A U.S. appeals court on Friday declared unconstitutional a nearly 158-year-old federal ban on home distilling, calling it an unnecessary and improper means for Congress to exercise its power to tax.
The 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans ruled in favor of the nonprofit Hobby Distillers Association and four of its 1,300 members.
They argued that people should be free to distill spirits at home, whether as a hobby or for personal consumption including, in one instance, to create an apple-pie-vodka recipe.
The ban was part of a law passed during Reconstruction in July 1868, in part to thwart liquor tax evasion, and subjected violators to up to five years in prison and a $10,000 fine.
The problem wasn’t the individual blowing themselves up, it’s the individual starting a massive fire that spreads to surrounding structures. That’s less of a problem with modern fire suppression and building materials, though, so what made sense 158 years ago probably isn’t as big of a concern.
What about BBQs? You’ve got people, often drinking, handling things like propane canisters and burning charcoal while cooking objects that emit flammable oils in dry grass or right next to their home. It’s a recipe for disaster.
As I mentioned elsewhere, the problem is that there’d be a civil war if you tried to stop people from burning shit. There’s a compromise being made between public safety and the public’s appetite for regulatory restrictions.
But also, like I said, fire is less of a problem with modern fire suppression and building materials. I wonder if those propane grills would actually be legal if our cities were still built like they were 158 years ago. I also wonder if they’ll remain legal forever, or if increasing droughts and infrastructure decay will force bans in some cities.
I doubt even the risk of fire will a problem since modern home distillers will use small electric stills. And the alcohol boils of at about 170F, (about 76C for our challenged brethren in Texas). So the explosion risk is also very minimal.
The challenge is to maintain a steady temperature while distilling your booze. Just enough heat to drive off the alcohol while leaving the majority of water behind.
Acting like most of the people doing this aren’t the biggest rednecks on the planet… Meth labs don’t need to be dangerous either, and yet… (not comparing alcohol to meth before the angry replies come).
When you can go on amazon and buy an 8 gallon electric still you plug in to the wall for under $200, there ain’t much sense in redneck engineering a still.
It’s kind of like brewing beer, you could floor malt your barley, but ain’t nobody doing that at home.
I’m talking about people in this thread commenting like this reversal is going to cause massive fires tomorrow.
But to your point, the ban was never about safety, it was about tax collection.
It could definitely cause a massive fire someday. Some home brewer blows up in California during a drought and suddenly you’ve got another wildfire in an urban area.
… but it probably was about taxes. The US doesn’t give a shit about public safety.
I don’t see people complaining about houses in the US using flammable and dangerous natural gas for tons of things, including drying clothes for chrissake. You know, a process that occurs by itself if you just leave the clothes in the air for a bit.
Didn’t I already say it? The US doesn’t give a shit about public safety.
I’d be in favor of banning gas stoves and clothes dryers, but that would probably cause a civil war.
That and home made hooch can sometimes make people go blind if they do it wrong and there’s too much (I wanna say?) methanol in the batch.
Thats actually a myth, it’s basically nothing in sugar and grain based mashes and can be mitigated easily with fruit mashes. It’s one of those things that’s been perpetuated through scaremongering, almost all cases have been purposeful methanol consumption or adulteration - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_methanol_poisoning_incidents
The very first incident I clicked on makes it look like it’s definitely an issue. Under Mexico on the site you linked-
Government restrictions on liquor and beer sales during the COVID-19 pandemic may have exacerbated the problem of illegal production and sale of alcoholic beverages in Mexico. Reportedly, 35 people died in 2020 in just one mass poisoning incident due to methanol tainted drinks
Looking into those incidents further most of those appear to be cases where the alcohol was adulterated with methanol rather than as a result of distillation.
That occurred because the US government poisoned the supply of alcohol during prohibition.