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US appeals court declares 158-year-old home distilling ban unconstitutional

theguardian.com

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Re: US appeals court declares 158-year-old home distilling ban unconstitutional

#211

Post by giantg2 »

twsahjklf wrote: post #136
giantg2 wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you have a source?

Not parent, but after 1 minute of googling: https://historyfacts.com/us-history/fact/the-u-s-government-... Note that we are talking about industrial alcohol, which was not made for human consumption but could be distilled to make it palatable (before the toxic additives were added).

They made it sound as if they were poisoning alcohol intended for drinking (looks like it was possibly edited or I missed that it said industrial). Methanol and other additives are still added to most industrial alcohol today.

Re: US appeals court declares 158-year-old home distilling ban unconstitutional

#212

Post by iamnothere »

andrewmg wrote: post #205
cobbzilla wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is there a genuine opportunity to overturn either Wickard or Raich? That would be exciting.

Raich is teed up. See our opening brief[0] at pp. 38–39. [0] https://www.buckeyeinstitute.org/library/docLib/2025-06-24-T...

Wonderful news. Inch by inch maybe we can finally reclaim some freedoms.

Re: US appeals court declares 158-year-old home distilling ban unconstitutional

#213

Post by iamnothere »

btreecat wrote: post #162
cubefox wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Illegal stills make quality control impossible, so legalisation and government certified testing can make it safe. Another way to increase safety is to reduce the availability of illegal stills without quality control by enforcing the ban. (Anyone who thinks otherwise presumably also thinks all hard drugs should be legalized since this presumably wouldn't lead to an increase in consumption.)

>Another way to increase safety is to reduce the availability of illegal stills without quality control by enforcing the ban. I can see you're lacking some knowledge on what makes up a still, as well as it's completely legal use for distillation of water. A still is just a bucket with a heat source and some vapor collector and condenser. It's easy to build from a couple of pickle jars and hot glue if you're determine…

And you can literally buy them on Amazon!

Re: US appeals court declares 158-year-old home distilling ban unconstitutional

#214

Post by _heimdall »

Cpoll wrote: post #210
_heimdall wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a whole ball of wax here that boils down to whether a society would rather be individualistic or collectivist. Its a chicken and egg problem as well, the way we regulate and manage health care and health insurance (at least in the US) allows for costs to pretty easily bleed out to the rest of society. That implies that we must then be collectivist in other policies, though that is counter to many of the origi…

> a society would rather be individualistic This is a bit oxymoronic. People are a bit too happy to pick and choose what they like and otherwise pretend they're an island to themselves, but it doesn't take a communist to see the contradiction.

You're assuming its a binary rather than a spectrum though. I wouldn't expect to find anyone who is entirely individualistic or entirely collectivist.

Plenty of people would agree they're willing to pay taxes and give governments the authority to build and maintain public roads, for example. That doesn't mean they would also then be okay with government taking over industry.

Re: US appeals court declares 158-year-old home distilling ban unconstitutional

#215

Post by swasheck »

btreecat wrote: post #159
angry_octet wrote: post #86

As tourists to sketchy places in Asia discovered, methanol poisoning is a real risk, even from large scale distillation. It is the quality control that matters. Illegal stills make quality control impossible, so legalisation and government certified testing can make it safe. However, this ruling is not about alcohol, it is about dissolving Federal authority exercised via the trade and commerce clause of the Constitut…

As someone who's involved in said home production, the only way someone is getting methanol poisoning is if it's intentional done.

negligence (especially via ignorance) is a thing. a hobbyist wanting to celebrate their first batch with their buddies can poison them with some smeared hearts. but i get what you’re saying.

