
to play the drums on the dinner table with cutlery,
then the moment I look away, she starts like kind
of just itching to tap that fork on the table.
It's a little paradidle, really, exactly. No, And it's the
same with human nature in general. People don't like being
(03:37):
told what they can and can't do, especially when it's
something they've done freely for a long time. Yeah. Absolutely,
it's easier to prevent someone from beginning habit or thing that,
and it's much more difficult to get them to stop
after they have already acclimated to it. And that's why
prohibition was UH spoiler alert, ridiculous historians not completely successful.
(04:01):
From nineteen twenty to nineteen thirty three, Uncle Sam gave
it the old College try, but very very quickly doctors
and politicians realized that some exceptions had to apply. This
could not be an absolutist rule because you know, as
you said, well, there were already people very well acquainted
(04:23):
with drinking. Some of these people had become dependent on alcohol,
so they would have painful physiological withdrawal systems if they
weren't able to have access to that substance. Yeah, I
mean the sheiks, the d t s, that stuff is real.
If you are absolutely addicted to alcohol, you can experience hallucinations,
(04:46):
all kinds of very disruptive things that can cause you
to not go about your normal existence. And that's why,
according to Daniel Okrint, the author of Last Call, The
Rise and Fall of Prohibition, some if teen thousand doctors
applied for permits during the first six months of the
(05:06):
Volstead Act. UH. These permits would allow them to prescribe
alcohol but not just like a I don't know, like
a regular medicinal alcohol. It allowed them to prescribe uh
specific types of alcohol, right yeah, rye whiskey, scotch um.
(05:27):
Also I believe there were some clear ones on the
list too, right, Oh yeah, I mean, why would you
go to a doctor's office if you don't leave with
a prescription for gin? You know what I mean? That
applies in the in the modern day. Probably gin is
interesting too, because I always think of jin as being
sort of an herbal type tasting booze. It's probably the
closest thing to like what you might have drunk for
(05:50):
medicine anyway, right right, with a juniper berry basics. Right,
So already we can see the opportunity for corruption it right,
that lingers here because sure a lot of doctors during
this time we're prescribing alcohol with nothing other than medicinal
(06:12):
interest at hand. But also he can't walk away from
the money because there wasn't much federal oversight of these doctors.
You're a doctor, you write prescriptions as long as it's
not illegal. You can write prescriptions for whatever you want,
whenever you want. But it was illegal, not if you
had the permit I see got it. You know, that
(06:32):
reminds me of very obvious parallel in our modern day
UM with marijuana prohibition, and that tide kind of turning.
There was a while where it was a little easier
maybe than it should have been, to get a medical
marijuana card or prescription, and that was the case with
this situation as well. It became um see if there's
(06:54):
a great story about Winston Churchill, Uh a case study
kind of where he got hit by a car while
doing a a lecture at the Brooklyn Academy of Music UM,
and he got a cut on his forehead, and he
bruised his chest and had a sprained shoulder, and he
was prescribed uh kind of carte blanche access to alcohol
where he had a doctor's note more so than a
(07:17):
prescription um signed by doctor otto see pick art. That said,
this is to certify that the post accident convalescence of
the Honorable Winstones Churchill necessitates the use of alcoholic spirits,
especially at meal times. The quantity is naturally indefinite, but
the minimum requirements would be two fifty cubic centimeters. And
then there's a handwritten note on the top under this
(07:38):
guy's letter head this doctor from New York saying keep
on hand. So basically this was just a get out
of jail free car for Wizard Churchill to be able
to drink as he typically did, which we know Churchill
was fond of his spirits. I love the phrase they're
naturally indefinite. It's just he was walking around with this
(07:58):
doctor's note on his person whenever he wanted to buy alcohol,
and whenever. I don't think this would happen very often
because it's Winston Churchill, but whenever maybe an authority figure
stopped him and said, hey, you you absolute lush. Put
this down. You're supposed to be in charge of the country.
(08:20):
And this doctor's note from Churchill is dated January nineteen
thirty two, which, as we know, was on the tail
end of prohibition, which wrapped up in nineteen thirty three
in earnest, but by this point, according to a fantastic
Atlas Obscure article by Paula masia Um, the doctors were
becoming much more like the modern day equivalent of marijuana
(08:42):
dispensaries than they were doctor's offices, where they were stocked
with every type of booze you could imagine. They were
almost more like an off the book's liquor store than
even a doctor's office. Because they were cleaning up doing this,
they were able to like make good money and have
a legal loophole of prohibition. Absolutely, as you find in
(09:03):
a great article on How Stuff Works by Michelle Konstantinowski.
Pretty much right after prohibition began and doctors realized they
could get these permits, they also realized that alcohol was
a useful treatment for no less than twenty seven separate
medical conditions. This included stuff like cancer, incurable cancer, anxiety,
(09:26):
but it also included diabetes, snake bites, and even lactation problems.
So you're you're a nursing mother and you're having issues lactating,
you know what you need? Uh? Some of Grandpa's leg medicine,
which is a weird I think Tennessee term for whiskey.
That's actually my favorite brand. Grandpa's like medicine. Oh maybe
(09:48):
I'm thinking of moonshine. I smell a T shirt and well,
I think that's a great It's a great T shirt, right,
Grandpa's like medicine. I can picture that within like an
old timy label with like xxx on it, you know,
And then ridiculous History written really small on the bottom. Yeah,
I'm fine with that. I mean, I have no problem
with us advertising alcohol as long as it's our own
(10:08):
fake alcohol exactly. Speaking of which, just to take a
quick pause from today's topic, have you seen the amazing
Casey on the case t shirts that are now available
in the T public store. Saving it for the end,
but I'm glad you brought it up. I just want
to make people make sure ye stop what you're doing.
