8 ms·

This reminds me of defective/poisoned alcohol in the prohibition era causing blindness and whatnot. If you're going to create a black market via regulation, yo

This reminds me of defective/poisoned alcohol in the prohibition era causing blindness and whatnot. If you're going to create a black market via regulation, you better be damn sure the cure isn't worse than the disease. In marijuana's case, that's definitely not true. The book Reefer Madness by Eric Schlosser covers the unintended consequences of black markets in depth and I can't recommend it enough. But pretty much any Schlosser book is great.

dehrmann 7y ago
The denatured alcohol during prohibition was a government attempt to prevent people from drinking. This was manufacturers allegedly (the reason isn't clear) cutting THC with something that's safe for ingestion, but not inhalation. The motivations are completely different.
- CoolGuySteve 7y ago
  If your assertion is that all tainted liquor during the prohibition era came from the government then you're going to have to provide a source, because that's simply bullshit. The safety risks of cheaply/poorly made moonshine are well documented: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moonshine#Safety https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moonshine#Safety
  - dehrmann 7y ago
    It's still different because that's shoddy manufacturing. Vitamin E is an additive, so it's more intentional.
    - drawkbox 7y ago
      If it is 'intentional' it still could be sabotage. A decade of no issues like this then suddenly a bunch at the same time the bigs are buying into vaping and the legal market for marijuana is growing. The blue ocean of vaping and marijuana is here, both the black market mafias/cartels and the big fish want it and to shakeout the small/medium suppliers you need an event like this. Not to mention the anti-smoking and cigarette lobbies in with the prohibitionists and presidential and governor executive orders, mere months after Altria buys into Juul (Dec 2018), very sketchy and suspect. Top it off it is a big target of propagandists and bot networks right now. Add all that up and it seems like a planned event after sabotage. The bigs and the mafias/cartels can weather the storm, the small startups and small/medium businesses that have made safe products for over a decade are the target of attack. In my opinion it was market sabotage on purpose. Every new blue ocean market has events like this and it is from various sources: big fish, underground mafias/cartels, prohibitionists, authoritarians, puritans and moral patrols. This is America. People not thinking it is about market power and money are naive as hell. You think this is for health reasons? laughable. From the country that can't even get healthcare to everyone? Same with all bans and prohibitions, makes it more unsafe and more lucrative for mafias/cartels because there is decreased supply and increased demand, price goes up, in comes the underground and big fish and more danger.
      - narag 7y ago
        So that vaping Vitamine E gives you cancer was a known fact? How do they know?
        drawkbox 7y ago
        Vitamin E doesn't give you cancer, the Vitamin E filler Acetate that cheap production was using to stretch supply is not good for your lungs and creates this sickness. What is known to cause cancer is carcinogens and vaping does not combust like cigarettes so that is 20+ less carcinogens going into lungs. Smoking isn't healthy, but smoking cigarettes is way less healthy and more damaging. Not only for cancer but for heart and circulatory issues. However people smoke all their lives, most of that damage is prevalent at the end. People should have a Right to Body and there should be safety/health alerts like there are with smoking to let people decide on their own, bans and prohibitions only make the product people will use more dangerous and unsafe, as well as create cartels/mafias that make everyone unsafe.
        narag 7y ago
        Well I meant that, whatever substance is the cause, if it was intentionally introduced, then someone had to know in advance it would be harmful and at the same time it couldn't be common knowledge or it would have been banned. If that's what happened, then how can the accusation hold? How would anybody prove it?
      - amaranth 7y ago
        I thought the Vitamin E was only being added to the illegal marijuana vapes though. I believe someone else on a previous story on here pointed out that Vitamin E makes the THC more potent so they can lower the dosage they actually give you and save money. > The investigation has found that many of these products patients used were bought online or received through friends or family, rather than through vaping shops or at licensed THC dispensaries.
  - mcguire 7y ago
    All? No. But the official policy was that anyone who got hurt had only themselves to blame. "By mid-1927, the new denaturing formulas included some notable poisons—kerosene and brucine (a plant alkaloid closely related to strychnine), gasoline, benzene, cadmium, iodine, zinc, mercury salts, nicotine, ether, formaldehyde, chloroform, camphor, carbolic acid, quinine, and acetone. The Treasury Department also demanded more methyl alcohol be added—up to 10 percent of total product. It was the last that proved most deadly." https://slate.com/technology/2010/02/the-little-told-story-of-how-the-u-s-government-poisoned-alcohol-during-prohibition.html https://slate.com/technology/2010/02/the-little-told-story-o...
    - yabadabadoes 7y ago
      I don't get why this is written in the past tense or treated as something that ended when one special program ended in the article. The US started demanding denaturing or taxes in 1909, made it deadly during prohibition, but the US still requires a deadly mix on untaxed ethanol today.
lmilcin 7y ago
When making moonshine first destillation products contain large amount of toxic methanol and are typically discarded. Methanol boils at lower temperature than ethanol. If an unscrupulous or unknowinh bootlegger sells it anyway this is potentially dangerous.
ndzig 7y ago
As long as the government (ie the people) don't have to pay for it, what's the problem?
- jedimastert 7y ago
  > As long as the government (ie the people) don't have to pay for it, what's the problem? Doesn't necessarily apply here, but there are things that people believe are such a detriment to society that keeping them around would incur an unacceptable cost to the government and it's people that might outweigh any benefits it brings.

dehrmann 7y ago

The denatured alcohol during prohibition was a government attempt to prevent people from drinking. This was manufacturers allegedly (the reason isn't clear) cutting THC with something that's safe for ingestion, but not inhalation. The motivations are completely different.

