The Coalition of the Swilling

Yeah, this really ticks me off. I hope very kid in the school uses mouthwash every morning and swallows just a touch because this test gives lots of false positives and that is one way to cause one.

This will not be tolerated in '09!

Americans and alcohol, you guys are obsessed. Shouldn't they be testing for illegal drugs first. I know we are not in warm Europe but jez they've been giving babies wine and teens a taste at dinner for years without everyone becoming raving drug addicts although half of them only seem to work 20 hours a week..
Reminds me it's about time to rant about: Reagan-increase drinking age-massive rise in illegal drug use, coincidence I think not. Cheers.

"underage drinking and driving kills about 2,000 people under the age of 21 each year."

Compared to the number of teenagers, this is a tiny percentage. My best guess from the census site is that there are about 30 M kids in the 16 - 21 age bracket in the US. 2000 people under 21 is 0.007% of this population. This is an awful big imposition into civil liberties to prevent the death of such a tiny fraction of the cohort. Get a grip people (both on life, and on basic math).

But the 2000 figure is what NumberWatch would call a Trojan Number - it's national, not NJ data. So, NJ probably has only about 1/35th of the national total of teens (also from the census bureau), so we are talking about preventing a maxumum of only 57 deaths per year in exchange for teaching our kids at a young age that freedom should be exhanged for security.

Now, take away the deaths in summer, when this program would have no power. I'd be willing to be that more than 25% of those drunk driving deaths are in the summer, but lets be simple minded here: we are now down to 43 deaths per year. Now, remove those kids who die from drunk driving who are drop-outs. Also remove those killed by a drunk driver who were not drinking themselves - you know these busy-bodies included htose in the total. I have no idea what those numbers are, but let's assume another 20% drop. We are now talking about a huge investment and an erosion of freedom in exhange for saving at the very most 35 kids in an entire state who are stupid enough to drink and drive.

I say let Mr. Darwin's selection method take its natural course, and help improve the NJ gene pool.

B-b-but John: think of the children!

I just did - and found two other subtractions I forgot. The 2000 kids are "under 21". How many were passengers of the ages 0 - 15? Take off another 5 kids for that.

Also, this will only work to prevent deaths from the 16-18 cohort. The 19 - 21 cohort will not be caught in this net. Assuming the age cohort are about equal size and that deaths are evenly distrubted, that's half of what's left.

15 kids. At maximum. Sorry, Darwin rules.

Sadly, NJ must take a lot of the blame for this

"Many congressmen were involved in the long process that created this piece of legislation. First of all Sen. Frank R. Lautenberg, D-N.J. was the senator who proposed the senate amendment to house bill H.R. 4616. This amendment was the "first piece of legislation he has successfully sponsored since his election in 1982." (Gettinger 1984) Sen. Gordon J. Humphrey, R-N.H. proposed an opposing amendment to Lautenberg's; one that offered benefits to states that complied rather than penalties to those that didn't. Opposition was further led by Sen. Steven D. Symms, R-Idaho. Rep. James J. Howard, D-N.J. chairman of the Public works and Transportation Committee, got the Senate amendment onto the House calendar before the upcoming recess. Rep. Howard was also the person who had "offered the legislation that set a nationwide speed limit of 55 m.p.h." (Perlez 1984)."

Sigh. We owe a lot of apologies. I may have to tilt my head and say "sorry".

It's not a good thing to piss off a number jock with Trojan Numbers. I did some digging. I overestimated the impact by a factor of 3.

First off, as I suspected, the 2000 figure included kids under 14 and teen passengers killed. Go here to find that the actual national stat for DUI teen drivers involved in fatal crashes: 1198 in 2005. Already we cut 50% out of our Trojan Number - even more because sometimes the teen survives and the passenger or driver of the other car doesn't. But I quibble.

Next, if you look at the NJ stats for DUI fatalities, it is much lower than the simple cut I did above, lower than one would expect for the NJ population, meaning that highway enforcement is already catching a lot of this stuff. So I went digging for teen driver DUI fatalites in NJ, an lo and behold I found them.

Thirteen. Thirteen teens were DUI and involved in a fatal crash in 2005. But the age range is 16-20, so alcohol testing in high school won't catch the 19 and 20 year olds. I'll be generous and call all of the 18 year olds as high-school age. 60% of 13 is about 8. All of this BS for 8 kids.

But wait, it gets better. SADD admits that most teen DUI fatalities occur over the summer. Their statistic means that about 33% occur in July alone. Lets be generous and say 40% for the entire summer. Now we are down to 5 kids. I won't even ask how many of those were high school drop-outs.

All of this investment, all of this erosion of freedom, for 5 kids in an entire state - all of whom decided to commit several crimes by drinking and driving. But the number 5 just doesn't grab you like 2000 does, does it?

You know, when I first put this up , I thought to myself "well, lemme see how many kids DIE, etc." Then I remembered John's penchant for doing in ten minutes what it would take me days to do. So I said 'fuggedaboudit' and voila.

He strikes.

This is such bullshit. I grew up in a household where my parents, especially my step-mother, who is German, *allowed* us to drink alcohol. I mean, it's not like we sat around doing tequila shots as a family when I was ten, but ever since we reached adolescence, we were always allowed to have an occassional beer or a glass of wine with dinner. I could just see one of these nutjobs calling my house to "inform" my parents that I had alcohol in my system.

"And...?"

THS - I struck even harder, but the comment is stuck in the filter, and Bingster appears to be AWOL. ;-)

Okay, okay, I rescued it from spamfilter purgatory.

Geesh, ain't a feller allowed to commute anymore?

Here are the other months, John

"Teen traffic deaths also peak in summer: a 2003 study of teen driving behavior conducted by Liberty Mutual and Students Against Drunk Driving found that July saw more deaths (644) of youth ages 15-20 than any other month, followed by June (600), September (590) and August (587) in 2002."

In an alternate universe:

Official Piss-Test Coordinator: "Come along, Johnny. It's time for your random alcolhol test!"

Johnny: "Fuck you."

OPTC: "Excuse me? WHAT did you say?"

Johnny: "What, did I stutter? I said FUCK YOU!"

OPTC: "Well, young man, I guess we'll just have to suspend you for a week!"

Johnny: "Gee, break my fuckin' heart, why don't ya? Jerk."

I would be proud to be Johnny's father in this universe.

Sorry, but this is all just a form of conditioning - slowly take away their freedom and privacy (note I didn't say rights) when they are young and they won't have the outrage to resist when they are voting adults. This 'alcohol monitoring' is a responsibility of the parents and unfortunately too many parents are all too willing to have their God given responsibility assumed by others.

I can't figure out why so many have a problem raising their 1.5 children. Of course, I'd like to just blame the baby boomers for being too self-centered.

I'd like to konw if truancy and drop-out rates go up as a result of this. Drink on Friday, cut class on Monday.

Unintended consequences anyone?

I'd lyke ta konw two, Jon Kary.

Yor mie onlee hop.

i needa dreenk.

Pinheads, all of them.

http://www.google.com/q=Whats+going+on