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Nov 26, 2025
Booze's post-Repeal redemption was no accident
Booze's post-Repeal redemption was no accident
00:00
1:12:28
Transcript
0:00
[hip-hop music] After a long hiatus, the "Fingers" podcast is back, and glad to be back.
0:28
I'm Dave Infante, publisher of "Fingers," an independent newsletter about drinking in America, now celebrating five years in publication. I'm not sold on that intro music, listener.
0:38
Let me know if you like it or don't by emailing me, along with any other feedback you might have, at
[email protected]
. That's D-I-N-F-O-N-T-A-Y.com, or just reply to any recent "Fingers" newsletter. Let's get to it.
0:56
Anybody who watched the de facto federal ban on hemp-derived tetrahydrocannabinol, or THC, take shape in early November 2025 intuitively understands that both the booze industry and the government have a major influence on the way we get, well, under the influence.
1:14
Still, it was unusual to see major beer, wine, and spirits trade groups line up to encourage an effective death sentence for another intoxicating vice, given the sector's own experience with capital P Prohibition.
1:28
I guess regulation looks a little different when you're on the right side of the food-drug divide.
1:33
As historian Lisa Jacobson lays out in her 2024 book, "Intoxicating Pleasures: The Reinvention of Wine, Beer, and Whiskey after Prohibition," the beverage alcohol business didn't just magically wind up in the relatively good graces of Uncle Sam and society writ large.
1:49
Its post-repeal redemption was a hard-fought battle that took many years of work and many, many marketing dollars, all focused on convincing policymakers, public health officials, and the American drinking public itself that drinking was less a form of drug abuse than the agricultural, culinary, and patriotic pursuit of moderate, socially acceptable leisure.
2:11
Lisa, a professor of history at the University of California, Santa Barbara, joins me now on the "Fingers" podcast to talk about the calculated, coordinated, wildly successful campaign to bring drinking into upstanding American life.
2:25
Stay tuned.
2:28
[hip-hop music] Folks, we have joining us today, uh, Lisa Jacobson.
2:47
Lisa, thank you so much, uh, for coming on the show. It's my pleasure. Thank you. Lisa, where are you joining us from today? Um, I'm joining you from, uh, sunny Santa Barbara, California. Nice.
2:59
And I teach, uh, history courses at the University of California, Santa Barbara. Okay. That's a good place to be.
3:06
Uh, for my part, as you may know, and as our listeners and my readers will know, I'm based in Richmond, Virginia, so we've got a cross-country conversation today about the, uh, the history and constant redefinition of the institution of drinking in, uh, in this country.
3:27
We should get right into it, and our, our vessel today, or our prism today to get into it will be your fantastic book, uh, "Intoxicating Pleasures: The Reinvention of Wine, Beer, and Whiskey after Prohibition."
3:41
Uh, Lisa, tell listeners who, uh, you know, who may not be familiar with your work, may not be familiar with your, uh, your resume or your academic background, how you came to write "Intoxicating Pleasures."
3:55
How did this project come about?
3:58
Well, it was really driven by a question that, a very simple, de- deceptively simple question that, um, piqued my curiosity, which is, how is it that products and practices that were once viewed as disreputable, um, eventually acquire mainstream acceptance?
4:20
And that's a question that you could ask of alcoholic beverages. It's a question you could ask of cannabis. Uh, you could ask it of sex toys.
4:30
Um, but I really wanted to understand, how did alcohol beverages, which were once banned under Prohibition, shed their stigmatized pasts and, uh, eventually acquire mainstream respectability?
4:48
I think that's part of the reason that I wanted to speak with you today. I mean, as I told you before we started recording, the, the book is fantastic. It's incredibly thorough.
4:57
It's really, uh, makes a lot of compelling arguments, and frankly, uh, uncovers a lot of,
5:03
or digs a lot of new ground that I wasn't even familiar with, and I, I consider myself, at least as a layperson, a decent scholar of Prohibition. Mm-hmm. So, I mean, the work is fantastic. Thank you.
5:14
Um, but part of the reason I wanted to talk to you is because the lessons that you put forth in, or you sort of excavate in "Intoxicating Pleasures" are not just historical lessons.
5:26
I mean, obviously history's in constant, you know, production and reproduction, and we are living through an era right now where we have some pretty, to me, like, close parallels, um, e- for that, uh, that dynamic that you're describing, right?
5:42
How these illicit substances or practices become or achieve mainstream acceptance and, and, uh, and acceptability. I'm thinking of, uh, for, you mentioned sex toys, which is a great example.
5:54
I'm thinking also of mobile sports betting, which was- Mm... verboten just 10 years ago, right? Unheard of that, that we would, uh, allow that in our society, and is now, um, you know-...
6:06
devoured the, the sports industry in this country, and sports media along with it. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
6:12
I'm also thinking about, and this is very, uh, uh, up-to-date, uh, bleeding edge example, but hemp-derived THC beverages, right? Mm-hmm. Which are currently being, um, [tsks] [sighs]
6:26
sort of, uh, litigated is the wrong word, but it i- they are being vetted and chewed over at the highest levels of legislative power in this country.
6:36
Congress is considering whether or not to close the 2018, uh, quote-unquote, "loophole" that it opened in the farm bill, um- Hmm... allowing hemp beverages to exist, right?
6:46
So there's, there's this, these battles even within beverage to achieve mainstream respectability, and anyone who's, who is trying to understand whether they're on the side of trying to ban THC drinks or they're on the side of trying to help them gain acceptance, has a lot to learn from what the alcohol industry did or maybe didn't do, you know, the mistakes they made, the successes they had, um, 100 years ago.
7:10
So that is my way of setting the stage for you. Please take us back.
7:17
I mean, you know, the book is in-le- as I said, incredibly thorough, but I wanted to maybe take you and take our listeners back to the immediate aftermath of prohibition, right? Mm-hmm.
7:29
Like, repeal, um, happens, and as you note in the book, and other scholars have also noted, the three-tier system doesn't just emerge out of nowhere, right?
7:40
Like, the, at first, no one really quite knows what to do with alcohol.
7:43
Can you speak a little bit to that, that early post-prohibitionary period, period where the experiment has failed, everyone understands it, but no one...
7:54
I-it is still a live ball the role alcohol will play in American society. Mm-hmm. Can you, can you take us back to that moment and give us the lay of the land a little bit? Yeah.
8:04
I mean, one thing I would say is that, uh, the story of the, the kind of legal landscape that takes shape after repeal actually begins, uh, during the campaign to repeal prohibition.
