Here's Where It Gets Interesting - A Physician, a Rabbi, and a Bootlegger Walk into a Pharmacy

Episode Date: May 10, 2023

By 1920, America was officially a dry country. In theory. In practice, the law came with enough loopholes that opportunists found plenty of ways to make, trade, sell, and guzzle vast quantities of alcohol. Some turned to religion and some walked into a pharmacy with a doctor’s note. Still others knew how to rig the system so well that they made their fortunes and even got away with murder. Hosted by: Sharon McMahon Executive Producer: Heather Jackson Audio Producer: Jenny Snyder Written and researched by: Heather Jackson, Valerie Hoback, Amy Watkin, and Mandy Reid Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

As a Fizz member, you can look forward to free data, big savings on plans, and having your unused data roll over to the following month, every month. At Fizz, you always get more for your money. Terms and conditions for our different programs and policies apply. Details at Fizz.ca. Visa and OpenTable are dishing up something new. Get access to primetime dining reservations by adding your Visa Infinite Privilege Card to your OpenTable account. From there, you'll unlock first-come, first-served spots at select top restaurants when booking through OpenTable. Learn more at OpenTable.ca forward slash Visa Dining. Hello, friends. Welcome. Welcome to Episode 5 of our series on prohibition, from hatchets to hoods.

Okay, so, in 1928, the Scottish microbiologist Alexander Fleming returned from vacation to his messy lab, where he found a moldy petri dish sitting on a shelf. And in it, he had been growing a bacteria called Staphylococcus aureus. He could see that around the mold, the staph bacteria had died, and it was his aha moment. He knew he was on to something. Penicillin was hailed as a miracle drug, an antibiotic that could treat a variety of maladies like throat infections, meningitis, and many other bacterial infections. It was, quite literally, a lifesaver. It cured where previous miracle drugs, including alcohol and cocaine, had failed. And yet, despite this world-changing discovery,

even Fleming, the inventor of penicillin himself, famously said, Penicillin cures, but wine makes people happy. I'm Sharon McMahon, and here's where it gets interesting. In December 1931, when Prohibition had been in effect for 11 years, member of British Parliament Sir Winston Churchill was on a lecture tour through the United States. While he was in New York City, Churchill looked the wrong way when crossing a street. I mean, he was English after all, and was hit by a car zipping along Fifth Avenue at around 35 miles an hour. Churchill sustained a number of cuts, bruises, broken bones, and a

sprain from the accident. Not to mention, like it's just shocking. It's shocking to be hit by a car. It's shocking to see a car accident. What you should know is that Churchill was a daily drinker. We're talking whiskey with breakfast, champagne for lunch, scotch at tea time, and a steady stream of cognac between dinner and bed. The additional need to numb pain from his accident made Churchill's travels through Prohibition America especially tricky. Buying alcohol in America was illegal, but Churchill found a loophole. Like any good student looking to get out of gym class, Churchill armed himself with a doctor's note. Dr. Otto Picard's prescription for Churchill says, this is to certify that the post-accident convalescence of the Honorable Winston S. Churchill

necessitates the use of alcoholic spirits, especially at mealtimes. The quantity is naturally indefinite, but the minimum requirements would be 250 cubic centimeters, which is like eight and a half ounces, by the way, that's like over a cup. Which is like eight and a half ounces, by the way. That's like over a cup. Churchill's doctors may have recommended eight and a half ounces of alcohol per day as the minimum. But there's no doubt that the man who historians estimate consumed 42,000 bottles of champagne in his lifetime had eyes for only the quantity is naturally indefinite part of the prescription. Winston Churchill was far from the first person to take advantage of the medical loophole in order

to get alcohol in a dry America. According to Section 6 of the Volstead Act, a person may, without a permit, purchase and use liquor for medicinal purposes when prescribed by a physician. At first, many doctors promoted prohibition. In 1960, the highly regarded Pharmacopeia of the United States of America, removed brandy and whiskey from its roster of established medicines. And in 1917, the American Medical Association, or AMA, issued a statement supporting prohibition that claimed the use of alcohol is detrimental to the human economy, and its use in therapeutics as a tonic or stimulant has no scientific value. And yet, the Volstead Act allowed doctors to prescribe alcohol, which meant that before long, the AMA changed their tune. They realized they were missing an opportunity to do what? To make money!

