In 1791, a group of proud and passionate agitators in western Pennsylvania protested against the first tax on domestic products imposed by the new federal government of the United States—a sales tax on whiskey. today, whiskey rebellion The uprising is primarily considered one of the first populist uprisings in the United States, and a foreshadowing of many future conflicts between America’s heartland and government elites.
Yet the debate over whether Alexander Hamilton’s whiskey tax was a prudent revenue-raising scheme or an egregious example of government overreach often overlooks its true meaning. no There was controversy during the rebellion. In other words, Americans have the right to make their own wine.
Just three years after George Washington sought to aggressively enforce the Treasury Secretary’s tax bill, the first president of the United States opened a brewery at his Mount Vernon estate. Washington will continue to operate one of these largest winery He spent his post-retirement years in the United States—and when it comes to brewing’s founding fathers, he’s not the only one. Peers such as james madison and Patrick Henry Also operated a distillery on a Virginia plantation.
Home brewing was hardly a part of the slaveholding ruling class. As the Whiskey Rebellion itself demonstrated, homebrew was small remote farm in the western Appalachian region of the country. For these farmers, it is almost impossible Harvest the crops they harvest Go to the big city shopping markets before they go bad. But if they Distilled Converting these crops into high-strength spirits not only has a longer shelf life, but also greatly reduces the volume and weight of shipped goods.
Thus, the American tradition of home distilling whiskey officially began in the late 18th century (although the roots of home-made whiskey in the United States date back to the 18th century) 1620 Go to Berkeley Plantation on the James River). But what early citizens considered a core part of America’s birthright is now illegal in modern America.
Under federal law, home distilling is felony violation The offense is punishable by up to five years in prison. Despite America’s longstanding hardline stance on home distilling raised eyebrows among policy experts and industry stakeholders—especially given the domestic brewing exist legalization In the late 1970s, it now attracted the attention of the liberal legal community. The implications extend far beyond homemade spirits.
Earlier this year, the Buckeye Institute partnered with the elite litigation team at BakerHostetler in Washington, D.C., to launch a litigation Challenging the U.S. home distilling ban, arguing that it violates the Commerce Clause of the U.S. Constitution.
The modern elastic interpretation of the Commerce Clause has been a thorn in the side of originalist legal scholars for decades. The emergence of the inevitable expansion of commerce clauses can be seen in the 1942 case. Wickard v Philburnin which the Supreme Court ruled that wheat grown by farmers for home consumption remained subject to federal regulation under the Commerce Clause because it had Indirect effects In the larger national wheat market (according to a complex theory, for every bushel of homegrown wheat a farmer consumes, he may buy a bushel on the open market).
In 2008, the commercial terms were further extended Gonzalez v. Leitch When the court upheld the federal government’s authority to regulate local cannabis cultivation and use under the Controlled Substances Act. The ever-expanding scope of the Commerce Clause has enabled the federal government to bring more and more aspects of American life within its regulatory purview. since go Since the decision, liberal and conservative legal scholars have been looking for a way to compensate for the seemingly unlimited reach of the Commerce Clause.
There is a federal ban on home distilling. Owned by Buckeye Institute client John Ream Trek Brewing Living in Newark, Ohio, he is both an entrepreneur and an engineer. “About 15 years ago, [my] My wife gave me a homemade kit and I fell in love with it,” Rem said reason. “I’m an engineer, so testing different things, trying different things, how different flavors come together really interests me.”
Ream, a former aerospace engineer, founded Trek in 2018. “A natural step [home brewing] Distillation has been studied since its inception [brewing and distilling] The process is the same, but when you learn it’s illegal, you hit a roadblock,” Rehm said.
with in go, Marijuana is a Schedule I substance under the Controlled Substances Act, but the federal government does not have a comprehensive regulatory plan for alcohol — in large part because Regulation at the state and local levels Since the repeal of Prohibition. As Buckeye Institute debate In its summary of the law, if the federal government can ban home distilling, then the Commerce Clause has no legal restriction doctrine at all. The federal government can even ban home gardening, home baking, or home employment at will.
While the Commerce Clause challenge will sidestep the debate over the merits of home distilling policy, the rationale behind banning home distilling is crumbling as a legal argument. The most commonly cited reason for banning home distillation is that the process can pose some risks, such as fire or explosion, if not handled properly.
This rationale not only ignores the fact that we allow citizens to acquire everything from guns to Fourth of July fireworks, but it also ignores data from countries like New Zealand, which Legalizing home distilling 1996. caused by residential fire And not a single death or injury has been recorded as a result of home distilling. In addition, they retain Overall fire statisticsSince legalization, fires caused by home distilling are far less common than fires caused by electric or gas stoves and stoves.
“I’m an engineer, I have a family, I have two boys, and I wouldn’t do anything to put anyone at risk,” Rem said.
John Rem was simply trying to do what generations of Americans had done before him, from small farmers in rural Pennsylvania to the landed aristocracy of Virginia’s Founding Fathers. If he succeeds, he might save the U.S. Constitution along the way.
“Ultimately, we decided it was the right thing to do,” Rem said. “So we’re proud to try to make that happen.”
