There's still a small safety element. Sometime moonshiners produce toxic alcohol, or they contaminate their product with things that are toxic.

I agree that the main element is taxation.

Very many cigarettes sold in England are smuggled in from EU because of tax. But now people are counterfeiting so some cigs are both smuggled and fake - the quality of some of the smuggled product is alarmingly poor. (But it's tricky to get any sensible information about this because the only people releasing information are the customs / police who want to make it seem as scary as they can.)