Boozebags Break into a Funeral Home and Get Drunk on Embalming Fluid Because Liquor is Banned

Daily Mail - Thirsty thieves who broke into a mortuary during a nationwide booze ban are feared to have stolen gallons of ghostly exhumation fluid to get drunk on.

South Africa is into its seventh week of coronavirus lockdown and one of the most hated restrictions is the total prohibition of buying or selling any type of alcohol.

The nation has gone home brew mad stripping supermarkets of pineapples in their tens of thousands a day to just to make a potent tropical beer they can get a hit from.

But in the latest incredible twist it would seem desperate drinkers forced their way into the Rest in Peace Funeral Parlour in Clocolan in Free State Province to get pickled. 

They stole four gallons of the of 97 per cent proof exhumation liquid contained in two 2kg bottles which is usually used to preserve body parts if dead bodies have to be dug up. ...

Last week loving couple Tony Hilliar, 54, and Alida Fouche, 42, both died in agony after drinking a batch of home-brew they had made themselves to get round the alcohol ban.

People, people, people. How many times are we gonna have to go over this before it sinks in? "Those who do not learned from history are doomed to repeat it." 

You can't ban alcohol. You just can't. It fails every time it's tried. Guys in POW camps figure out a way to make a still. Guys in prison make booze in the cell toilet. Somehow in the US someone got Prohibition past the public's wishes and amended into the goddamned Constitution - which is intentionally a hard thing to pull off. And things were so bad, they got it repealed in short order. Which was actually easy to do because it was such a disaster in all respects. 

So how is it in 2020 South Africa can be so wrongheaded, draconian and ignorant of history to think it'll work this time? It's human nature to want to get drunk, or at least buzzed, once in a while. Even more so when you're stuck in lockdown. Hell, I live in the authoritarian nightmare that is Massachutopia. The most locked down state in the union. The last one to open golf courses. And even the oligarchs running this nanny state had the good sense to know that the risks from leaving the liquor stores open were smaller by and order of magnitude than what would happen if they shut them down. 

Let people mask up and social distance mom through the vodka aisle and dad over to the IPAs and we'll all go home quietly and let the horror of all this float away gently on a river of sweet, sweet intoxicants and we won't be tempted to violate the guidelines. Deny the good people of South Africa the same basic human right and they'll be dying of agony of the homebrew they mixed up in the bathtub or drinking the embalming room dry. I mean, I hate walking into the front door of a funeral home. I don't want to contemplate the gothic horrors that await in the basement around back. But if my government was denying me beer and wine, I'd be busting in there and sticking a straw into the arm of someone's embalmed grandma and draining her like a Big Gulp. Not really, but you get my point. [DISCLAIMER: Do not drink embalming fluid or sip the contents of a dead body like a high fructose beverage. Do NOT do that.]

So it was misguided and naive to prohibit liquor sales in South Africa at the very least. And a violation of the public's basic freedoms at most. Hopefully the news of this will get out and booze loving nations around the world will send the humanitarian relief of tankers full of the stuff or even get our navies to rescue them. Sober quarantining is a fate worse than drunken quarantining.