They pretty quickly reversed their position on prohibition, and suddenly alcohol was on prescription pads everywhere. Doctors applied for permits so they could prescribe alcohol, and people could buy these prescriptions for $3. It's kind of similar to obtaining medical marijuana today, although alcohol had been very, very widely accepted in society prior to prohibition, unlike some places with marijuana. But there were some restrictions, of course, including Congress's rules of no more than a pint of liquor every 10 days and no prescription refills. But those limitations weren't enough for

prohibitionists. The 1921 Willis-Campbell Act, more commonly called the Emergency Beer Bill, outlawed prescriptions of beer and reduced the amount of alcohol per prescription from one pint to a half pint. Under this act, doctors were only supposed to write 100 prescriptions for alcohol every 90 days. Despite these attempts at increasing restrictions, doctors kept on writing unlimited scripts. Various types of medical professionals, including dentists and veterinarians all over the country, were allowed to prescribe whatever type of alcohol they or their patients chose for all types of ailments from high blood pressure to cancer. And yes, that is right, I did say veterinarians, you heard that correctly. Which is how we know that there was very little oversight or policing being done on

medical alcohol prescriptions. What were they pretending the veterinarians were prescribing alcohol for? What? Gin does not help a cow birth their calf more easily. No doctor is like, well, your cat's been vomiting. Let's get it drunk. No, that is not what was happening. In the decade of the 1920s, approximately 11 million prescriptions for alcohol were filled every year. They got away with it because according to the Washington Post, hundreds of new drugstores had opened, over 700 in New York City alone by 1922, and only one prohibition agent per 300 physicians was available to keep tabs on the prescriptions. A ratio like that meant that of the 64,000 physicians who were given liquor prescribing permits from 1920 to 1926, only about 1,200 lost their licenses.

Many physicians and pharmacies cashed in on this clear money-making opportunity. Just a few short weeks after Prohibition went into effect, most New York City pharmacies were charging $12 for a pint of whiskey, which is like $150 in today's money. $150 for a pint of whiskey. Beyond getting prescriptions from doctors, many used another type of loophole to get their hands forgery. In 1931, around 400 pharmacists and a thousand doctors were caught selling signed prescription forms to bootleggers who then used them to, quote unquote, legally purchase alcohol to turn around and sell for gouged prices. Just 25 of those caught were actually indicted in the scam, and even then, the guilty parties faced only a one-time fine of $50. A man named George Remus saw his opportunity. At five years old, a young immigrant, George Remus, arrived in the U.S. with his German parents.

By the time he was 15, he had to quit school and work in order to help his family. He trained under his uncle as a pharmacist, where he proved to be a quick study. By the time he was 21, he was certified as a pharmacist and purchased his first pharmacy. George also put himself through law school and started practicing law in Illinois in 1904. When Prohibition began, Remus was practicing law. He was well known as a criminal defender, and more and more of his clients were wealthy bootleggers. He later said, I was impressed with the rapidity with which those men without any brains at all piled up fortunes in the liquor business. The more I studied the Volstead Act, the more I was convinced of its frailties. And so I decided to get in on the ground floor

and strike while the iron was hot. George Remus knew that millions of gallons of alcohol made before prohibition were locked away in storage. Which makes sense, right? When the country went dry and alcohol trade halted, there were still vast stores of already made alcohol that had been on the shelves. It had to go under lock and key somewhere. Remus thought that maybe warehouse owners could sell all of this liquor, and if they used the medicinal alcohol loophole to sell only to drug companies for prescriptions, it would even be legal. But why put your trust in a middleman? Remus founded his own pharmaceutical company, which meant he was buying from and selling to himself. And conveniently losing the shipments, at least according to his doctorate accounting books.

He called this network the Circle. In June of 1920, Remus married his second wife, Augusta Imogene Holmes, who, by the way, had been his secretary when they began their affair. He divorced his first wife to marry her. The couple, plus Imogene's daughter from her first marriage, moved to Cincinnati, Ohio, which was a very specific choice. Those warehouses full of alcohol that we just talked about were nearly all within a 300-mile radius of Cincinnati. Remus bought distilleries in Cincinnati and then set up a bogus drug company in Covington, Kentucky, and created his own transportation company to haul liquor to the base of operations. Basically, his distilleries, for which he got withdrawal permits, acted as a supplier for his drug company,

