#ILLEGAL ALCOHOL

[scotianostra]

On December 29th 1815 customs and excise officers were attacked in Glasgow, after raiding an illicit still.

The customs men arrested two people and tipped over 50 gallons of illegal whisky down the drain. Another man escaped in the confusion after he set a light to some pure alcohol, later returning with a gang of about a dozen men who who set about the government officers as they were dismantling the still , managing to liberate the equipment.

The methods of these illicit activities were well-rehearsed and their respective territories well-defined, as you would expect, gangs were very territorial.

The pics are a mock still and a real one, which was unearthed in a barn in New Galloway last year. Many farmers in the mid-19th Century owned small stills which they could distil their own spirit out of sight from the exciseman.

Of course most stills were away from prying eyes, in the Highlands and Islands, as well as in Dumfries and Galloway. Recently the Forestry Commission of Scotland to underook a comprehensive survey of the Big and Wee Bruach farmsteads in Loch Ard Forest, near Aboyne, not far from Glasgow.

These remains survive as series of at least seven ruined late 18th-century buildings, enclosures, and corn-drying kilns. Among the buildings are a series of very narrow structures which most likely date from the 18th century. Their unusually long shape, considered alongside the presence of large corn drying kilns and proximity to running water, in what is a relatively inaccessible area yet close to Glasgow, could suggest large scale illicit whisky distilling.

While the surviving buildings are relatively recent, the name Bruach is a territorial designation reaching back to the 13th century or earlier. Title to the landholding gave the right to bear the name of the landholding ‘of Bruach’, suggesting this was more than a small farm.

[newyorkthegoldenage]

Rum runners (bootleggers) at a pier, 1924.

Photo: Bettmann Archive/Getty Images/Fine Art America

[if-you-fan-a-fire]

“Liquor Charges Heard After Raids at Border,” Toronto Globe. February 4, 1933. Page 2.  --- (Special Despatch to The Globe.) -- Fort Erie, Feb. 3. - Liquor cases predominated in border Police Courts today, four persons being arraigned in Fort Erie and Ridgeway, charged with infractions of the Liquor Control Act. In Fort Erie, before Magistrate W. T. Malkin, Arthur Wright was fined $100 and costs on a charge of illegal possession following a raid on the Lakeshore restaurant by Fort Eric police, when beer, champagne. and whiskey was seized. Harry Sullivan, whose car was seized by Provincial Police here last week, with nineteen cases of ale, was remanded until Fob. 13. In Ridgeway Court, before Magistrate J. C. Massie, Matthew R. Lutz and Catharine Creekmore were arraigned on charges of illegal possession of liquor following a raid on their premises by Fort Eric Provincial Police, when eight cases of ale and a quantity of whiskey were seized. They were remanded until Fob. 13.

[spider-mand]

One of my favorite examples of "Deadpool's not actually an idiot."

Context: In this issue, Deadpool takes down a corrupt police department in very rural Georgia. Rather than kill 'em all (as suggested by the cops' mastermind), he invites the Feds to catch them all red-handed at their illegal moonshine distillery. Initially, he's cuffed and detained along with everyone else.

His little interaction with the ATF agents at the end is fantastic.

Love it. It's like...summary of my favorite version of Deadpool. He's heroic, he does good things, he doesn't kill anyone in this issue - but he's also dangerous, his good intentions don't erase his bad habits or volatile nature. He definitely wanted to kill the whole lot of 'em (in fairness, one of theirs killed him first, that's why he got involved) and had to dial it back to "wait, I don't do that anymore."

Plus - smart enough to turn his bad reputation into an advantage, sometimes. He probably wouldn't have hurt those agents (not on purpose), but they don't need to know that...

IDK I just love this sequence. :)

[cumaeansibyl]

okay this is my biggest conspiracy theory except it's not really a Conspiracy Theory because I am not actually positing a shadowy prime mover who planned the whole thing from the start. that always ends up in wildly antisemitic places where I do not go, and also I don't think anyone in history has had their shit together enough to mastermind Schemes of this type. my theories are always more like "this happened serendipitously and at some point maybe someone noticed and took advantage but there's certainly no central figure in charge."

so we start with the normalization of overwork in our society, since roughly forever. in modern times this led to abuse of medical and recreational stimulants -- everyone was on speed in the 50s and coke in the 80s -- but we all kind of figured out that was a bad idea, for the most part. what we still had after the white powder settled, though, was caffeine. totally legal, totally normalized.

but people were still overworked, and they also still wanted to have energy after work, to do fun things with the little free time left to them.

enter energy drinks.

unlike coffee, which still has the feeling of a daytime beverage and also to some extent a workplace beverage, energy drinks are an anytime food! you can even get them in mixed drinks for a night out. they're for work AND play. they come in a wide range of dose strengths, including a shooter for when you're in really dire straits. after all, taking caffeine pills feels like "pill-popping," but having a little beverage is fine, right?

at the same time, there is increasing interest in remedies for a variety of unspecific ailments caused by "toxins," the new buzzword in a very old industry of patent nostrums and dubious cure-alls. the theory is that some sort of unspecified substance has entered your body, and in order to feel well again you need to detox and cleanse -- which in practice involves a lot of induced defecation. And this is supposed to be good for feelings of fatigue, muscle soreness, anxiety, stomach upset, and difficulty sleeping.

