With artisanal cocktails and mile - long vino menu at just about every eating house and taproom from coast to coast , it ’s strong to ideate an alcohol - complimentary era in America . But for 13 years , The NationalProhibitionAct , otherwise get it on as The Volstead Act , put the kibosh on unpaid drink and ban the industry , exile and sale of " intoxicating hard drink " in the United States .
And while bootleggers and speakeasy operators receive mode to surreptitiously betray spirits despite the police , one unbelievable group legally provided easy admittance to alcohol : doc .
You may not think of your friendly neighborhood medical situation as the most likely makeshift liquor computer storage , but for a meter in America , doc were able to escape the law and make a few bucks on the side . " Doctors had long prescribed alcohol as medicine , but it became a flourishing patronage during prohibition era , " state Karen Blumenthal , author of " Bootleg : Murder , Moonshine , and the Lawless Years of Prohibition . " While alcoholic drink had been wide used through story to treat an raiment of aesculapian precondition , it eventually fell out of favor with doctors , and by 1917 , the American Medical Association ( AMA)votedto tolerate the ban of intoxicant across the nation .
But by 1922 — just two years after the Volstead Act drop dead into effect — a national AMA view call in " Referendum on the Use of Alcohol in the Medical Profession " revealed someinteresting development : Suddenly American doctors believed alcohol was a useful discussion for 27 freestanding medical conditions include everything from diabetes and cancer to Snake River bites and lactation problems .
" Medicinal alcohol was a pop loophole in the Volstead Act , the Prohibition enforcement police , " says Garrett Peck , author of " The Prohibition Hangover : Alcohol in America from Demon Rum to Cult Cabernet . " " Before prohibition era , doctors wide recognized that alcoholic drink is not medicament , but during Prohibition , the AMA change its opinion , in part because patient still want to drink . "
Even though the very same group that wanted to bring hard drink back had antecedently declared it had " no scientific value , " the U.S. Treasury Department authorized doctors to write prescriptions for alcohol . " Doctor were generate prescription configuration to order ' medicinal whisky ' at pharmacies , " Peck says . " This was wide abused , as the configuration were often copied , and much more whiskey was released from bond than the federal political science ever intended . "
" Doctors did it , for sure , " Blumenthal says , " But pharmacists and others also sold fake prescription pattern . Many people never go to a physician — they go to the pill pusher , who could provide a prescription shape and deliver the ' prescription drug . ' "
In fact , historians have suspicions about one famous pharmacist , Charles Walgreen , whose Walgreens chain exposit from 20 stores to 525 during the 1920s . Many credited the founder ’s introduction of the shake for the range of mountains ’s success , butas Charles Walgreen Jr. later told an interviewer , while his father worried about the danger of fires in his stores , he " wanted the fervidness department to get in as tight as potential and get out as fast as possible because whenever they came in , we ’d always drop off a case of liquor from the back . "
" The prescription exemption was thirstily sought by the same physicians who , in the paseo - up to the 18th Amendment , had formally — through the AMA — debate that there was no real aesculapian use for hard drink , " says Daniel Okrent , author of " Last Call : The emanation and Fall of Prohibition . " " What they realized , as the Volstead Act was being draft , was the opportunity to take advantage of it . "
doc and druggist were n’t the only ones able to surround the law ; sodbuster were allowed to raise wine-colored for their own consumption , and religious leaders admit priests and rabbis were allowed to serve it during serve and ceremonial occasion . But Dr. were the unity who stand to make a lucre . " Any doctor could give a patient a prescription of a pint of whisky ( or other alcohol ) every 10 days , " Okrent read . " In most metropolis , $ 3 was the going price for the prescription , and a like amount was paid to the pharmacist who filled it . "
According to Peck , others found way to get crafty during Prohibition , too . " George Remus , the humans who exalt " The Great Gatsby , " picture out that medicinal whisky was a great business model , " he says . " He bought up a bunch of still , which had rickhouses full of whisky that could n’t be sold , then bought up pharmacies to distribute the whiskey . He then bribed Union officials to provide a passel more whiskey to seep out of his rickhouses . Remus made a fortune in a myopic menstruation of time . "
And although some timeserving alcohol pushers did in fact get lambast for crossing legal lines , the end of the 13 - year ban put an end to most boozy corruption . " One of the last people in Wyoming charged with transgress the Prohibition jurisprudence was a aesculapian medico from the town of Kemmerer , " allege University of Wyoming account professorPhil Roberts . " Oddly , he was point the very day before Wyoming ’s ' constituent convention ' met to vote on repeal of the 18th Amendment . later on , the rush against the doctor were dismissed . "
