almost every year there is a news story of some Western tourist visiting another country dying from bootleg methanol alcohol

As I said, this happens when someone tries to sell illegally produced trash created not by brewing but with sugar, chemical essence, and whatever they've mistaken for ethanol. The tax on alcohol creates a black market and some people taking part in it are either dumb or lazy and those are the cases you hear about.

Raised and addressed in an earlier post on an earlier article on HN https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47736298#47737600