Open Source Distilling

> blindness caused by drinking improperly distilled alcohol.

This isn't actually a thing. You will die of normal ethanol poisoning well before consuming enough methanol to cause blindness when drinking alcohol you made from distilling something you fermented.

The blindness thing is some nicely placed Prohibition-era propaganda combined with the addition of methanol to alcohol-containing products that managed to make its way into the public psyche.

We know it’s illegal. We don’t care.

By that logic it would be acceptable for the state to regulate all sorts of common culinary techniques. Note that those are regulated in a commercial setting. I'd have no objection to similar regulations pertaining to restaurants that wanted to serve alcohol that was distilled, brewed, or otherwise prepared on site. In that context it's equivalent to the regulations pertaining to the handling of raw meat.

Similarly, perhaps the state ought to regulate the use of refrigerators in a residential setting since various failure modes there can easily land you in the hospital.

Enough people have contracted botulism poisoning by storing chopped garlic under oil in their fridge that the FDA has a warning about it on their website. So I suppose that would also be acceptable to regulate? Or perhaps just cooking oil in general? After all, it's quite flammable and people commonly start house fires when frying things.

While we're at it, perhaps canning things at home ought to require a permit?

The standard that "thing could pose a hazard therefore regulation is acceptable" is far too broad a criteria as it applies to approximately everything that exists and entirely disregards individual freedoms.

> It requires care and craft

A fine whiskey? Sure. The equivalent of vodka? Don't be ridiculous.

> alcohol is not only a drug but a transformed product

It most certainly is not. Distillation concentrates something that is already there.

Alternatively, fried eggs are a transformed product but at that point the term as used is so absurdly broad as to be rendered entirely useless.

> Distillation, when done improperly, can result in very toxic substances.

You're talking methanol right? That's a byproduct of fermentation of fruit.

>It requires care and craft

It really doesn't, it's a very basic process.

>and since alcohol is not only a drug but a transformed product (like LSD or meth),

Not sure what that means, could you clarify?

>it is perfectly fine that some state-level supervision apply: anything ranging from plain interdiction to controlled production.

It's really no different than brewing beer or wine, then discarding the water. For personal consumption it shouldn't be an issue.

Let’s be honest, what the government really cares about are the excise taxes on whiskey.

People frequently get blind or just die from home made booze when distilling and not checking for methyl alcohol. Quite common on poor parts of the world but also ie eastern Europe and russia.

Note that I don't take issue with the UAE banning home distillation.

If marijuana is fully legalized in a given jurisdiction yet it remains illegal to grow small quantities of it I would feel similarly. Still, I don't think it's quite as culturally ubiquitous throughout history as alcohol is, at least in the west.

LSD is an entirely different ballpark. I don't personally think US drug law makes much sense but I will acknowledge that something like LSD lacks the broad historical acceptance that alcohol enjoys in the west. Mushrooms would be a much better example if you want to take the discussion in that direction.