On This Day: Anti-beer law limits doctors "prescribing" alcohol - Nov. 23, 1921

[jgo]

(edited from article)
"
Prohibition permitted doctors to prescribe alcohol for their patients. Soon, doctors were prescribing it for dozens of ailments and conditions. Doing so generated annual income for doctors of about one-half billion dollars in today’s value.

[The practice was typified by the popular song "Oh! Doctor", published in 1920]:

Most ev’rybody you meet now a days
Seems to be feeling so blue.
They say it is an imposition
To enforce this prohibition.
And I think so too.
But Congress has given Doctors the power
To hand out the Brandy and Rye.
And now in their office at most any hour
You’re bound to hear somebody cry.

[chorus]
Oh! Doctor, Oh! Doctor, I’m feeling blue.
Oh! Doctor, Oh! Doctor, it’s up to you.
The drug stores on the corners are filled with liquor mourners.
I told a drug clerk my condition,
He said, “Go see your physician!”
Oh! Doctor, Oh! Doctor, don’t feel my pulse.
That’s not what I need for results.
Write the prescription and please make it say
“Take with your meals.” I eat ten times a day.
Oh! Doctor, Oh! Doctor, help me pull thro’
For I’ll never get well ’till you do.

"
https://www.alcoholproblemsandsolutions.org/songs-about-prohibition-expressed-support-opposition/

(edited from article)
"
Prescriptions for Alcohol

The Willis-Campbell Act was passed by Congress in 1921. It was during the second year of National Prohibition (1920-1933). The purpose of the law was to limit the right of doctors to prescribe medicinal alcohol to their patients.

U.S. Attorney General Mitchell Palmer was a Prohibitionist. Yet he had ruled that the the National Prohibition Act (known as the Volstead Act) did not limit the authority of doctors to prescribe alcohol for medicinal purposes. Proponents of Prohibition (“drys”) saw this as a distressing loophole in the law.

No Beer

The Willis-Campbell Act is sometimes called the anti-beer law and the beer emergency bill. It permitted doctors to prescribe only wine or distilled spirits to patients. Neither could exceed 24% alcohol by volume. That equals 48 proof.

It also limited the number of prescription forms the government could issue to a doctor to 100 per month. The law further limited the total total amount of alcohol that could be prescribed to any patient. It was one pint per person per ten-day period.
"
https://www.alcoholproblemsandsolutions.org/willis-campbell-act/

(edited from Wikipedia)
"
Willis-Campbell Act

The Willis–Campbell Act of 1921 was a piece of legislation in the United States intended to clarify and tighten regulations around the medicinal use of alcohol during Prohibition. [It became] effective [on] November 23, 1921.

The law, sponsored by Republican Sen. Frank B. Willis of Ohio and Rep. Philip P. Campbell of Kansas, specified that only "spirituous and vinous liquors" (i.e. spirits and wine, thus excluding beer) could be prescribed medicinally, reduced the maximum amount of alcohol per prescription to half a pint, and limited doctors to 100 prescriptions for alcohol per 90-day period. It was commonly known as the "beer emergency bill".

The Act kept in force all anti-liquor tax laws that had been in place prior to the passage of the Volstead Act in 1919, giving authorities the right to choose whether or not to prosecute offenders under prohibition laws or revenue laws, but at the same time guaranteeing bootleggers that they would not be prosecuted in both ways.
"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Willis%E2%80%93Campbell_Act

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