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This vaguely reminds me of the fact that in many countries, pure ethanol sold for industrial purposes is intentionally made poisonous, so you can’t drink it and

This vaguely reminds me of the fact that in many countries, pure ethanol sold for industrial purposes is intentionally made poisonous, so you can’t drink it and thus merchants don’t have to charge the taxes on it that they would for spirits.

ivan_gammel 2y ago
It's more like "so you can't drink it" without the taxes part. Those taxes play important role in reducing alcohol consumption (though they are of course not the only tool), so making cheap ethanol poisonous and with different color closes the loophole in healthcare policy rather than opens a loophole in taxation. E.g. study: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC3860576/ https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC3860576/
- amelius 2y ago
  Couldn't they just make it taste bad, for safety's sake?
  - School-Cotton 2y ago
    In some countries that is allowed, but in others it has to actually be poisonous.
    - amelius 2y ago
      Well, I hope it is both then.
    - ted_bunny 2y ago
      And in some, it's a tourist attraction. Don't drink "White Elephant" in Vietnam unless you want to wake up blind and pissing blood, at least according to a friend!
      - sampullman 2y ago
        I don't know exactly what "White Elephant" refers to, but I've had plenty of homemade liquor in Vietnam and am mostly fine.
        ted_bunny 2y ago
        Methyl alcohol. Bad shit. Not unique to VN, a lot of desperate people drink it.
  - jampekka 2y ago
    In some countries it's done so and poisoning is banned. E.g. Finland and Poland got an exemption from the EU to do this because so many people died from the poisonings.
    - amelius 2y ago
      Where can I read more about this? What poison were they using?
      - snaily 2y ago
        Methanol has been used, as has rubbing alcohol and methyl ethyl ketone. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Denatured_alcohol https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Denatured_alcohol for further reading. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Denatonium https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Denatonium is used to make it unpalatable. Fun fact: the same chemical is also coated onto Nintendo Switch cartridges to discourage children from putting them in their mouths.
        FireBeyond 2y ago
        We used to use denatonium (Bitrex) in firefighting to test the efficacy of your face mask seal - you'd put on your mask, a filter, and a hood - Bitrex would be aerosolized into the hood and if you could taste it, there was not a good seal. Nowadays we just measure pressure differentials.
      - jampekka 2y ago
        It was specifically about methanol. Methanol wasn't explicitly used as a denaturation agent but ethanol methanol mixture sales were (forced to be) allowed. Can't find much in English but here's a brief story. Methanol sales were banned in Finland prior to EU and Finland applied for the exemption already in the EU application in the early 1990s. It was finally granted in 2019. Probably around 500 people died and many got blinded meanwhile. https://yle.fi/a/3-7841018 https://yle.fi/a/3-7841018
  - beAbU 2y ago
    Addiction is one helluva motivator, and some people will put up with horrible tasting stuff as long as it's a cheap high.
    - szszrk 2y ago
      Not that pure spirit is something you drink for the wonderful taste, in the first place.
    - poincaredisk 2y ago
      I live in one of the countries that just made it taste bad (because enough people died of poisoning it was allowed as an exception by the EU). I've drank a shot of denaturated alcohol once - half out of curiosity, half because I was already out of liquor at home for that evening. If you close your nose the taste is just bitter, but bearable. The additives are supposed to make you vomit, but for me I only had vomit reflex for ~5 seconds after swallowing. I could live with that if I was addicted and couldn't afford a regular alcohol. I'm sure many people do. Not sure what the moral is. I guess that addiction is a really strong motivator, and tax evasion is not a good enough reason to justify killing people with poison.
    - bluGill 2y ago
      Including not checking as one person I know found out after drinking hand sanitizer. (some hand sanitizer is just alcohol that is made to taste bad, some of it isn't even alcohol, she got the later)
  - weberer 2y ago
    That doesn't seem to stop people from drinking IPAs.
    - flerchin 2y ago
      I'll save you from them.
  - chongli 2y ago
    Chinese cooking wines avoid alcohol taxes by adding salt. The salt is useful as a seasoning for food but makes the wine undrinkable!
    - _trampeltier 2y ago
      Does remind me when I talked to a chef from a big restaurant about wine and cooking. He said, a lot of people who work in a kitchen have often an smaller or bigger alcohol problem. He said, as soon as wine is opened in the kitchen for cooking, he does add just a bit salt, so people in the team don't even try to drink some cooking wine.
    - Eavolution 2y ago
