The Black Market is a Race to the Bottom

Prohibition leads to a destructive black market that harms all Americans

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This is Part II of a 4-part series about some of my personal experiences over the years as a Raw Milk Mama and activist. It includes details I’ve never shared before, and experiences that are difficult to write about.

These are real and true personal experiences and will be quite difficult for some to believe. It was difficult to believe even living them.

Black market definition: The illegal business of buying or selling currency or goods banned by a government or subject to governmental control, such as price controls or rationing. (American Heritage Dictionary, online)

Read Part I here – Raw Milk is Flooding DC

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“Food freedom” vs black markets

When the 18th amendment outlawed the “manufacture, sale, or transportation of intoxicating liquors,” it left some gaping holes.¹

Prohibition didn’t stop consumption, “it simply pushed the consumption of booze underground. By 1925, there were thousands of speakeasy clubs operating out of New York City, and bootlegging operations sprang up around the country to supply thirsty citizens with alcoholic drinks.” (NPR, 2011)

The facade was that alcohol was illegal. 

The reality was that the laws of prohibition allowed exceptions in several cases including religious freedoms, medicine, and non-consumption purposes such as grooming and cleaning products.²

Of course, businesses took advantage of these exemptions.

Prohibition, far from reducing the harm of alcohol in American households, instead set up a false front, giving business opportunities to those willing to engage in shady, underground practices. The ensuing tug-of-war between business and government forces created untold turmoil and damage. 

Attempts to circumvent the intent of the law instead of changing it are obvious means to keep the black market controlled for profit.

Wine cellars

The wealthy had a built-in exemption. There was no law against consuming alcohol. So those who accumulated stores of wines, whisky or other liquor could–and did–continue to enjoy their “investments.” One can only imagine how easy it might have been to purchase wine, whisky or other liquor on the black market and claim it was part of one’s collection prior.

Medicine

As one writer notes, "...capitalism abhors a vacuum. Within two or three years, you could go into virtually any city in the country and buy a prescription for $3* from your local physician and then take it to your local pharmacy and go home with a pint of liquor every 10 days. And this is really how many of the large distilleries in Kentucky and the middle of the country stayed in business throughout the Prohibition years.” (NPR, 2011)

*from 1920-1930 that would be between $47-56 in 2024 money. A significant expense.

Another example of this is lawyer-turned-”doctor,” George Remus. As historian Amy Hayes explains it:

“George Remus was arguably the biggest bootlegger of Prohibition. Remus was a pharmacist before he attended law school to become a criminal defense attorney. He practiced for about 20 years before deciding to dabble in the illegal booze trade. As a criminal defense attorney, Remus had a significant advantage in knowing the law and finding loopholes in the Volstead Act. He conjured up a plan called “The Circle” to buy up as many distillery warehouses as he could. The warehouses still contained tons of liquor made before Prohibition. He established a trucking company to transport the liquor and opened his own drug company to distribute it, selling liquor for “medicinal purposes,” which was legal.

Remus was making tens of thousands of dollars a day. Bootleggers and rum runners were traveling to Remus’ hidden and strictly guarded whiskey distribution center in Ohio at all hours of the day. He had thousands of employees running his operation, and Remus made millions.” (Hayes, A. December 2022. Bootleggers, Bathtub Gin, & Speakeasies: Organized Crime in the 1920s)

Did these bootleggers use their vast resources and clout to work to change the laws? No, it was the prohibition that empowered them to exploit people for profit.

Religious freedom

Perhaps more ethically sinister was the religious racket.

"Among the groups who opposed Prohibition were the Catholics and the Jews — very avidly — and not necessarily for religious reasons ... The Jews needed their sacramental wine for the Sabbath service and other services. They were entitled — under the rules — for 10 gallons per adult per year. ... There was no official way to determine who was a rabbi. So people who claimed to be rabbis would get a license to distribute to congregations that didn't even exist. On the other side of that, one congregation in Los Angeles went from 180 families to 1,000 families within the very first 12 months of Prohibition. You joined a congregation; you got your wine from your rabbi." (NPR, 2011)

The government’s laws against alcohol gave these businesses the opportunity to thrive and effectively limited their competition. Even with the loose rules and scarce and scattered enforcement, many Americans were unwilling to outright become part of the black market either overtly or through the exemptions. Therefore, the government’s prohibition supported only those willing and able to take on the risks associated with delinquency.

Like alcohol, the prohibitive mindset against raw milk has its exemptions (both legal and social).

Having your own cow and/or herdshares

There is no law against buying or consuming raw milk. Just as there was none for alcohol.

Most dairy farmers drink their own milk raw. But it shouldn’t require having enough money to purchase land and a cow just to get your family fresh raw milk.