8:21
So one thing that, um, you know, the, the remnants of the alcoholic beverage industry that's still alive, um, making, uh, medicinal whiskey or sacramental wine, um, uh, or, or the beer industry still making near beer and those products, um- Malt syrup, wink, wink, by the way.
8:44
Yes. Yeah. [laughs] Yes, malt syrup, wink, wink. Uh, you know, y- brewers yeast. Yep. Yep. Uh, people figured out, yes, these can be combined to wonderl- wonderful effect. But, you know, please don't, by the way.
8:56
You know, uh- Right... uh, folks, please. [laughs] Mail order this stuff and whatever you do in your own home is your business, just please don't combine them- Right... you know, with water perhaps, you know?
9:05
[laughs] Right. Or, or the, um, famous wine bricks during prohibition that were- Sure... uh, sold, you know. B- you can mix this with wine, but be sure not to put it in a dark space where f-fermentation might happen.
9:21
So- Sure... lots of winking and nodding.
9:24
But it's important to recall that a constitutional amendment had never been repealed before, and there is this perception that all it would take would be a determined block of 13 states, most of them in the South, to prevent the repeal of prohibition.
9:46
So the early political overtures are, "Let's see if we can get, um, some openings for low-alcohol beer and light wines by modifying the Volstead Act," which is reinforcing, which is, you know, the legislation enabling the 18th Amendment.
10:07
Um, and the only way you can do that is to enter a debate about, well, what's intoxicating? Hmm.
10:16
The 18th Amendment bans, um, intoxicating beverages, but it's only the Volstead Act that defines it, so maybe we can modify the Volstead Act to get rid of this ridiculously restrictive definition of intoxicating, uh, beverages, which puts it at 0.5%.
10:37
And so there are congressional hearings that go on for weeks, um, right after the landslide election of, um, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, and the, you have these huge Democratic majorities in the, um, House and the Senate, and they're ready and, and kind of eager to, um, do what they can to bring back beer, um, part as a revenue-enhancing, um, uh, benefit, but also bringing back jobs.
11:12
Mm-hmm. And these congressional debates lay the foundation for the legisla- legislative, um, mess [laughs] that really comes later, um, because what the- The, the rich tapestry, let's say. Yes, the rich tapestry.
11:29
Yeah, the me- a mess to some, a rich tapestry to others. Yeah, yeah. [laughs] Right. Yes. The crazy patchwork quilt. That's right.
11:38
But the, um, brewers, um, you know, make the argument, and they're really backed up by scientists, who ultimately are the ones who persuade, um, Congress to legalize beer early, several months before full-scale repeal takes effect, and they make the argument that beer at 3.2% is non-intoxicating.
12:07
And part of the argument that the scientists put forward is that alcohol, um-Uh, intoxication is not determined by potency alone, that context matters.
12:21
The, you know, where you're drinking it, the time of day, with what kind of food, with the, uh, you know, what is the intention of the drinker. All of these factor in to determining what intoxicating is.
12:36
Um, but there's a little winking i-i- in the, um, congressional hearings too, because they're arguing, "You know, we can't have 2.75% alcohol.
12:48
That's not going to have the sensory stimulus that's going to get us the economic stimulus- [laughs] Right... that we want." Right. Right, right.
12:57
Um, we want something that will, you know, put people in a, um, good mood and, and, and warm them up. Um, so that's an important argument that really lays the groundwork.
13:11
The, the vintners aren't successful in convincing Congress that, you know, 10 to 12% alcohol is non-intoxicating, but they do convince a lot of people that beer and wine should be more lightly regulated than spirits.
13:29
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Um, and a lot of the regulations, um, that come in after, um, repeal sort of mirror that. Mm-hmm. Um, access to wine and beer, uh, is e- easier.
13:44
They're taxed at a much lower rate. Um, spirits are much harder to get, taxed at a significantly, um, higher rate.
13:55
So that, and then 3.2 beer is, um, defined as non-intoxicating, and that's something that allows beer to be sold in states that otherwise ban all other alcoholic beverages.
14:10
They might only permit 3.2 beer. This is also what allows the military to say, for the first time in the 20th century, "We'll allow beer back in.
14:22
Um, it can be sold through the PX stores, the, you know, a- on, on base camps- Yep... um, because it's non-intoxicating."
14:32
Um, and then the other p- piece of the three-tier system is, that comes into to being, is to, um, make sure that the tied house saloon never returns. And so
14:50
y- you, you have to keep, uh, it, it separate. The manufacturing and the, the retailing ends and the distribution ends of the business- Mm-hmm... have to be, um, separated.
15:03
And that's something that, you know, there are rivalries within the brewing industry between the big shipping companies that have a national market that are well-positioned to, um, sell bottled beer.
15:18
They've got the infrastructure. They've got the transportation infrastructure, um, the glass-making in- infrastructure to do it.
15:26
Um, but then you have regional and, um, local breweries that still are selling p- primarily on tap. Mm.
15:35
And so, um, there is, in those early years after repeal, some kind of violations of the, some sort of bringing back of hints of the tied house saloon. Um,
15:51
old habits die hard, and the, the economic incentives are there. Yeah. The... Well done.
16:01
So you've mentioned so much here, and I wanna unpack a couple things for readers and listeners who, um, may not be quite as familiar and haven't had an opportunity to pick up your book.
16:13
What you've set up here, Lisa, I think, and I don't wanna get too ahead of ourselves here, is like there's a couple things that continue, there's themes that continue to appear throughout "Intoxicating Pleasures" that you've just sort of referenced in this, this lead-in.
16:27
One is, uh, that the concept of drinking in moderation, right? Mm. Which is still not quite maybe explicitly being discussed, right?
16:36
Where there's still debates over level of intoxication, but this is the seed that gets planted, right? It, it rests on this paradox. As you note, uh, they are debating before Congress.
16:48
They're bringing in scientific experts to say, "Well, 2.7%, 2.75% ABV, like, that won't be enough to, to tran- you know, elevate the drinker and, and have them experience pleasure, but 3.2 might be enough."
17:00
What we're talking about in that case, or what they were talking about that time, is like, well, how drunk is it gonna get you, right? Like you're g- Yeah. We all know what's going on here, right?
17:06
But it, I, I think one of the things you draw out in this portion of your book is that this conversation was recontextualized away from drunkenness and more into the realm of, uh, I mean, I don't wanna say pseudoscience, but right?