and his trucks shipped the liquor to and fro. I mean, get this. He would have his own men hijack his own trucks and then write off the liquor as a loss. Like pretend to hijack. Oh, you know what? It was hijacked. It's a write off. Is that what it takes? Just pretend, fake a hijacking and write it off. But it wasn't actually lost to anonymous bootleggers who stole it. It all sat on a 50 acre farm hidden in the middle of nowhere, Ohio, with buildings hiding tens of thousands of boxes full of alcohol. Armed men lined the dirt road that led to the property, which was nicknamed Death Valley. Then, George Remus sold his stockpiled liquor to whoever could pay for it. Remus recalled that the customers came

from all over the country and included the fashionable club man, the hotel keeper, the whiskey jumper, the petty bootlegger. They were as anxious to buy as I was to sell, and there was never a day that the demand was not 70% greater than the supply. We are talking about a little operation here, okay? George Remus had about 3,000 employees working three shifts a day in his various fronts and businesses. He was a hero in Cincinnati. So many men had lost their jobs when distilleries closed at the start of Prohibition, and he gave them a way to earn a living. His operation did

millions of dollars of business a year. Sales were cash only, not surprising, and he'd sometimes bring in nearly $80,000 a day. And of course, since it was all illegal, it was tax-free. Remus purchased an elegant Cincinnati mansion in Imogene's name and furnished it lavishly for her. One New Year's Eve, the couple hosted an over-the-top affair where party favors for the men were diamond stick pins, like actual diamonds, and their wives all received cars. I mean, that is like Oprah-level wealth, like you get a car and you get a car, right? You could argue that Remus grew a little bit overconfident as his business became so successful.

He regularly talked about himself in the third person, which totally threw people off their game in his business dealings. It helped him keep the upper hand. We can hear how this might have sounded in a clip from Boardwalk Empire. Don't take it personally, kid. What do you think George Remus spent five years doing? Come again? I said, what do you think George Remus was doing for him? Ain't you George Remus? Who'd you think I was? You just said it like it was someone else. It would be a little off-putting, wouldn't it? Remus's unofficial title became King of the Bootleggers. And with such a noteworthy

reputation, it wasn't like the law was in the dark to his schemes. He had an army of federal, state, and local officials on the payroll. He bought their silence and support saying, I went on the theory that every man has a price and I could afford to pay it. In order for Remus to get the federal permits he needed to grow his operation, he needed to go all the way to the top, Washington, D.C. In May of 1921, he had a clandestine meeting at the Commodore Hotel in Manhattan with the fixer of the Harding administration, Attorney General Harry Doherty's right-hand man, the infamous Jess Smith. We talked about him in the last episode. Smith sold the permits to George for $2.50 per case of whiskey and swore that for another $50,000, Remus would never have to go to jail, even if he was arrested and indicted.

even if he was arrested and indicted. Revis liked that idea. He thought, that is the kind of security I need. And he immediately paid Smith's bribe fee in $1,000 bills. And yes, there actually was such a thing as a $1,000 bill in the 1920s. It featured Grover Cleveland. And it was discontinued in 1969 along with the $500 bill. All said, over a few short years, Remus paid Jess Smith about a quarter of a million dollars in bribes. That's like $4 million in bribes today.

This man worked for the United States Attorney General, okay? But not everyone was on Remus's side. For Assistant Attorney General Mabel Walker-Willibrand, who we spoke about in a previous episode, he was target number one. She organized with loyal federal agents who were not paid off by Remus. And when they caught him, he was indicted for thousands of Volstead Act violations. Remember the $50,000 Remus paid Smith for protection from arrest and indictment? It ended up not being money well spent. Remus was counting on the promise from Jess Smith that he could avoid conviction, but the jury found him guilty in under two hours. He was sentenced to an entire whopping two years

in prison. So if you remember in our previous episode, I mentioned Jess Smith's death by suicide may have actually been a homicide. Again, history doesn't give us a definite answer, but another theory is that if not suicide, and if not an order given by Warren Harding or Harry Doherty, maybe Smith's death was set in motion by George Remus and carried out by his men. While he was imprisoned in Atlanta, George became acquainted with an inmate named Franklin Dodge. Remus confided in his new friend that it was his wife, Imogene, who had control over his money and his estate. And that was exactly the news Franklin Dodge, who was hiding secrets of his own, wanted to hear. sound range, making them perfect for enjoying music and podcasts. Get up to 55 hours of listening with active noise cancelling enabled, soft microfibre cushions engineered for comfort,

