The deadly danger of 'dewshine'

Illicit alcohol is as old as Prohibition, both the social and legislated kinds.

It also kills.

Sadly, this week, two Greenbrier teenagers who were caught up in the hype and promise of a cheap high will never see better days.

The teens died after consuming a drink nicknamed 'dewshine,' a mixture of Mountain Dew and racing fuel, which is composed mostly of methanol, a highly toxic substance.

Second teen dies after drinking racing fuel mixed with soda

'Dewshine' is a depressing rejoinder that draws on years of history where low-grade alcohol products are mixed with sodas or fruit juice to make them more palatable.

Even the name Mountain Dew comes from an Appalachian moniker for moonshine, the illegal corn and sugar-based liquor that became popular in the South during and after Prohibition, when alcohol couldn't be sold.

Mountain Dew was created in the 1940's in East Tennessee by the Hartland brothers who wanted a citrus-flavored beverage with a caffeine kick as a mixer for whiskey.

They nurtured the lore already popularized by jug bands on the Grand Ole Opry, where musicians would swap suits for hillbilly garb. Mountain Dew went as far as creating a cartoon character named Hillbilly Willy and pushing their motto, "It'll tickle your innards," in hand-scrawled lettering on the bottles and in ad campaigns.

It was a slick and fun way to gain attention.

The scourge

The bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms had reasons for trying to shut down moonshiners. The "revenuers," as they were called, knew that some producers used less-than-sound methods, allowing lead solder to leach into the product, poisoning the sorry drinkers and causing "jake-legged" thrashing, blindness and death.

Sure, it was easy to paint the story in terms of recalcitrant and independent mountain folk (the original "teapartiers") thumbing their bearded noses at authority, calling moonshine drivers the birth of NASCAR, and making it a proud part of Appalachian culture. When moonshine was good, it was all of those things, but when it was bad, it took the curl out of your hair and suddenly your home was a pine box.

In urban areas, especially among the homeless during prohibition and the Depression, "canned heat" was the cheap, easy, and often deadly way to get stoned. Desperate drinkers would take cans of Sterno, strain them through socks and make "jungle juice" with cheap fruit drink mixers. The problem with Sterno was that it was alcohol denatured with methanol, a poisonous blend that created quick highs followed by sorrowful and painful deaths, chronicled in songs like the "Canned Heat Blues" recorded in 1928 by Tommy Johnson.

4 'dewshine'-drinking cases are state's first

Hey kids!

Today, however, relentless marketing and promotion of products draws on the romanticized and whitewashed history of moonshine's past. While no standard of identity exists for moonshine, it hasn't stopped dozens of companies from making legal product and calling it moonshine. Their ad campaigns sell rugged individualism, they turn the novelty of overalls and mason jars into naughty fun for folks in button-downs and Tory Burch boots. They hawk pride in the Rebel South, and give you tasty recipes created by mixologists because even they know you won't choke this stuff down without heavy mixers.

Which brings us back to the kids.

It brings us back to sweet soda and alcohol, so codified in Tennessee culture that we have names like Jack and Coke, Dickel and Drop, and now, sadly, 'dewshine.'

The surprising moonshine history of Mountain Dew

What makes this harder, and unfortunate for Mountain Dew and its parent company PepsiCo, is they recently released a new, clear product called just that: Dewshine. The bottle has a hillbilly with a jug. It carries the phrase, "It'll tickle your innards." Advertising says it's "available legally for the first time."

Sadder still, Mountain Dew has evolved into something bigger. It spawned other caffeine-fueled drinks which gave rise to the energy drink explosion. 'Vodka and Red Bull' trips off tongues as easily as 'gin and juice' did fifty years ago.

'Do the Dew' went after skate punks and Warcraft gamers with new brands and partnerships. It went squarely after kids who thrived on risk and danger.

And then, inexplicably, a mixture of racing fuel and Mountain Dew co-opted the name 'dewshine.' And now two teens are dead.

You can't undo the decades and millions of dollars of marketing. This isn't about blame. It's is about a horrifyingly tragic confluence of history and circumstance.

We have closed a deadly circle and it needs to be addressed immediately, before another kid does what kids do.

Reach Jim Myers at 615-259-8367 and on Twitter @ReadJimMyers.