      That doesn't seem like a good idea as a lot of people would try to reduce salt intake due to blood pressure concerns, where the alcohol in this wouldn't be a concern for that as it would likely be cooked off
      - chongli 2y ago
        That’s going to be tough. Shaoxing wine and soy sauce both have lots of sodium in them because they’re intended for seasoning dishes without the need to add salt separately. Even dòuchǐ (fermented black soybeans), which offer a similar flavour profile to soy sauce in solid form, have a lot of salt.
  - apricot 2y ago
    Chicago does it: https://malort.com/ https://malort.com/
    - depressedpanda 2y ago
      Cute, didn't know it was a thing in Chicago! I suppose wormwood is an acquired taste, but it's one I happen to like. They still put it in many different bitters here in Sweden.
- School-Cotton 2y ago
  I’m not sure how this is different from what I’m saying?
  - contrast 2y ago
    The thread is about bad things because of tax policy, your post is about a good thing because of health policy - but you don’t say it’s a good thing, or that it’s about heath not taxes. The post pointing this out has different content to yours, which reads as if your meaning is “this reminds me of another bad thing caused by tax policies” - even if that’s not what you meant.
    - School-Cotton 2y ago
      > you don’t say it’s a good thing But I also never said OP’s anecdote was a bad thing. (Why shouldn’t countries be able to tax video cameras coming in…). What’s the difference?
      - jeffhuys 2y ago
        You can’t win arguments on the internet. Best case: they ghost you. Cowards, I say!
- 15155 2y ago
  Every legal allowance I disagree with is a "loophole", every legal allowance I take advantage of is intended functionality.
  - poincaredisk 2y ago
    I think if it's working as intended and as designed then it's hard to call it a loophole. Loophole would be when dying your spirit purple would change the taxation, because someone codified the color of alcohol instead of it's content. But of course as you say it's largely semantics.
    - 15155 2y ago
      > I think if it's working as intended and as designed then it's hard to call it a loophole. This assumes everyone acts in good faith. A popular one these days is the "gun show 'loophole.'" Rather than calling it "renegging on an explicitly-legislated compromise", it's a "loophole" that needs "closing."
      - Spivak 2y ago
        You're assigning a single mind to a group of uncoordinated actors to create a hypocrisy that probably doesn't exist in any specific individual. It looks like a loophole, it could be in the textbook describing them. You have a law that establishes a rule, then creates a small exception that in effect opts out of the rule entirely. The people who want this provision eliminated don't know it was intended. That's pretty in the weeds of congress' internal negotiations
        adolph 2y ago
        >> Rather than calling it "renegging on an explicitly-legislated compromise", it's a "loophole" that needs "closing." > You're assigning a single mind to a group of uncoordinated actors to create a hypocrisy that probably doesn't exist in any specific individual. POSIWID
        wnoise 2y ago
- jrockway 2y ago
  > making cheap ethanol poisonous and with different color closes the loophole in healthcare policy I have never seen this as anything other than the death penalty for evading taxes. If the tax were designed to reduce consumption across the population, it needs to scale with income or net worth. Otherwise, it's just a tax on the poor.
rsynnott 2y ago
FWIW, many countries no longer allow denaturing via poisonous agents, just via extremely unpleasant tasting ones (eg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Denatonium https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Denatonium).
beAbU 2y ago
I heat my house with oil, a truck comes every couple of months and fills a massive tank in my back yard. This "oil" is basically diesel. It smells and feels identical to diesel. But it's about 70 cents cheaper per litre compared to road diesel. It's dyed red, and you are not supposed to put it in your car, but I reckon it'll be more than fine for older diesel engines. The red diesel is not taxed like road diesel, and is much cheaper.
- kotaKat 2y ago
  > I reckon it'll be more than fine for older diesel engines There's always the risk of getting your fuel tank dipped if you're on road. Moreso for trucks, but some jurisdictions will set up inspections and check for dyed fuel and tear you an absolute new one when they catch it.
  - bluGill 2y ago
    The exit of off road events is a common place to check this. So much so that there is a reputation in the off road community and now they don't even need to check often anymore since nobody is stupid enough to risk driving a truck that has ever had off road fuel in it there.
- extraduder_ire 2y ago
  Here, that's commonly called red diesel (despite them changing to green decades ago) and it's sold for agricultural use. There are a number of cross border smuggling operations where criminals remove the dye and resell it for somewhere between the two prices. Though primarily done to trucks, there are occasional fuel tests done by police. Even if your tank is currently clean, they'll occasionally pull out the fuel filters and check those for dye.

