Where is personal responsibility in the DWI fight?
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I don't usually write letters-in fact, I never do-mostly because I don't care and the rest of the time because I'm too lazy.
But on this rare occasion I'm writing because I'm on antibiotics and can't drink to suppress my anger. Usually my hatred for authority is limited to people in my immediate area who tell me what to do; I really believe that I smoke just because I know that it irritates most people. With my current lack of adequate alcohol, however, I find my anger stretching further out to lawmakers in general.
Being in the business I'm in (the bar business), I find myself frequently set upon by haphazard lawmaking. Recently, some agents from the Public Safety Department's Special Investigation Division came around and coerced a customer of mine to take a breathalyzer. At the time I was feeling quite punchy-dare I say, shooty-but with various voices of reason, from my mom to my lawyer, I got over it. (My recent sobriety has exposed a deeper, more passionate side to my unrest and frustration.)
I also recently received a call from a very nice lady at the Department of Transportation who wanted to know if I would like to install talking urinal cakes that would remind my male customers not to drink and drive. (I assume that there is some kind of logistical problem rather than sex discrimination here.) Fortunately, I was in a rather good mood so I simply told her I couldn't because I don't have any urinals in my bar. But it got me thinking, and the more I thought about it, the more pissed off I got, which peaked when I heard some crappy radio DJ saying that bar owners should do a better job of cutting people off when they have had too much.
In my humble opinion, as a grown-up human I am able to drink myself silly and, if I drive and wake up in jail, know that I have only myself to blame. The problem we run into is when I kill some people as well as myself. I'm dead so I cannot go to jail or say I'm sorry or pay millions to those family members who survived my drunken rampage. What to do now? How can we as a people deal with a situation like that? Who will go to jail? Who will say sorry? Who will pay millions? I know! The bartender who let me drink all that booze! Because I am, after all, a child and need other people to be there and take responsibility for when I do naughty things.
But let's keep in mind that booze is legal. What if we applied the same kind of reasoning we've used with the DWI problem to an illegal substance, like crack. So let's say that instead of being a bartender, I'm a crack dealer. If I get caught dealing crack, I go to jail for however long the amount of crack requires. But what if I sell some crack to a guy before the police are able to stop me?
For argument's sake, let's say this person then proceeds to smoke all the crack and then lose his mind and shoot a bunch of legislators and then in a final blow to the system throw himself off the top of the Roundhouse and die. This is a situation in which it's much better to be a crack dealer than a bartender who is trying to work for a living and support an education or a child or other interests. The reason it's better is because I, the crack dealer, can't be held responsible for the actions of the crack customer.
The bartender can.
So I think the only way to solve this problem is to do what everyone seems to want to do and make booze illegal so that I and everyone else in my business can start making some real money and everyone else will no longer be influenced by evil bartenders who make them drink till they puke and then force them to drive.
Then it will only be criminals who drink booze and all will be as it should.
Santa Fe Reporter