International Alcohol Poisoning Incidents Provide Tragic Reminder of the Need for Effective Regulation

At least five tourists in Laos, including one American, have died from suspected alcohol poisoning. "The victims are believed to have consumed drinks tainted with methanol, which is sometimes added to mixed-drinks at disreputable bars as a cheaper alternative to ethanol, but can cause severe poisoning or death," reported the Associated Press. Authorities are looking into additional hospitalizations in popular Laotian backpacking and tourist towns that could be related to the tainted supply.

Undetectable by flavor or color, methanol smells similar to ethanol but is very dangerous to consume, with fatality rates reported to be 20-40% if untreated. The BBC notes that foreign governments have repeatedly raised alarms about consuming alcohol in poorer Southeast Asian countries such as Laos that have "methanol alcohol suppliers exploiting an environment where there is low law enforcement and almost no regulations in the food and hospitality industries."

These tragic and preventable deaths are the latest in a series of international incidents caused by tainted alcohol:

While ineffective regulation has proven deadly, so too has prohibition. Over the course of two weeks in October nearly 50 Iranians died from drinking alcohol beverages containing methanol, with hundreds more hospitalized. Alcohol consumption is officially banned in the Islamic Republic but as Americans know all too well, prohibition leads to a flourishing black market - one lacking any regulatory protections for consumers.

Alcohol regulation in the United States provides an alternative example. Within our nation's licensed and closed alcohol sales system, licensed distributors source alcohol products from licensed alcohol producers and sell only to licensed alcohol retailers. This process creates natural checks and balances that ensure consumer safety is prioritized at all levels of the alcohol market. "Incidents of 'fake alcohol' products being distributed in the United States are reported much less frequently than in many other countries," noted former Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau (TTB) Chief Counsel Robert M. Tobiassen in a 2014 whitepaper The "Fake Alcohol" Situation in the United States.

The American solution to the piracy/counterfeit issue has been to provide nearly limitless opportunity for entrepreneurialism within the confines of a well-regulated alcohol market. Our robust and competitive system of independent distribution ensures that suppliers of all sizes can get their products onto trucks to go to market.

In the rare cases tainted alcohol does reach consumers, the American system quickly shuts down and prosecutes perpetrators. For example, this week Dennis R. Zeedyk of La Porte, Indiana, was sentenced to 48 months in prison for mail and tax fraud after selling a toxic, methanol-laced ethanol product marketed as food-grade.

As the world watches the tragedy in Laos unfold, it serves as a tragic reminder that effective alcohol regulation is necessary for consumer safety.