BAC.08

[Thomas]

Drew, you make many good points, and I do feel bad about your losses. But as a police officer (there are two in my family) you must also be aware that laws are generally respected by law-abiders, and no matter how many laws go on the books, law-breakers will break them. What bothers me, however, is that in the process of lawmaking reason seems always to give way to political stupidity, or at the least nonsense. If it is so important to keep alcohol off our roads, isn't equally important to provide less funding for highways (to reduce traffic) and more for mass transit? I cannot tell you how many times I wished for a train to get me home, but there are no trains anymore, unless you are in a major city and near a subway entrance, and even then, late at night, you wait until you have already slept off your BAC.08 on the bench before a train arrives.

I am particularly concerned when special interest groups have powerful influence to make laws and I am certainly not happy when our federal government blackmails states into compliance.

On the issue of BAC .08, or any BAC: science suggests this and science suggests that, but as Bucko surely knows, there are as many interpretations of science as there are special interests, and it is only a matter of time when the special interest people come up with new scientific evidence for a BAC .06 and then for lower and lower until the scientific fact seems to tell us that any alcohol level in the blood can be construed as drunkeness.

This fight has been going on since the anti-alcohol Rechabites of ancient times tried to stop the Canaanites, among others, from making and consuming wine. Their descendants finally won a battle in the early twentieth century and now they are developing modern tactics to recapture their winnings--MADD seems to have changed its focus from a reasoned approach to policy to a radical approach to ban alcohol consumption outright--incrementally.