Drunk driving. Dwi and dui. A license to drink.
Madd, sadd, radd, A.A., and alanon/al-anon related.

Copyright: 1987-2007 � Bruce Alm. Documentation is available upon request.

The answer to the problem of drunk driving, etc. could be this; a permit for the purchase and consumption of alcoholic 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, college binge drinking, 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 alcoholic 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 alcoholic 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 It could simply be a large X, (or whatever,) on the back of any driver’s license in any state, to show who has been revoked, and cannot purchase alcohol.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 ID specifically for the purchase of alcoholic beverages. All states have these already for the purpose of identification.

This would 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 ID’s at the time of purchase.
In the case of crowded bars, they could simply check ID’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 IDs 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. The need for A.A., alanon, madd, sadd, etc., could be greatly diminished as well.

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 would seem 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 MADD, on the NBC TODAY show, said “One out of every ten Americans has a drinking problem, and that 10% consumes 60% of all alcoholic 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?

I thought they were Mothers Against Drunk Driving? not Mothers Insisting on Total Abstinence?

What's that law about institutions becoming more liberal over time?

This is an issue that has always pissed me off and it stems from personal experience.

These kids who are in Iraq fighting for this country can't have a beer? They can kill, vote, get married, pay taxes, and go to big boy jail if they screw up, but they can't have a damn drink.

The same thing happened to me during my time.

That's just plain butt stupid.

What you're seeing here is MADD stepping beyond the scope of their original intent and into the world of control lobbying.

This sucks.

Probably a mistake to say "they do all this, but cannot have a beer?". I'd make the case this way; we have this amount of problems with abuse of alcohol, and we're preventing parents from teaching their children how to drink responsibly?

Let's face facts; the 21 drinking age more or less tells parents that giving their children a Bitburger or Guiness is dead wrong, and then the U tells those same children that having 20 Falstaffs or 15 cans of Milwaukee's Beast will be politely ignored until they cause problems.

And then we wonder why we've got so many puddles of vomit on the floors of dorms and frat houses.

Personally, though I'm a teetotaler, I'd much prefer to see kids taught to drink real beer, so they won't tolerate the cheap, um, "stuff."

Spoken like a true alcoholic.

There is no argument. Your screeching of totalitarian crap undermines any "point" you may possibly have.

Drop the"I am right, you will do as I COMMAND" crap people wil actually take you seriously. Till then you are just another Jerry Falwell, anti-freedom asshole.

You are the personification of the self-delusional, addictive personality. What you decide is the only option, what you say is the only reality. Trotsky and Lenin LOVED people like you.

Two: Are you reading this? Now you have some real totalitarianism.

I blame Bush.

r,this is just the natural extension of your line of thinking. You are all about stopping people from doing things A. for their own good/safety, B. because you do not approve of whatever activity it is you want to prohibit. This Geocities clown is just clearly articulating what the "Its for your own good"Crowd is always screeching incoherently about.

Bruce, Margaret Sanger, the mother of eugenics in America and abortion on demand, would be proud of you. Here is a hint, America already kicked the shit out of your kind. Remember? We pounded Germany into rubble and smashed Nazism. Do not delude yourself, we will wipe your kind out every time you attempt to come to power, scumbag.

So, r, you are Bruce Alm? I thought better of you than to ever believe you practiced sockpuppetry.

My original statement:

Maybe the real problem is defining an alcoholic drink as a "reward".

Out of this one line, you have invented an entire false construct about me, even though you are familiar with my views, and should know better. I can't help but feel that I have unknowingly pushed some of your emotional buttons, and you aren't thinking clearly at all. Your litany of false accusations is truly staggering, but you give a very different impression of this blog than it's name, "Say Anything" would imply.
I guess it's "Say Anything unless you disagree with certain views, and then hateful venom gets spewed on you(and you get called a Nazi)".

I blame Bush.

The truth is, if we used more good sense, we would need a lot less regulation and enforcement.

Guys, your argument is getting errily reminiscent of stereotypes about that time of the month. You might want to step back, take some Tylenol PM if need be, and re-evaluate what you're arguing about.

I'm not (knowing my record of PMS arguments as well!) the world's greatest peacemaker, but I'm going to try here. Bear with me.

108 makes a simple claim; that maybe, just maybe, we ought not to treat liquor as a reward. Unfortunately, the ugly reality is that we have many centuries of doing just that under our belts as a society, so 2H9 is probably right; to remove alcohol as a reward would require either a total transformation of society's attitudes, or a totalitarian society where alcohol was more or less banned.

Personally, though I'm a teetotaler, I really don't have much of a problem with a glass of wine or a beer as a reward for a long day's work, or a job well done. The problem comes when it's a case of beer for the same.

A beer vs. a case of beer after a long, hard day is a choice to be made by the individual and not society at large.

Some busy bodies just can't stand to see someone else making decisions for themselves.

Shame on them.

Since one of the symptoms of insanity is to keep doing the same thing and expecting a different outcome, trying to stop the evils of drinking with law enforcement is obviously not working; that doesn't mean that abandoning all enforcement(cutting and running) is the answer, either. I proposed a middle path, where we stop doing the things that might add to the drinking problem. That is a change in the approach we take as a society to how people are unconsciously encouraged to drink by associating alcohol with positive outcomes. It's that simple, although it got blown up into some sort of monstrous Nazi accusation, for some reason unknown to me.
I never advocated any sort of enforcement.
If drinking, and the damage it causes, is an "ugly reality"(to quote another commenter), why would we want to encourage that?

…I'd have to ask what the heck you're thinking if you're actually doing that kind of thing.

You assume that "thinking" is going on. Like we used to say in my college days, "It's time to stop thinking and start drinking."

This,"r,this is just the natural extension of your line of thinking. You are all about stopping people from doing things A. for their own good/safety, B. because you do not approve of whatever activity it is you want to prohibit. This Geocities clown is just clearly articulating what the "Its for your own good"Crowd is always screeching incoherently about.", addresses you, r.

This,"Bruce, Margaret Sanger, the mother of eugenics in America and abortion on demand, would be proud of you. Here is a hint, America already kicked the shit out of your kind. Remember? We pounded Germany into rubble and smashed Nazism. Do not delude yourself, we will wipe your kind out every time you attempt to come to power, scumbag." addresses Bruce Alm.

Why are you behaving as if a direct assault on one person is an attack on yourself? Commonality of ideology? Or simply wishing perpetuate argument for arguments sake?

Why are you behaving as if a direct assault on one person is an attack on yourself? Because you included me in your hateful accusations and statements. Commonality of ideology? Or simply wishing perpetuate argument for arguments sake?

21 is a responsible age. I don't see how it can be a bad thing at all. President Bush seems happy enough to send these poor soldiers on meaningless wars in Iraq they should at least be allowed to have a drink when they get back home. It's not like they are raging alcoholics and will end up in <a rel="follow" href="http://www.2bloghealth.com/drug-rehab-treatment/">drug and alcohol rehab is it?

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