The idea of legalizing a drug by arguing for its medicinal qualities is hardly new. The movement for medical marijuana, which Illinois legislators may consider for legalization this year, is more than 15 years old. Historically, the therapeutic benefits of various narcotics have been debated for centuries.

Even during Prohibition, when the "drys" ruled the country, there was an allowance for medicinal wine and whiskey. Doctors could — and did — prescribe lots of hooch. It was a huge loophole in the Volstead Act. In March 1920, just over two months after Prohibition went into effect, an enforcement officer speaking to the Chicago Retail Druggists' Association said, "There is an extremely large percentage of unscrupulous doctors in Chicago who are prescribing liquor at wholesale without examining their patients. Too large a percentage of druggists are in cahoots with these doctors."

So it should probably come as no surprise that the beer brewers — backed by the "wets" — thought it would be a great way to get their suds flowing again, and possibly eviscerate Prohibition before it really took hold.

The medical beer movement got a big boost in March 1921 when U.S. Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer, shortly before he would leave his post, issued an opinion that the Volstead Act didn't in fact prohibit medicinal beer. Later that month, word came from Ralph Stone, federal Prohibition director for Illinois, that new regulations being drafted would allow doctors to prescribe to a patient up to 96 bottles of beer per month: "3 times a day," as the Tribune's headline put it. This led Stone two days later to call the Volstead Act a dead letter, arguing, "There is no denying that the country won't be very dry when a man can obtain a case of beer on one prescription and drug stores can retail it by the pint over a soda fountain."

But students of American history know that wasn't the last word. No, as millions of ailing Americans looking for the comfort of a good pint thought they were safe, Congress slammed shut the loophole before the year was out.

A Tribune editorial a few days later questioned how "Dr. Congress" — eager to save the American public from the evils of alcohol — could allow whiskey but ban beer for the same purpose when most physicians said neither had any medicinal value. The editorial's prophetic conclusion: "All it indicates is an intent to confine the drinking in the United States to hard liquor, illegally obtained."

sbenzkofer@tribune.com