17:21
There's, like, a little bit of, um, uh, y- maybe pop science, right? There's like, well, this'll be enough.
17:28
And, and this idea of, of context in, in eating, uh, in dr- you know, drinking while you eat a meal versus drinking alone. Like, those things are demonstrably true to some extent. Mm-hmm.
17:39
Like that, that's empirically factual, right?
17:42
[laughs] But it also is really expedient for the brewers and, and to some extent for all the, uh, the, you know, beverage alcohol suppliers who really want to claw their way back into the good graces of American society.
17:56
So that's one of the things that I wanted to just briefly flag, is that this, this paradox starts to emerge here, right?
18:02
It's like, well, we, we want everyone, you know, to not get drunk, but really w- what we sell is, is a, is, to some extent, is, is a, is a drunkenness, right?
18:10
And so the industry is starting to circle, even at this point 100 years ago, right after Prohibition, or even during still Prohibition, uh, circle around messaging that would wind up serving it extremely well over the course of, you know, most of the 20th century and into the 21st.
18:25
The other thing I wanted to briefly mention is the schisms or the, uh, rivalries, power dynamics bothInter, uh, congre- or in, you know, throughout the country, and then even within the industry itself, right?
18:41
And those are the ones that are most interesting to me because- Mm... we, we, we know a lot about what proponents of prohibition and what the dries, uh, you know, were going for.
18:52
And, and there's been a lot of work done on shedding light on the kind of shaky alliances that cobbled that coalition together, right?
19:02
And, um, the big tent of that it somehow at different points included the Ku Klux Klan and various church groups and whatever. So- Mm-hmm...
19:11
but there's less, uh, or there has been typically less work done to understand the intra-industry relationships between the trade groups that f- either already existed pre-Prohibition or formed to try to usher Prohibition out the door.
19:28
Um, and, uh, to the outsider, right, to the casual drinker now or then, alcohol, uh, is certainly...
19:36
You know, different types of alcohol are different, but you mostly think about it from a taste perspective or, you know, a experience perspective.
19:42
But, um, this was, those, those ideas are, were still being formed at this time, right? Alcohol, all alcohol was not created equal. And in this era,
19:52
uh, there was daylight that formed not only between the brewers and then, you know, the winemakers and the distillers, but also, as you note, between different types of brewers.
20:01
I want, I, I hope if you could discuss a little bit how these alliances change, uh, and shape the post-Prohibitionary period, because I think that's really important to get at, is like
20:16
the, these maybe seemingly natural allies are not always that allied with one another. [lip smack] Right. Ab- absolutely.
20:25
I think, you know, one of the big stories that my book tells is how do these, you know, distinctive industries come to recognize themselves as a culturally coherent industry, and that takes a lot of work.
20:45
So I mean, what's fascinating to me is that this is a book about persuasion, persuading consumers and regulators to see wine, beer, and even spirits as something that can be enjoyed in moderation.
21:01
Um, but it's also a story about persuading people within the industry, uh, to get on the same page about- Yeah. Yeah... what it is that they're promoting, what it is that they're making. Um- What business we're in.
21:15
Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Right.
21:17
And, um, and I think the wine industry is particularly fascinating on this point because the wine industry, you know, combines people who are making grapes to growing grapes to be sold as tr- table grapes or to be sold as raisins, and then a very small part is interested in wine.
21:41
And so you have this tension between, um, those winemakers who are invested in creating a market for table wines to be enjoyed with meals, um, those who are more invested in s- selling to the much better developed market for fortified wine, and then you have another group, and some of these are overlapping, who basically look at wine and say, "Well, this is the, you know,
22:14
dumping ground for the surplus table- Right... grapes and surplus raisin grapes that I wasn't able to sell this season." [chuckles] Right.
22:24
Um [chuckles] This is an outlet for my, my fruit that I can't place anywhere else. Yeah. [laughs] Yeah. It's, it's, it's a salvage, uh, a- a- outlet. And- Yeah, yeah...
22:33
um, and, you know, and that does not make for, um, great quality wine because you've got a variety of grapes ending up in the crushers that are not, um, the most high quality, um, grapes.
22:49
Uh, but that in and of itself is partly a legacy of Prohibition,
22:56
in which, which was bad for winemakers, but a huge bonanza for grape growers who were selling their grapes across the nation to, um, you know, big cities with large pools of, of immigrants who were turning that, um, those grapes into homemade wine.
23:19
Sure. Um,
23:20
in keeping with an, an odd exemption in the Volstead Act that allowed for, um, the making of up to 200 gallons of, of, of wine, or fermented fruit juice was the term they used, um, for home, uh, use.
23:39
Right. Right. And the winemaker thing, you know, the dynamic w- amongst the winemakers I think is really instructive.
23:48
I, I pulled a excerpt from your book for a recent newsletter because w- what we, uh, see in this market today for beverage alcohol, right, is, is what, uh, one of my readers referred to as the infantilization of the American- Mm...
24:04
drinker, right? And that's actually not a new phenomenon.
24:07
As you ably note in your book, like you mentioned fortified wines and these more sweet wines, like those gained a lot of traction during this period, and the American palate, I mean, you could view it as an arrested development of the national, you know, palate that really has never recovered or never, you know, fully recovered from that, uh, that era.
24:30
Can you, y- so jumping off the fortified wine piece, can you talk a little bit about why those products in particular had so much success in this period and in-...
24:42
the potential downsides they posed to the broader category achieving legitimacy. Yeah, absolutely. Um, so
24:54
the experience of prohibition actually ends up changing, um, what Americans gravitate to in wine. Yeah. Actually, before prohibition, you know, the dry, drier table wines sold better.
25:12
Um, hoppier beers sold better.
25:15
Uh, but in part because of what drinkers are exposed to and not exposed to in, um, during prohibition, winemakers are confronted with an entirely different market of people who, you know, have very different taste preferences.
25:34
So the fact that people were using orange juice and soda pop and whatever sweetened, um, beverage to cover the awful taste of bootleg gin during, um, prohibition meant that, you know, they were primed to enjoy a sweeter alcoholic beverage.
25:57
Um, or simply just being accustomed to enjoying a orange juice or a soda with a meal means you're gonna expect your beverage to be, um, much better.
26:09
You also have the problem that most Americans weren't wine drinkers to begin with. Right, right.
26:16
[laughs] This was something that, um, you know, was really enjoyed, um, by various immigrants, uh, from, you know, southern and eastern Europe, um, but not, not really widely practiced.