and a range of colours and finishes. Dyson OnTrack. Headphones remastered. Buy from dysoncanada.ca. With ANC on, performance may vary based on environmental conditions and usage. Accessories sold separately. ANW is now serving Pret Organic coffee. And you can get a $1 small coffee, a $2 small latte, or like me, a $1 small coffee and a $2 small latte. Available now until November 24th in Ontario only. Woohoo! Franklin Dodge appeared to be a down-on-his-luck, bootlegging criminal serving time. But he was not. He was an undercover federal agent, and his task in prison was to suss out information from inmates, get them to talk, and report it to his superiors, who could use it to

bust up even more illegal bootlegging rings. But for Dodge, the news that George Remus, one of the richest criminals of the decade, technically didn't have control of his own money, was too juicy to report. Instead, he sought out Imogene on his own, and he began a relationship with her while Remus continued to be detained in prison. Dodge quit his federal job, and then he and Imogene sold off Remus's distilleries and properties and kept the money for themselves, hiding it so it couldn't be traced. It's reported that Imogene gave George Remus only $100 from his multi-year, multi-million dollar operation. And to take it a step further, Imogene and Franklin Dodge attempted to have George Remus deported by telling the immigration authorities that he didn't have

naturalized citizen paperwork. And I mean, like, if you recall, he was born in Germany and came to the United States as a young child with his parents. He was able to escape the deportation, not specifically because his papers were in order, but because authorities considered him an asset. He had made a deal to act as an informant and testify against other bootleggers. When the deportation plan did not pan out, Imogene and Franklin hired a hitman to take out Remus. I mean, as one does. Totally just kidding. They were not playing around, though. I mean, truly, they wanted his money and they wanted him gone. In the end, the hired assassin took their

money but double-crossed them by telling George about the hit. I mean, seriously, if you pitched this plot to a room full of executives, they would be like, seems a little unrealistic. Once again, American history is stranger than any fiction you could write on a page. is stranger than any fiction you could write on a page. And we're not done yet. In 1927, Imogene Remus filed for divorce. As they traveled to their divorce hearing, Remus ordered his driver to chase Imogene's car off the road in a public park in Cincinnati. And then Remus hopped out of his car and shot Imogene in the stomach in public with witnesses who had just been out there enjoying a nice leisurely day. They're just watching. And they're standing there in shocked silence as Imogene died from her injuries. And George Remus was arrested for murder. But remember, Remus's path to bootlegging and murder began in the courtroom. He was a lawyer.

He was a criminal lawyer by trade, and he had a knack for successfully winning murder cases. Remus represented himself and entered a plea of not guilty by reason of temporary insanity. He had his closest friends testify to his state of mind in the days before the murder, claiming that he was so distraught over losing imaging that he could hardly function. This time, the jury deliberated for 19 minutes, acquitted him, and then asked if they could have their photo taken with the larger-than-life George Remus. Surprisingly, George left the national spotlight after that. He retired from his life of crime to Covington, Kentucky, across the river from the site of his illegal operations

in Cincinnati. He lived modestly, married for a third time, and ran a contracting firm for 20 years until his death in 1952. Okay, who is marrying him for a third time? Who is like, you know what, you did go insane, and you did shoot your previous wife, but I think you're over it. Like what? How? Make it make sense. George Remus, by the way, was not the only guy finding loopholes in prohibition laws. A fellow George, George Cassaday, played a vital role in creating a secret pipeline for lawmakers' liquor supply. Remember we learned a bit about the Anti-Saloon League earlier in this series? They had most of the politicians in their pocket, and they didn't care whether the politicians themselves drank or not. The ASL only cared that politicians voted for prohibition, which in turn kept the ASL a powerful and influential organization.

Those politicians who had bowed to Prohibition pressure, but wanted access to alcohol after its passing, had to get creative. Turns out, hypocrisy is nothing new. hypocrisy is nothing new. George Cassaday was a World War I veteran, and he returned from conflict and like so many other soldiers, struggled to find employment. He said, a friend of mine told me that liquor was bringing better prices on Capitol Hill than anywhere else in Washington, and that a living could be made supplying the demand. So George Cassaday rose to the challenge and began to supply the congressional house with rum, whiskey, and any sort of liquor they desired. It was like Uber Eats, but like only for alcohol and top secret.

