It is generally accepted that drinking alcohol, among other things, can cause reckless driving which may lead to accidents. If this is true we can expect that a significant number of people pulled over by the police for reckless driving will have consumed alcohol. The point is, as you described in your article, that by enforcing the existing laws punishing those who drive dangerously and who cause accidents you already address the problem (whether or not the government should punish people for actions which haven’t harmed anyone else being beyond the scope of this discussion).

In addition to the criminalization of drinking and driving itself, there is also a tendency for people to insist that someone convicted of a driving infraction while under the influence of alcohol should receive a harsher punishment than someone who hasn’t. The idea being that the infraction was avoidable and wouldn’t have occurred if the driver hadn’t had alcohol in their blood. It would be equally just to hand out a harsher punishment if it was discovered that a driver’s radio was on at the time of an accident. Just as there is no way to know whether listening to the radio led to the accident there is know way to know whether alcohol played a role in causing the infraction.

We should also keep in mind the punishments currently applied to cases of drunk driving. Being convicted of a DUI is no slap on the wrist, but a life-changing event.

Despite the logical flaws in drunk driving laws which appear, at least to me, to be obvious; drunk driving laws are popularly accepted and praised. Because drinking alcohol is considered a vice, others feel less sympathy for the drinker and the drinker is more inclined to accept guilt for his actions. This effect combines with the ever present tendency for people to assume that the government knows what it’s doing, whether or not we understand why, and to defend these laws beyond all reason.

It is time to stand and Fight.

This sentence strongly implies that ‘reckless endangerment’ should be criminalized. Two questions: 1) What is it? Some would call drunk driving a form of reckless endangerment; Rockwell doesn’t address this. 2) According to Rockwell, on what grounds can even reckless endangerment (which includes bad driving) be criminalized, since it only increases the probability that others will be harmed and, as Rockwell says elsewhere in the same article, “government in a free society should not deal in probabilities”? Rockwell should explain this apparent contradiction.

Some posters have compared drunk driving that hurts no one to firing a loaded gun at a person and having it jam. A better analogy would be to neglecting to store firearms, poisonous chemicals, or dangerous tools so that children cannot readily get to them. Drunk driving is a form of negligence.

californiadui

by Bruce Alm

The answer to the problem of drunk driving, etc. could be this; a permit for the purchase and consumption of alcohol beverages.

This would not only be a major assault on the problem of drunk driving, but would also have an effect on virtually all other crimes such as these;

murder, rape, assault, burglary, robbery, suicide, vandalism, wife beating, child beating, child molestation, the spread of aids, animal cruelty, etc., the list is endless.
If this proposition was made law, there could be a major reduction in all these areas of concern, even though the emphasis concerning alcohol abuse seems to be drunk driving in particular.

There could also be many other positive results; families healed, better work performance, booze money spent on products that would help the economy (we’ve all heard of the guy who spends half his check in the bar on payday,) would spare many health problems, etc.

This new law could go something like this:

Any person found guilty of any crime where drinking was a factor would lose the right to purchase and/or consume alcohol beverages.

For a first misdemeanor, a three year revocation. a second misdemeanor, a ten year revocation. a third misdemeanor, a lifetime revocation. Any felony crime, an automatic lifetime revocation.
Anyone caught drinking alcohol without a permit would receive a possible $1000 fine and/or jail sentence. those who would supply alcohol to people without a drinking permit (and possibly make money at it,) would also lose his/her right to purchase alcohol beverages.

What wife or husband would buy an alcoholic spouse a bottle?

What friend would give a problem drinker a drink at the possible cost of a thousand bucks and the loss of their own privilege? This could be a total discouragement to these would-be pushers.

This permit doesn’t seem as though it would be a problem to put into effect. It could simply be a large X, or whatever, on the back of any drivers license in any state, to show who has been revoked, and cannot purchase alcohol.
Most people of drinking age have a driver’s license, but one area that might be a problem could be New York City, where many people don’t drive.

This problem could be resolved, however, by a license-type I.D. specifically for the purchase of alcohol beverages. Most, if not all states have these already for the purpose of identification.
This could be a small price to pay for the saved lives of thousands of Americans each and every year.

After this, it would simply be a matter of drinking establishments checking I.D.s at the time of purchase.
In the case of crowded bars, they could simply check I.D.s at the door, as they do now.

Would this be a violation of rights? There can be no argument here since they already check I.D.s of people who look as though they may not be old enough to drink.

This could be a good saying, “If a person who doesn’t know how to drive shouldn’t have a license to drive, a person who doesn’t know how to drink shouldn’t have a license to drink.”

Here are some other pluses to this idea:

A good percentage of people in correctional institutions are there because of alcohol related offences . Because of this, court, penal, and law enforcement costs could drop dramatically.

A.A., ALANON, MADD, SADD, etc., could become things of the past.

What the alcoholic fears most, is the temptation to have that first drink, usually a spur of the moment type thing. Without the ability to do this, he/she is fairly safe. To start drinking again would almost have to be planned in advance. and to maintain steady drinking would be extremely difficult, in most cases.

Even though A.A. members as a group don’t become involved in political movements, it seems as individuals, they would all be in favor of a situation like this. Any person who wants to quit drinking, even if never having been in trouble with the law, could simply turn in their license for the non-drinking type.

A woman from MAAD, on the NBC TODAY show, said “One out of every ten Americans has a drinking problem, and that 10% consumes 60% of all alcohol beverages sold in the U.S..” If this is true, there could be financial problems for breweries, liquor stores, bars, rehab centers, etc., as well as lawyers, massive amounts of tax revenue ‘down the drain,’ and so on.

But it doesn’t seem as though anyone would have a valid argument against a proposal such as this for financial reasons. To do so would be morally wrong, and could be likened to a drug-pusher attitude.

Even with the problems this new law could present, it still could, in one sense, be considered the simple solution to the number one drug problem in the U.S. and elsewhere. Alcoholism.

P.S.

What ever happened to the skid row drunk?

http://www.geocities.com/dwi_dui/index.html

Speaks alot against the whole notion of positive law. There should be no positive law at all. It should be handled under the common law. You cause harm, you pay restitution accordingly. If you don’t cause harm, then the government (and MADD) need to stay out of your business.

Who hasn’t driven after consuming some alcohol at one time or another? Had a few and thought, “I’m OK. I’m only slightly over. I’ll just drive home CAREFULLY.” And guess what, you drove home AOK. Nothing happened. No-one died. No-one was injured. Nothing was damaged or destroyed. Done it several times. So quit the hypocracy and admit there is something wrong with the official govt line on this topic, not with the action that is being persecuted.

The blood alcohol limit is arbitrary. Some people are fine at that point, others are affected far more strongly. There are those who are safe to drive at twice the limit and there are those who should not be driving at half the limit or less. Then there are those silly falsifiable (wreckable) tests do not measure the OUTCOME of action other than to show a person may have been drinking. So what if he has?

Drinking and then driving is not necessarily going to result in a traffic fatality, injury or even a crash. It isn’t causal in every single situation. It isn’t causal in the majority of cases. Given that, then there is no need to prohibit it.

The whole “prevent road accident” business is based on hokum and make-work. Why accept such nonsense?

Sione