You can go to our website Ridiculous History show dot com,
(10:29):
or you can go directly to our store t public
dot com slash Ridiculous History and check out our newest shirt,
which I pulled it up because I love I love
looking at this. We we've revealed this on air right
that Casey used to be a child model. Okay, so,
uh so Casey, can you tell us about how this
(10:50):
how this all came to be? Yeah, well, there was,
you know, kind of a grassroots campaign to uh have
my face on a T shirt. I really didn't like
the idea at first, but I apologize. I kind of thought,
you know, we could kind of kill two birds with
one stone here. We could finally deliver those modeling picks
from my youth and my face on a T shirt,
(11:10):
so just kind of combined the two, and you know,
I think the results pretty spectacular. I have to say,
I agree, So check it out. It's it's worth your worth,
your worth, your dime for sure. Casey on the case,
we are exploring the story of Prohibition, and as you
(11:33):
have pointed out, Man, there are quite a few modern parallels,
especially when we talk about the purpose for a prescribed substance.
So this medicinal alcohol, sort of like medicinal marijuana, becomes
a popular loophole. Funny thing is, before Prohibition was in effect,
(11:55):
doctors knew the score. They knew that alcohol was not medicine.
But during Prohibition, the American Medical Association or a m
A changed its opinion. And the weird thing is that
the US Treasury Department backed them up. They authorized doctors
to write prescriptions for alcohol, and they were given the
doctors were given these government prescription forms to prescribe quote,
(12:19):
medicinal whiskey at pharmacies. But this was so corrupt and
was so open to abuse because we're not just talking
about people stealing prescription pads. We're talking about people making
counterfeit prescription pads and then using that to like pass
around with their friends. And let's just point out that
(12:40):
the pharmacies did not ask as many questions as they
should have. Oh, certainly not, certainly not. And it's like
I said, with the whole comparison to the modern day
marijuana prescriptions, you could kind of just go in and
say you had it got to the point eventually, as
a pretty recently where you can kind of just say
you have a little back pain, or you have maybe
you got an eye twitch, and that's about all it takes.
(13:03):
And you have a seat on a couch, talk to
somebody behind a desk, answer these few questions. You know
what they're looking for, so you just give it to them,
give them what they want, and they don't really ask
any question. They certaly don't run any tests or require
any real burden of proof. And that was exactly the
case with these with these these pharmacies giving out these
booze prescriptions a vague sense of unease, that's right, walking
(13:26):
in and saying I don't trust my elbows and there's
nothing I could do about it. Well, the funny thing
is that isn't that why people drink in the first
place to combat that vague about life from the world.
So this leads us to an interesting, an interesting story
because we're emphasizing the rule of the doctors, but we
(13:46):
haven't talked a lot about the pharmacist, and the pharmacists
are part of this supply chain. Historians have suspicions about
one famous pharmacist, Charles Walgreen of the Walgreen Walgreens, of
the Wall Green Walgreens, the very same Throughout the nineteen twenties,
the Walgreen's pharmacy change encountered tremendous growth. They expanded from
(14:07):
twenty stores to five hundred and twenty five. For a
long time, people would credit the introduction of the milkshake
to the pharmacy's success, but it sounds like alcohol may
have played a more prominent role. In an interview, Charles
Walgreen Jr. Said that while his father worried about the
(14:30):
danger of stores catching fire, he always wanted the fire
department to get in and out as quickly as possible
because whenever they came in, the fire department would steal
a case of liquor from the back. So this we
we know that there was a lot of money to
be had. I mean organized crime had a bonanza with this, right.
(14:52):
Oh yeah, sure, you got your al capones, you got
your bootlegging, Tommy gunn Toten gangsters, you know, running those
speakeasies and all the flapper girls and all that thing.
You know, this is the neighbor were high times underground,
but I didn't really realize that this was happening above
ground as well, completely legally, and that Walgreens played a
(15:13):
huge part in that. I mean, there's an article on
vine pair dot com called the seventy five billion dollar
business that was built selling whiskey during Prohibition legally by
Emily Bell, and it shows a fantastic shot of behind
what behind the counter situation at Walgreens would have looked like.
And that you know, you've got your apothecary type bottles
and you know things with a little plastic you know,
(15:35):
glass stoppers in it, but a lot of it is
straight up booze. That's right. This was a business. Every
ten days, patients could pay about three dollars for a
prescription and another three or four dollars to have it filled,
and they would get about a pint of booze and
(15:55):
that's not necessarily beer. Of course, this was again medicinal liquor.
So ultimately, according to Okrint, the guy I mentioned earlier
in last call, according to him, what this really functioned
as was a new revenue stream for physicians and pharmacists.
You know, every ten days you're getting three bucks, the
(16:17):
pharmacy is getting three or four bucks, and multiply that
out by the number of patients you have. Not to
put too dark as spin on it, but similar circumstances
have occurred recently in the last few years, not just
with marijuana, but with opioids. The so called is tough
for my Tennessee accent, the so called pill mills, Yeah,
(16:37):
exactly where again, it doesn't take much burden of proof
to get a doctor to prescribe you whatever you know
tickles your fancy as far as heavy opioid drugs are concerned. Uh.