Top secret. Back then, visitors entering Capitol office buildings did not have to go through a metal detector like they do now. Security only stopped them when they wanted to make sure no one was taking government documents, which, you know, those documents that are just haphazardly left around in garages. I'm just teasing. I'm just teasing. The lack of security made it very easy for George Cassidy to just walk around the House and Senate office buildings with a briefcase full of that day's orders, making his deliveries and leaving with an empty briefcase. No reason for security to suspect a thing. As for the congressmen that he supplied, they could just come and go as they pleased with no one ever checking them. They were allowed to leave the building with all the alcohol they wanted. It may not have been a scam of George Remus proportions, but the system worked without a hitch for five years until one day in 1925, when a briefcase associated with Cassaday was left near the security check. It contained four quarts of whiskey.

of whiskey. Cassaday made it as far as the Cannon House building's front courtyard before being arrested while wearing a green fedora. A gaggle of reporters were nearby and not knowing his name, branded him in their stories as the man in the green hat. After his arrest, he was given nothing more than a slap on the wrist. These people were not serving long prison times for these crimes, clearly. But it's our George against the House of Representatives. So for the next five years, he would only deliver to the Senate. He felt like they were more discreet. The legend of the man in the green hat was known,

but he was smart enough to leave that particular fedora at home, which kept him inconspicuous. He was arrested again in early 1930 and given a couple of months in prison, but he agreed to stop bootlegging and instead became a writer. In October of 1930, he ran a series of articles in the Washington Post called The Man in the Green Hat Series, a juicy tell-all about his operation. Nearly 80% of congressional leaders had bought alcohol from Cassaday over the years.

But interestingly enough, his expose fell short of naming names. He kept their confidence, even as he revealed their drinking habits. By then, many Americans were starting to view prohibition as a failure. So George Cassidy's articles were a major catalyst for the public to see exactly how hypocritical it was for Congress to purchase and consume alcohol while publicly punishing citizens for doing the same. The midterm elections were held about a week after his series ran, and the mostly dry Republican majority was voted out. They were replaced with the Democratic majority, and it was these newly elected officials who eventually passed legislation to end prohibition. But it wasn't just bootleggers

and government officials finding loopholes and workarounds. It might surprise you to hear that even religious figures got in on the act. Why? Because another loophole in prohibition laws allowed the sale of wine for sacramental purposes. Wine, as you know, is often used in religious traditions and rituals, especially Catholicism for communion and in Judaism for things like Shabbat, which meant that during Prohibition, leaders of churches, synagogues, and other religious establishments had to apply for a liquor license from the government in order to use wine in their observances. government in order to use wine in their observances. The main difference was that Catholics and other religions imbibed their wine during public services while Jewish people customarily drank their wine in the home. This led to the rise of wine rabbis who were either actual rabbis profiting from prohibition laws or people dressing up as traditional rabbis in order to make money selling wine.

So here's a little bit about how it worked. Thanks to the First Amendment, which says that we cannot discriminate on the basis of religion, Jews were entitled to 10 gallons of wine per adult per year, even during prohibition. And some states only required a petition with 10 signatures to certify someone as a rabbi. So becoming a fake rabbi was easy, popular, and lucrative. Within a few months ofhibition going into effect in New York City, new synagogues, and I say that in air quotes, sprang up in empty apartments and posted signs advertising kosher wine for sacramental purposes. A customer showed up and signed a form declaring them a member of that synagogue's congregation. They paid the self-declared rabbi who sat behind a table

and left with a bottle of wine. Another of the exceptions in the Volstead Act concerned winemaking at home. Section 29 read, the head of a family who has properly registered may make 200 gallons of wine exclusively for family use without payment of tax thereon. Seeing the opportunity this loophole presented, the number of farmers in California who grew wine grapes exploded from under 100,000 before Prohibition to almost 700,000 after. Before Prohibition, a ton of grapes cost $9.50, but by 1924, the price was $375, which is actually not much less than grapes cost today. Winemakers had to get creative, so they started crushing grapes with their stems and skins and dehydrating them into solids known as grape bricks

or wine bricks or raisin cakes. They were about the size of a bar of soap and they sold for $2 each, which is like $34 today. of soap and they sold for two dollars each which is like 34 today these wine bricks were officially intended for making grape juice of course but everyone knew they could also produce wine the prohibition museum tells us that one wine brick company with a barely disguised hint wrote on the packages of its product after dissolving the brick in a gallon of water do not place the liquid in a jug away in the cupboard for 20 days because it would turn into wine how many people were like oh no i accidentally forgot and let my grape juice ferment into wine.