26:31
And then you have the phenomenon of what kind of wine is entering bootleg channels during prohibition. So some of it is wine that's destined for the Catholic Church or the s- synagogue as sacramental wine.
26:49
Those all tended to be much sweeter. Mm-hmm. And then you have the practice of home winemakers who, in order to perhaps boost the potency and the volume of wine, are adding a lot of sugar into it. Sure. So that's also...
27:07
So it's, that both works, uh, a- against the wine industry later in a couple of different ways, in part because the stuff is really kind of raw and harsh.
27:18
So when they do drink it in Italian restaurants, some develop a taste for it, but some decide, "Ah, I'm stay- stick- staying away from this."
27:27
Um, uh, but there is this sort of, um, people accustomed to expecting something that's more sweet, more potent. Uh, and then you also have tax policy- Right...
27:41
affecting consumer preferences, because if you want something that packs a little bit more of a punch, [chuckles] and you don't wanna pay for whiskey, which is priced much higher, you're gonna go for the fortified wine.
27:57
Mm-hmm. So that's part of the market. Um, and sweet wines, dessert wines like the ports and the sherries, um, still outsell, um, table wines up until 1966. Wow.
28:14
So this is a very long, protracted, um, [lips smack] sort of campaign to get Americans to enjoy, um, wi- drier wines with their, their dinner.
28:29
And in fact, one of the things the wine industry has to do is, you know, plant stories in women's magazines- Yeah, yeah... in Life Magazine, that, um, teaches consumers more flattering ways to talk about wine. Yeah.
28:46
So they say, "Don't say this is a sour wine. The, the word you, you want is dry. This is a dry wine." [laughs] Yeah. Um- Which is, which is, it strikes me as, you know, I'm always, sorry to interrupt, but I just- Yeah...
28:59
uh, was struck with a thought. I'm al- as a journalist, I'm always, uh, adversarial towards the industry. That's the posture I take. Mm.
29:05
That's what I believe my job is, is to be scrutinizing the claims that they make and, and the types of media they produce and the way they talk about themselves, et cetera, et cetera.
29:15
But I wanna make the point, at least in my view, and I'd be...
29:18
I'd love to hear your perspective, but a- a- as I, as I sussed it out in the book, I, I tend to think that you sort of come down in the middle here, that this was not necessarily pernicious propaganda as such, right?
29:32
Like, there was an education process that was actually happening at this time, and, and beer was doing a version of the same thing, and the distillers were kinda squabbling around to find their message because they don't have nearly the, the moral high ground or the veneer of Europhilic respectability that wine is able to tap into.
29:51
But there was actual education happening at that time. It wasn't just, "Hey, let's pull a fast one on these rubes," right? Absolutely, and I think, um, one of the, I think, um,
30:04
the wine, all of them, winemakers, whiskey makers, brewers, see themselves and cast themselves as drinking reformers afterwards. Yeah, yeah. And they- We, we alone can fix it, the problem we created, by the way.
30:19
[laughs] Well, actually, I don't think they think that it's the problem that they created. I think the, they think the problem was created by prohibition itself. Sure, sure, yeah. Which, um, by glamorizing...
30:35
alcohol, um, by glamorizing sort of overindulgence at these, in these speakeasies, at cocktail parties, that Americans sort of didn't learn how to drink well.
30:50
Um, that prohibition reinforced all of the bad habits of excessive drinking and, and created some new ones along the way.
31:00
And so one of the fantasies that the brewers and the vintners have in particular is that we want to transform the United States into a republic of temperate wine and beer drinkers.
31:14
And what's fascinating about this story is who their allies are in this process.
31:20
Some of them are in members of Franklin Delano Roosevelt's brain trust, Rexford Tugwell, who, you know, early on in the Roosevelt administration, has this gathering of, speaks to this gathering of, um, the National Democratic Women's Club, and he says, "It's up to you women to make repeal work.
31:45
And the way you're gonna make repeal work is by, um, becoming guardians of moderation." Mm. "By joining your husbands in the beer garden, by joining them in the wine cafe, by serving wine with your dinners.
32:03
This is going to teach people how to enjoy alcohol in a moderate, civilized way that promotes conviviality, um, but without all the drunken excess." Yeah. And so that is certainly part of the fantasy.
32:19
It's a fantasy that, um, you know, is very difficult to realize, in part because the allure of whiskey is there. That tends to be where Americans gravitate towards first.
32:36
Um- Especially American men. Yes. Um, uh, right. And, um, but they certainly, um, are, are going... I mean, I think women are really key to making repeal work.
32:53
Um, and the brewers, all of them, brewers, vintners, and distillers recognize that women are important, and they either, in the case of brewers and vintners, court women aggressively,
33:08
um, because the assumption is that women are the gatekeepers who are gonna decide how much and what kind of alcohol enters the home.
33:18
Which becomes relevant because, just to bring it back for, for folks who didn't make the connection maybe, becomes relevant in that shift from saloon on draft drinking to bottled, shipped, distributed, what we now think of as distributed packaged beer.
33:34
Once the shift from the on-premise to the off-premise happens, then the man is no longer, uh, of a household, isn't necessarily in charge of procuring his own alcohol because shopping is gendered to the housewife in the household.
33:49
She becomes the decision-maker, which is a crucial shift, as you... S- sorry to interrupt. I just wanted to make sure I flesh that out. Yeah. No, thank you. That's, that's great.
33:58
Um, I, and I think part of what the beer industry does early on is teaches women to see, or at least it tries to, um, get them to imagine beer as, um, belonging on the pantry shelf or in the refrigerator, along with everything else that they put in their cart.
34:21
Or, um, so that they're getting them to kind of think of it as a, a pantry staple, um, and something that you might even, um, cook with. So, you know, there early on are some,
34:37
you know, beer cook, um, books that have some really classic recipes for, like, you know, beer bread and beer cheese sauce- Cheese, yeah. Yeah...
34:48
and chocolate beer cake, which might sound strange to some people, but actually is absolutely fantastic. But then they've got some really strange ones, by, by my lights at least, like, um, melon balls in beer dressing.
35:06
[laughs] This is one of my favorite parts of your book is, is where you list off or reel through some of the...
35:12
'Cause the, w- I forget if it was the US Brewers Association, one of the trade groups was putting out, producing, like, a pretty, at the time, high production value cookbook, and disseminating it through traditional media and publishing, you know, uh, getting into the hands of housewives.