And there's also the whole idea of doctor shopping. If
you've got multiple pill mill situations, you can go from
one to the other and have none of them really
(16:59):
know a about each other, and you can just be
kind of swimming in this stuff. And that is one
of the reasons, aside from laxness and utter irresponsibility on
the part of big pharma that caused the opioid epidemic
that is such a huge problem in our country. And
we see the same sort of federal level corruption in
the turn of the century prohibition days. There's a great
(17:23):
example about you remember the Great Gatsby, right, jam Scott Fist. Yeah,
So there's a real life guy named George Remus who
inspired the Great Gatsby, and he figured out how to
play the system. He thought medicinal whiskey was a bang
up business model, So we bought a ton of distilleries
which had these storage areas full of whiskey that could
(17:47):
not be sold. So he bought pharmacies for the express
purpose of distributing this whiskey. And then he bribed the
Feds to allow more and more whiskey to sort of
what they call it and retails stores. Shrinkage allowed whiskey
to disappear from the official record, and so in a
very short amount of time he made quite a bit
(18:09):
of money. And let's let's get back to those justifications,
because there is one great example from the Atlas Obscure
article we mentioned earlier, Improvidence Rhode Island. One physician prescribed
whiskey for a single condition debility and ability just means,
by the way, physical weakness, just feeling down. It's sort
(18:32):
of like a lighter version of being debilitated. I guess
just of my debility, I'm gonna bring the ability back.
So legally speaking, these physicians could get their licenses revoked
if they were found to be distributing medicinal liquor for
(18:54):
anything less than medical purposes. However, what that really translated to,
if we're being this is they were either super blatant
about what they were doing or they didn't bribe the
right people. Only about a hundred and seventy doctors per
year ever, had their licenses revoked. And here's the thing.
I mean, it really wasn't as it progressed throughout prohibition.
(19:18):
It really was not just a flash in the pan
or like the exception to the rule. It kind of
became the rule. And I don't I don't know, but
I don't know if you can tell me this, but
I did get a sense that the Winston Churchill example
was kind of how it was. It was a little
bit more something that was available to the privilege or
people that had access to doctors that would work with them. Yeah,
(19:41):
if you had the money, you could play ball, you
know what I mean. So this is still this is
still a time where there's a lot of institutionalized racism,
there's class warfare. You know, it's the it's the Gilded Age,
the Roaring twenties of inequality. This stuff was not necessarily
cheap for the average person, but it was still a
(20:03):
big business. Physicians wrote and estimated eleven million prescriptions per year,
and the Prohibition Commissioner John F. Kramer cited anecdotally one
doctor who wrote four hundred and seventy five prescriptions for
whiskey in one day. Yeah, and uh, I believe the
(20:25):
rough estimate um of the number of prescriptions written throughout
this period when prohibition was the law of the land
was around eleven million prescriptions. So while it certainly wasn't
available to everybody, it was available to quite a few
individuals that knew how to you know, milk. This particular loophole,
(20:48):
and as we know, this was just one of several loopholes. Right,
we already talked about in the past, the the hilarious
practice of selling concentrated grape juice with very specific instructions
on what not to do, because if you obeyed these instructions,
(21:11):
you would accidentally make wine and you should turn that
into the authorities if you happen to accidentally take these
like three or four steps. So everybody was lying to
themselves as individuals, as communities, as a nation, and the
numbers spoke for themselves. Upper crust Americans would take advantage
(21:35):
of French champagne, which was imported for medicinal use, so
much so that imports skyrocketed by three hundred and thirty
two percent in nineteen twenty alone. People who still have
the drive to drink but maybe not the scratch to
go to the pharmacy would make alcohol for themselves, using
(21:58):
corn syrup to make moonshine. The moonshine would be counterfeited
or adulter rated and supplied to speakeasies, which used to
be cool. Speakeasies aren't really that cool anymore, right, am I?
Old speakeasies cool? Yeah? When's the last time you went
to a cool speakeasy I went to? I don't know.
I mean, what makes what makes us speak easy? It's
(22:18):
there's the there's the basement, right, It's like the whole
story of you know, the whole dog and Pony show
business of like you have to get to a specific thing.
Noah Pass was like, I think that's fun, but people
told me it's corny now maybe so I don't know.
I mean, I'm I'm not saying I'm like the arbiter
of cool or anything, but I did go to I
think it was considered to Speak Easy couple months ago
(22:39):
in New York and it was like a Japanese themed one,
and all the drinks were like Machu powder and like
different Japanese whiskeys, and it was good. I think another
thing that makes us speak easy, Speak easy that it's
very expensive. Dare I say over price? Dare you? I dare?
Because can you imagine in prohibition era? You know, it
was basically it wasn't that wasn't Basically it was an
(23:01):
illegal enterprise. So of course the markup was probably nuts
because you couldn't get it right and you might not
know exactly what you're buying if you haven't checked it
out before. Check out our previous episode on the US
government's plan to poison the heck out of hundreds of people, yeah,
through adulterating the alcohol that was being sold illegally. This
(23:25):
was not sustainable. There were other exceptions that we should
list to be fair. Uh, there were religious exemptions. You know,
if you were a priest administering communion or a rabbi,
you had a you had the ability to create your
own alcohol or obtain it for use in religious services.
(23:48):
But these things were not as big of a business
as the medical loophole, which seems like a no brand
you know what. I know this is a history show,
but I predict this kind of loophole will come up again.
Whatever the next substance our nation attempts to prohibit is,
we will find ourselves in a situation where someone says,
(24:10):
I need a prescription for my debility, for my general unease,
and nothing but quae ludes will will help. It's true,
that's what I call it. That's where the quail comes from.
And quai ludes because it's for quelling. That just generalized
unease facts. These are facts. So as we know, prohibition
ultimately came to an end. The twenty first Amendment was
(24:35):
ratified in nineteen thirty three, ending the era of illegal
booze and ending the financial windfall for a lot of
pharmacies and a lot of doctors. And going back to
what we said at the top about reverse psychology, Oxford
University Press noted that alcohol enthusiasts actually drank more liquor
(25:00):
during prohibition than before prohibition, and that it man telling
you that tell me, you tell me what I can do,
I'm gonna do. I'm gonna double down and say, oh,
I can do it, and I will. An alcoholic consumption
pre prohibition, so pre n had been trending toward beer,
you know what I mean, Like, you get off work,
(25:22):
you have a couple of beers with your buddies, right,
and then you go home to dinner or you cook something.