ivan_gammel 2y ago

It's more like "so you can't drink it" without the taxes part. Those taxes play important role in reducing alcohol consumption (though they are of course not the only tool), so making cheap ethanol poisonous and with different color closes the loophole in healthcare policy rather than opens a loophole in taxation. E.g. study: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC3860576/ https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC3860576/

amelius 2y ago
Couldn't they just make it taste bad, for safety's sake?
- School-Cotton 2y ago
  In some countries that is allowed, but in others it has to actually be poisonous.
  - amelius 2y ago
    Well, I hope it is both then.
  - ted_bunny 2y ago
    And in some, it's a tourist attraction. Don't drink "White Elephant" in Vietnam unless you want to wake up blind and pissing blood, at least according to a friend!
    - sampullman 2y ago
      I don't know exactly what "White Elephant" refers to, but I've had plenty of homemade liquor in Vietnam and am mostly fine.
      - ted_bunny 2y ago
        Methyl alcohol. Bad shit. Not unique to VN, a lot of desperate people drink it.
- jampekka 2y ago
  In some countries it's done so and poisoning is banned. E.g. Finland and Poland got an exemption from the EU to do this because so many people died from the poisonings.
  - amelius 2y ago
    Where can I read more about this? What poison were they using?
    - snaily 2y ago
      Methanol has been used, as has rubbing alcohol and methyl ethyl ketone. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Denatured_alcohol https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Denatured_alcohol for further reading. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Denatonium https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Denatonium is used to make it unpalatable. Fun fact: the same chemical is also coated onto Nintendo Switch cartridges to discourage children from putting them in their mouths.
      - FireBeyond 2y ago
        We used to use denatonium (Bitrex) in firefighting to test the efficacy of your face mask seal - you'd put on your mask, a filter, and a hood - Bitrex would be aerosolized into the hood and if you could taste it, there was not a good seal. Nowadays we just measure pressure differentials.
    - jampekka 2y ago
      It was specifically about methanol. Methanol wasn't explicitly used as a denaturation agent but ethanol methanol mixture sales were (forced to be) allowed. Can't find much in English but here's a brief story. Methanol sales were banned in Finland prior to EU and Finland applied for the exemption already in the EU application in the early 1990s. It was finally granted in 2019. Probably around 500 people died and many got blinded meanwhile. https://yle.fi/a/3-7841018 https://yle.fi/a/3-7841018
- beAbU 2y ago
  Addiction is one helluva motivator, and some people will put up with horrible tasting stuff as long as it's a cheap high.
  - szszrk 2y ago
    Not that pure spirit is something you drink for the wonderful taste, in the first place.
  - poincaredisk 2y ago
    I live in one of the countries that just made it taste bad (because enough people died of poisoning it was allowed as an exception by the EU). I've drank a shot of denaturated alcohol once - half out of curiosity, half because I was already out of liquor at home for that evening. If you close your nose the taste is just bitter, but bearable. The additives are supposed to make you vomit, but for me I only had vomit reflex for ~5 seconds after swallowing. I could live with that if I was addicted and couldn't afford a regular alcohol. I'm sure many people do. Not sure what the moral is. I guess that addiction is a really strong motivator, and tax evasion is not a good enough reason to justify killing people with poison.
  - bluGill 2y ago
    Including not checking as one person I know found out after drinking hand sanitizer. (some hand sanitizer is just alcohol that is made to taste bad, some of it isn't even alcohol, she got the later)
- weberer 2y ago
  That doesn't seem to stop people from drinking IPAs.
  - flerchin 2y ago
    I'll save you from them.
- chongli 2y ago
  Chinese cooking wines avoid alcohol taxes by adding salt. The salt is useful as a seasoning for food but makes the wine undrinkable!
  - _trampeltier 2y ago
    Does remind me when I talked to a chef from a big restaurant about wine and cooking. He said, a lot of people who work in a kitchen have often an smaller or bigger alcohol problem. He said, as soon as wine is opened in the kitchen for cooking, he does add just a bit salt, so people in the team don't even try to drink some cooking wine.
  - Eavolution 2y ago
    That doesn't seem like a good idea as a lot of people would try to reduce salt intake due to blood pressure concerns, where the alcohol in this wouldn't be a concern for that as it would likely be cooked off
    - chongli 2y ago
      That’s going to be tough. Shaoxing wine and soy sauce both have lots of sodium in them because they’re intended for seasoning dishes without the need to add salt separately. Even dòuchǐ (fermented black soybeans), which offer a similar flavour profile to soy sauce in solid form, have a lot of salt.
- apricot 2y ago
  Chicago does it: https://malort.com/ https://malort.com/
  - depressedpanda 2y ago
    Cute, didn't know it was a thing in Chicago! I suppose wormwood is an acquired taste, but it's one I happen to like. They still put it in many different bitters here in Sweden.
School-Cotton 2y ago
I’m not sure how this is different from what I’m saying?
- contrast 2y ago
  The thread is about bad things because of tax policy, your post is about a good thing because of health policy - but you don’t say it’s a good thing, or that it’s about heath not taxes. The post pointing this out has different content to yours, which reads as if your meaning is “this reminds me of another bad thing caused by tax policies” - even if that’s not what you meant.
  - School-Cotton 2y ago
    > you don’t say it’s a good thing But I also never said OP’s anecdote was a bad thing. (Why shouldn’t countries be able to tax video cameras coming in…). What’s the difference?
    - jeffhuys 2y ago
      You can’t win arguments on the internet. Best case: they ghost you. Cowards, I say!
15155 2y ago
Every legal allowance I disagree with is a "loophole", every legal allowance I take advantage of is intended functionality.
- poincaredisk 2y ago
  I think if it's working as intended and as designed then it's hard to call it a loophole. Loophole would be when dying your spirit purple would change the taxation, because someone codified the color of alcohol instead of it's content. But of course as you say it's largely semantics.
  - 15155 2y ago
    > I think if it's working as intended and as designed then it's hard to call it a loophole. This assumes everyone acts in good faith. A popular one these days is the "gun show 'loophole.'" Rather than calling it "renegging on an explicitly-legislated compromise", it's a "loophole" that needs "closing."
    - Spivak 2y ago
      You're assigning a single mind to a group of uncoordinated actors to create a hypocrisy that probably doesn't exist in any specific individual. It looks like a loophole, it could be in the textbook describing them. You have a law that establishes a rule, then creates a small exception that in effect opts out of the rule entirely. The people who want this provision eliminated don't know it was intended. That's pretty in the weeds of congress' internal negotiations
      - adolph 2y ago
        >> Rather than calling it "renegging on an explicitly-legislated compromise", it's a "loophole" that needs "closing." > You're assigning a single mind to a group of uncoordinated actors to create a hypocrisy that probably doesn't exist in any specific individual. POSIWID
      - wnoise 2y ago
jrockway 2y ago
> making cheap ethanol poisonous and with different color closes the loophole in healthcare policy I have never seen this as anything other than the death penalty for evading taxes. If the tax were designed to reduce consumption across the population, it needs to scale with income or net worth. Otherwise, it's just a tax on the poor.

