Comment by JasonCEC | Hacker News Reader

Comment by JasonCEC | Hacker News Reader

I debated this ~4 years ago on the Penn State University Parliamentary Debate team. During the practice session I tried to use this as an argument against the claimed moral high ground of the prohibitionists.

It failed; our coach and the rest of the team we're able to prove to me, with a more careful reading of the article (and checks from other primary source material) that there was never a "Federal Poisoning Program" and that most of the deaths resulted from a lack of communication with those looking to drink while alcohol was illegal.

On both of those points:

- 1) Only industrial alcohol was legal to produce during prohibition. Industrial alcohol contains methanol, a compound that can cause blindness and death. It takes a good amount of skill and refinement to remove all traces of methanol from alcohol to make it ready for human consumption - a step that the legal distillers had no reason at the time to take (and would have in fact had them closed down for bootlegging)

- 2) The Federal Government never added poison (methanol) to alcohol made by bootleggers - had they found the bootleggers, they would have destroyed their stills and jailed them, not poisoned their stock, brought it to market, and sold it. I believe[citation needed] only about 10% of the alcohol produced by the bootleggers was contaminated in any way, and even less caused 'permanent damage' beyond what you would expect from people drinking alcohol.

- 3) The order to add methanol to industrial alcohol is historically dubious... All of the citations I can find for it in the searchable web (read: Google) links back to the original Slate article. Supposedly, the article is based on this Article in Nature[1]. From the abstract, it is more likely that the mass of laws and policies that followed the ratification of the 18 amendment included an understanding that industrial alcohol should be exempt but rendered purposely undrinkable - which it already was.

I am personally against prohibition, and against the government attempting to mandate morality; but I fear that this article is popular because of its anti-government attitudes - but you could only come to the conclusion that there was ever a "Federal Poisoning Program" if you give perfect foresight agency to every policy the government passes....

[1] http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v463/n7279/full/463299a...

There is a reason that it's called "denatured alcohol". It's because something is added to it to make it unsuitable for consumption. The Volstead Act (establishing prohibition) makes repeated references to "bonded denaturing plants":

http://www2.potsdam.edu/alcohol/Controversies/Volstead-Act.h...

It also mentions 'Denatured alcohol or denatured rum produced and used as provided by laws and regulations now or hereafter in force.', so I'm sure there is some text somewhere describing the processes.

There is often methanol in fermented mash, but if you have a working still, the sophisticated method of getting rid of it is to discard the early fraction of the distillation. It probably isn't a large amount of methanol (but there's probably other assorted things not to drink).

Edit: Here's the IRS guidance issued in association with the 1906 law that created "industrial alcohol" by not taxing denatured alcohol:

http://books.google.com/books?id=AA7ZAAAAMAAJ&lpg=PA23&ots=B...

This page talks about adding methyl alcohol "in the presence and under the direction of an authorized Government officer":

http://books.google.com/books?id=AA7ZAAAAMAAJ&lpg=PA23&ots=B...

Apparently for use in cars, because it was cheaper than gasoline.

Right!

Though: Heads and tails recycling of the mash is more complicated than simply 'discarding' the heads to avoid methanol.

Bootleggers usually weren't using a fractional still, and thus would have needed precise temperature and timing to even attempt to measure methanol concentrations.

Furthermore their supply of grain, being an illegal operation, was (probably) sub-par; any rot or mold on grain to be distilled greatly increases the chances of producing methanol.

Again, I think only ~10% of the alcohol by bootleggers was contaminated. Distilling has been around for a long time, but the effects of driving it underground greatly reduced quality and increased the chances of going blind or dying due methanol poisoning.

I think I'm railing against It takes a good amount of skill and refinement to remove all traces of methanol from alcohol to make it ready for human consumption - a step that the legal distillers had no reason at the time to take (and would have in fact had them closed down for bootlegging).

The legal distillers (or distributors, whatever) were actively adding significant amounts of methanol, not just avoiding some process for removing it.

> "actively adding significant amounts of methanol"

That's the claim currently being debated. The parent claims to have researched and been unable to find any legitimate source, and further claims to have uncovered where the misunderstanding came from. If you wish to refute him, you'll need to do better than merely assert your position -- you'll need to provide a legitimate source, with specific quotes and page numbers / paragraph numbers / other citation markings so we can see exactly where the "actively adding" claim comes from.

Read my initial comment! I edited it some, but that was well before you weighed in here.

I already did what you asked for, providing a link to an IRS document from the 1910s or so describing adding methanol in the presence of an authorized government agent.

