Distilling today is where brewing was in the late 70s. Almost everything in the US was produced by a few big players. There was a growing illegal craft movement going on in homes. A few of the home brewers had the money to make the jump to legitimate production and jump-started the microbrew revolution. Eventually the government came around, and the hobby came in from the cold when President Carter signed a Bill into Law legalizing it.
I see it as part of a more general food movement. Home brewing, commercial craft wine and beer making, cooking shows, brick ovens, "locovores", cheesemaking with its own sub-rosa trade in raw milk, the legalization of absinthe and so on are a definite trend.
The main impediments I see are lost tax revenue and the inherently more hazardous process of distillation. No, it doesn't have to be dangerous. But the worst you can do with beer or cheese is make a mess or cause a couple cases of tuberculosis with bad milk. Careless or ignorant people mixing open flames with real quantities of nearly pure ethanol is a much more explosive problem.