Article from Reason by Baylen Linnekin.
A new report issued last week by the National Academies of Sciences, Getting to Zero Alcohol-Impaired Driving Fatalities: A Comprehensive Approach to a Persistent Problem, urges a host of draconian measures in an effort to eliminate every alcohol-related driving death in the United States.
The NAS report suggests that policy approaches expand dramaticallyfrom their present focus, preventing drunk driving, “to also encompass reducing drinking to the point of impairment”—the latter, in other words, targeting all drunkenness.
Getting to zero, in the report’s estimation, means a host of nefarious, neo-Prohibitionist approaches to alcohol regulation, including “lowering state per se laws for alcohol-impaired driving to 0.05% blood alcohol concentration (BAC) [from 0.08%, the law today in most states], preventing illegal alcohol sales to… already-intoxicated adults, strengthening regulation of alcohol marketing, and implementing policies to reduce the physical availability of alcohol.” It also calls for stepped-up sobriety checkpoints, which can be constitutionally questionable.
The means the report recommends to achieve its unrealistic goals are both obnoxious and intrusive. In the case of reducing the physical availability of alcohol, for example, the report recommends specifically that state and local governments restrict the number of establishments allowed to sell alcohol and reduce “the days and hours of alcohol sales[.]” Among its key recommendations, the report also calls for the federal government and state governments to “increase alcohol taxes significantly.”
Read the entire article at Reason.
wpDiscuz
Have we not learned a thing from history. The American Prohibition is evident of what happens when alcohol was made illegal. Making drugs illegal has resulted in exactly the same downhill avalanche.
We NEED to stop calling political activists that may or may not have degrees in ‘scientific’ fields scientists. Even if they are actual scientists, when they push for the government to do ANYTHING, they are NOT acting as scientists. In addition, what makes someone a scientist is USING the Scientific Method. A person could have 12 PHDs in scientific fields and not know what a scientist is. A person could be a junior high dropout and be a scientist.
This repeat drunk drivers causing murders problem was solved back in the 70’s & 80’s by a breath gadget to be installed on the ignition of repeat offenders cars but the program was never started thus the millions of needless deaths that have happened since. I was really looking forward to that program starting as I was working the graveyard shift in 7-Eleven Stores and have been shot, stabbed and beaten by drunks in the store [one night two drunks bludgeoned me for twenty minutes, beating me until my heart & lungs stopped, literally beating me until I was dead… for BEER!] We the people do NOT need to make new laws for this problem… just start enforcing the laws we already have for if we try and keep people from booze, bootlegging will just startup all over again and when that happened the last time during Prohibition… the streets of America literally ran red with blood.
FOR SAFTEY’S SAKE, it’s time to look at alcohol abuse in this country. There are so many people in positions of safety and authority that over use alcohol on a daily basis. Therefore, let’s start out small. any individual that receives tax payer money on a regular basis should be alcohol free. Period. Politicians, teachers, police, firemen, welfare recipients, college students with grants or guaranteed loans, etc. Penalty, employees and politicians fired, loan guarantees rescinded.
When we see that this works well, we can extend it to the populace.
See how crazy it sounds? It didn’t work in the 20s and 30s, it wont work now. Especially after the Legalize Marijuana trend.
Yeah boy, criminalize any consumption of beer or liquor but encourage the use of Marijuana and in some cases hard drugs. WTF are they thinking?