You linked to a book that's over 50 pages and contains hundreds of laws. Provide specific quotes and page numbers, please.

The one quote you seem to be basing your argument on basically said that already-produced beverage-grade alcohol could be sold if it was mixed with something else to make it undrinkable. That doesn't imply (as you seem to think it does) that newly-made alcohol was being mixed with methanol, only that previously-distilled alcohol could be reused instead of destroyed.

And that definitely doesn't imply that the government was intentionally poisoning bootleg alcohol.

The first paragraph of my last link is wildly specific, referencing a law about denatured alcohol passed in 1906. I read it as talking about freshly distilled alcohol having stuff added to it, with a specific mention of methyl alcohol. Maybe explain how you don't see that there.

I responded to the obvious confusion in the initial post about what "industrial alcohol" is. I'm not trying to establish that the government ramped up the poisons during prohibition (although I wouldn't be surprised if people involved with the denaturing were intentionally using nasty shit with no official government program backing it).

Ahh, I now understand the specifics of your claim.

It appears you are correct that (prior to prohibition) one could produce alcohol and then intentionally add non-drinkable substances that matched its industrial use and therefore not be taxed for producing drinkable alcohol. And, as you say, this doesn't establish anything specific to prohibition, such as an intentional ramping up of poisons.

Which means the initial claim of the article still appears to be completely unsupported.

> If you wish to refute him, you'll need to do better than merely assert your position -- you'll need to provide a legitimate source, with specific quotes

Why? What's making JasonCEC more trustworthy than Slate? He didn't do any of the things you're asking maxerickson to do either. I see this having happened:

1. Deborah Blum, without any backing, claimed to have researched and found legitimate sources claiming that in 1926 the Coolidge administration decided to make denatured alcohol more virulent.

2. JasonCEC, without any backing, claimed to have researched and failed to find any such evidence.

3. maxerickson took exception.

It takes nothing other than the power to surf the internet to do everything JasonCEC did. Accordingly, it's not really necessary to give what he said any weight at all. Why isn't an unbacked, citeless refutation at least as strong as JasonCEC's original argument?

> "Why?"

because.

...

OK, seriously though: because the specific question is whether the government intentionally added methanol or other substances to alcohol with the intent to poison people who were drinking it during prohibition. "JasonCEC, please cite the lack of evidence you found" is nonsensical. "Those who are claiming it happened, please cite specific, original documentation" is reasonable.

(To be fair, max does not appear to be making the specific claim regarding prohibition; he's making a more technical claim about denaturing alcohol based on a law from 2 decades prior.)

> because the specific question is whether the government intentionally added methanol or other substances to alcohol with the intent to poison people who were drinking it during prohibition. "JasonCEC, please cite the lack of evidence you found" is nonsensical

I originally made this point:

1. But JasonCEC hasn't addressed the question in any way. He's claimed to have researched it. That's not the same as having researched it.

I could make a couple more:

2. If you go looking into the question of whether a historical event happened, there are plenty of ways to show evidence that it didn't. People arguing the ahistoricity of Jesus don't say "well, it's impossible to cite a lack of evidence", they do things like pointing out that the non-Christian historians who mention him do so only in known forgeries, and that certain historians who you'd think would have taken note, like one who specifically wrote about religious movements in Asia, seem to have overlooked him, and they compare the state of the evidence for Jesus with the state of the evidence for other notable figures of the same time period. Discrediting the idea that something happened isn't impossible, or in principle even difficult.

3. If one person says "I've looked into it, and I found strong evidence for X", and a second person says "I too have looked into it, and I didn't find evidence for X", that's quite compatible with X having happened. We've all looked for something that was there and not found it.

4. You're calling for applying very strict standards to one side of an argument while implicitly trusting the other side -- based on the word of a guy you don't know who has made not even a token effort to comply with your standards. This doesn't make any sense. If drunken finger-pointing and mumbled arguments are an acceptable attack, they're an acceptable defense too.

> "We've all looked for something that was there and not found it."

which is why it's important for those who claim there is strong evidence to present it.

Note that I'm not expressing any specific trust in one side of this argument. I'm simply asking the side claiming to have evidence to post it. max has posted his evidence about the general denaturing process (which I initially misunderstood and would retract my criticism if I hadn't passed the editing cutoff.) Thus far, I have seen no evidence regarding a specific ramping up of "poisoning" during prohibition.

I responded with the specific historical evidence that point 3 hand waved to not exist specifically because it was such an odd claim to make. I didn't respond to it because I thought the point was particularly debatable (in my mind, just quickly looking at that document was pretty damning to point 3...).

