Why isn't drunkenness illegal?

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Compare the temporary inconvenience of arrest to the permanent state of death. I think your point is disproportionate. ANY law can cause the inconvenience of arrest, and false arrest is the most galling result. If we took your statement to its logically exaggerated conclusion we would not have any laws.

ruveyn

Depends on where you live and what your work is. For a lot of people, it's a necessity.

Legally it is a privilege rather than a right. This privilege must be dispensed in a non-prejudicial manner.

ruveyn

It's not the arrest alone, it's everything else with it that costs these people everything and the justice system isn't about blood vengeance. I think my point is entirely proportional because the people arrested haven't necessarily hurt anyone or even caused property damage. If you murder someone when drunk then yes, you should completely lose out. If you're damaging property when you're drunk, you should have a breathalyzer installed into your ignition system and be forced to pay the full cost of reparations. If you're arrested for drunk driving ipso facto, you shouldn't have to face more than a fine and maybe community service, not losing your ability to generate income for yourself and be a productive member of society.

Also, with that quarter million, that's only people who have been caught and arrested and I know a large number of people who drive intoxicated and have never been caught and have never harmed person or property so, extrapolating that for the population at large, the number of harmless intoxicated drivers goes up.

This isn't about the death. That should be taken on one-on-one just like we're supposed to deal with firearms deaths case-by-case and there are people who fight against that being dealt with in broad strokes.

The law does not always represent the reality; which is why I rally against the law's standing on this.

I agree that 0% BAC is ridiculous, but I'm all for harsher penalties. Anything more than 3 drinks and you should not be driving at all. The DUI penalties are a joke and no one takes em seriously.

Do you even drink alcohol?

Do you understand the concept of alcohol tolerance?

@ Skafather84:

Hey Ska, did you read the Radley Balko article on DUI? He makes a lot of the same points you do, it's worth reading if you haven't already.

No I haven't. I'll look that up.

Circular. BEFORE there were cars, work and residences distributed themselves so as to minimize transport - often living over the shop or in company towns.

After there were cars, but before they were ubiquitous, there was in many places [still is in some] actually useful public transport.

WITH the car - yes, we have people who commute to the East side of a major city in the morning, and to the West side in the evening, with traffic snarls and snarly people and a warming at least of global tempers.

THERE ARE ALTERNATIVES.

Which we may have to deal with in some of our lifetimes.

Reading a bit and this is mostly common sense stuff to people who are drinkers and hang around drinkers as I do.

That's the problem of sober people writing laws for drinkers: they have absolutely no concept of the finer points within and they have no concern for the lives of those people because they perceive such people as below them and beyond their concern. A healthy, functioning drinker would be more cautious about what needs to be done maybe...but maybe the drinker is a bit of a lightweight and .08 is more than sufficient for them...the guys at Mythbusters all seem to magically get drunk at .08 so I assume they don't really drink that consistently. That or they're lying to not challenge any laws...which is something they normally avoid debunking laws.

Drivers who gets behind the wheel while their ability to operate a vehicle is impaired are being reckless as to whether or not death, injury or damage is going to occur as a result of their actions. The evidence to link impairment to these risks is well established. Just because a driver happens to be lucky and doesn't hurt anyone does not mean that the behaviour is not still criminal.

In this country, impaired driving causing bodily harm and impaired driving causing death are separated, included offenses within the larger ambit of impaired driving. If your recklessness results in actual harm, you are exposed to greater penalties than the simple reckless act.



What a fatuous argument. No intoxicated driver is harmless. Rather, many intoxicated drivers do not cause the potential harm created by their recklessness. But every single intoxicated driver elevates the risk for every other person in their vicinity. That is sufficient, in my view, to render their behaviour culpable.



I beg to differ. Your leaders, in their wisdom, have made the possession and use of firearms a right. There is no constitutional right to operate a motor vehicle.

I would be far more sanguine about firearms if the same rigours of training, examination, licensing and insurance were in place for their use. Far from treating motor vehicles like firearms, I would prefer to see firearms treated like motor vehicles.

Yes I l get wasted every weekend. And how do you want me to address tolerance? By saying people shouldn't drive when they're past tipsy? Kinda vague dontcha think? The average person, assuming they have no tolerance, get wasted after 5 drinks, so 3 is a pretty rough number.

People aren't good at telling how impaired they really are, so 3 is a rule of thumb. And it's not about blood vengeance, it's about people making reckless decisions that put everyone else in danger.

I don't think people should be punished for addiction to anything. I think the black market drug trade makes it a lot uglier and more damaging than it would otherwise be. Throwing people in prison for youthful stupidity and making them unemployable doesn't make society better. Of someones addicted, they should be sent to treatment or some sort of therapy.

I feel the same way about drug abuse that I do about prostitution and abortion. I don't condone it and am strongly against it, but I also don't see criminalization as being the solution to social ills. Black markets just make things more dangerous. Instead of leaving people to use dirty products at marked up prices to self medicate their depression, rely on back ally abortions, and end up wage slaves to pimps to substitute their underpaid tenement jobs (common in America in the early 1900's and in any third world or developing country today), we should make social conditions less demanding and depressing by improving working conditions, creating jobs, and generally creating more options for people. It would certainly knock down the stats on these social problems, but for the remaining percentage who will be involved in these activities, keeping it legal and regulated will keep prostitutes protected from abuse, drug users from ruining their selves financially from the black market mark up, and women from bleeding to death from amateur surgical procedures.

To completely rid society of these things would be desirable, but it needs to be done in a more creative way besides resorting to penalization. It would require gaining more knowledge about human psychology. It might never be rid of really.

Btw, my cousin was involved in prostitution and drug addiction, and she;s having a really hard time finding work because of her felony charges. Its putting her at risk for getting involved in her old habits again.

Booze is legal because when it was made illegal, it caused all or most of the issues that illicit drug users had to face for a much larger segment of the population. Alcohol's a psychoactive drug. The distinction between "drugs" and alcohol is just imaginary.

Damn, that's exactly my thoughts on it though a much more thought out post than I'd make. Go you!

caus its freedom of speech and decition.