The Ethanol Papers - Paperturn manuscript - Flipbook - Page 528
In the meantime, an event took place that made ethanol unavailable in America.
This event was the ratification of the 18th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution...PROHIBITION. This Rockefeller-sponsored misguided law made alcohol
production and distribution illegal. As I've said in previous editorials, "nothing
kills your competition better than making it illegal." It's a sure-fire winning marketing tactic. Think how valuable it would be to Pepsi-Cola if they could bribe
enough politicians to make Coca-Cola illegal!
Fortunately, Prohibition was repealed about 13 years later. But great damage
was done. One result was that disorganized crime became organized crime.
The other problem was that the ethanol (alcohol) industry had to restart and
compete against an industry that owned America, had the financial war chest
to stay in control, and that had inundated the American public with false information about ethanol.
So, now we see how issues #2 and #3 were created by external forces, outside
of any legitimate qualitative consideration of ethanol as a fuel, and made ethanol too costly and unavailable.
Originally, gasoline with tetra-ethyl lead (leaded gasoline) wasn't globally accepted because of concern over the use of tetra-ethyl lead (TEL), a highly dangerous poison, and because it wasn't needed in those countries to mitigate engine knock. As incredible as it may seem, the same oil companies that sold
leaded gasoline in America and bad-mouthed ethanol were actively engaged in
selling ethanol-gasoline blends elsewhere (and they touted the "power alcohol"
as being cleaner, more powerful, safer, and providing better mileage than ethanol-free gasoline).
SEE: The Hypocrisy of Big Oil
Leaded gasoline wasn't only highly poisonous because it contains tetra-ethyl
lead, but because it required the use of another poison (ethylene bromide) in
the gasoline to make the TEL less corrosive. It's not relevant to wonder which
is the more poisonous substance, TEL or ethylene bromide, but let me just say
that ethylene bromide did not magically make leaded gasoline less poisonous.
The use of ethylene bromide to lessen the severe effects of TEL corrosion is
little known by the general public, many of whom believe that leaded gasoline
was not itself corrosive - ironically these people often describe ethanol as being
highly corrosive to engine and fuel system parts.
The Second World War brought many drastic changes to the world. Although
this sounds like an obviously redundant statement, I'm not referring to the
