IIRC the original anti-distillation laws were not made for safety. They were passed because hard liquor made a better currency than the paper money the early federal government was trying to push. Better, in this case, means easily transportable, easily assayable (if you can set it on fire, it's good), high intrinsic value (as opposed to the inflationary, war-debt ridden money just after the revolution), and untraceable and hence harder to tax.

A quick look at wikipedia on the subject of the Whiskey Rebllion half confirms and half denies this, but safety was definitely nowhere near the reason that distillation got inspected, taxed, and put under the treasury department.