Hobby Distiller's Association Seeks to Legalize Home Distilling
Fort Worth, Texas (PRWEB) April 18, 2014 -- The Hobby Distiller's Association (http://www.hobbydistillersassociation.org) and Lobbyit.com (http://www.lobbyit.com) are leading the fight to legalize hobby distillation of alcohol for personal use.
The Hobby Distiller’s Association (HDA) was created in response to the increasingly aggressive targeting of hobbyist home distillers by the U.S. Department of the Treasury’s Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau (TTB). Hobbyist home distillers have never been a law enforcement priority. But in May of 2013, TTB began requesting sales records from distiller suppliers, later using this information to arrest hobbyists and seize their property.
In response, a group of concerned hobbyists, in conjunction with commercial still producer Brewhaus America, joined together to reform Federal law to treat home distilling on par with home beer and wine making.
Despite the fact that hobby beer and wine making are both currently legal in the USA, it is not currently legal to distill a single drop of homemade spirits, even as a hobby, in the privacy of one's own home. HDA is strongly against illegal distillation for profit, and supports legalization only as a hobby, and only for private consumption.
HDA will strive to educate lawmakers and the public, dispelling the myths surrounding home distilling. For instance, in New Zealand, where hobby distillation was legalized in 1996, no reports of injuries or property damage as a result of hobby distilling have been found over the intervening two decades. No reports of poisoning from hobby distilled spirits have been found. The only located reports of poisoning have been intentionally adulterated illegal spirits sold for profit.
It is time Congress end the retrograde and discriminatory treatment of home distilling. The HDA is committed to making this a reality.
More information is available at http://www.hobbydistillersassociation.org
Rick Morris, [email protected], http://www.hobbydistillersassociation.org, +1 (817) 750-2739, [email protected]
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