The foregoing “ exposé ” of trickery and fraud, and the shameful latitude and extensive means afforded designing and iniquitous men, of practising their roguery on the credulity and folly of the public, as well as to the loss of the revenue, evidently shows that our present system of excise-laws is defective and absurd: indeed, it is disgraced by the most perfect anomalies; for, while the brewer and vender of spices, &c. are subjected to 38 the strictest survey of the excise, and the frauds and adulterations used in those trades are punished, (when detected, though it must be acknowledged that that happy consummation of justice is rather of rare occurrence even with those sophisticators,) in the most prompt and efficient manner, the venders and compounders of “seductive poison,” in the form of drams, are allowed to manufacture and sell their deleterious inventions to an enormous extent, and with an effrontery disgraceful to civilized society.
— from Deadly Adulteration and Slow Poisoning Unmasked Disease and Death in the Pot and Bottle by Anonymous