Participatory production is, perhaps, one of the best and truest avenues when it comes to raw milk. You’re either the farmer, or, you can participate via a herdshare or cow share. In a herdshare or cow share situation you take ownership or part ownership of an animal and you pay the farmer for board and all expenses related to that cow and milking that animal. You then get the milk from your own cow even if you don’t have the means to own land.

However, like having your own wine cellar or liquor medical card, this is expensive and therefore inherently discriminatory.

Pet milk

Another functional exemption is the sale of pet milk. Because the ban on interstate transport only covers milk for human consumption, farmers have taken to getting pet food permits and licenses so they can manufacture and sell their dairy products as pet food all over the country.

This is still exorbitantly expensive for the buyer. This requires paying for the products, the shipping fees, and paying tax on top of it all. Again, this is an option only for a select few in our weakening economy. Pet food sales can – and do – involve shipping items all across the country. Transparency and participation are lost.

While pets get to enjoy the benefits from this age-old food, sadly humans don’t?

PMAs

The most problematic of the black market methods is the vast networks of “Private Membership Associations” (PMA) arrangements. These have cropped up with the claims that these PMAs exempt farmers from following the law.

In fact, they do not. There is no current exemption from CFR 1240.61– the ban on interstate transportation of raw milk for human consumption. 

Again, prohibition didn’t stop the attempts to exploit the exemptions–not in the 1920s and not today.

It was like a game of whack-a-mole, every time enforcement found and shut down gangster-owned distilleries, warehouses, speakeasies, more would pop up. They couldn’t enforce their own laws, and the casualty was ordinary Americans.

The answer is obvious. We must change the laws for all. CFR 1240.61 needs a full repeal just as the 18th amendment needed to be repealed. States need to take up this issue in a real and rational way and follow the example of Pennsylvania in setting fair standards for both farmers and consumers. Media, lawmakers and regulators must not continue to malign those with genuine interest in raw milk as a viable food source.³

Poisoning of industrial alcohol

As part of enforcement measures, and “frustrated that people continued to consume so much alcohol even after it was banned, federal officials had decided to try a different kind of enforcement. They ordered the poisoning of industrial alcohols manufactured in the United States, products regularly stolen by bootleggers and resold as drinkable spirits. The idea was to scare people into giving up illicit drinking. Instead, by the time Prohibition ended in 1933, the federal poisoning program, by some estimates, had killed at least 10,000 people.” (Blum, D. February 2010. The Chemist's War. Slate.)

It was here that the cycle of distrust deepened. Minds were mixed. Prohibition existed, ostensibly because there was a strong desire for better lives, but, perversely, the ban did the opposite of that for many.

Deaths from this poisoned alcohol were a necessary side effect, and, according to many politicians, simply unavoidable “collateral damage.”⁴

Was this a class issue?

It’s hard to tell 100 years away from the events. Did socio-economic status and income play a role in who got the medicinal whisky? Who got medical cards? And who was left with poisoned booze, redistilled from the industrial alcohol? Was there a cavalier attitude towards those who were poisoned and injured by industrial alcohol? Some speculate that there was.

The modern parallels, though not nearly as deadly, are obvious.

The more that our state governments insist that law abiding, ethical, transparent dairies cannot provide fresh milk to willing neighbors or, must add charcoal to their milk, label it as pet food, and sell it in commercial chemical containers, the more the governments themselves prop up and bolster an increasingly angry and distrustful black market.

It is, inevitably, a race to the bottom.

Trust is a fickle thing. For many Americans, there is so much distrust of the government, they are all-too-willing to run eagerly into the arms of shady, slimy business people wearing farmer costumes. Worse yet, ignorant Americans are flocking to the altar of “gurus” who cannot deliver on their promises of “magic milk” or “medicinal milk” being a cure for every ailment.

These salacious lies from the self-proclaimed gurus, benefiting the black market, are just as harmful as the lies from the government and media that raw milk is inherently dangerous.

This duality accelerates the downward spiral, giving further fuel and justification to both arguments.

Am I asking you to trust the government with your food? No. With the lies they’ve already fed us, trust can only be built back over years of actual credibility–something the federal government still refuses to do. Although some states are making decent headway.

Yes, Americans should absolutely be able to decide for themselves what kind of milk to drink.

I’ve long held the belief that average Americans should have a choice of what food they get and from which producers.

But the twisting, turning path of reality brings me to conclusions I hadn’t anticipated years ago.

20+ years ago when I first embarked on this journey, I was impressed with the passion and the integrity of people I met. We seemed to have the same goal: greater access to foods we chose from local farms. I formed warm and inspiring friendships. We worked hard together, shoulder to shoulder to bring about a fairer food system. A food system in which having access to capital, land and a cow wasn’t the only way you could safely–and legally–get raw milk. We didn’t ask whether you wanted to drink it raw, home pasteurize it, or make it into cheese or yogurt. You could make that choice in your own home. 

