Editorial: "Tough laws better for impaired drivers"

Drunk driving is dangerous and stupid, and we need strong measures to stop it. On that I agree with the Courier editor here. Where we differ is that I think those measures should also be effective, and they should address the real problem.

Stopping a drunk driver by putting a lock on his car may stop the car from moving, but not the drunk. People share and borrow cars all the time, so while the innocent wife of the drunk is trying to get a balky machine to allow her to go to work, hubby is out in his brother's truck making mayhem unimpeded. The car is not the problem, it's the driver.

I wonder how the Courier would react to legislation proposing that the state put a breathalyzer interlock on a drunk's gun.

If a person is convicted of endangering the public with any deadly weapon because of substance abuse, that person must be prevented from doing it again until the substance-abuse problem is clearly eliminated. If that means physical restraint, so be it. The real problem here is that neither the drunk nor society takes this issue seriously enough. We're doing essentially nothing about the root cause, which is the easy availability of an addictive drug and a culture that encourages its abuse. If the Courier editor had thought to include some stats, it might have helped.