Are you with me on this? We all love those stories that glorify the roaring 20s when folks whispered a magic password to get into speakeasies and gin joints for some illicit partying during prohibition. But it wasn't all a roaring good time. Would our government purposely poison the public to try to stop them from drinking?

Guess what?

Turns out the feds ordered industrial alcohol makers to add poison to what they sold,

to scare the public to death,

maybe killing as many as 50,000 and blinding or paralyzing hundreds of thousands more.

I'm Patty Steele, dying for a drink, literally.

Next on the backstory.

This is an I-Heart podcast.

We're back with the backstory.

Okay, do you know much about prohibition when the government outlawed alcohol for 13 years starting in 1920?

Did you know the feds mandated that industrial alcohol makers add poison to what they made to keep people from drinking it. It killed as many as

50,000 and maimed hundreds of thousands. We've kind of seen what that world looked like in

movies like The Untouchables and the Great Gatsby, and also on TV shows like Boardwalk Empire.

Prohibition-era gangsters included Al Capone,

who took in $60 million a year during those years. But one of the most amazing and not so well-known

stories about prohibition was how the feds tried to control access to alcohol for folks who just wanted to party.

When the government wants to control us, they have all sorts of crazy ways to enforce laws, right?

But during Prohibition, it got way darker.

Again, their approach left by some accounts 50,000 dead and possibly hundreds of thousands permanently impacted

by conditions like paralysis and blindness.

Now, how the heck did that happen?

Mass poisoning.

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