And many of us saw our small, decentralized dairies as, perhaps, one of the best antidotes to widespread food insecurity.

But the insidious creep of consumer entitlement has taken a grip even on this basic principle. At issue is the unhinged demand that we have “food freedom” regardless of the consequences and whether or not that food is coming from thousands of miles away or whether or not there is transparency from the seller.

The new attitude is clear: If you want it, you’re entitled to it, whether or not you’ve worked for it. Whether or not you know what you’re getting or how many honest people you must trample to get what you want.

In fact, we are moving further and further away from food freedom and falling into traps of entitlement, fear, and greed much like the ordinary Americans of the prohibition era who were casualties of the battle between Capone, the government, and the propaganda wars.

The “ban on raw milk” doesn’t keep people from drinking it just like prohibition didn’t stem the flow of liquor. Like its alcohol counterpart 100 years ago, the prohibitive mindset creates a thriving raw milk underground and a highly lucrative market for a small subset of farmers who run operations akin to Capone’s speakeasies, Remus’ medical card racket, and the vast new religious “converts” and sudden interest in overly expensive “pet food.”

All of these silly escapades could be avoided with a simple return to sensible laws with a focus on education, safety standards and participation, rather than prohibition.

It seems that the government's adamant propaganda against raw milk–without any mention of why people might actually want to know their food sources or have access to raw milk from small farms–paradoxically brings shady raw milk farmers even more business.

“Kind-hearted philanthropist” or manipulative kingpin?

When the depression hit in 1930, the economy was in free-fall and people needed heroes. Everything felt destabilized, there was fear everywhere.

And so Capone responded to the fear, depression, and dejection that plagued many Americans. He opened up a soup kitchen that served breakfast, lunch and dinner to an average of 2,200 Chicagoans every day. “He couldn’t stand it to see those poor devils starving, and nobody else seemed to be doing much, so the big boy decided to do it himself,” a Capone associate told a Chicago newspaper.” (Klein, C. 2023)

The narrative of Capone as “Robin Hood” was in full swing “with a segment of Americans who saw him as a hero for the common man. They pointed to the newspaper reports of the handouts he gave to widows and orphans. When the government deprived them of beer and alcohol during Prohibition, Capone delivered it to them. When the government failed to feed them in their desperate days, the crime boss gave them food. For anyone who felt conflicted about taking charity from a gangster, hunger trumped principles.” (Klein, C. 2023. emphasis added)

 “The press followed Capone’s every move avidly, and he was able to gain public sympathy with his gregarious and generous personality. Some even considered him a kind of Robin Hood figure, or as anti-Prohibition resentment grew, a dissident who worked on the side of the people.” (History.com. 2021)

But was it kindness behind these deeds? Or was it really avarice? Clearly Capone had the image of being “for the common man.” Perhaps it was only in juxtaposition to the image of the government goons outlawing something as common and basic as Joe Schmoe’s dinnertime beer.

Fast forward almost 100 years and examine the case of Amos Miller. The Amish farmer-turned “folk-hero” isn’t a case of a heroic farmer as some have made him out to be. He’s no more a folk hero than notorious killer Al Capone was a “kind-hearted philanthropist” for opening a soup kitchen. (Klein, C. 2023)

Far from being “heroic,” Miller and his minions are putting raw milk back into the dark ages of milk in America–back to the early 1900s when greedy “investors” produced swill milk for profit while ignorant consumers were lapping up the propaganda. 

Rather, could Miller be the face of a team (movement?) of negligent farmers with highly questionable practices taking the law and the leniency of the law into their own hands for profit, notoriety, and perverse social engineering?

Nothing is simple. You must look for the nuances.

Careful examination of the facts–not blindly following your team’s narrative–is essential to what many say they want: food security.

Even though raw milk production and sales are not outright “prohibited,” some outlaw Amish farmers have created a parallel market–not one based on freedom, strengthening America’s economy, or providing families with a high quality food. A market based on greed and control. If it was about food freedom, or Americans having the right to choose which milk to drink, these farmers would work hard to change the laws for everyone.

But they work hard not to, ensuring that the lucrative nature of their business remains solid, even as they put others out of business who could possibly legally compete with them.

For example, regulated raw milk sales are easily and widely available in PA. But, the ban on interstate transportation means that the farmers cannot sell to neighboring states with high density cities such as Maryland, DC, New York, Delaware, New Jersey, Connecticut, Virginia, and West Virginia. The individual states, with their patchwork of far-fetched regulations*, make it all too attractive for these black market businesses to create networks of deliveries and logistics to meet the rising demand. *(Even in states where raw milk is available as pet milk or cow shares, there is nowhere near enough supply to meet the demand, and, often the state-level enforcement makes it unappealing for farmers to get started. We must change the laws and the mindset behind the prohibitive laws so that more ethical farmers can provide this food to their local community.)

