Alcohol Round-Up

Two interesting developments on the battle to eliminate alcohol from society.

First, the Marines (celebrating 232 years of kicking ass) are trying to allow members of the Corps to drink on base. Obviously, MADD is, well, mad. Good luck fighting the marines, Mom.

Second, a follow-up to this post about a mom arrested for serving alcohol to her son at his birthday party. The prosecutor who charged her has failed in his re-election bid.

Now here's where I'm supposed to kowtow to the moral bullies and signal my agreement that underage drinking is some kind of horrible offense. Well, forget it. I'm not recommending excessive drinking (though I confess to doing it, shall we just say, on more than one occasion) for anybody. However, the United States is the only country that imposes alcohol prohibition on people until age 21. Germany, France, Italy and the Netherlands, among others, put that limit at age 16 and they don't seem to be falling apart as societies. I think it's high time to lower the U.S. drinking age.

In any case, Camblos' attempt at moral grandstanding turned out to be bad politics. Good riddance to him.

Prohibition Returns!

Reason Magazine's cover story this month is about the new prohibitionary movement gaining momentum across the US. They lead off with a story about a woman who was pulled over in DC after having a single glass of wine. Her BAC was .03, or less than half of the level of intoxication. She was arrested and ordered to attend a 12 week alcohol counseling course. When she refused, her license was suspended. Then the tale of a man in Pennsylvania who had his license taken after he told his doctor that he drank a six pack of beer a day. "State law requires doctors to report any of a patient's physical or mental impairments if the doctors think it could compromise his ability to drive safely" He had no convictions, his work attendance record was good, he had exhibited no history of anti-social behavior except drinking. From the article:

Neoprohibitionists aim to muddle the distinction between drunk diving and driving after drinking any amount of alcohol. Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) endorsed the idea at a Senate Environment and Public Committee hearing way back in 1997, contending that we "may wind up in this country going to zero tolerance, period." Former MADD President Katherine Prescott concurred, in a letter to the Chicago Tribune, where she stated "there is no safe blood alcohol, and for that reason responsible drinking means no drinking and driving."

I highly recommend reading the whole thing, especially the part about police in Fairfax county VA asking a woman in a restaurant who had just finished dinner and was enjoying her first drink to come outside and take a sobriety test.

I can only stress that as our government takes over our decision making process and becomes responsible for more of our lives, they will only continue to become more meddlesome. Already people justify these kinds of actions by saying that "we" pay for the hospital bills of people injured in accidents, so "we" have a responsibility help prevent drunk driving. As the state assumes new duties, it will use them to justify new powers.

Protectionism

You don't like US-style protectionism? You really wouldn't like the French-style.

Woman Gets 27 Months in Jail For Buying Alcohol For 16 Year Old Son's Party

Apparently she lied to the parents of the other guests at the party, but she also collected keys at the door and no one drank to the point of legal intoxication. The prosecutor called it "the worst case of underage drinking he has had to deal with in 15 years."

As Radley Balko says, "Really? A party where not a single person was drunk, and not a single person drove home after having a drink, is the "worst case" he's dealt with in 15 years?" Some of the quotes from MADD and others are hysterical, in the literal sense. These people are nuts. Read the whole thing for a frightening look at how these people are demonizing alcohol. Get ready for this to be the target of the next public health crusade, as it already is in the UK.

Another Bait & Switch - This Time With Alcohol

A British organization wants the government to prosecute parents who give children under 15 alcohol. Now, regardless of your stance on whether children of a certain age should be allowed to have alcohol and, if so, how much, and, if not, until what age, please notice the bait and switch used in the organization's justification for such a law: "Binge drinking by children can have serious consequences for brain function, significantly raises the risk of alcohol dependency in later life and diminishes their life chances."

So, the justification is that binge drinking is a problem. Even if the law were successful (which I doubt) in preventing binge drinking on the parts of minors, that does not justify outlawing all alcohol consumption by that demographic. That would be like outlawing driving because it would decrease the number of DUIs.

Oh, and for good measure, the organization, Alcohol Concern, "also wants a 16% rise in alcohol taxes, a ban on brewers selling to retailers at a loss, and a crackdown on under-age alcohol sales." I'm not sure if the first or the second one annoys me more. I generally do not like taxes, especially arbitrary ones that target a certain segment of the population or a certain activity just because some lobbying group has convinced the general population that there is something inherently evil going on. On the other hand, I really hate governments trying to dictate how a company can conduct its business.

Legal Drinking Age

There is a good article on the issue of the federal legal drinking age. There are too many parts of if that I would like to quote, so I'll have to resort to a bullet list. You should definitely read the entire article just to get a lay of the land with regard to the issue.

1. "The first is that the age set by the legislation is basically arbitrary."
2. "The U.S. has the highest drinking age in the world (a title it shares with Indonesia, Mongolia, Palau). The vast majority of the rest of the world sets the minimum age at 17 or 16 or has no minimum age at all."
3. "It makes little sense that America considers an 18-year-old mature enough to marry, to sign a contract, to vote and to fight and die for his country, but not mature enough to decide whether or not to have a beer."
4. "The drop [in alcohol related highway deaths since the minimum age first passed Congress in 1984] is better explained by safer and better built cars, increased seat belt use and increasing awareness of the dangers of drunken driving than in a federal standard [than by the legal drinking age]."
5. "The age at highest risk for an alcohol-related auto fatality is 21, followed by 22 and 23, an indication that delaying first exposure to alcohol until young adults are away from home may not be the best way to introduce them to drink."

I have always been particularly hung up on points 1 and 3. I once saw an ad on television that was trying to convince under-agers not to drink. The narrator said - and I quote - "It's not just wrong, it's illegal." Being of a philosophical bent, my head almost exploded when I heard that piece of logical fallacy being broadcast on behalf of some government sponsored public awareness commercial. There is nothing essential to the age of 21 nor to alcohol that makes drinking underage "wrong". Rather, it is precisely because it is illegal that it is wrong.

This touches on another point made in the article regarding the fact that "thou shalt not drink before the age of 21" has become something of a sacrosanct moral principle in the American mind to the point where parents - even in states that have home exceptions - won't allow their 20.5 year old children to have a sip of wine with a celebratory dinner "because it is wrong".

This whole issue and the blind acceptance of an arbitrary (regardless of how prudent the exact age is) limit as a moral or ethical principle is one of the most obvious signs that people simply do not engage in critical thinking - a phenomenon which I personally consider to be one of the most profound social evils.