I don't know. But during the era of prohibition, seventy
five of all alcoholic beverages we're liquor, because now people
did They didn't just drink more, They went for the
hard stuff because why risk of getting on the wrong
(25:42):
side of the law over you know, a a Miller Lite,
What's a what's another beer? I don't want to just
name Miller Lite. There are other beers. There's another high Life,
Miller high Life, the Champagne of the Champagne of beers.
I believe Miller makes other products as well. I heard
the phrase for Budweiser. I heard the phrase, Uh, you
(26:03):
know bud light. We all know bud light. But I
heard someone describe regular Budweiser is bud heavy. It seems
like an awkward phrase. But uh, Now, if you are
listening to this, uh, we hope that you enjoy the
freedom to have a boozy cocktail, a nice cold beer,
(26:24):
a glass of wine to your heart's content, as long
as you are responsible about it. And hey, maybe maybe
we end today's show on a question about modern prohibition.
Do you believe that there are examples of prohibition working
or is prohibition inherently doomed to fail due to that
(26:46):
you know that reverse psychology trick that we were talking
about earlier, or is it just a matter of what
is most profitable for the government and the companies involved.
Let us know. You can find and us on our
Facebook page, where we are ridiculous Historians. You can find
us on Twitter. You can find our show on Instagram.
(27:08):
But wait, as Billy Mays was wanting to say, there's more,
you can find my co host and I on our
own personal instagrams. It turns out we have lives. It's weird.
We're not just locked in the shipping container twenty four
hours a day, although we has a decent percentage of
the day. I am at Embryonic Insider and I am
at ben Bowland. Big thanks to our super producer, Casey Pegram. Again,
(27:34):
if you if you thought that we were just blowing
smoke about this Casey on the case T shirt, we
really like we were over the moon about it. And
we have had a pretty tough time not mentioning this
on previous episodes because we didn't want anyone to know
about it until it hit the store. Right, that's accurate.
(27:55):
Casey is adorable, little Dickens, and it really has the
appearance of some kind of eighties noir l a detective
kind of thing. Where is this very stark, black and
white image of young Casey and the text looks like
dirty dancing or something like that. It's pretty fantastic. And
his face is all power moves, very pensive, very power move.
A lot going on behind those deep baby blue eyes.
(28:18):
All you can't tell, I don't know are what color
are your eyes? They are blue images black and white.
You'd never know. Well that will have to wait for
the next T shirt, But yeah, do check it out.
We're ordering something for ourselves, which casey apologies in advance effect.
It's weird. Uh. In the meantime, we'd also like to
thank Alex Williams, who can post our track. We'd like
(28:38):
to thank our research associate Gabe. And you know what,
while we're while we're handing out thank you's, like they're
booze prescriptions during prohibition. That should be a thing that
needs to take off. We need to make that happen. Oh,
handied out things? No, no, no, just just that as
an expression sort of like selling selling you. I can
sell something to a man. I could sell a catch
(28:59):
up pop cycle to a man in white gloves. This
idea of like Willy nilly, just giving things away, passing
stuff out like booze prescriptions during prohibition. It helps. It rhymes, right,
I like it. I would like to thank um, what
was that band who did Level Terrorist apart again? Joy Division?
I'd like to thank Joy Division. I I quite enjoy
(29:19):
that song. I would like to thank a new Order
who I kind of prefer Hot Take. No right, yeah no,
I'm not picking battles of the bands. I'm just saying
I like that song. There's a surprisingly wide variety of
covers of that song as well. But I'd also like
to thank you. No, Ben, I accept your thanks with
(29:41):
an open heart, and I shoot it back at you
care bear style, nice nice, nice care beers too scared
the heck out of are you kidding? That green face
in the book, And that was some devil worship stuff,
my friend the way she like, I'll basically bewitched that
young boy, the young wizards assistant. He she bewitched him
and kind of like lured him into her ap caravan.
(30:01):
And yeah, no, no, thank you made him evil. He
had ability. You sure did, Ben, you sure did. We'll
see you next time, folks,
The actor, vaudeville performer, cowboy and humorist Will Rogers once
famously said that the American people will vote dry so
long as they are able to stagger to the polls,
voting dry meaning voting against legalized alcohol. Welcome to the show,
and Ben, my name is No. That's really funny. Then
(00:44):
that's a very good little loaded was it? What do
you call it? It's like a pun a turn of phrase.
I mean, uh yeah, sort of a that's sort of
a double message, like it's like a hidden meaning. Voting
dry to me would mean voting sober. But as long
as they can stumble the polls implying voting drunk. There's
a lot going on there. There's a lot of stuff.
There's a lot of meaning. We've gotta unpack them. That
that has to do with today's story, because, as we know,
(01:07):
voting also has a history of drunkenness. Remember we did
an episode about when people used to booze people up
and at the polls and and then keep them hostage,
keep them hostage and weird little you know speak easy
booze dungeons. We're not talking about that today, exactly. We
are talking about uh prohibition and a particular exception that
(01:27):
was made for drinking alcohol during that time, right, right,
and speaking of exceptional people and circumstances, let's give a
shout out to our super producer, Casey Pegram Casey, just
for the record to establish all three of us are
not teetotalers. Right, yeah, it's correct. All have a drink now.
