British lawyer, 28, dies after suspected mass drink-spiking in Laos
“Spiking” means deliberately done.
A British lawyer has died and several other UK tourists are in hospital after apparently being poisoned by a drink laced with methanol in Laos.
Simone White, 28, is suspected to have unknowingly drunk methanol at a bar in Vang Vieng last week while on holiday.
Far more likely – to the point of near certainty – is cheaply made local hooch and not well made cheap local hooch.
Only got to get your condensation temperature a few degrees out and you’ll be collecting the methanol from your still, not the ethanol. With the above results.
On a recent visit to a whiskey factory in Mull, they explained that they reject the ‘head’ and ‘tail’ of the distillation run for just that reason. Then they distill the middle again and reject its head and tail too.
What part of Di Di Mau did they not understand?
Which is why you measure your heads and tails with methanol testing strips which cost peanuts for 100. Might be more expensive in Vietnamese Dong, but cheaper than a murder conviction for poisoning a multitude.
That was my immediate suspicion. Where’s the incentive? With bars one wants repeat customers. And I’d doubt it’s the bar. It’ll be their supplier. Their booze will actually be a small part of the bar’s input costs. Alcohol’s cheap. It’s selling it’s expensive. Why I was able to run a free bar. We made our money in other ways.
There’s no business like ho business, BiS
When I was in Laos, I was cautioned against too much Lao Lao (spelling?) which is home distilled poison watered down with orange juice.
Exactly, Tim. And “spiked” suggests victimhood, while drinking free shots of hooch suggests stupidity.
Well, they are victims, seeing as how they’re dead.
You don’t know how I make money Steve
It’s just a bit of business sense. If you’re selling a product that peripherally involves alcohol, do you try to make a profit selling it? If drinking reduces your customers’ sales resistance to what you’re selling , why ration alcohol by price? My aim is to have all of my customers’ money, not just some of it. A spirit & mixer costs me about 1€. Seems a good investment. And it’s a good way of getting rid of people cluttering up the place but not buying the product. It is difficult to demand something you’re being given as a gift. We just cut off their alcohol supply by not offering it. There’s no going to the bar & asking, because there isn’t one.
But it inspires my take on the Laos thing. The amount they’d save by spiking drinks with methanol is trivial. The service the bar provides is the ambiance of drinking it & & it’s that costs them most of their input. Asset, wages, energy, services etc. They just made a stupid decision on their supplier.
The toll indicates a fair amount of methanol.
The usual cause of these incidents is the hooch is made from drums of industrial alcohol and someone doesn’t know the difference between methanol and ethanol. Denatured ethanol is often called methylated spirits because it used to have methanol added to stop people drinking tax free booze. Now pyridine is the usual denaturant – tastes worse, more difficult to remove and the booze effects kill the derelicts before the pyridene.
The other thing is what we think we know about this incident comes from journalists ie unreliable sources.
‘Which is why you measure your heads and tails with methanol testing strips which cost peanuts for 100.’
Thanks JG. I was wondering how you could test for it.
BiS – the simplest explanation is that Laos is a dirt poor, low trust society where everybody’s always on the rob, and nobody cares about the effect of their antisocial behaviour on others.
Sort of like Liverpool.
In that scenario, a bar owner could be the most responsible man in the world, and it wouldn’t make any difference because he’s necessarily dealing with scallies every single day.
Happens to craft distilling hipsters too. When I heard this story immediate thought of this video. V good on the medical side. Chubby emu
https://youtu.be/4DQUrg0Yhu4?feature=shared