Government Poisoning Citizens

[ government, ]
February 25, 2010

Via Craig, we get this heartwarming story of the US government adding poison to then-illegal alcohol during Prohibition.

Slate

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.

Of course, they'd never do anything like that these days, right?