Methanol was used before, during and after prohibition, and it continues to be used today. Pretty much any decent reference will be very clear about denaturing ethanol with methanol (Wikipedia takes 5 words to wink at the fact, using "methylated spirits" as a synonym for denatured alcohol. One paragraph later it says "The main additive has traditionally been 10% methanol").

Calling that particular fact "historically dubious" insinuates something about the other claims in the article, but I sort of think that the author (a "professor of science journalism") went further than "the googles" in their attempts to gather information. I'm sure they read the medical examiner reports that they claim exist. I'm sure the reports are real. I guess I'll read the book, because I'd like a clearer picture of what was going on.

> I'm sure there is some text somewhere describing the processes

http://www.law.cornell.edu/cfr/27/part-19/subpart-O

http://www.law.cornell.edu/cfr/27/part-20

http://www.law.cornell.edu/cfr/27/part-21

Point 1 is false point 2 is true and point 3 seems to contradict itself.

1) When distilling, it is quite easy to remove methanol as it has a different boiling point. The presence of significant amounts of methanol in the first place is plausible, but not necessary (If you ferment plain sugar, for example you are unlikely to get methanol).

3) "The order to add methanol to industrial alcohol is historically dubious ... industrial alcohol should be exempt but rendered purposely undrinkable" The "mass of laws and policies" to make industrial alcohol purposely undrinkable is the same thing as an order to poison industrial alcohol. They made it undrinkable by poisoning it.

Point 1 is not false;

I work in Quality Control for artisan distillers - heads and tails recycling is an important part of the production process, and requires both skill and testing to make sure methanol is removed from the spirit.

A bootlegger would need 1) a fractional still or 2) precise temperature control and monitoring - they were unlikely to have either.

Furthermore, I find it doubtful that an illegal bootlegger would have used pure sugar for their mash - that would have been far more expensive than the purchase of grain.

Finally, on point 1, the foresight and knowledge to remove methanol doesn't come in a nice pamphlet with the illegal still - we know that a lot of the alcohol produced by the illegal bootleggers (who the government did not have control over) was contaminated with methanol (And other heavy metals or contaminants).

On point 3; Sure... that's almost right...

Industrial alcohol not made for human consumption would already contain methanol and other contaminants; the law establishing a minimum level of contaminants to render it undrinkable by humans did theoretically make it more harmful.

That does not constitute a "Federal Poisoning Program". - when someone hears those words, they don't think "the government established that already undrinkable industrial alcohol must contain a minimum level of naturally occurring contaminants to stop individuals from consuming it";

they think "the government purposely added poison to alcohol sold to individuals for consumption" - which is not what happened.

> heads and tails recycling is an important part of the production process, and requires both skill and testing to make sure methanol is removed from the spirit.

The tails contain no methanol so we can ignore them for this conversation. If you have a reasonable estimation of the amount of methanol in your mash, then throwing out enough of the head takes neither skill nor testing. Without that knowledge you need either a moderate amount of skill (to determine when methanol is coming out of your still) or the ability to test for methanol, but not both. I have done this myself and spoken with multiple people who have done it. It sounds like you are talking about re-distilling your heads and tails to get every last drop of ethanol out of them. This can be done safely with skill and testing, but is not necessary by any stretch of the imagination.

You can make a good argument that what they did does not constitute a "Federal Poisoning Program" as they did not intend to poison people. I am not arguing in favor of that term, but I know from personal experience that separating out methanol from ethanol is not particularly difficult. The same criteria that make a still good at separating ethanol from water make it good at separating methanol from ethanol.

>Finally, on point 1, the foresight and knowledge to remove methanol doesn't come in a nice pamphlet with the illegal still

Correct. If foresight and knowledge to remove methanol was universal, no one would have suffered methanol poisoning.

>we know that a lot of the alcohol produced by the illegal bootleggers (who the government did not have control over) was contaminated with methanol

We do not know this. It is possible given that are records are not great, but my guess is that this is false given the low quantities of methanol generally produced by yeast and the ease with which it can be removed. Heavy metal and other contamination seems much more likely (though I would expect them to be quite rare as well).

As for industrial ethanol including methanol, some of it probably would without a law requiring it, but that would certainly not be universal. Do you believe that without the law requiring contamination that they would not have sold uncontaminated ethanol?

>they think "the government purposely added poison to alcohol sold to individuals for consumption" - which is not what happened.

The government did not purposely added poison to alcohol intended for consumption. They did however require the addition of poison to alcohol that was later sold for consumption.

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