Re: US appeals court declares 158-year-old home distilling ban unconstitutional

#216

Post by amluto »

akersten wrote: post #40
mattmaroon wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is actually a myth. I’ll have to see if I can find the papers I read but mass spectrometry has shown that methanol comes out throughout the entire process. The idea that things come out at their boiling temperature is a drastic oversimplification. Methanol is really only present in significant amounts in fruit mashes because it comes from fermentation of pectin. Grain or sugar-derived alcohol barely has any at a…

> This is actually a myth. I’ll have to see if I can find the papers I read but mass spectrometry has shown that methanol comes out throughout the entire process. The idea that things come out at their boiling temperature is a drastic oversimplification. Please do find those papers! They may be describing a radical new chemistry that I'm not familiar with. To be clear - methanol boils at 64C and ethanol boils at 78C.…

When you mix different liquids, all manner of complex things happen to their vapor pressure vs temperature curves.

Re: US appeals court declares 158-year-old home distilling ban unconstitutional

#217

Post by fuzzfactor »

general1465 wrote: post #194
direwolf20 wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is still routinely done to avoid ethanol taxes. It's called "denatured alcohol". Ethanol that has been poisoned is not considered drinkable alcohol, so not subject to the taxes on drinkable alcohol.

Furthermore denatured alcohol is also flavored in such a way that normal person would throw up on spot how bitter it is. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Denatonium

Beyond the recognized "Formulas" such as Formula No. 40-B, there are a number of other "flavors" of denaturants, pages of them starting at section 21.91:

https://www.ecfr.gov/current/title-27/chapter-I/subchapter-A...

The only purpose is not to "jeopardize the revenue."

In that respect, regardless of the rate being levied, the result on behavior was intended to be very strict and immediate.

Re: US appeals court declares 158-year-old home distilling ban unconstitutional

#218

Post by magicalhippo »

somenameforme wrote: post #183
magicalhippo wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A large Bic Mac meal with plain fries and soda is 123 NOK or $12.91, and a large double Quarter pounder menu is 168 NOK or $17.63. It's actually relatively cheap right now, I expect a price hike soon given how much grocery prices have increased.

Is that in Oslo or elsewhere? Have prices gone down for some reason? EDIT: Ahh! I was basing my statement on data from quite a number of years back, and just assuming prices tend to go in one direction in inflationary economies. The nuance here is that the NOK has weakened somewhat dramatically against the dollar, so relative prices aren't quite as insane now as they were in the past.

Ah yes, back when the dollar was 7 NOK and not ~10 NOK, the Big Mac meal would indeed have been the equivalent of $20.

Re: US appeals court declares 158-year-old home distilling ban unconstitutional

#219

Post by hilbert42 »

giantg2 wrote: post #211
twsahjklf wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not parent, but after 1 minute of googling: https://historyfacts.com/us-history/fact/the-u-s-government-... Note that we are talking about industrial alcohol, which was not made for human consumption but could be distilled to make it palatable (before the toxic additives were added).

They made it sound as if they were poisoning alcohol intended for drinking (looks like it was possibly edited or I missed that it said industrial). Methanol and other additives are still added to most industrial alcohol today.

"Methanol and other additives are still added to most industrial alcohol today."

Depends in which country you reside. Where I am the denaturants methanol and pyridine were removed decades ago and replaced with the nontoxic bitterant denatonium.

Re: US appeals court declares 158-year-old home distilling ban unconstitutional

#220

Post by hilbert42 »

freedomben wrote: post #123
delichon wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From ~1906 through prohibition the Feds purposely poisoned industrial alcohol with methanol and other chemicals as a deterrent. 100 years ago, in 1926, they increased it, up to as much as 10%. This was true rotgut. Around 10,000 people, mostly poor, died from it. Blindness, organ failure, paralysis. This was legal and regulated by the Volstead Act. It was the primary source of methanol poisoning during prohibition.

Yep, never forget. The government literally poisoned people. Anytime I mention this I get eye rolls and immediate dismissal as a kook. It's quite frustrating.

I keep raising this and I cannot understand why many people can't understand the facts. You're right, it's damn frustrating.
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