>Another way to increase safety is to reduce the availability of illegal stills without quality control by enforcing the ban.

I can see you're lacking some knowledge on what makes up a still, as well as it's completely legal use for distillation of water.

A still is just a bucket with a heat source and some vapor collector and condenser. It's easy to build from a couple of pickle jars and hot glue if you're determined.

> (Anyone who thinks otherwise presumably also thinks all hard drugs should be legalized since this presumably wouldn't lead to an increase in consumption.)

Why should the government be in the business of reducing consumption? Do you believe alcohol to be immoral, and the government's role to be enforcing morality?

I think hard drugs being legal would greatly increase the amount of responsible consumption. Methamphetamine used to be purchaseable from any pharmacy over the counter in the US, and there was not a meth crisis at that time. Now there is.