rsynnott 2y ago

FWIW, many countries no longer allow denaturing via poisonous agents, just via extremely unpleasant tasting ones (eg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Denatonium https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Denatonium).

beAbU 2y ago

I heat my house with oil, a truck comes every couple of months and fills a massive tank in my back yard. This "oil" is basically diesel. It smells and feels identical to diesel. But it's about 70 cents cheaper per litre compared to road diesel. It's dyed red, and you are not supposed to put it in your car, but I reckon it'll be more than fine for older diesel engines. The red diesel is not taxed like road diesel, and is much cheaper.

kotaKat 2y ago
> I reckon it'll be more than fine for older diesel engines There's always the risk of getting your fuel tank dipped if you're on road. Moreso for trucks, but some jurisdictions will set up inspections and check for dyed fuel and tear you an absolute new one when they catch it.
- bluGill 2y ago
  The exit of off road events is a common place to check this. So much so that there is a reputation in the off road community and now they don't even need to check often anymore since nobody is stupid enough to risk driving a truck that has ever had off road fuel in it there.
extraduder_ire 2y ago
Here, that's commonly called red diesel (despite them changing to green decades ago) and it's sold for agricultural use. There are a number of cross border smuggling operations where criminals remove the dye and resell it for somewhere between the two prices. Though primarily done to trucks, there are occasional fuel tests done by police. Even if your tank is currently clean, they'll occasionally pull out the fuel filters and check those for dye.