CoolGuySteve 7y ago
If your assertion is that all tainted liquor during the prohibition era came from the government then you're going to have to provide a source, because that's simply bullshit. The safety risks of cheaply/poorly made moonshine are well documented: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moonshine#Safety https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moonshine#Safety
- dehrmann 7y ago
  It's still different because that's shoddy manufacturing. Vitamin E is an additive, so it's more intentional.
  - drawkbox 7y ago
    If it is 'intentional' it still could be sabotage. A decade of no issues like this then suddenly a bunch at the same time the bigs are buying into vaping and the legal market for marijuana is growing. The blue ocean of vaping and marijuana is here, both the black market mafias/cartels and the big fish want it and to shakeout the small/medium suppliers you need an event like this. Not to mention the anti-smoking and cigarette lobbies in with the prohibitionists and presidential and governor executive orders, mere months after Altria buys into Juul (Dec 2018), very sketchy and suspect. Top it off it is a big target of propagandists and bot networks right now. Add all that up and it seems like a planned event after sabotage. The bigs and the mafias/cartels can weather the storm, the small startups and small/medium businesses that have made safe products for over a decade are the target of attack. In my opinion it was market sabotage on purpose. Every new blue ocean market has events like this and it is from various sources: big fish, underground mafias/cartels, prohibitionists, authoritarians, puritans and moral patrols. This is America. People not thinking it is about market power and money are naive as hell. You think this is for health reasons? laughable. From the country that can't even get healthcare to everyone? Same with all bans and prohibitions, makes it more unsafe and more lucrative for mafias/cartels because there is decreased supply and increased demand, price goes up, in comes the underground and big fish and more danger.
    - narag 7y ago
      So that vaping Vitamine E gives you cancer was a known fact? How do they know?
      - drawkbox 7y ago
        Vitamin E doesn't give you cancer, the Vitamin E filler Acetate that cheap production was using to stretch supply is not good for your lungs and creates this sickness. What is known to cause cancer is carcinogens and vaping does not combust like cigarettes so that is 20+ less carcinogens going into lungs. Smoking isn't healthy, but smoking cigarettes is way less healthy and more damaging. Not only for cancer but for heart and circulatory issues. However people smoke all their lives, most of that damage is prevalent at the end. People should have a Right to Body and there should be safety/health alerts like there are with smoking to let people decide on their own, bans and prohibitions only make the product people will use more dangerous and unsafe, as well as create cartels/mafias that make everyone unsafe.
        narag 7y ago
        Well I meant that, whatever substance is the cause, if it was intentionally introduced, then someone had to know in advance it would be harmful and at the same time it couldn't be common knowledge or it would have been banned. If that's what happened, then how can the accusation hold? How would anybody prove it?
    - amaranth 7y ago
      I thought the Vitamin E was only being added to the illegal marijuana vapes though. I believe someone else on a previous story on here pointed out that Vitamin E makes the THC more potent so they can lower the dosage they actually give you and save money. > The investigation has found that many of these products patients used were bought online or received through friends or family, rather than through vaping shops or at licensed THC dispensaries.
- mcguire 7y ago
  All? No. But the official policy was that anyone who got hurt had only themselves to blame. "By mid-1927, the new denaturing formulas included some notable poisons—kerosene and brucine (a plant alkaloid closely related to strychnine), gasoline, benzene, cadmium, iodine, zinc, mercury salts, nicotine, ether, formaldehyde, chloroform, camphor, carbolic acid, quinine, and acetone. The Treasury Department also demanded more methyl alcohol be added—up to 10 percent of total product. It was the last that proved most deadly." https://slate.com/technology/2010/02/the-little-told-story-of-how-the-u-s-government-poisoned-alcohol-during-prohibition.html https://slate.com/technology/2010/02/the-little-told-story-o...
  - yabadabadoes 7y ago
    I don't get why this is written in the past tense or treated as something that ended when one special program ended in the article. The US started demanding denaturing or taxes in 1909, made it deadly during prohibition, but the US still requires a deadly mix on untaxed ethanol today.

lmilcin 7y ago

When making moonshine first destillation products contain large amount of toxic methanol and are typically discarded. Methanol boils at lower temperature than ethanol. If an unscrupulous or unknowinh bootlegger sells it anyway this is potentially dangerous.

ndzig 7y ago

As long as the government (ie the people) don't have to pay for it, what's the problem?

jedimastert 7y ago
> As long as the government (ie the people) don't have to pay for it, what's the problem? Doesn't necessarily apply here, but there are things that people believe are such a detriment to society that keeping them around would incur an unacceptable cost to the government and it's people that might outweigh any benefits it brings.