Posted on 05/20/2003 6:54:13 AM PDT by bassmaner
Apologies for the vanity, but this is bugging me and I need FReeper input.
I live in the Philadelphia suburbs, and I recently saw a billboard on Baltimore Pike in Clifton Heights sponsored by the Ad Council which appeared to support increasing the minimum drinking age to 25. Is there any kind of serious movement underway to make such an abomination law, or was it some kind of sick joke?
Dinuguan is better than menudo.
Just kidding ;-)
1. Raise the drinking age to 23. (College age children should not have access to alcohol.)
Why should "college age children" not have access to alcohol? At 18 one can vote, enter legal agreements, purchase a firearm, join the military and fight for and possibly die for America, but they shouldn't have "access to alcohol"?
2. Lower BAC to 0.07%.
0.08% is low enough, though I supported keeping it at .10%.
3. Ban all Sunday sales, purchase and consumption of alcohol.
Why should people not be allowed to purchase alcohol on Sunday? Why should people not be allowed to go out for a nice dinner with a bottle of wine on Sunday? And by what authority and reason should the stated ban the consumption of alcohol on Sunday? Give me one good, legitimate, and non-totalitarian reason that I should not be able to sit on my couch, watch football, and have a beer on Sunday.
4. Give Ohio State Highway Patrol same jurisdiction on private property as well as public property for DUI and alcohol/drug investigations and arrests.
Let me know what other amendments besides the 4th you would like to eliminate.
5. Give 72 hour automatic drivers license suspensions to any person arrested for alcohol related offense. (This would be for licensed drivers who commit an alcohol related offense while not driving.)
Why should one lose their drivers license for non driving related offenses?
Every year people under the age of 21 die from alcohol poisioning. How did this happen with them being under the legal age? Would raising the age to 23 have prevented these deaths?
How many people a year die from cocaine, heroin, and other drugs? Maybe they should be made illegal and then those deaths will not happen.
2. At 0.05% BAC one is considerably impaired by alcohol. 0.07% is a liberal limit and would get the borderline drunks off the highways.
Define "considerably". And every person handles alcohol and greatly different manners. Some people are severely impaired by less than one drink, which will not get their BAC even close to 0.05%. Others can have BACs well above .05% and you would never know it.
3. If people cannot refrain come consuming alcohol for a twenty-four hour period, especially on our Lord's day, they have a considerable drinking problem. Families travel our highways on Saturdays and Sundays more than any other days of the week. Why shouldn't we give them extra protection from drunks for at least one out of two of those days?
This is one of the most laughable reasons I have ever read. It is not a matter of being able to refrain from drinking for 24 hours. It is a matter of the government overstepping its legitimate authorities. And regarding "Our Lords Day", will your suggested law have an exception for the consumption of alcohol at religious services? And if so, why? And if not, why not? And your "lords day" is not everyone else's "lords day". We do have a seperation of church and state in this country, which unfortunately has been taken far beyond the Founders intent by courts over the years.
4. In Ohio, an Ohio State Trooper can be stopped at a red light, look over and see young youngsters drinking beer or a porch (or even worse, smoking pot or crack) and he hasn't the legal authority to do anything about it because he is only sanctioned on state and public property. Come on, surely this would not violate any body's civil rights!
So what your saying is that I can sit on my front porch in Ohio doing bong hits and if a cop sees me he has no legal authority to come and arrest me? There is no way that is true. Find me one case where a cop saw someone doing drugs in the open, on their land where the cop arrested them and they were released because of "lack of authority".
5. If you are too drunk or impaired to drive, you are too drunk or impaired to drive. Why shouldn't your driving privileges be revoked until you sober up?
If I am found to be drunk in public and my source of returning home is my vehicle I should be prevented from driving. If I am found to be drunk in a hotel that I am staying at why should my drivers license be revoked for 72 hours? Plus, I will be sober in the morning or several hours. It doesnt take 72 hours to sober up. In fact, I would have to consume 70+ drinks in an hour to need 72 hours to sober up.
Yes. It's me again.
Anybody read about the six innocent people who were killed in Sandusky last week.
