Poison Booze

The roaring twenties were a time of huge political, scientific, and cultural change. In the U.S., women finally won a hard-fought battle over the right to vote, medicine was forever transformed by the discovery of penicillin, and the jazz age was fully underway. And in the background of all of this was a not-so-small new law: the 18th Amendment. But six years into Prohibition, people were drinking as much as ever. In response, the U.S. doubled down by tasking government chemists to poison the liquor supply. And the most shocking part? People drank it anyway.