During Prohibition in the USA, there was still a large need for the production of ethyl alcohol for use in various industrial processes. In order to discourage the diversion of this alcohol for use in illegal beverages, the government required that the makers add poisons to denature it. However, because most bootleggers could pay more for competent chemists than the government would, the bootleggers would quickly develop de-denaturing processes to restore industrial alcohol back to a form which could be consumed, and industrial ethyl alcohol became the primary source of alcohol for illegal liquor suppliers.
However, in 1926, the government finally came up with a formula which could not easily be made safe. It included, among other ingredients, kerosene, brucine (a plant alkaloid closely related to strychnine), gasoline, benzene, cadmium, iodine, zinc, mercury, nicotine, ether, formaldehyde, chloroform, camphor, carbolic acid, quinine, acetone, and methyl alcohol (Methyl alcohol, unlike the ethyl alcohol normally contained in booze, is not always fatal. Sometimes, it merely causes permanent blindness.). Despite the lethality of this mixture, there were always foolish folks who would, either knowingly or unknowingly, feel compelled to drink alcohol laced with it.
The government's witches' brew killed over 10,000 people from 1926 to the end of Prohibition in 1933. Somehow, however, the supply of illegal liquor, regardless of its source, remained plentiful throughout the same time period.
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