Category: State Poisoning

• The Prohibition "Liquor-Poisoning" Plot

  This theory held that the federal government intentionally poisoned industrial alcohol during Prohibition in order to kill or disable people who drank illegal liquor. Unlike many panic narratives, this one rests on a substantial documentary foundation: federal policy did require more dangerous denaturing formulas for industrial alcohol, and those formulas contributed to deaths when bootleggers reprocessed or diverted industrial spirits for drinking. The conspiracy form of the theory extends this into a broader claim that the state knowingly accepted mass death as an enforcement strategy.