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by throwawayjava
3084 days ago
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> Blackmarket alcohol is not uncommon in the US. But large criminal syndicates funded by blackmarket alcohol are very much a thing of the past. At least in the USA. I guess I technically know quite a few people who make "black market" whiskey. It's not legal to distill without lots of licensing and these people do sell bottles to friends and friends-of-friends. But it's Really Hard to understate the difference between poor folks running cottage industries around moonshine and the sprawling violent criminal enterprises that flourished around the alcohol trade during prohibition. (e: also, illegal alcohol isn't just a poor person thing. Plenty of wealthy folks illegally distill, they just normally aren't motivated to sell.) |
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Certainly. And it's some gargantuan scale different versus the illegal drug trade as a comparison (0.1% as large perhaps). My point was that it isn't particularly uncommon, the underground illegal alcohol trade (it's also not monetarily massive in size as you're noting, which is why it exists at all, local police mostly look the other way so long as it stays small'ish).