Deaths of three men highlight dangers of home-distilling and the lack of law enforcement for illegal activity Date/Time: 2013:06:15 21:26:09 Source: The Courier-Mail LAWS around the making of moonshine are being flouted by illegal distillers because of a lack of proper enforcement across the state. Queensland police have no dedicated squad to investigate moonshine incidents and most prosecutions only occur when tip-offs uncover distillers making or selling their booze, in contravention of Australian Tax Office excise laws. Home beer brewing and wine making are legal under both state and ATO laws as long as they are not sold but distilling your own liquor is illegal. Ballandean local Joshua Lynam, 26, is the sole survivor of a bad batch of home-distilled alcohol that poisoned and killed his brother and two friends this week. Joel Lynam, 21, was found dead at the family's rural property on Sunday while Bryan Wilmot, 30, and Vincent Summers, 21, succumbed to methanol poisoning in the days that followed. Police are not treating the men's death as suspicious but the matter has been referred to the Coroner. Owner of Brewer's Choice, David Kitchen, 48, said the laws were ignored by thousands of home distillers every year. "It's a grey area," he said. It is possible to (legally) buy all the bits and pieces (for distillation) but it's how you use it that will determine the safety of what you're doing. All the Europeans have been doing this for hundreds and hundreds of years perfectly safely. There's a large European population in Australia who I'm totally confident do this on a regular basis, and there's a large portion of Australia's population that safely produces alcohol through distillation, despite the fact that it's illegal, for their own personal consumption," he said. Mr Kitchen said concocting booze was increasing in popularity partly because of people feeling the economic squeeze. He said illegal distillers in Queensland favour rum, whiskey and bourbon. "People are interested in anything, if you can buy it in a bottleshop they try to make it," he said. Initial reports about the four men's methanol poisoning suggest it occurred when they tried to concoct grappa, a grape-based brandy. "If it is methanol poisoning they've simply not known what they were doing and run the still incorrectly and produced methanol instead of ethanol which is what we drink," Mr Kitchen said. Victims of methanol poisoning are treated with a combination of dialysis and alcohol administered intrav-enously or through their mouth to stop the methanol breaking down and forming toxic formic acid. The Princess Alexandra Hospital's director of clinical pharmacology, Dr Peter Pillans, said survivors can be left blind and with damage to their brain and central nervous system including the features of Parkinson's disease. It is not known why only one of the four men survived their boozy weekend. "I would imagine he didn't have as much but there's an enormous variation in sensitivity to the poison - as with anything your metabolic ability can vary," Dr Pillans said.