35:26
And as you note, some of this stuff made sense, and it's like, okay, cool, and then some of it was like, [tsks] I don't know, man, I think you're reaching a little bit here. [laughs] Right. Right. [laughs] Y- yeah.
35:36
I mean, the, the recipe for, uh, melon balls in, in beer dressing was simply melon balls doused in a cup of beer and, and stored in your refrigerator. Right.
35:50
And, and the cookbook did not get very good reviews, uh, y- you know,
35:56
uh, with some saying, "Well, you know, maybe these, uh, cookbook authors have, uh, had a little bit too much of this mild amber fluid to drink when they were-" Right... "writing, um, these recipes."
36:10
The wine industry has much, uh, better luck in, in promoting wine as a cooking aid. I- Oh, sorry. Go ahead. Go ahead.
36:19
Well, I wanted to potentially maybe address this a little bit more head-on, because I think, uh, not the thesis, but one of the, like, strongest r- ribs or supporting arguments- Mm...
36:30
of intoxicating pleasures that you make, at least as I found it, is this explicit, in some cases, uh-...
36:41
repositioning by the, by the trade groups, uh, of beer and wine, and to some extent, lesser extent whiskey, as agricultural or even more so f- like, l- literal food stuffs.
36:54
And the, the-- You mentioned the beer cookbook, and you, you spend time, uh, laying out brewer's yeast as an additive, uh, during World War II, which is obviously a huge inroad for the American brewing industry.
37:08
They're able to convince the government, and by extension, a large portion of the population, that brewer's yeast is not only a good source of, what, vitamin B- Mm-hmm...
37:17
but also, I mean, downright patriotic to be eating brewer's yeast or putting it into your recipes or whatever. Mm-hmm.
37:24
The other one that I wanna mention, because it's, it's a- almost a bridge too far, but it works, and it works magnificently, is how wine,
37:34
uh, or vineyard owners, people who grow grapes, start referring to themselves as wine growers. Can you talk a little bit about that rhetorical shift? Because it sounds ridiculous, right?
37:45
And even at the time, uh, there was a lot of pushback as, as you write in, in, um, Intoxicating Pleasures.
37:51
Within the wine industry, they all kinda guffaw, or many of them guffawed and thought it was, "No one will ever believe this if we..." You don't grow wine. What's a wine grower?
37:59
Can you talk a little bit about this rhetorical shift and how, uh, how it achieved success and, and what that success allowed the wine industry to do? Yeah.
38:10
So the wine growers is this remarkable linguistic invention that- Doesn't mean anything. [laughs]... that, you know, actually has huge staying power.
38:23
And, uh, the reason why it sort of, uh, and this is part of what I was talking about earlier, that how does this industry that has lots of rivalries within it come to see themselves as a culturally co- coherent industry?
38:41
And part of that is pivoting around this idea of seeing themselves as fundamentally agricultural, um, as, um, and really hyping the agrarian mystique of wine and wine growers.
38:58
Um, one of the, um, you know, the industry really wanted, industry leaders I should say, really wanted to invest in a colt- national collective advertising campaign to promote wine drinking.
39:15
Um, and so the idea was to promote the product and the practice of drinking wine with meals or as an appetizer or a dessert wine, um, rather than promoting a brand.
39:28
And it was very difficult to get people on board, to get everybody to pitch in. Mm-hmm.
39:34
But there was a mechanism that could compel everybody to pitch in as long as everybody, you know, once a, en- enough, um, growers signed onto this.
39:49
That mechanism was a marketing order from the California State Department of Agriculture.
39:57
You first had to convince the State Department of Agriculture, though, that wine was an agricultural product in order to take advantage of that mechanism for compelling everybody to pitch into this collective advertising campaign.
40:13
And so one of the lawyers for Jefferson Peyser, the lawyer for, um, the Wine Institute, basically says, "Well, we should just call ourselves wine growers."
40:25
And as you said, [laughs] you know, if that was initially sort of, um, laughed at, "We don't see any of this wine growing out of the ground." Um, but that really stuck.
40:37
Um, and here's also where, um, other linguistic, um, innovations are important. So, um, the people who sold wine, um, who, um,
40:53
were encouraged to take study courses, and consumers sometimes took these wine study courses that taught people here's the proper terminology, and so that reinforced this idea and spread the idea of, um,
41:11
winemakers were wine growers. But part of the other linguistic innovation was, don't refer to, you know, wine as coming out of a factory or out of a plant. It's a winery.
41:26
Um, don't use the word fortified, because that implies that the wine is spiked intentionally, um, so that it, you know, and it reinforces the impression that wine is enjoyed primarily for its intoxicating effects.
41:42
But all of these were moves to kind of redefine winemakers as artisanal, as kind of gentleman farmers. They weren't manufacturers. This was a way of really distancing wine from the whiskey industry- Mm-hmm...
41:59
which was, you know, m- about in, about mass manufacturing. Of course, wine was mass manufacturing, man- mass manufactured, but that wasn't, um, the sort of cultural overlay that they- Yeah...
42:13
were putting on the industry. And they had, uh, maybe a little bit of a head start or a built-in advantage because they, uh,
42:20
the consumer at least perceived a little bit less, uh, manufacture between a vineyard and a bottle of wine, right? You can sort of in your mind's eye get a little, you know, it's grape juice, right?
42:32
It just, it gets from one to the other.
42:33
Whereas, um, [clears throat] distilling is a process that runs through copper kettles and, uh, multiple levels of distillation, and it does not-Even retain the hue necessarily of the grains that go into it.
42:48
I mean, it, it adopts obviously a brown hue, but often that comes from the char of the, of the oak barrels it sits in. So a, a little bit of a, a different jump. I, I'm glad you mentioned whis- Oh, sorry, go ahead.
42:58
I was gonna say that it's, it's easy for us from our current perspective to see it as a little less of a jump- Yeah... for the wine industry. But I think this was, um, a cultural invention- Hmm...
43:14
that we don't see now, but that it happened then. In fact, a lot of wine, um, was, uh, you know, California wine got some negative reviews early on. Yeah, yeah.
43:26
I think Fortune Magazine referred to it as conveyor belt wine. [laughs] Right, right. So there was this idea that it was cheap, mass-produced.
43:37
Um, so to really heighten the sort of agrarian mystique of wine, that was, that took some cultural work.
43:47
And, um, the wine industry was aided in this effort by novelists who, you know, wrote very romantic pictures of, uh, you know, the wine industry and the beautiful fields. Yeah.
