Buying a flask of moonshine or a bagfie of weed is one thing, operating a speakeasy or smuggling in bales is another. Paying the Mexican gent to trim your hedges is not the same as hiring them by the thousand to pick your fruit.

One is a personal exchange between buyer and seller, the other is a commercial transaction with implications for the society as a whole.

Even the law, which by necessity must deal in abstract categories and generalities, makes distinctions between the two.

Buying a pistol from your neighbor is not the same thing as selling crates of AK-47s in the ghetto, or a shipload of missiles to terrorists.