(01:50):
And again I mean I'm no, no, definitely not. I
love that expression though, teetotaler, teetotaler. It's it's fun to say,
and it sounds like a test for people who have
been drinking exactly if you pronounce it correctly. But yes, yes, no,
you're right. Uh. Nowadays, when we think of prohibition, we
think of you know, al capone, we think of some
(02:11):
of us think of the origin of some race cars.
But this was a very serious problem for thirteen years.
The National Prohibition Act, otherwise known as the Volstead Act,
attempted to keep people in the United States from drinking, transporting,
(02:32):
even making any intoxicating beverage. How that work, though, man,
How that work? Abstinence? Right? Oh boy, yeah, right, complete success.
I'm gonna move this microphone because I like making that
context with you. Can we keep that part in of
course some Monday morning guys, it really is. But no,
I mean I'm I'm obviously being a little sarcastic because
(02:55):
as we know, when you when you make people, you
tell people they can't do something, they just want to
do it even more, don't they. Yeah, I absolutely agree
with you. It's it's one of the hallmarks of you
as a parent. No, reverse psychology is one of the
hallmarks of any social dynamic, right, absolutely. And I mean
I have learned that anytime I tell my kid not
(03:15):
to do something or scold her about doing something, I
can see the little glint in her eye of it,
just the itch that she's got to scratch and he's
got to do that thing. If I tell her not
to play the drums on the dinner table with cutlery,
then the moment I look away, she starts like kind
of just itching to tap that fork on the table.
It's a little paradidle, really, exactly. No, And it's the
same with human nature in general. People don't like being
(03:37):
told what they can and can't do, especially when it's
something they've done freely for a long time. Yeah. Absolutely,
it's easier to prevent someone from beginning habit or thing that,
and it's much more difficult to get them to stop
after they have already acclimated to it. And that's why
prohibition was UH spoiler alert, ridiculous historians not completely successful.
(04:01):
From nineteen twenty to nineteen thirty three, Uncle Sam gave
it the old College try, but very very quickly doctors
and politicians realized that some exceptions had to apply. This
could not be an absolutist rule because you know, as
you said, well, there were already people very well acquainted
(04:23):
with drinking. Some of these people had become dependent on alcohol,
so they would have painful physiological withdrawal systems if they
weren't able to have access to that substance. Yeah, I
mean the sheiks, the d t s, that stuff is real.
If you are absolutely addicted to alcohol, you can experience hallucinations,
(04:46):
all kinds of very disruptive things that can cause you
to not go about your normal existence. And that's why,
according to Daniel Okrint, the author of Last Call, The
Rise and Fall of Prohibition, some if teen thousand doctors
applied for permits during the first six months of the
(05:06):
Volstead Act. UH. These permits would allow them to prescribe
alcohol but not just like a I don't know, like
a regular medicinal alcohol. It allowed them to prescribe uh
specific types of alcohol, right yeah, rye whiskey, scotch um.
(05:27):
Also I believe there were some clear ones on the
list too, right, Oh yeah, I mean, why would you
go to a doctor's office if you don't leave with
a prescription for gin? You know what I mean? That
applies in the in the modern day. Probably gin is
interesting too, because I always think of jin as being
sort of an herbal type tasting booze. It's probably the
closest thing to like what you might have drunk for
(05:50):
medicine anyway, right right, with a juniper berry basics. Right,
So already we can see the opportunity for corruption it right,
that lingers here because sure a lot of doctors during
this time we're prescribing alcohol with nothing other than medicinal
(06:12):
interest at hand. But also he can't walk away from
the money because there wasn't much federal oversight of these doctors.
You're a doctor, you write prescriptions as long as it's
not illegal. You can write prescriptions for whatever you want,
whenever you want. But it was illegal, not if you
had the permit I see got it. You know, that
(06:32):
reminds me of very obvious parallel in our modern day
UM with marijuana prohibition, and that tide kind of turning.
There was a while where it was a little easier
maybe than it should have been, to get a medical
marijuana card or prescription, and that was the case with
this situation as well. It became um see if there's
(06:54):
a great story about Winston Churchill, Uh a case study
kind of where he got hit by a car while
doing a a lecture at the Brooklyn Academy of Music UM,
and he got a cut on his forehead, and he
bruised his chest and had a sprained shoulder, and he
was prescribed uh kind of carte blanche access to alcohol
where he had a doctor's note more so than a
(07:17):
prescription um signed by doctor otto see pick art. That said,
this is to certify that the post accident convalescence of
the Honorable Winstones Churchill necessitates the use of alcoholic spirits,
especially at meal times. The quantity is naturally indefinite, but
the minimum requirements would be two fifty cubic centimeters. And
then there's a handwritten note on the top under this
(07:38):
guy's letter head this doctor from New York saying keep
on hand. So basically this was just a get out
of jail free car for Wizard Churchill to be able
to drink as he typically did, which we know Churchill
was fond of his spirits. I love the phrase they're
naturally indefinite. It's just he was walking around with this
(07:58):
doctor's note on his person whenever he wanted to buy alcohol,
and whenever. I don't think this would happen very often
because it's Winston Churchill, but whenever maybe an authority figure
stopped him and said, hey, you you absolute lush. Put
this down. You're supposed to be in charge of the country.
(08:20):
And this doctor's note from Churchill is dated January nineteen
thirty two, which, as we know, was on the tail
end of prohibition, which wrapped up in nineteen thirty three
in earnest, but by this point, according to a fantastic
Atlas Obscure article by Paula masia Um, the doctors were
becoming much more like the modern day equivalent of marijuana
(08:42):
dispensaries than they were doctor's offices, where they were stocked
with every type of booze you could imagine. They were
almost more like an off the book's liquor store than
even a doctor's office. Because they were cleaning up doing this,
they were able to like make good money and have
a legal loophole of prohibition. Absolutely, as you find in
(09:03):
a great article on How Stuff Works by Michelle Konstantinowski.