44:02
But all of, all of that, um, was something, um, that the wine industry has continued to work on through, um, promoting culinary tourism and- Sure... and wine tourism. Sure.
44:15
You mention whiskey, and I do think that it's important, um, I mean, of course it's important, but it's also a point of great interest here about what the whiskey ind- or the distilling industry, which de facto is the whiskey business, because gin got a very bad rap during Prohibition, as you note.
44:32
Um, but the whiskey distillers, they have a bunch of product laid down.
44:36
Um, initially, as you note in the, in the book, uh, post-Prohibition, or excuse me, in World War II, you know, so, uh, a few years after Prohibition ends, uh, they figure, "Well, we're gonna have a surplus of whiskey because all these GIs are, are overseas."
44:50
Well, the opposite was true. [laughs] There was a run on whiskey because, uh, more women in the workforce and more people getting bigger paychecks with almost full employment.
45:00
All of a sudden, the distillers didn't have enough whiskey to sell, and there's shortages, and they get the, they got the government involved to help them, uh, to help them try to meet demand.
45:10
So, uh, but I'm getting a little bit ahead of myself. Uh, we've talked about whiskey in context to what beer and wine aren't, right?
45:19
And the, and the brewers and the vintners to some extent have a lot of success differentiating themselves and, and convincing n- you know, uh, policymakers and the American consumer that they are the beverages of moderation.
45:33
But the whiskey business is no slouch, uh, in it, in its own right at this stage, and it goes to work trying to figure out what its message is.
45:41
And, and we spoke a little bit earlier about the importance, uh, that Tugwell places on the American housewife or the American woman in being stewards of moderation.
45:53
But the whiskey business, as you, as you lay out, uh, kinda cuts the other direction and has a lot of success in doing so, framing up whiskey as a masculine product.
46:03
Can you speak a little bit, can you tell us, uh, how they ran the other direction and wound up in more or less the same place? Yeah. So the whiskey industry, um, actually
46:16
voluntarily agrees that, um, we will not include representations of women in liquor advertising, and this is a self-imposed ban that lasts until 1958.
46:33
[laughs] And, and the rationale for it is that they just simply think there's too much risk in antagonizing prohibitionists, so, um, let's not do that.
46:44
Plus they recognize that whiskey is widely recognized as a masculine drink, um, and that's their primary market in any case. So
46:58
Seagram launches its own kind of institutional campaign, a moderation campaign that lasts for five decades. And in this campaign, you know, they're promoting messages about
47:12
it- the imperative of responsible drinking, of never taking that one glass too many, of, you know, not drinking and driving, all of these messages.
47:24
But one of the things that I find particularly fascinating is the way that these early ads in the 1930s actually co-opted the message of their temperance opponents. Yeah. So there was, uh, one ad [lip smack]
47:42
that said, "We don't want your, your bread money," um, which was quite a slogan, and it had a, an image of a woman's, you know, weathered hands trying to cut a very stale loaf of bread. Yeah, yeah.
47:59
Really- Dest- destitution. It, it calls back Hoovervilles. It calls back to the, yeah, Great Depression, right? Yeah.
48:05
And it also calls back the image of, that prohibitionists promoted of the forlorn housewife who was left impoverished by her husband who squandered the family income on drink in the saloon. Right. Right.
48:21
And so what they're doing is saying, "We only want the business of men who have definite incomes and know how to fulfill their breadwinning obligations.
48:34
Uh, we don't want, um, to take money from people, from men who are going to drink beyond their means." This also is a way of sort of saying, providing some instruction to people.
48:48
Um, whiskey is going to be more expensive. It's, um, a luxury that's meant to be sipped and savored, not guzzled. Um, but they're really associating whiskey drinking with responsible male breadwinning- Mm-hmm...
49:06
and men of financial means. Right.
49:09
And, and that, um, lends whiskey a, a kind of respectability.Um, and all of these efforts that the brewers are making, winemakers are making, the whiskey makers to promote drinking in moderation, um, really begin to gain traction enough so that prohibitionists start complaining very loudly, "They've stolen our moral thunder."
49:36
[laughs] You know, "They're beating us, uh, uh, you know, using these, these temperate m- messages." Yeah. Yeah.
49:44
Uh, one of the things I think we've mentioned a few times throughout this conversation is the importance, maybe not the all importance, but certainly significance of, uh, alcohol's tax revenue potential. Mm-hmm.
50:01
Um, a- a- and I think a lot of listeners and readers will recognize that tax revenues were very important to repeal, um, and certainly important in the immediate aftermath as America prepared for and then entered World War II.
50:17
Um, you make the case in, in your book that while this was an important piece, it maybe wasn't the only piece, right? There are other things at play.
50:27
I mean, the brewers in particular had a lot of success with, as we mentioned, uh, brewer's yeast and, and finding- Mm-hmm...
50:34
a way to build cultural and institutional inroads with the government that didn't really have to do with taxation so much as like a proactive, collaborative, uh, a mutually beneficial partnership.
50:47
But nevertheless, taxation and tax revenue is very important. You mention it in terms of placement and cost, right? The difference between wine and spir- beer and wine, and then spirits. Mm-hmm.
50:57
Um, uh, contextualize, if you could, um, how those convers- I know this is a huge topic, but like those conversations didn't just happen, right?
51:07
The industry is working to shape how it is taxed and is, is looking for ways to get the most advantageous position, but also not overreach and be seen as, uh, uh, greedy or, or taking advantage because that's, that could lead to a reinvigoration of the dries that are still, at that point, quite powerful and are still kind of looming around the corner and trying to reinstitute prohibition.
51:32
Talk a little bit about the political economy around taxation of beverage alcohol in this period. Okay. So there are a lot of different points of entry for that, that question. I, I'm gonna start with- I know. It's huge.
51:49
I'm setting you up to... How could you answer? I know, Lisa. Okay. I'm sorry. [laughs] I, I... Well, I'll start with, um, one of the more amusing episodes in, in my book, which actually comes ver- very early.
52:02
Um, in 1932, um,
52:08
the brew- uh, cities across the country staged these massive beer parades to demand the re-legalization of beer, and there's one in New York that's particularly impressive, about 150,000 participants, uh, you know, hundreds of, you know, 500,000, um, people on the s- city streets watching and cheering the marchers on.
52:34
But what's fascinating is that, um, they are carrying big banners that say, "Beer for taxation." Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
52:43
And [laughs] you know, most of us might be familiar with those photographs of, of, um, you know, union workers carrying placards that say, "We want beer."
