Comment by throw10920
2 months ago
> you to some extent want that activity to occur otherwise you've got budget issues. Now what is the incentive?
I was just talking with some friends recently about an instance of this: distilling, which is still federally illegal in the US for the primary reason that it provides a lot of tax income if you charge for licenses and tax sales, which is incredibly frustrating because it's easy and safe to make yourself high-quality liquors at a fraction of the price that you'd pay at the store and have a fun hobby to boot.
(pedants: please don't bring up safety issues - it's trivial to realize with five minutes and internet access that distilling isn't significantly less safe than many other unregulated activities in the world as a whole)
When advertising is taxed/banned, we'll have to resort to making our own dangerous forms of advertising and bootleg them around without the cops catching us.
Forget about the safety issues of the distilling itself (and the risks of accidentally creating methanol), I'd be far more concerned with the safety and public-health issues of cheap, unregulated access to high-proof alcohol.
> I'd be far more concerned with the safety and public-health issues of cheap, unregulated access to high-proof alcohol.
This isn't grounded in reality.
Alcohol itself is already dangerous, yet we've managed to figure out how to build cultural elements that mitigate the risks a lot.
You can already buy huge amounts of high-proof alcohol for cheap after you're 21, and most underage kids know someone who could get it for them anyway.
And it's already legal to brew your own alcohol - it's fairly easy to get up to 20% ABV with wine.
And I don't know where you got "unregulated" from. I certainly didn't mention anything about that. Alcohol is already regulated quite heavily - you can't give to a minor or sell without a license, homebrew or not - and legalizing distillation wouldn't change that.
You need to do some research, because you're clearly not familiar with the legal and social environments of the US, at least.