Prohibition in the United States

=== Medical liquor ===
[[File:Prohibition prescription front.jpg|thumb|A [[Prohibition]]-era prescription used by U.S. physicians to prescribe [[liquor]] as medicine]]
Doctors were able to prescribe medicinal alcohol for their patients. After just six months of prohibition, over 15,000 doctors and 57,000 pharmacists received licenses to prescribe or sell medicinal alcohol. According to ''Gastro Obscura'',
{{Blockquote |Physicians wrote an estimated 11 million prescriptions a year throughout the 1920s, and Prohibition Commissioner John F. Kramer even cited one doctor who wrote 475 prescriptions for whiskey in one day. It wasn't tough for people to write—and fill—counterfeit subscriptions at pharmacies, either. Naturally, bootleggers bought prescription forms from crooked doctors and mounted widespread scams. In 1931, 400 pharmacists and 1,000 doctors were caught in a scam where doctors sold signed prescription forms to bootleggers. Just 12 doctors and 13 pharmacists were indicted, and the ones charged faced a one-time $50 fine. Selling alcohol through drugstores became so much of a lucrative open secret that it is name-checked in works such as The Great Gatsby. Historians speculate that [[Charles R. Walgreen]], of [[Walgreens]] fame, expanded from 20 stores to a staggering 525 during the 1920s thanks to medicinal alcohol sales." |Paula Mejia| "The Lucrative Business of Prescribing Booze During Prohibition"; ''Gastro Obscura'', 2017.<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/doctors-booze-notes-prohibition|title=During Prohibition, Doctors Wrote Prescriptions for Booze|first=Paula|last=Mejia|date=November 15, 2017|website=Atlas Obscura|access-date=April 11, 2019|archive-date=April 11, 2019|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20190411081604/https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/doctors-booze-notes-prohibition|url-status=live}}</ref>}}