See where I'm going with this?

The "toxins" that make you feel terrible all the time are caffeine. Not heavy metals, or refined sugar, or vaccines, or yeast. It's just fucking caffeine.

Well, caffeine and chronic overwork/sleep deprivation, which is not entirely a direct result of the caffeine but is certainly enabled/exacerbated by it. Everyone is working too much and taking stimulants to get through the day and in fact experiencing mild overdose symptoms on a fairly regular basis (irritable? jittery? that's caffeine toxicity) and it's no wonder we all feel like shit.

And then! When you come home from your day of pushing your mind and body too hard! It is ALSO normalized to take downers to level out! Alcohol is also a toxin, and it takes a lot less of it to start doing systemic damage than most people realize. When you wake up in the morning feeling foggy and achy, it may not be enough to register as a proper hangover, but it's almost certainly the combined effect of alcohol and caffeine withdrawal. Both mild! Both nearly harmless and easily recovered from! If you're not doing it on a regular basis and if you're getting enough rest, which you're not, as we previously established.

It's the chronicity that's the issue, the neverending grind of it all. You can't recover from chronic sleep deprivation or overwork with an extra few hours of rest on the weekends. You can't recover from long-term chemical dependence with a 24-hour tolerance break. If you're a wage earner in late-stage capitalism your options for reversing the damage are pretty limited and they all look like deprivation: prioritizing an unbroken 8-9 hours of sleep per night may well mean giving up most if not all of your social life and leisure activities. Fuck that.

And to be clear, I don't consider choosing to stay out late with a vodka Red Bull to be a personal failure of any kind, just like I don't think poor people should never buy themselves anything nice. If work keeps trying to take more and more of your time, you gotta carve out time for yourself somewhere. But... y'all know me. I want people to know the risks.

I think a lot of people don't realize that their bodies are under this much strain. They don't know that we are better suited for a 4-6 hour work day, that 6-7 hours of sleep is genuinely not enough for most people, that as little as 2 cups of coffee might be enough to put them over the recommended maximum caffeine intake. They don't know that they're drinking enough alcohol to cause health problems.

If you know and you decide to do it anyway that's fine, it's your right. I do inadvisable shit all the time. But people don't know, they're not being told, because they can't be allowed to question the material conditions they're being forced to endure -- and then they're being sold a bunch of useless or even harmful bullshit to "cure" the inevitable consequences of those conditions.

[srslylini]

the way germany handles alcohol with teenagers is a word I don't currently have in my vocabulary

because at one hand having it be legal to drink stuff like beer at age 16 does help to reduce a LOT of risks but at the other hand it's also vastly ignoring the shit alcohol does to ones body.

the fact that I was able to drink alcohol at age 13 in restaurants because parents can decide if it's okay or not does have its positives (not ending up in a unsafe situation due to doing it illegaly) but again alcohol is such a dangours substance that gets underestimated all the time.

I don't know one side of me is like "the points that is FOR it being legal, at parts, for 16 year olds is positive" and the other side is like "hmmmm but then again-"

[retropopcult]

A speakeasy in San Francisco, 1931.

[goraturtle]

I need to get back to Maryland so fucking bad glen fucking youngkin keeps cockblocking my recreational weed JUST LET ME GO TO THE WEED STORE

[rigormortisangel]

the fact that there are people who start drinking at 21 is crazy to me

[aspecbuddie]

I couldn't join in with at least half of the conversations tonight because it was all about getting drunk and going to pubs and all I could think was how much more a part of the family I would seem if I didn't avoid alcohol

[fauvester]

Garak would definitely make those clay vases,so it would be cool if you drew him

truly wish I know which vases you were referring to. but this did coincide neatly with my newly retired mom's pottery obsession. we cannot even begin to fathom how many weird hobbies garak's going to try once he's softly forced to retire. he's going to make so many god damn pots

[dead-fandom-society]

born to be the ringleader of a successful prohibition era bootlegging scheme. forced to be a chemistry major.

[hotsugarbyglassanimals]

every time i try to explain drug prohibition to my mom it goes like this:

me: they made these class of drugs illegal because of racism and fear of abnormality first and foremost- mom: and because a lot of people were getting addicted and dying from overdoses me: no, actually- mom: but that's what happened!

[toughtttz]

I still have a few years for something cool to start rearing it's head I can't handle being stuck with the same starter pack mental illness I have now.

[blazingkaistars]

guess who reached seniorhood/j

[waffliesinyoface]

yay: i may be employed soon at a job with benefits and shit

unyay: i will be employed soon, and actually have to work

extremely unyay: the job is with the federal government so there's a decent possibility i'll have to give up weed for, well. forever. if having used it doesn't automatically disbar me.