Oh, well, bottoms up. Making 200 gallons of wine at home per year meant that households could make a thousand bottles of wine each year. And when you do the math, that boils down to almost three full bottles a day, all without technically breaking the law or paying taxes. It was a very big loophole. Over 700 million gallons of homemade wine was produced by Americans during Prohibition, triple the amount they drank in the previous decade. Of course, pharmacy owners didn't want people just drinking at home because where was the profit in that? Many grew quite inventive in their strategies to drum up business like Charles R. Walgreen, who saw huge success during Prohibition, he opened his first store on a popular Chicago corner in 1901. And by the end of Prohibition, there were 525 Walgreens locations across the

country. Walgreens claimed that they became so popular because of the malted milkshake invented in their store in 1922. Now, these were not the days of racing through Walgreens after work to grab your child's prescription and a carton of milk, impulse buying holiday clearance Reese's peanut butter pumpkins, and a thing of nail polish because your nail chipped on the way to the register. Not that I know anything about that. No. In the 1920s, you handed your pharmacist a paper prescription that your doctor gave you, possibly for alcohol.

And then you sat at the counter to have a refreshing non-alcoholic beverage while you waited for it to be filled. Often, it was a malted drink that would have been very similar to the type of drink that Cadbury was selling in England about a century earlier during the temperance movement. One sweltering day in 1922, employee Ivar Pop Colson added a large scoop of Walgreens' extra-rich vanilla ice cream to the malted milk mixture and changed everything. Customers stood three and four deep around the soda fountain to buy the double-rich chocolate malted milk, the company writes on its website. on its website. Pharmacies with soda fountains were all over the country in the beginning of the 20th century, and a lot of those drugstores were serving fizzy drinks or carbonated sodas, sometimes as medicine. 7-Up, for example, was invented in 1929 as a treatment for bipolar disorder and depression. You can tell they were trying to market it as medicinal because its original name was, get this,

Bibb Label Lithiated Lemon Lime Soda. Certainly more of a mouthful than 7-Up. And then there was Confederate Colonel John Pemberton,ing to soothe the pain of his Civil War wounds, but also kick his morphine addiction, he used his medical degree to create Pemberton's French wine cocoa nerve tonic in 1885, which sounds fancy, but was basically wine mixed with cocaine. When the city of Atlanta passed prohibition legislation in 1886, Pemberton recreated his drink without the wine. And he focused on two key ingredients, the coca leaf, where cocaine comes from,

and the cola nut. And by now you have surely guessed, surely what this drink turned out to be, Coca-Cola. Coca-Cola was marketed and sold as medicine because at the time doctors thought cocaine could cure all sorts of medical issues. Everything from morphine addiction and nerve disorders to indigestion and headaches. Oh, you're addicted to morphine or you have a little heartburn? Maybe I can interest you in a glass of liquid cocaine.

We'll sell it over the counter. Doesn't matter how old you are. No worries. Just pull up a stool. But you know what? We're not done yet. It doesn't stop there. Let's mix this fun cocaine drink

with some alcohol. I mean, why not? Bootleg and homemade liquors were not always the tastiest, okay? So many people started mixing them with sodas to mask the alcohol's flavor, to mask the alcohol's flavor, and Coca-Cola was a front-running favorite. By 1929, Coca-Cola was officially cocaine-free. But by then, it had become such a prominent part of American life that an entire chapter of the Women's Christian Temperance Union was determined to eliminate the Hydra-headed menace of Coca-Cola. That's what they called it. The marriage of soda or pop or fizzy drink or soft drink or cola or lolly water, depending on where you were raised, and alcohol was a lasting inheritance from prohibition, changing American drinking habits in ways that are still popular today.

1933 marked the end of Prohibition when the 21st Amendment was ratified, and Americans could no longer get booze by prescription. But as far as the ways in which the average American consumed alcohol during a time when it was technically illegal goes, homemade wine and faux medical prescriptions barely scratch the surface. If you have been waiting to learn some riveting secrets about the infamous speakeasies of the roaring 20s, You are not going to want to miss the next episode. I'll see you then. Thank you for listening to Here's Where It Gets Interesting. This episode is written and researched by Sharon McMahon, Heather Jackson, Valerie Hoback, Amy Watkin, and Mandy Reed. Our executive producer is Heather Jackson. Our audio producer is Jenny Snyder. And it's hosted by me, Sharon McMahon.

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