Pretty much right after prohibition began and doctors realized they
could get these permits, they also realized that alcohol was
a useful treatment for no less than twenty seven separate
medical conditions. This included stuff like cancer, incurable cancer, anxiety,
(09:26):
but it also included diabetes, snake bites, and even lactation problems.
So you're you're a nursing mother and you're having issues lactating,
you know what you need? Uh? Some of Grandpa's leg medicine,
which is a weird I think Tennessee term for whiskey.
That's actually my favorite brand. Grandpa's like medicine. Oh maybe
(09:48):
I'm thinking of moonshine. I smell a T shirt and well,
I think that's a great It's a great T shirt, right,
Grandpa's like medicine. I can picture that within like an
old timy label with like xxx on it, you know,
And then ridiculous History written really small on the bottom. Yeah,
I'm fine with that. I mean, I have no problem
with us advertising alcohol as long as it's our own
(10:08):
fake alcohol exactly. Speaking of which, just to take a
quick pause from today's topic, have you seen the amazing
Casey on the case t shirts that are now available
in the T public store. Saving it for the end,
but I'm glad you brought it up. I just want
to make people make sure ye stop what you're doing.
You can go to our website Ridiculous History show dot com,
(10:29):
or you can go directly to our store t public
dot com slash Ridiculous History and check out our newest shirt,
which I pulled it up because I love I love
looking at this. We we've revealed this on air right
that Casey used to be a child model. Okay, so,
uh so Casey, can you tell us about how this
(10:50):
how this all came to be? Yeah, well, there was,
you know, kind of a grassroots campaign to uh have
my face on a T shirt. I really didn't like
the idea at first, but I apologize. I kind of thought,
you know, we could kind of kill two birds with
one stone here. We could finally deliver those modeling picks
from my youth and my face on a T shirt,
(11:10):
so just kind of combined the two, and you know,
I think the results pretty spectacular. I have to say,
I agree, So check it out. It's it's worth your worth,
your worth, your dime for sure. Casey on the case,
we are exploring the story of Prohibition, and as you
(11:33):
have pointed out, Man, there are quite a few modern parallels,
especially when we talk about the purpose for a prescribed substance.
So this medicinal alcohol, sort of like medicinal marijuana, becomes
a popular loophole. Funny thing is, before Prohibition was in effect,
(11:55):
doctors knew the score. They knew that alcohol was not medicine.
But during Prohibition, the American Medical Association or a m
A changed its opinion. And the weird thing is that
the US Treasury Department backed them up. They authorized doctors
to write prescriptions for alcohol, and they were given the
doctors were given these government prescription forms to prescribe quote,
(12:19):
medicinal whiskey at pharmacies. But this was so corrupt and
was so open to abuse because we're not just talking
about people stealing prescription pads. We're talking about people making
counterfeit prescription pads and then using that to like pass
around with their friends. And let's just point out that
(12:40):
the pharmacies did not ask as many questions as they
should have. Oh, certainly not, certainly not. And it's like
I said, with the whole comparison to the modern day
marijuana prescriptions, you could kind of just go in and
say you had it got to the point eventually, as
a pretty recently where you can kind of just say
you have a little back pain, or you have maybe
you got an eye twitch, and that's about all it takes.
(13:03):
And you have a seat on a couch, talk to
somebody behind a desk, answer these few questions. You know
what they're looking for, so you just give it to them,
give them what they want, and they don't really ask
any question. They certaly don't run any tests or require
any real burden of proof. And that was exactly the
case with these with these these pharmacies giving out these
booze prescriptions a vague sense of unease, that's right, walking
(13:26):
in and saying I don't trust my elbows and there's
nothing I could do about it. Well, the funny thing
is that isn't that why people drink in the first
place to combat that vague about life from the world.
So this leads us to an interesting, an interesting story
because we're emphasizing the rule of the doctors, but we
(13:46):
haven't talked a lot about the pharmacist, and the pharmacists
are part of this supply chain. Historians have suspicions about
one famous pharmacist, Charles Walgreen of the Walgreen Walgreens, of
the Wall Green Walgreens, the very same Throughout the nineteen twenties,
the Walgreen's pharmacy change encountered tremendous growth. They expanded from
(14:07):
twenty stores to five hundred and twenty five. For a
long time, people would credit the introduction of the milkshake
to the pharmacy's success, but it sounds like alcohol may
have played a more prominent role. In an interview, Charles
Walgreen Jr. Said that while his father worried about the
(14:30):
danger of stores catching fire, he always wanted the fire
department to get in and out as quickly as possible
because whenever they came in, the fire department would steal
a case of liquor from the back. So this we
we know that there was a lot of money to
be had. I mean organized crime had a bonanza with this, right.
(14:52):
Oh yeah, sure, you got your al capones, you got
your bootlegging, Tommy gunn Toten gangsters, you know, running those
speakeasies and all the flapper girls and all that thing.
You know, this is the neighbor were high times underground,
but I didn't really realize that this was happening above
ground as well, completely legally, and that Walgreens played a
(15:13):
huge part in that. I mean, there's an article on
vine pair dot com called the seventy five billion dollar
business that was built selling whiskey during Prohibition legally by
Emily Bell, and it shows a fantastic shot of behind
what behind the counter situation at Walgreens would have looked like.
And that you know, you've got your apothecary type bottles
and you know things with a little plastic you know,
(15:35):
glass stoppers in it, but a lot of it is
straight up booze. That's right. This was a business. Every
ten days, patients could pay about three dollars for a
prescription and another three or four dollars to have it filled,
and they would get about a pint of booze and
(15:55):
that's not necessarily beer. Of course, this was again medicinal liquor.
