O Really wrote: ↑Thu Aug 31, 2023 7:54 pm
I might have been a bit tongue in cheek about the "giant conspiracy" but not about the creeping toward prohibition, which appears to be intentional.
I don't see the evidence for that.
I'm saying that unless you hurt somebody, that DUI ought to be a traffic violation, no more and no less, and on a points scale similar to reckless driving. If you do hurt somebody, the charge ought to be vehicular homicide, or assault with a deadly vehicle, or whatever is appropriate, and books can be thrown. But now just the charge of DUI - even if you've pulled over into a parking lot - can and often does have major personal cost past just an insurance increase.
The point is prevention rather than just retribution.
CDC: Impaired Driving Is an Important Public Health Problem
* In 2020, 11,654 people were killed in motor vehicle crashes involving alcohol-impaired drivers, accounting for 30% of all traffic-related deaths in the United States.1 This was a 14.3% increase compared to the number of crash deaths involving alcohol-impaired drivers in 2019.
* 32 people in the United States are killed every day in crashes involving an alcohol-impaired driver—this is one death every 45 minutes.
* The annual estimated cost of crash deaths involving alcohol-impaired drivers totaled about $123.3 billion* in 2020. These costs include medical costs and cost estimates for lives lost.
O Really wrote: ↑Thu Aug 31, 2023 7:54 pm
I'm saying that people have been drinking since before the first Viking made the first mead and over the past 20-30ish years or so, there have been increasingly tight "guidelines". I don't think this is entirely scientific or medical findings.
Your link:
These changes were made in response to the World Health Organization’s warning that no amount of alcohol is safe.
I think you need to prove the health data wrong.
It's surely not scientific or medical reasoning that sets the age to drink at 21 in the same places that guns can be bought and people can be sentenced to death/life imprisonment at 18.
I'd be fine with raising the age for gun purchase and death/life imprisonment sentencing to 21.
The National Minimum Drinking Age Act of 1984 forced states to raise their legal age for purchase or public possession of alcohol to 21 or risk losing millions in federal highway funds.
That is indeed a limited prohibition, one that has not been extended since. It was meant to reduce the roadway death toll, but I don't know that a ban on all youth drinking was wisest.
Who was President then? That would be Reagan and his "Just Say No" First Lady. Coincidence or conspiracy? Then it was legal limit down from .10 to .08.
Guilt by association? I think it had more to do with the rise of MADD than with the Reagans. Aha:
National Minimum Drinking Age Act
... With the lowering of the voting age to 18, the minimum legal drinking age (MLDA) was similarly lowered under the notion that by being able to vote (and for males, be subject to being involuntarily drafted into the enlisted ranks of the military), one should also be able to legally consume alcoholic beverages.
However, these changes were soon followed by studies showing a significant increase in motor vehicle fatalities attributable to the decreased MLDA. In response to these findings, many states raised the minimum legal drinking age to 19 (and sometimes to 20 or 21). In 1984, the National Minimum Legal Drinking Act,
written by Senator Frank Lautenberg (D-NJ) and influenced by Mothers Against Drunk Driving (MADD), required all states to set their minimum purchasing age to 21. Any state that chooses not to comply with the act would have up to 10 percent of its federal highway funds withheld....
No mention of Reagan instigation. Ftr, I would favor raising the minimum military draft and enlistment age to 21.
What's next - closing drive-through Daiquiri stands in New Orleans?
"44 oz Mega 190 Octane Daiquiri" — assuming at least one shot per 12 oz daiquiri, that's at least 4 drinks sold to drivers!
Discussion
Edit: OPPS! My bad:
So, a 44 oz daiquiri, assuming no extra ingredients, is 33 oz of booze, less if diluted with ice. A fifth of rum is a little over 25 oz.
Fwiw, boozers created far more tragedy and work for me than druggies, even in 1990 Oakland. I am not bothered by health science-based information, and consideration of such when crafting policy.