[Granville-Hough] 4 Apr 2009 - Blue Language And the Jakewalk Blues, 3rd part

[Trustees for Granville W. Hough]

Date: Sat, 04 Apr 2009 05:35:18 -0800
From: Granville W Hough <gwhough at oakapple.net>
Subject: Blue Language And the Jakewalk Blues, 3rd part - 4 April 2009.

    In considering the way the judges and lawyers in Boston handled this 
case, one must conclude that the judge was a victim of astounding 
ignorance, and/or mistrust of government agencies from Washington, DC, 
or  susceptible to bribery or other coercion.  There is little doubt 
that, today, US firms trading in arms, chemical stocks, and  raw drugs  
are so influential that they make a mockery of any effort  to suppress 
illegal drug trafficking.  The question before us is this: Would 
legalizing drugs improve the situation?  If we say YES, then how would 
we go about it?

Another form of paralysis was associated with moonshine, and I 
will talk about it tomorrow.

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(Harold Hopkins, continued)
     FDA's chief of drug control, J. J. Durrett, made an investigative 
swing through the South where some of the lagrest outbreaks of Jakeleg 
had occurred.  Upon returning, Durrett wrote to the chief of FDA's 
Eastern District about watching an experiment in New Orleans in which a 
pig was paralyzed when given some of the poisoned jake.  And he 
addedddd: "We cannot escape the impression that somewhere around the Hub 
Products Co. and its products the answer (to the cause of the poisoning) 
is to be found."
    It was.  While Durrett was urging the prompt collection of samples 
of the poisoned jake to build a case against Hub, the chief of FDA's New 
York Station, Joseph Callaway Jr., reported to Washington that his 
laboratories had extracted from a jake sample "an oily residue 
resembling phenol."  Before 1930 was out that "oily residue" had been 
identified by other Government chemists as the poisonous substance 
triorthocresyl phosphate.
    By mid-summer Federal grand juries in several cities had returned 
indictments against Hub's principals -- Harry Gross, President, and Max 
Reisman, his brother-in-law and part owner.  When FDA investigators went 
to the Hub plant at 65 Fulton Street, Boston, Gross refused permission 
for them to inspect it and told them to return the next day.  They did, 
but samples given them contained no unusual substances.  Hub Products 
closed down its operations immediately.  Investigators of the 
Prohibition Agency and FDA made seizures in a number of cities, but too 
often in tracing shipments from Hub to distributors they found that the 
evidence had already been drunk.  Enough of the poisoned product were 
intercepted in various cities, however, to weave together a strong web 
of evidence implicating Hub Products.
    In February 1931, the several cases pending against Gross and 
Reisman were consolidated for trial in Boston, and the two men were 
charged with conspiracy to violate, and with violations of the National 
Prohibition Act's prohibition against selling jake as an alcoholic 
beverage and of the adulteration and misbranding provisions of the Food 
and Drugs Act of 1906.  Both men pleaded guilty.  The two men were 
sentenced to 2 years imprisonment and fined $1,000 each.  However, the 
jail sentence was suspended and both were placed on probation for 2 
years.  FDA men, who had worked so hard to bring the cases to court, 
were stunned.  The light sentences were later said to have been given in 
a plea bargaining arrangement under which the defendants were to present 
evidence that would convict the "real" culprits, the New York 
bootleggers from whom Gross claimed he got all his products..
    As a result of this arrangement, Gross and Reisman and their lawyers 
met and conferred in Mid-May of 1931 with Haven Parker, assistant U. S. 
Attorney in Boston, but the information they offered was nebulous and 
insubstantial.  The New York culprits had evaporated.
    FDA was particularly miffed becaused it representatives were not 
asked to this conference.  On May 31, 1931, George H. Adams, chief of 
FDA's Boston Station reported evidence to headquarters that traced the 
sale of 135 gallons of triothoocresyl phosphate to Hub Products Co.  
Under the trade name Lyndol -- a plasticizer manufactured by the 
Celluloid Co., Newark, N. J. and used as an ingredient in lacquers and 
othe chemical products -- this chemical had been sold to Hub by a 
chemical products broker, Raffi and Swanson, Boston.  This was enough 
triorthocresy phosphate to adulterate 200 barrels of jake or 640,000 
2-oz. bottles.
    The failure of the conference with Gross and Reisman to provide 
solid evidence against the New York bootleggers they claimed were 
responsible for the poisoned jake strengthened the FDA's determination 
to find the source of the contamination.  Trials had been held in New 
York and elsewhere and a number of people convicted of selling the 
poisoned product, but evidence of who performed the original 
adulteration was not established.
    After conducting its own investigation in New York, FDA concluded 
that both Gross and Reisman were lying about the origins of the 
poisoning and thus had violated the terms of their probation.  The 
Agency decided to probe further in Boston.
    George White, a former employee at Hub, told investigators that he 
had received the barrels of Lydol, left them on the third floor of the 
Hub premises, where they were removed to the fourth floor by Gross and 
the empty containers returned afterward.  White said he had no access to 
the fourth floor, which was kept locked at all times, and that Hub's 
goods apparently were shipped out at night because he would see them 
near the elevator on the third floor when he left for the day and they 
would be gone when he returned in the morning.  Adams presented this 
information to the U.S. Attorney.
    On April 1 1932, Gross was charged with violating probation and 
ordered to serve his 2-year prison term.  Later Judge James A. Lowell 
refused to hear the Government's case asking revocation of Reisman's 
probation.
    Other charges of selling poisoned jake had been brought against 
Gross and Hub Products in December 1931 and had been tried January 25 
1932.  The defendants pleaded guilty and the only sentence was a fine of 
$1, Judge Lowell explaining that these cases should be considered a part 
of the earlier ones, for which the defendants had already been punished.
    The jake poisoning events of 1930 showed plainly that legislation 
was needed to require premarket testing to assure the safety of drugs 
sold in the United States.  The strongest charges that could be brought 
against the men responsible for so many deaths and permanent cripplings 
were that they conspired to ship and had shipped large quantities of 
adulterated and misbranded drugs "consisting of approximately 1,000 
gallons of a product called 'fluid extract of ginger,' and sometimes 
called 'Liquid Medicine in Bulk,' which differed from the standard of 
strength, quality, and purity as determined by the tests laid down by 
the United States Pharmacopoeia for fluid extract of ginger."
    Some observers of the widespread Jakeleg epidemic of 1930 considered 
it more joke than jake, and in a way it was, a grim and lasting 
reminder of the country's noble, adventurous, and sometimes hilarious 
dozen years with legally imposed temperance.  When the Nation was voting 
to go dry in 1818, my father was in France and had no say in the 
matter.  But the notion didn't set well with him and he had no intention 
whatever of letting the agents respoonsible for enforcing Prohibition 
deter him from taking a drink, if he could find one.  Just 3 years shy 
of Repeal, when happy days were just ahead, he and 35,000 other revelers 
found one drink too many.

Harold Hopkins is editorial director of _FDA Consumer. 
/From _FDA Consumer, _June 1980.