So ultimately, according to Okrint, the guy I mentioned earlier
in last call, according to him, what this really functioned
as was a new revenue stream for physicians and pharmacists.
You know, every ten days you're getting three bucks, the
(16:17):
pharmacy is getting three or four bucks, and multiply that
out by the number of patients you have. Not to
put too dark as spin on it, but similar circumstances
have occurred recently in the last few years, not just
with marijuana, but with opioids. The so called is tough
for my Tennessee accent, the so called pill mills, Yeah,
(16:37):
exactly where again, it doesn't take much burden of proof
to get a doctor to prescribe you whatever you know
tickles your fancy as far as heavy opioid drugs are concerned. Uh.
And there's also the whole idea of doctor shopping. If
you've got multiple pill mill situations, you can go from
one to the other and have none of them really
(16:59):
know a about each other, and you can just be
kind of swimming in this stuff. And that is one
of the reasons, aside from laxness and utter irresponsibility on
the part of big pharma that caused the opioid epidemic
that is such a huge problem in our country. And
we see the same sort of federal level corruption in
the turn of the century prohibition days. There's a great
(17:23):
example about you remember the Great Gatsby, right, jam Scott Fist. Yeah,
So there's a real life guy named George Remus who
inspired the Great Gatsby, and he figured out how to
play the system. He thought medicinal whiskey was a bang
up business model, So we bought a ton of distilleries
which had these storage areas full of whiskey that could
(17:47):
not be sold. So he bought pharmacies for the express
purpose of distributing this whiskey. And then he bribed the
Feds to allow more and more whiskey to sort of
what they call it and retails stores. Shrinkage allowed whiskey
to disappear from the official record, and so in a
very short amount of time he made quite a bit
(18:09):
of money. And let's let's get back to those justifications,
because there is one great example from the Atlas Obscure
article we mentioned earlier, Improvidence Rhode Island. One physician prescribed
whiskey for a single condition debility and ability just means,
by the way, physical weakness, just feeling down. It's sort
(18:32):
of like a lighter version of being debilitated. I guess
just of my debility, I'm gonna bring the ability back.
So legally speaking, these physicians could get their licenses revoked
if they were found to be distributing medicinal liquor for
(18:54):
anything less than medical purposes. However, what that really translated to,
if we're being this is they were either super blatant
about what they were doing or they didn't bribe the
right people. Only about a hundred and seventy doctors per
year ever, had their licenses revoked. And here's the thing.
I mean, it really wasn't as it progressed throughout prohibition.
(19:18):
It really was not just a flash in the pan
or like the exception to the rule. It kind of
became the rule. And I don't I don't know, but
I don't know if you can tell me this, but
I did get a sense that the Winston Churchill example
was kind of how it was. It was a little
bit more something that was available to the privilege or
people that had access to doctors that would work with them. Yeah,
(19:41):
if you had the money, you could play ball, you
know what I mean. So this is still this is
still a time where there's a lot of institutionalized racism,
there's class warfare. You know, it's the it's the Gilded Age,
the Roaring twenties of inequality. This stuff was not necessarily
cheap for the average person, but it was still a
(20:03):
big business. Physicians wrote and estimated eleven million prescriptions per year,
and the Prohibition Commissioner John F. Kramer cited anecdotally one
doctor who wrote four hundred and seventy five prescriptions for
whiskey in one day. Yeah, and uh, I believe the
(20:25):
rough estimate um of the number of prescriptions written throughout
this period when prohibition was the law of the land
was around eleven million prescriptions. So while it certainly wasn't
available to everybody, it was available to quite a few
individuals that knew how to you know, milk. This particular loophole,
(20:48):
and as we know, this was just one of several loopholes. Right,
we already talked about in the past, the the hilarious
practice of selling concentrated grape juice with very specific instructions
on what not to do, because if you obeyed these instructions,
(21:11):
you would accidentally make wine and you should turn that
into the authorities if you happen to accidentally take these
like three or four steps. So everybody was lying to
themselves as individuals, as communities, as a nation, and the
numbers spoke for themselves. Upper crust Americans would take advantage
(21:35):
of French champagne, which was imported for medicinal use, so
much so that imports skyrocketed by three hundred and thirty
two percent in nineteen twenty alone. People who still have
the drive to drink but maybe not the scratch to
go to the pharmacy would make alcohol for themselves, using
(21:58):
corn syrup to make moonshine. The moonshine would be counterfeited
or adulter rated and supplied to speakeasies, which used to
be cool. Speakeasies aren't really that cool anymore, right, am I?
Old speakeasies cool? Yeah? When's the last time you went
to a cool speakeasy I went to? I don't know.
I mean, what makes what makes us speak easy? It's
(22:18):
there's the there's the basement, right, It's like the whole
story of you know, the whole dog and Pony show
business of like you have to get to a specific thing.
Noah Pass was like, I think that's fun, but people
told me it's corny now maybe so I don't know.
I mean, I'm I'm not saying I'm like the arbiter
of cool or anything, but I did go to I
think it was considered to Speak Easy couple months ago
(22:39):
in New York and it was like a Japanese themed one,
and all the drinks were like Machu powder and like
different Japanese whiskeys, and it was good. I think another
thing that makes us speak easy, Speak easy that it's
very expensive. Dare I say over price? Dare you? I dare?
Because can you imagine in prohibition era? You know, it
was basically it wasn't that wasn't Basically it was an
(23:01):
illegal enterprise. So of course the markup was probably nuts
because you couldn't get it right and you might not
know exactly what you're buying if you haven't checked it
out before. Check out our previous episode on the US
government's plan to poison the heck out of hundreds of people, yeah,
through adulterating the alcohol that was being sold illegally. This
(23:25):
was not sustainable. There were other exceptions that we should
list to be fair. Uh, there were religious exemptions. You know,
if you were a priest administering communion or a rabbi,
you had a you had the ability to create your
own alcohol or obtain it for use in religious services.
