by thaumasiotes 4 days ago
> Pretty sure this was a relic of prohibition right? The feds would contaminate ethanol with methanol to keep people from drinking it
We still do this now. We don't do it because alcohol is illegal, we do it because we levy higher taxes on non-poisonous alcohol, and if someone decides to drink the poisoned alcohol, they deserve what they get.
No going to the gas station and getting blitzed on ethanol fuel on a Saturday night.
More like solvents at the hardware store
During the covid period, the price of hand sanitizer, which is thickened alcohol, rose to exceed the price of drinkable alcohol.
Several beverage factories proposed to rework themselves to produce sanitizer instead, which would have been good for everyone.
But they couldn't, because federal law would have required them to poison the sanitizer, which would have contaminated their machinery so badly that they would have been unable to switch back to producing drinkable alcohol afterwards.
So - even if we ignore the idea that intentionally poisoning people is wrong - there was a serious cost to the legal regime, one that still exists.
Are there any benefits?
> But they couldn't...
This is false. Several breweries and distilleries started producing sanitizer basically overnight [0]. The requirement to add denaturing components to alcohol was suspended during the pandemic specifically to allow it [1].
[0] https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/distilleries-aroun...
[1] https://www.ttb.gov/laws-regulations-and-public-guidance/pub...
I swear there was one cheap sanitizer brand that smelled like tequila. Figured this is what they were doing.
Most of the really cheap sanitizers I got smelled like bad tequila.