It’s the age-old story of business.

This PA band of Amish farmers, for example, is like Capone’s band of gangsters–to those in their pockets, they are Robin Hoods, providing a livelihood and safety. To others who cannot compete with the black market advantages, they are the cause of the crippling destruction. Does providing “jobs” to a handful of people (mostly Amish) justify the tyranny and misery they inflict on others?

Yet the black market thrives. 

The black market is a race to the bottom.

Alphonse Capone didn’t start off as the infamous mobster “Al Capone.”

He was a guy who was willing to do things that others were not, take risks, use his charisma to gain a few favors…

But, as enforcement escalated, so did the violence, creating a downward spiral of harm.

Black market raw milk businesses are not so different. Not even Amish black markets.

Where will their illegal escapades end? How far are they willing to go to protect their empires–and they are indeed business empires! What “fringe” English allies will be eager to do the confrontational and violent enforcing for them?

People have invested heavily into the narrative of the small farmer being persecuted by the government.

“It’s just milk,” people argue. “It’s just a small farmer selling to his neighbors.”

Except it’s not.

It’s organized businesses banding together to create a black market that is destructive to honest farmers striving to make a living while following the laws–even as they work hard to change them.

The more that the government and media work to create a prohibitive mindset through laws and propaganda, the more the black market pushes back in the ugliest of ways.

The vast majority of black market farmers are unscrupulous agitators with no transparency, no accountability. They are the antithesis to upstanding farmers who provide food to a local community with built-in accountability.

Like the gangsters, “medicine men,” and the fake rabbis of the 1920s, today, certain subsets of Amish farmers compete with each other for revenue, for customers, for how many products they can sell and how far away they can ship them. But it’s not about providing hungry families with food. The bottom line is their bottom line. Profit.

Except in very few cases built on stronger foundations, they undercut and stab each other in the backs. They cut corners and let loose ends dangle. They use the English as pawns in their larger game of fortune. They lie to consumers. They lie to anyone standing in their way–either overtly or through lies of omission. Their products are linked to illnesses. They sell poor quality products at high prices. Milk sours quickly. There’s no recourse. They bring greater unwelcome scrutiny down on honest farmers.

Even though there are not mafia-style street shootings from these gang wars, make no mistake that they cause incredible damage in a disturbingly more subtle way.

And it works because consumers are often too lazy to look behind the curtain themselves and certainly some want to believe the utopian picture that the black market Amish painted for them.

It’s a lucrative reputation. It’s also a race to the bottom. And now, upstanding farmers and consumers alike have been subsumed by loyalty to the raw milk black market. 

They’ve bought into a vicious cycle that can only take them one lowly place as their cartel gains strength and momentum.

And the consumers remain all too eager to lap up the delicious lies of the raw milk black market and throw darts at anyone who dares to question the narrative of those “pure” and “honest” Amish farmers. Even murderous Al Capone had his defenders to the end.

The vapid semi-worship and idolization of the Amish that many “English” do is infantilizing and a complete disservice to both English and Amish alike.

Not all Italian immigrants were part of the prohibition era mafia-like organizations. Not all Amish are part of this modern raw milk mafia. But in this particular case, enough Amish are, and they are profiting immensely from it. Sadly, that is giving good Amish people and churches a bad image.

Their black market is thriving. It’s an underground, gross, sloppy, dirty-milk market filled with puppy mills, nepotism and incest. Literally.

The prevalence of this black market pushes many hard working American farmers either out of business or into the black market themselves, but without the protection of a well-crafted “humble” image.

That is the race to the bottom. It cannot and will not end well. It’s literally a black hole.

It’s only by stepping up NOW and making better choices, that the American consumer will have the hopes of true food choice and true food security in the next decade.

Folks, we can do better. It’s time to do better.

Now, it is time for the consumers to step up. America’s food security hinges on our ability to support honest small farmers and the communities we build around them.

What are you going to do?

Part III – There is no “easy” solution…

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I am called to share in-depth investigative articles with salacious details about my experiences in the “food freedom” movement–the good, the bad, and the ugly. If you appreciate these articles and want to see more of this work, please consider a paid subscription, or if that is out of reach, please share this Substack with others. This work helps to support my family.

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1. Volstead Act

2. Suciu, C. December 2018

3. 21 CFR 1240.61 — regulation banning the interstate transport of raw milk for human consumption.

4. Government Poisoned Alcohol During Prohibition