Rumors, panic & quackery kill.
They were drinking methanol, wood alcohol, which is highly toxic, not ethanol which is drinking type alcohol.
But other than that - yeah, fear and ignorance.
Very sad, Wikipedia has a huge list of methanol poisoning incidents:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_methanol_poisoning_incidents
It’s one thing to be dumb enough to drink it if clearly labeled but quite another if you didn’t realize your drink was made with it.
The worst ones are the people who sell methanol, removing the artificial coloring (which is required to be in methanol under Iranian law) and are knowingly selling poison.
I swear, my fingers type all by themselves. I wanted to type “industrial alcohol.” Sorry.
Thread title corrected.