I think much more likely is that it will just be made legal federally sometime in the next decade. Marijuana legalization has majorities across ideologies (https://news.gallup.com/poll/514007/grassroots-support-legal...) and even though the inability to create federal law on something so popular seems like a good case study on how the US system doesn't always do a good job representing it's actual people, it seems to be at a critical mass where it can't be ignored for much longer. Even my parents' friends who are conservative have started doing weed.

I'd imagine one wants to litigate Wickard v. Filburn in its entirety, rather than just the downstream Gonzales v. Raich

Another case based on interstate commerce: the US ban on racial segregation. The example given, iirc, was restaurant competition across state lines.

I looked at the actual decision [1] and didn't see Filburn mentioned once. I find that odd. Filburn [2] was a controversial and far-reaching decision that said that the Federal government's ability to regulate interstate commerce extended to people growing wheat on their own property for their own use. The rationale was that by growing wheat you weren't participating in the interstate wheat market. That seems like a wild interpretation to me but it's Supreme Court precedent at this point.

So I found this footnote:

> The government does not challenge the district court’s Commerce Clause analysis on appeal. Accordingly, any such argument is forfeited, and we do not address it.

That's interesting. Here's a legal analysis that does bring up the Commerce Clause and Filburn [3]. I really wonder why the government didn't raise this issue.

I knew just from the headline this was going to be a 5th Circuit decision, and it was. This is the same circuit that is perfectly fine to override "state's rights" for other issues.

[1]:https://www.ca5.uscourts.gov/opinions/pub/24/24-10760-CV0.pd...

[2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wickard_v._Filburn

[3]: https://www.yalejreg.com/nc/reviving-the-commerce-clause-one...

Also, this line is quite funny on its own because while understand what she actually meant, it can be very easily reinterpreted as "only actions committed out-of-home should be crimes; murdered someone in your home? welp, our hands are tied, have a nice day".

> Methanol poisoning stories in the news almost exclusively result from people trying to sell denatured or industrial alcohol

Pretty sure this was a relic of prohibition right? The feds would contaminate ethanol with methanol to keep people from drinking it, but then they hurt a bunch of people and never faced any consequences...

> the treatment for methanol poisoning is… ethanol!

My grandpa drank a shot of schnapps every night and called it his medicine. I thought it was a euphemism but apparently he was actually taking an antidote prophylactically. You can't be too careful. He never once got methanol poisoning.

As someone living in the Balkans, home brewing is a national passtime for every nation around. When every family has its own recipe for brewing alcohol, killing ourselves would've been achieved many centuries ago if it was a real concern. Methanol is an issue when some dumbshit decides to cell chemically produced trash on industrial scale instead of buying the expensive ingredients.

Was it missed or intentionally downplayed/ignored because people came into the discussion with priors that they were eager to maintain?

Seems like these sorts of "yes it could be unsafe in theory but the reality of physics and incentives make this mostly irrelevant" type things get missed far too often certain parts of the internet to be coincidence.

That said, the fact that it dropped on a weekend did it no favors the first time around.

The ruling only has binding precedent in the 5th Circuit, other circuits aren't bound to follow it. Formerly this kind of ruling would come with a nationwide injunction to force the issue but now that those are severely curtailed by the Supreme Court it's only binding to the courts under the jurisdiction of the 5th circuit.

Decisions in other circuits can be very persuasive to other circuits but they're not required to agree the same way a Supreme Court ruling is binding. Circuit splits are moderately common and usually trigger a review by the supreme court if an appeal wasn't filed for the earlier decisions.

Appeals court decisions generally only apply to their own jurisdiction. But they obviously hold a lot of weight when cited in others.

Prior to this year, the entire country. Today, thanks to SCOTUS shenanigans, it likely only applies to the states involved in the lawsuit, LA. But who knows, hard to keep up with the game of calvinball the SCOTUS is playing.

Wasn’t great. Would love a second attempt focused on distilling not individualist v collectivist or immigration.

(Except for relevant connections around sharing your creations with neighbors and/or internationally inspired novel spirits.)

To be fair, we still add 5-10% methanol to industrial alcohol. But also a bunch of bitterants to discourage use.

Yes, it'd be interesting if this gets appealed and the SC gets to take a look at if $0 tax stamps are allowable under the tax and spending clause.