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Comment by nucleardog | Hacker News Reader

The free market got us methanol-laden hand sanitizer the second demand rose and the regulators looked away for a second.

Don’t mistake your broken government as an argument against government in general.

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One of the primary ways to denature is by adding methanol. The free market had nothing to do with methylating the alcohol used in hand sanitizer.

The FDA does a lot of stuff that is great, but the institutional paranoia about someone, somewhere being able to recreationally consume alcohol isn't one of them.

Downthread someone has managed to cite the FDA specifically telling manufacturers not to include methanol.

To be fair, if it wasn't denatured then it wouldn't just be someone, somewhere. It would be hoards of underage kids. Heck if I use the self-checkout lane at the supermarket to buy cough medicine the attendant has to come over and approve the purchase because that's abused by underage kids as well.

That said, I won't claim to know precisely where the line should be drawn, but would say that in a sanitizing product shortage during a pandemic the line should be somewhere in the area of "hey how about we make it easier to make more sanitizing products right now"

Would it? Would it be hoards of teenage kids? Perhaps we should try to figure out why hoards of teenage kids would drink cough syrup or hand sanitizer. Perhaps the problem is that we pay to much attention to underage kids. Maybe if there wasn't an age limit, underage drinking wouldn't be so taboo. And underage drinking would not be a problem and binge drinking might go down.

I agree with everything you said, but in our society as it is right now, I still believe it would be hoards of teenage kids. Maybe it's a local problem, but there are stores near me that put cough medicine behind the counter for this reason. So you're right, there are underlying dynamics that contribute to this behavior, but the behavior does exist.

That's likely less to do with alcohol and more to do with the fact that it's pretty easy to "make" other psychoactive substances using it.

In particular, you can spin robitussin rapidly to separate the dextromethorphan.

https://erowid.org/chemicals/dxm/

Unrealistic, teenagers can still get trashed on vanilla extract from the grocery store but very few do

Maybe this reflects a lot more on the environment & social circle I grew up in? In that context though:

I think if the alcoholic nature of extracts were more widely known to teenagers, more would take advantage. But it also doesn't come in a convenient "party" format. If you could walk into Walmart, buy a half-gallon of sanitizer for $10 (well, pre-covid you could get those sizes for cheap, now not so much) and mix it with a gallon of fruit punch, then you've basically got the ingredients for a typical small 4-8 person Everclear & Fruitpunch highschool basement party without the hassle of tracking down that >= 21 friend.

An accident vs the government purposely poisoning American’s alcohol: https://slate.com/technology/2010/02/the-little-told-story-o...

The FDA forced distilleries to add methanol to the hand sanitiser, despite that causing significantly higher costs and delays.

I'm not sure you could have have this story more backwards.

I don't think this is correct. While it's accurate that the FDA requires industrial alcohol to be denatured, they specifically said "methanol cannot safely be used as an ingredient, or as a denaturant, in hand sanitizer"[1]. A few alternative alcohols are allowed to be used as denaturants under the emergency sanitizer guidance instead, e.g. isopropyl, tert-butyl. I don't think those are safe to drink, but I think they are safe for skin unlike methyl.

[1] https://www.fda.gov/media/136118/download

I replied in haste, and was incorrect. Mea culpa.

Having bought multiple hand sanitizers made by distilleries, I can report all of them used isopropyl, not methanol -- which certainly suggests the FDA did not require them to use methanol. And, someone else replied to you with the chapter and verse from the FDA explicitly saying the opposite of what you are.

Somebody may have this story backwards, but I don't think it's the person you're replying to. Where did you get your information?

I said nothing of the FDA or the US.

I'm in Canada. Health Canada not only did not require methanol to be added to sanitizers, it explicitly forbids it and forced recalls on many products that manufacturers tried to sell containing it.

> Don’t mistake your broken government as an argument against government in general.

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