>>Popcorn? Popcorn sold potentially dangerous alcohol, drugs, almost certainly was guilty of tax evasion spanning multiple decades, was convicted of assault with a deadly weapon.
Bootleggers aren't 'innocent'.
Replace with marijuana and you get the same. Declare taxes on cocaine sales? People know what they want, moonshine, and he provided it. Do I think everyone should mix stuff on their bathtub or garage and sell it to people? Nope, but people that buy moonshine know what they want and he had his own brand /customers. So, while illegal no harm comes from them to the average person. (A CEO uses a legal, but paid for via lobbying, loophole to save 1000x more in taxes than all moonshiners steal combined)
When's the last time you've heard of a burnout pot-dealer murdering people, murdering police, modifying their cars to outrun police to the point of actually spawning a sport (nascar).
When's the last time you heard that marijuana made someone blind or destroyed their liver and kidneys by containing methanol and lead?
this is, in my opinion, a dishonest argument. Obviously a burnout pot-dealer isn't out murdering people, but guerrilla growers growing on land that is not theirs are definitely just as territorial as moonshiners doing the same. There's a difference between drug producers and Steve who lives down the street and usually has an ounce or two to spare.
Sure, moonshiners are sometimes direct to customer, but some will have distributors because you can throw tens, or even a hundred or more gallons in the bed of a truck or a van. Simply getting enough materials to manufacture large quantities is a great way to 'get got', buying sugar in sufficient quantities will get state BATF called. You have to obtain large amounts (for a private individual) of grain and sugar (which usually means paying people to set some aside for you and buying their discretion, or having customers go buy in smaller quantities for you for pay or for a discount on their liquor), transport it to a storage area, transport it and horded containers to an often remote location to cook and distill where the scent can travel for many many miles and the heat signature is readily visible from piloted aircraft and UAVs, fill containers, transport containers to one or more caches, then actually deliver to customers or sellers. This is comparable to a 'guerilla grower' however the risk to reward ratio is considerably less than a grow-operation. Then of course you're selling something of unknown purity, that may contain lead or methanol which can do damage within hours of consumption and over relatively short periods can cause irreversible damage or death.
For grow operations that are outside, you mostly need to go set up some trail cams, plant your crop, watch it (and be willing to protect it with lethal force), and transport it at harvest. Sure, you can then carry more in value out on a single person than a moonshiner might make from an entire run. Moonshine has to be competitive with state or retail sold alcohol so 20-30$ a quart for 150-190 proof. Sure a grow operation is making a lot more money even at wholesale pricing, a quick google search shows 18.5g of 'average mid weed' is a cup of volume so 74g of week is roughly the same volume of a quart jar, even if you assume half that due to moisture volume, someone could easily walk out of the woods with 5kg of weed in a 65 liter hiking backpack which is far more than your average dealer is going to be moving in a reasonable amount of time.
Yes, a 'guerrilla grower' is an order of magnitude higher on the threat list than most moonshiners BUT a moonshiner is an order of magnitude higher than your buddy from high school that sold a little weed to fund his habit, or had a few plants growing in his closet and sells almost exclusively to people he's known for years and is likely buying from a single individual or has a couple of grow tents in his walk-in closet.
Bootleggers aren't 'innocent'.
Replace with marijuana and you get the same. Declare taxes on cocaine sales? People know what they want, moonshine, and he provided it. Do I think everyone should mix stuff on their bathtub or garage and sell it to people? Nope, but people that buy moonshine know what they want and he had his own brand /customers. So, while illegal no harm comes from them to the average person. (A CEO uses a legal, but paid for via lobbying, loophole to save 1000x more in taxes than all moonshiners steal combined)