Alcohol is always poisonous (but mixed with methanol quite a bit more poisonous ) :-)

Anything that decants below 78.4C is going to have methanol in it, I usually separate out the first 100ml or so that decants after 78.4C to play it safe.

I've been doing it for about 20 years, no poisoning cases yet. Home distillation has been legal in NZ since 1996.

Distilling at home was fairly traditional long before high alcohol prices. Sure, high prices encourages some folks and helps ensure there is space for a black market. But technically, the high prices didn't cause distilling.

Home distillation is very popular in Poland too. Risk of getting poisoned from it is near zero in practice. In some parts of Poland there is more home-distilled alcohol bottles at the tables during weddings than commercial ones.

In many European countries you will be offered home-distilled drinks, you would be very unlucky to get anything else than hangover.

The problem is overblown.

I visited Norway and was blown away by the price of alcohol. Given that the sun only comes out for a fraction of an hour in winter I struggled to believe it. At a local bar... (I think I was in trondheim?) I asked how they afforded booze? (it worked out to 15$ USD per pint), "We don't, but we do it anyways"

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