Prescriptions for Liquor – NO REFILLS!
Regardless of how taverns and alcohol benefited the working class and immigrant communities, the Anti-Saloon League was determined to shutter all drinking establishments. Women in black dresses paraded up and down streets in vice districts praying loudly for the poor souls that entered into the saloons. They professed that the ethnic saloons were dens of ill repute. For the moralists, these dens had to be shut down and the sooner the better.
Then the unimaginable happened. The moralist won. On a wave of implementing prohibition in numerous states, they were able to convince United States Congress to pass a constitutional amendment outlawing “intoxicating liquors.” Suddenly, alcohol patrons found themselves in a pickle. Beginning on January 17, 1920, they would no longer be able to walk into their favorite watering hole and order a beer. A glimmer of hope arose. As the moralist celebrated their victory over the elimination of alcohol and the closing of numerous taverns, the 66th Congress passed the National Prohibition Act commonly known as the Volstead Act.
Moralists were happy, but drinkers—alcoholics or not—and businesses that made their money from the sale, manufacturing, and transporting booze were not. The Volstead Act gave federal and state governments the authority to regulate and enforce the 18th Amendment. While the 18th Amendment prohibited “the manufacture, sale, or transportation of intoxicating liquors” it made no provision for enforcing the law, which is what the Volstead Act did. And that glimmer of hope? It was in the the language of the Volstead Act that stated there had to be an “ample supply of alcohol” for use in “scientific research” as well as use in “fuel, dye…and religious rituals.” Doctors now became the avenue through which people could get alcohol.
The 18th Amendment did not prohibit people from drinking alcohol. For centuries, people drank liquor to ease the aches and pains of everyday life. Sometimes brandy-soaked rags were used to comfort a teething infant and other times whiskey was used to ease the pain of pneumonia, tuberculous, high blood pressure, even cancer. Alcohol was widely used to warm a person up after a cold night’s walk or with the hearing of bad news. It was this common acceptance of the medical benefits of alcohol that the US Treasury Department printed alcohol prescription pads.
The idea was that someone with a medical complaint would go to see their doctor. After an examination, if deemed appropriate, the doctor would write a prescription. The government-issued prescription pad had the doctor fill out the kind of liquor, the quantity, and directions. This was followed by the date of the prescription, the patient’s name, address, as well as the name and license number of the doctor. There were spaces for the drug store’s name and its permit number as well as the date filled and cancelled along with the store’s address. On the bottom of the prescription were the words, THIS PRESCRIPTION MUST NOT BE REFILLED.