(23:48):
But these things were not as big of a business
as the medical loophole, which seems like a no brand
you know what. I know this is a history show,
but I predict this kind of loophole will come up again.
Whatever the next substance our nation attempts to prohibit is,
we will find ourselves in a situation where someone says,
(24:10):
I need a prescription for my debility, for my general unease,
and nothing but quae ludes will will help. It's true,
that's what I call it. That's where the quail comes from.
And quai ludes because it's for quelling. That just generalized
unease facts. These are facts. So as we know, prohibition
ultimately came to an end. The twenty first Amendment was
(24:35):
ratified in nineteen thirty three, ending the era of illegal
booze and ending the financial windfall for a lot of
pharmacies and a lot of doctors. And going back to
what we said at the top about reverse psychology, Oxford
University Press noted that alcohol enthusiasts actually drank more liquor
(25:00):
during prohibition than before prohibition, and that it man telling
you that tell me, you tell me what I can do,
I'm gonna do. I'm gonna double down and say, oh,
I can do it, and I will. An alcoholic consumption
pre prohibition, so pre n had been trending toward beer,
you know what I mean, Like, you get off work,
(25:22):
you have a couple of beers with your buddies, right,
and then you go home to dinner or you cook something.
I don't know. But during the era of prohibition, seventy
five of all alcoholic beverages we're liquor, because now people
did They didn't just drink more, They went for the
hard stuff because why risk of getting on the wrong
(25:42):
side of the law over you know, a a Miller Lite,
What's a what's another beer? I don't want to just
name Miller Lite. There are other beers. There's another high Life,
Miller high Life, the Champagne of the Champagne of beers.
I believe Miller makes other products as well. I heard
the phrase for Budweiser. I heard the phrase, Uh, you
(26:03):
know bud light. We all know bud light. But I
heard someone describe regular Budweiser is bud heavy. It seems
like an awkward phrase. But uh, Now, if you are
listening to this, uh, we hope that you enjoy the
freedom to have a boozy cocktail, a nice cold beer,
(26:24):
a glass of wine to your heart's content, as long
as you are responsible about it. And hey, maybe maybe
we end today's show on a question about modern prohibition.
Do you believe that there are examples of prohibition working
or is prohibition inherently doomed to fail due to that
(26:46):
you know that reverse psychology trick that we were talking
about earlier, or is it just a matter of what
is most profitable for the government and the companies involved.
Let us know. You can find and us on our
Facebook page, where we are ridiculous Historians. You can find
us on Twitter. You can find our show on Instagram.
(27:08):
But wait, as Billy Mays was wanting to say, there's more,
you can find my co host and I on our
own personal instagrams. It turns out we have lives. It's weird.
We're not just locked in the shipping container twenty four
hours a day, although we has a decent percentage of
the day. I am at Embryonic Insider and I am
at ben Bowland. Big thanks to our super producer, Casey Pegram. Again,
(27:34):
if you if you thought that we were just blowing
smoke about this Casey on the case T shirt, we
really like we were over the moon about it. And
we have had a pretty tough time not mentioning this
on previous episodes because we didn't want anyone to know
about it until it hit the store. Right, that's accurate.
(27:55):
Casey is adorable, little Dickens, and it really has the
appearance of some kind of eighties noir l a detective
kind of thing. Where is this very stark, black and
white image of young Casey and the text looks like
dirty dancing or something like that. It's pretty fantastic. And
his face is all power moves, very pensive, very power move.
A lot going on behind those deep baby blue eyes.
(28:18):
All you can't tell, I don't know are what color
are your eyes? They are blue images black and white.
You'd never know. Well that will have to wait for
the next T shirt, But yeah, do check it out.
We're ordering something for ourselves, which casey apologies in advance effect.
It's weird. Uh. In the meantime, we'd also like to
thank Alex Williams, who can post our track. We'd like
(28:38):
to thank our research associate Gabe. And you know what,
while we're while we're handing out thank you's, like they're
booze prescriptions during prohibition. That should be a thing that
needs to take off. We need to make that happen. Oh,
handied out things? No, no, no, just just that as
an expression sort of like selling selling you. I can
sell something to a man. I could sell a catch
(28:59):
up pop cycle to a man in white gloves. This
idea of like Willy nilly, just giving things away, passing
stuff out like booze prescriptions during prohibition. It helps. It rhymes, right,
I like it. I would like to thank um, what
was that band who did Level Terrorist apart again? Joy Division?
I'd like to thank Joy Division. I I quite enjoy
(29:19):
that song. I would like to thank a new Order
who I kind of prefer Hot Take. No right, yeah no,
I'm not picking battles of the bands. I'm just saying
I like that song. There's a surprisingly wide variety of
covers of that song as well. But I'd also like
to thank you. No, Ben, I accept your thanks with
(29:41):
an open heart, and I shoot it back at you
care bear style, nice nice, nice care beers too scared
the heck out of are you kidding? That green face
in the book, And that was some devil worship stuff,
my friend the way she like, I'll basically bewitched that
young boy, the young wizards assistant. He she bewitched him
and kind of like lured him into her ap caravan.
(30:01):
And yeah, no, no, thank you made him evil. He
had ability. You sure did, Ben, you sure did. We'll
see you next time, folks,
Ridiculous History News
Hosts And Creators
Ben Bowlin
Noel Brown
Popular Podcasts
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
24/7 News: The Latest
The latest news in 4 minutes updated every hour, every day.
The Joe Rogan Experience
The official podcast of comedian Joe Rogan.