Daniel Okrent: An Illegal Substance Sold Legally
[Daniel Okrent is the author of "Last Call: The Rise and Fall of Prohibition," just published by Scribner.]
"He owned some drugstores, a lot of drugstores," Daisy Buchanan said. "He built them up himself." To Daisy, this was a perfectly reasonable explanation of the wealth of her new neighbor, Jay Gatsby. To her husband, more knowing about the world beyond the boundaries of East Egg, it was evidence that Gatsby had made his money as a bootlegger.
Modern readers in the grip of F. Scott Fitzgerald's prose may not recognize the meaning of Tom Buchanan's insight, but Fitzgerald knew his contemporaries would understand. In 1925, when "The Great Gatsby" was published, the meaning of "drugstores" was as clear as gin: Those were the places you went to get medically prescribed alcohol, a legally acceptable source of liquor during all 13 years of Prohibition.
Sound familiar? To any modern Californian, of course it does.
For most of the 1920s, a patient could get a prescription for one pint every 10 days about as easily as California patients can now get "recommendations" for medical marijuana. All it took to acquire a liquor prescription was cash — generally about $3, the equivalent of about $40 today — placed in the hand of an agreeable doctor. It cost $3 to $4 more to have it filled by the local pharmacist. Dentists were similarly licensed, as were veterinarians who believed their patients too could use a belt of Four Roses bourbon....
All that "medicinal" whiskey (and rum and gin and brandy and every other imaginable liquid intoxicant) was perfectly legal. But it also made a mockery of the law, debased the dignity of the medical profession and encouraged rampant criminality, as mobsters eventually and inevitably took over much of the medicinal market. What finally straightened out the liquor business was the legalization that came with repeal in 1933 — legalization that was accompanied by a coherent and effective set of enforcement laws, a healthy boost in tax revenues (in the first post-repeal year, the federal government was enriched by the 2010 equivalent of $4 billion in alcohol tax revenue), and an honest recognition that, all too often, "medicinal" had been a cynical euphemism for "available."
Read entire article at LA Times
"He owned some drugstores, a lot of drugstores," Daisy Buchanan said. "He built them up himself." To Daisy, this was a perfectly reasonable explanation of the wealth of her new neighbor, Jay Gatsby. To her husband, more knowing about the world beyond the boundaries of East Egg, it was evidence that Gatsby had made his money as a bootlegger.
Modern readers in the grip of F. Scott Fitzgerald's prose may not recognize the meaning of Tom Buchanan's insight, but Fitzgerald knew his contemporaries would understand. In 1925, when "The Great Gatsby" was published, the meaning of "drugstores" was as clear as gin: Those were the places you went to get medically prescribed alcohol, a legally acceptable source of liquor during all 13 years of Prohibition.
Sound familiar? To any modern Californian, of course it does.
For most of the 1920s, a patient could get a prescription for one pint every 10 days about as easily as California patients can now get "recommendations" for medical marijuana. All it took to acquire a liquor prescription was cash — generally about $3, the equivalent of about $40 today — placed in the hand of an agreeable doctor. It cost $3 to $4 more to have it filled by the local pharmacist. Dentists were similarly licensed, as were veterinarians who believed their patients too could use a belt of Four Roses bourbon....
All that "medicinal" whiskey (and rum and gin and brandy and every other imaginable liquid intoxicant) was perfectly legal. But it also made a mockery of the law, debased the dignity of the medical profession and encouraged rampant criminality, as mobsters eventually and inevitably took over much of the medicinal market. What finally straightened out the liquor business was the legalization that came with repeal in 1933 — legalization that was accompanied by a coherent and effective set of enforcement laws, a healthy boost in tax revenues (in the first post-repeal year, the federal government was enriched by the 2010 equivalent of $4 billion in alcohol tax revenue), and an honest recognition that, all too often, "medicinal" had been a cynical euphemism for "available."