Home-distilling ban ruled unconstitutional

[Monty]

I think this is the correct forum for this. If not, mods, please relocate as the spirit moves you.

A federal judge in Texas ruled Congress was too big for its britches when it banned home-distilling. (The link goes to Yahoo.)

Devin Watkins, a lawyer for the Texas-based hobby group at the libertarian think tank Competitive Enterprise Institute, told Reuters that the ruling “respects the rights of our clients to live under a government of limited powers.”

The hobby group, which represented the plaintiffs, and four of its 1,300 members filed a lawsuit in December against the Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau and the Department of Justice, saying that the government’s regulatory reach could not extend to activities within a person’s home.

I guess Daisy May Moses would be happy the Infernal Revenue Service has been reined in.

[Der_Trihs]

Well, that’s a decision that will poison a bunch of people.

[thorny_locust]

@Monty

The hobby group, which represented the plaintiffs, and four of its 1,300 members filed a lawsuit in December against the Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau and the Department of Justice, saying that the government’s regulatory reach could not extend to activities within a person’s home.

So you can murder your family members as long as you do it at home?

[Chronos]

How does this ruling not overturn the entirety of federal drug laws?

[gnoitall]

Because alcohol itself wasn’t already illegal.

[TroutMan]

@Der_Trihs

Well, that’s a decision that will poison a bunch of people.

Oh geez, can we stop already with the myth that home distilling causes methanol poisoning? Adding methanol to hooch causes methanol poisoning, not distillation.

The only poisoning that could be happening is alcohol poisoning, and alcohol is already readily available.

[x-ray_vision]

According to the article, the hobby group made that claim. The article states “U.S. District Judge Mark Pittman, in his ruling on Wednesday, sided with the Hobby Distillers Association’s lawyers that the 156-year-old ban exceeded Congress’s taxing power and violated the U.S. Constitution’s Commerce Clause.”

[solost]

@TroutMan

Oh geez, can we stop already with the myth that home distilling causes methanol poisoning? Adding methanol to hooch causes methanol poisoning, not distillation.

Inexperienced distillers using corn mash can unintentionally contaminate their moonshine with methanol.

Methanol is not a direct byproduct of fermentation, but instead forms from the breakdown of pectin in corn.

Methanol in the Moonshine

[kayaker]

@thorny_locust

So you can murder your family members as long as you do it at home?

I regularly forage for mushrooms. I only eat what I know to be safe, after positive ID. I’ve belonged to a mushroom club, own a few books, know how to do a spore print, etc. I’d never eat a shroom I wasn’t sure about, or one that has toxic look-alikes.

That said, there are people who eat mushrooms they found and end up sick or dead. I do not think making mushroom foraging illegal is the right approach to this situation.

[TroutMan]

@solost

Inexperienced distillers using corn mash can unintentionally contaminate their moonshine with methanol.

No, this just doesn’t happen. All the poisonings in your linked article are from methanol added to denature the alcohol (and bad distillers failing to remove it), or evil people adding methanol to make drinkers think it’s ethanol.

Yes, pectin can form methanol. But to concentrate enough to poison someone, it would take a very skillful distiller to purposely isolate the methanol. Simply leaving in the heads is not enough - the ethanol will kill you before you get a lethal dose of methanol.

[thorny_locust]

@kayaker

I regularly forage for mushrooms. I only eat what I know to be safe, after positive ID. I’ve belonged to a mushroom club, own a few books, know how to do a spore print, etc. I’d never eat a shroom I wasn’t sure about, or one that has toxic look-alikes.

That said, there are people who eat mushrooms they found and end up sick or dead. I do not think making mushroom foraging illegal is the right approach to this situation.

I agree with you on that. There’s no sense in requiring everybody to have a 20C licensed kitchen (that may be a NY term) just to make dinner. I’m not opposed to home distilling any more than I am to home canning, which can also be dangerous if it’s not done right and which it would be absurd for a state to try to ban. I just don’t think the specific argument they seemed to be making makes sense.

And, according to @x-ray_vision’s quote, neither did the judge, who apparently decided on other grounds entirely. Whether those other grounds make sense I don’t know.