52:55
Um, and there was that spirit that, um, uh, suffused the beer parades in 1932, but there was also this more conservative argument, beer for taxation.
53:10
When in American history have people marched to have their taxes raised? [laughs] And the newsreel that accompanies the beer march says something very interesting.
53:23
It says, "They're marching, uh, for beer, not for beer, but for taxation." Yeah, yeah.
53:31
So there's this conservative framing of something that is, you know, could be a very simple consumer demand, and it's instead being presented as a patriotic consumer sacrifice.
53:45
Um, meanwhile, the, um, uh, financiers, uh, and industrial magnates, some of whom have joined the parade, are marching with the hope that bringing back beer will lower their taxes. [laughs] Yeah, because they...
54:01
What is this federal income tax that I'm dealing with now? Maybe if we find a new revenue stream for the government, they'll loosen up on that, you know? [laughs] Right. Right.
54:10
So that- The D- the DuPonts of the world and the JP Morgans of the... Yeah, yeah. Sure, sure. E- exactly. Uh, EF Hutton, Walter Chrysler, all of these people, yeah, they, they want lower taxes, not higher taxes.
54:25
So, so there's a little bit of, uh, conflicting aspirations, um, on display in the, in the beer parade.
54:33
Um, but I, I think one of the things that, you know, the industry certainly understands that the key to their economic fortunes lies in part on how they're taxed.
54:47
Um, are they gonna be taxed at such a level that invites the bootleggers back in? Mm.
54:54
Um, and the government has to find that sweet spot where they're taxing high enough to take in revenue, but not so high that it makes, um, buying on the black market appealing.
55:08
And, you know, what's interesting in, in, during the Depression is that home wine making really persists all the way through the 1930s.
55:18
So it's, there, not everybody is rushing back to make, to buy commercial, um, grade, um, wine. Which was a challenge you referenced in the book.
55:28
[laughs] Like the wine makers are like, "We can't get people to buy our wine, in part because they're very content with their own product." [laughs] Right.
55:35
And, and maybe some of the earliest wines that came, uh, you know, out were not, not-Good enough- It works, yeah, yeah... to say, you know, uh, we should be trading up. Um, that's, yeah, that's, that's for sure.
55:51
And in fact, there's even this kind of sense of ethnic betrayal in the wine industry where the Italian winemakers are going, "Yeah, our, the very market that should be buying our stuff is still drinking their homemade wine."
56:07
So- Sure. Sure, yeah, yeah. Um- No, sorry, go ahead. No, go ahead. Well, I, I wanted to speak about taxation also i- uh, uh, a little bit in the context of its legitimizing power. Mm.
56:21
Um, because I think this is something that definitely has parallels in more modern history. I'm thinking specifically about in the mass tort litigation of cigarettes against the tobacco companies in the '90s.
56:36
One of their, one of the tobacco firm's very successful defenses was, "Well, hang on a second.
56:42
If the state believes this is so dangerous, and the state is the one who's bringing this lawsuit on behalf of public health, how can the state also be collecting taxes on these products," right?
56:52
This is a leg- th-that, they made the case, and they were largely successful for a long time, that with juries and judges alike, that the act of taxation is a de facto legitimization of the product.
57:08
Can you talk a little bit about or, uh, like maybe, uh, unpack that a little bit? Because beer for taxation, on one hand, this is a very pragmatic, you know, case to be made, right?
57:19
The US needs revenue, and, uh, uh, this is a source of it. Or maybe the rich people want it because maybe it'll lower their income taxes, whatever.
57:27
But on the other hand, like, uh, that's a, that's a two-way exchange, right? If beer is taxed, then beer is legitimate because the government says it's a real product, right?
57:37
Talk a little bit about what that imprimatur of revenue raising, of, of state taxation does for these, these products. Yeah. I think, um, the
57:50
place to begin with answering th- that question that might really help illuminate, um, what's at stake is to take us into World War II. Mm.
58:02
Because World War II is this moment of both great peril and great opportunity for the alcohol, alcoholic beverage industry.
58:13
Um, World War II revives the industry's biggest political foe, the Prohibitionists, who have memories of what they were able to accomplish in the previous World War- Right...
58:27
when they said, "You know, we can't have alcohol around.
58:32
Uh, if we do, we won't have a disciplined fighting force, and on top of that, um, it's a waste of vital foodstuffs that we need to conserve for, you know, troops abroad, allies abroad."
58:48
Um, and, and these are arguments that they revive very aggressively. And in fact, um, the Prohibition-- So there's a real resurgence of Prohibitionism in World War II.
59:01
The Prohibitionists mobilize their voters in the Baptist and Pro- um, [lips smack] uh, Methodist churches, who flood Congress with these ap- petitions sort of demanding that they, you know, pass a variety of, of Prohibitionist measures.
59:20
One, they want, you know, um, limits on production, uh, as a food conservation me-measure.
59:27
And secondly, they want to create 10-mile dry zones around military training camps, um, with the stated goal of, uh, you know, we have to have a disciplined, sober fighting force.
59:43
But with the unstated goal of controlling civilian drinking, because- Right, right... that 10-mile radius is pretty huge. That's gonna take out a lot of big cities, uh, where there are military bases.
59:57
So here's where the tax revenue argument becomes really important, and where all of these industries are able to make a really big patriotic appeal to the government and to consumers and voters, which is that, you know, these tax revenues are, um, helping to pay for the war, helping to buy,
1:00:21
you know, the airplanes and, [lips smack] um, you know, weapons that we need to win the war. So that's part of the measure. Uh, that's part of the argument.
1:00:33
I mean, the, the other thing they do and, and I think the important thing to recognize is that arguments about excise taxes are also arguments about what kinds of cultural norms do we want to validate. Mm.
1:00:50
And if you ta- And, and so the argument is we need to preserve access to beer and wine, um, and even the right to decent whiskey, which literally becomes a phrase- Yeah, yeah, yeah...
1:01:05
[chuckles] that tavern owners and restaurateurs use. "We, we have to defend the right to decent whiskey." Um, these are morale issues. And, you know, the, the US government is n- um,
1:01:21
one of the governments who is very invested in protecting civilian morale. They see that, and the morale of the troops, frankly. They see that as critical to winning the war.
1:01:33
Not all combatant nations were invested in preserving civilian morale.
1:01:38
But, um, the United States was, and I think, um, all of the brewers and vintners are able to, to really make the argument that, um, beer and wineWill cheer up war-weary souls.
