Our politicians and home distilling of alcohol
Treating citizens as potential criminals, bullying them with unnecessary and Hippocratic regulations will only lead to less respect for the laws and the politicians who wrote them.
The citizen does not understand what is best for him, he must be forbidden to produce his own spirit. It is ok to make your own wine but moving the alcohol to another bottle can not be allowed. Buying heavily taxed spirit is also accepted. In Scandinavia it is especially accepted to do so under humiliating circumstances – weekdays, not Saturdays when it is dangerous – after waiting in a long Soviet style line in a government shop, served by half incompetent staff, forced to show your ID and sniffed so you haven’t had a beer first in which case you will naturally be kicked out by a uniformed guard.
Grown up people are naturally capable to handle their own alcohol. After the Scandinavian countries joined the EEC, many of the worst laws and regulations will disappear when our domestic politicians are forced to comply with the common rules. Much has already been done; Gigantic license fees for handling alcoholic drinks are now down to nominal levels, we are all allowed to bring home some more alcoholic drinks when traveling abroad and our borders are open within the EEC so customers are no longer free to look in our suitcases without any serious suspicions anymore. The change is going slowly though, the old establishment is trying all possible methods to avoid changes and loose the power to control our lives.
If we want hobby distillation to be legal within a reasonable future we must influence our politicians, see page: how to influence.
Today's politics will result in many "protest distillers", making their own spirit even though – or rather just because – it is illegal. It also results in a gigantic inflow of cheap smuggled spirit, much in plastic containers from the east that can contain any rat poison as long as there is a profit in it. It is often sold as "home made" in order to give customers a false feeling of security.
The result is the opposite of what was intended. Thank God they have not been able to go any further! During prohibition in the USA, consumption rise to record levels, boosting smuggling and gangster wars.