lol @ must drive. That is a cop out used in order to avoid making the case why drinking must involve driving.
Drinking and driving is a choice. It is a poor one at that.
Personal responsibility is indeed, the the crux of this.
When people start using their heads and do not drive when they have been drinking there will be no money for the coffers that you like to center your opposition around.
Again, in this post you refer to "responsible people will stop drinking" when that is not part of the goal. Stopping them from DRIVING is the goal here. When you can stop blurring that line you might be able to form a rational reasoned response to this issue.
Please make the case for me why it is proper to drink and then DRIIIIIVVVVEEEEEE (especially above .08) Funny how these threads never have anyone on your side actually frame it in that way. Gee, I wonder why that is?????
Unless you are in Chicago, New York, San Francisco, and a handful of other old style central cities with convenient mass transit and roaming cab service, it is impossible to get to a restaurant or a bar by any means other than driving or on foot.
Drinking and driving is a choice.
Funny, I thought this nation was based on personal freedom, not nanny state coercion.
Personal responsibility is indeed, the the crux of this.
You are right. Persons should be responsible for their actions. However, at night, many police stops are made for motor vehicle actions that have nothing to do with unsafe driving, such as a "broken tail light" (which often isn't broken).
People have had beer, wine, and liquor with their meals for millennia. The majority of these people do not abuse alcohol, nor do they drink to a point to which they would become legally intoxicated. Yet the excessive enforcement of DUI laws places a person who is under the legal limit for intoxication at risk of arrest and trial.
When people start using their heads and do not drive when they have been drinking there will be no money for the coffers that you like to center your opposition around.
If the intent were to end consumption of alcohol in public places, it would be easier simply to prohibit its sale in restaurants and bars. In a like vein, it would be easier to ban the sale of tobacco entirely if government is so concerned about the health effects of smoking or chewing tobacco.
However, neither action, though it would be a common sense reaction if the risks of DUI and tobacco are as high as MADD and the public health community say, will ever take place. State and local governments are too dependent on alcohol and tobacco taxes. The states recently fleeced the tobacco companies of billions of dollars. Local governments receive huge amounts of fine money from DUI cases. Defense attorneys rake in several thousand dollars per case for DUI trials.
The strategy for combating alcohol and tobacco appears to be geared to maximize revenues for politicians and attorneys, rather than end the problems. At least the Prohibitionists of the early 1900s were upfront and honest. That is more than can be said for MADD and anti-tobacco groups.