Poisoned Drug Supply

This fascinating piece in Slate recalls the government's seldom-discussed effort to enforce alcohol prohibition by poisoning people:

Frustrated that people continued to consume so much alcohol even after it was banned, federal officials had decided to try a different kind of enforcement. They ordered the poisoning of industrial alcohols manufactured in the United States, products regularly stolen by bootleggers and resold as drinkable spirits. The idea was to scare people into giving up illicit drinking. Instead, by the time Prohibition ended in 1933, the federal poisoning program, by some estimates, had killed at least 10,000 people.

It's a nightmarish tale of prohibitionist lunacy that's worth reading in its entirety. Government officials were viciously calculating in their actions and callously blamed naïve drinkers for the consequences.

Today, prohibition kills people in different, yet equally abhorrent and unnecessary ways. Its advocates continue to deny responsibility for the predictable and inevitable consequences of the policies they defend and the death toll has grown to incalculable proportions, spanning the globe. The drug war leaves sickness and murder in its wake at every turn, yet many among us remain blind to the lessons learned nearly a century ago.

English authorities announced Wednesday that a Blackpool heroin user died of anthrax, making him the first fatality in England from what is apparently a batch of heroin contaminated with anthrax. The bad dope has been blamed for nine deaths in Scotland and one in Germany since the outbreak began in December. The anthrax fatality announcement from the National Health Service (NHS) in Blackpool came just five days after the Health Protection Agency issued a statement warning that a female heroin user in London had been hospitalized with anthrax. The spate of anthrax cases among heroin users is baffling police and health experts, who have yet to actually come up with any heroin samples containing anthrax spores. There is speculation that the heroin could have been contaminated at its likely source in Afghanistan, perhaps from contaminated soils or animal skins, or that it was present in a cutting agent added there or at some other point on its transcontinental trek to northern Europe. The cases in Germany and England have no known link to those in Scotland, leading to fears that tainted dope could be widespread. On the other hand, the numbers infected remain relatively small. Although harm reductionists and drug user advocates have called for measures including public information campaigns among users, swift access to drug treatment, and making prescription heroin more widely available, British health officials continue to do little more than tell users to quit. Dr. Arif Rajpura, director of public health at NHS Blackpool, was singing from the same official hymnal this week. He repeated warnings for users to stop using and advised them to be on the lookout for symptoms of anthrax, including rashes, swelling, severe headaches, and high fevers. "Heroin users are strongly advised to cease taking heroin by any route, if at all possible, and to seek help from their local drug treatment services. This is a very serious infection for drug users and prompt treatment is crucial," he said.