1:01:55
Um, they'll keep spirits up and sustain people's commitment to working hard, in fact.
1:02:04
Um, that it's the, the beer is a just reward to compensate people for the hard work, um, that they're putting into civilian defense and working in the defense, um, industries making tanks and planes and whatnot. Sure.
1:02:20
Sure. We could go on for hours like this, Lisa, and I would love to, but I know that all good things must come to an end. Yeah.
1:02:29
And I think this is a good place maybe to pivot down the home stretch of our episode here, and, uh, I'm hoping that you'll indulge me.
1:02:37
Obviously, your book focuses on the past, but as we've noted at various points in this conversation, there are a lot of lessons somewhat applicable or directly applicable to, to our present and to the future of, uh, the beverage alcohol industry and other intoxicating, uh, industries.
1:02:57
Uh, as you think about this book in that context, the, the contemporary, you know, marketplace for alcohol and for other intoxicants or other vices more broadly, what's maybe one lesson you might tell, for example, the folks who are currently litigating or currently battling to, uh, get THC-infused seltzers, uh, legitimized or, or, you know, uh, protected and, and legalized by, by Congress that feels maybe that they've created a loophole through which these illegitimate products have snuck?
1:03:34
Like, what, how would you- Mm. You know, there, there are obviously, as we've said, there are a bunch of parallels here, but in your book, um, you know, you, you make the point that this stuff didn't just happen, right?
1:03:47
There was a lot of work that gets done and a lot of trial and error that gets done. Mm-hmm. And, and there are forces that align that maybe aren't at play now, or maybe there are different forces that are at play.
1:03:56
Like, how would you apply the lessons of intoxicating pleasures to, um, you know, to some of the battles or some of the conversations that we're having in American society today about where our new set of vices belongs- Mm-hmm...
1:04:11
in our, in our society?
1:04:13
Well, I, I, I think the great triumph of the alcoholic be- beverage industry was to transform drinking from a vice into an ordinary respectable pleasure, so that the whole language of vice and sin really,
1:04:32
um, is not eliminated, but, um, cast aside. Mm. And, um, people find a new way of talking about
1:04:42
drinking as a respectable pleasure, in part because they've done such a good job of promoting the idea of drinking in moderation.
1:04:53
And on today's landscape, I mean, one of the things that's very striking to me is the, you know, new calls to, um, define moderate drinking as unsafe. Drinking in any amount is unsafe. Sure.
1:05:09
And, um, this is quite a remarkable historical shift because for the first time in many decades, really since World War II, we're seeing sort of the reputational demotion of the moderate drinker.
1:05:25
And so there's always a need to, um... Moderation is, is a concept that changes over time, um, and it's an argument that can be lost [chuckles] and a value that can be lost.
1:05:42
Um, and it's, it's an argument that needs to be reasserted, reasserted and redefined in new cultural contexts. I think one of the lessons- I mean, that's a lesson for the beverage alcohol industry itself. [laughs] Yeah.
1:05:56
Right. Yeah, yeah. Right. Yeah. Yeah. So I'm giving a lesson for the beverage alcohol, uh, industry itself.
1:06:02
Um, for cannabis, I mean, I think it's interesting to think about the difference between the situation that the alcoholic beverage industry found itself in and, and where the cannabis industry is, because the alcoholic beverage industry had existed before.
1:06:21
Right. Right.
1:06:22
And when it comes back in 1933, there are veterans of that old industry who have long memories of what it was to be up against, um, a determined prohibitionist foe.
1:06:40
And they tend to be much more cautious about how far they're willing to push boundaries and set limits. They tend to be much more aware that this can be lost again.
1:06:56
Um, and so I think there's circumspect. Um, that doesn't mean that there aren't others in the industry who are pushing boundaries, but there is an effort to kind of contain it.
1:07:10
And I think the cannabis industry is reborn into a historical moment in which states are thirsty for revenue of any kind. Mm-hmm.
1:07:23
And, um, and, you know, frustration with the war on drugs is intense, and there's deep, deep skepticism about over-regulation of, of drugs.
1:07:39
Um, but it doesn't have a set of industry veterans who can say, "Be careful about how far you're gonna push the boundaries on that." Mm. Mm. Um, and, um, and so
1:07:55
there's a w-In some ways, there's a little bit more of a Wild West. There's also not a federal presence in quite the same way.
1:08:07
It's there as a threat, but it's not taking an active role in regulating simply because it's, hasn't signed on to, to cannabis legalization. Right. So, um,
1:08:21
I, I, I guess, I don't know if that really answers your question, but I, I do think, um, there might be fewer, um...
1:08:30
I mean, the trade associa- I don't know enough about cannabis trade associations to really speak, uh, e- enough to what they're doing.
1:08:38
But I think they can take a page from the history of what alcoholic beverage trade associations did in trying to chart a course, um, that, um,
1:08:53
seized on the notion of, uh, corporate social responsibility. Yeah. Well, I'll leave you with maybe a complicating idea or something to pique your interest and, and our listeners' as well.
1:09:05
Within, you know, the cannabis industry, quote unquote, just as the alcohol industry contains multitudes of semi-rivalrous factions- Mm... so too does the, uh, cannabis industry as such.
1:09:19
And so hemp-derived, uh, THC is actually viewed by the, quote unquote, "adult use cannabis industry"- Mm...
1:09:28
which has been battling for legitimacy in state houses across the country, as an interloper that might come along and fuck everything up- Mm-hmm...
1:09:37
for, for these, for the, uh, industry that's been working really hard for legitimacy because, uh, hemp-derived THC is actually less regulated, but is kind of outside the purview of regulation.
1:09:50
So again, some of these dynamics that we see play out in history are once again happening in, uh, i- in new spaces as well because a lot of the jockeying, um, and, and you mentioned, you know, concern about going too far.
1:10:04
The adult use cannabis space is very concerned about THC-infused products going too far and ruining the party for everyone, right? So- Right... we see it, uh, we see it happening all over again in, um, what's the line?
1:10:16
Those who don't learn from history are doomed to repeat. Those who don't read "Intoxicating Pleasures" are doomed to go too far and potentially get smacked down by Uncle Sam. But I think that's a good place to leave it.
1:10:27
Lisa Jacobson, uh, author of "Intoxicating Pleasures," thank you so much for joining. This was a fantastic conversation. I, uh, really enjoyed it. I know our listeners will, too. You are welcome back here anytime.
1:10:39
Thank you so much, Dave. This w- was a lot of fun.
1:10:43
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