The driver that was responsible was "legally" drunk. i.e. his blood alcohol content was 0.025% and he said he had drank two beers nine hours before the accident (a likely story- if he had drank two beers nine hours before he would have had no trace of alcohol in his blood).
Six lives gone forever, because a drunk chose to drive. What a waste.
Ohio Responsible Drinking Initiative (ORDI) wants to lower Ohio's BAC to 0.07% down from the 0.08% that it is now. Hopefully Ohio's General Assembly will listen. How many children have to be killed before they will do anything.
Oh, by the way, Ohio State Senator Jay Hottinger, who last year bragged about wanting to lower the state's BAC even further, has not responded to ORDI about supporting the 0.07 initiative or any of the other three. If anyone out there is in his district, ask him why. And if YOU can't get a response, VOTE HIM OUT, along with any other member of the House or Senate who won't support ORDI.
LET'S LOWER OHIO'S BAC NOW!!!!! AND KEEP LOWERING IT IN THE FUTURE!!!!
1 posted on 07/01/2004 11:10:10 AM PDT by nustart23
I want to apologize to Sen. Hottinger for making the remark in my last posting on July 1, 2004. It was a Sergeant Brian Webster (not Sen. Hottinger) of the Newark (Ohio) Police Department who made the statement about wishing to seek the BAC lowered even lower than 0.08%.
Here is that article:
FAMILIES, ACTIVISTS CELEBRATE LOWER DUI LIMIT
Wednesday, July 2, 2003
By Jon Craig
THE COLUMBUS DISPATCH
NEWS 04C
Two mothers, a sister and a wife -- all of whom lost loved ones to impaired drivers -- came together yesterday to praise a new state law lowering the blood-alcohol limit to 0.08 percent.
"Hopefully you'll never get a call like I did on Christmas Eve of 2001,'' said Darcee Claxon of South Webster in Scioto County. Claxon cried while describing her younger brother, Cody Michael Hammersley, "who forever will be 17'' and dreamed of playing college baseball and getting married.
Hammersley was fatally injured 500 feet from his home in Coshocton when his car was broadsided. The other driver, also 17, registered 0.082 on the Breathalyzer but was not charged with driving under the influence under the old limit. Still, he served 18 months in jail and in a rehabilitation center on another charge.
Until yesterday, the blood-alcohol threshold was 0.10 percent. The new limit means a 170-pound man drinking four to five beers an hour -- or a 137-pound woman drinking three beers an hour -- is too drunk to legally drive.
Meanwhile, Columbus attorney Bradley P. Koffel questioned the effective date that people can be charged under the lower limit. Koffel said his reading of House Bill 87 makes the new threshold effective in six months on Jan. 1, 2004.
"As a defense lawyer, if we have any clients charged with DUI for testing between 0.08 and 0.099, we will be requesting dismissal of that charge,'' he said. "Even if they're right, there is still going to be a lot of litigation and discussion in the courts.''
Speaking at a press conference at a Dublin hotel, Claxon implored teen-agers to take keys away from friends who insist on drinking and driving. She said her brother lost a two-week battle in the hospital before being declared brain-dead.
"I watched my brother's heart beat for a last time. Those images still haunt me today. I cannot explain the immense pain. Cody was a fighter (but) he doesn't have a voice anymore -- he was robbed of that -- to let people know drunk driving is not an accident.
"We pay daily, and we will pay for the rest of our lives,'' Claxon said. "I believe (0.08) will save the lives of other people.''
Others attending the press conference lost loved ones to drivers legally drunk under the old law.
Louanne Jones of Bexley lost her 19-year-old son, Brett Alan Sutton, in 1995 to a five-time offender now serving a 10-year prison sentence related to her son's death. "Slowly but surely we're changing the attitudes,'' she said.
Donna Maines' 18-year-old daughter, Jennifer, was killed on Thanksgiving 1996. The Newark mother's pain is compounded by the fact that the drunken driver was arrested -- again -- and imprisoned seven weeks ago.
And Sherrie Kass-Roth of Gahanna lost her 45-year-old husband, David, in a 1995 crash with a drunken driver that also severely injured their daughter, Bethanie.
It is estimated that about one-fifth of all alcohol-related crashes occur with drivers who test between 0.08 percent and 0.10 percent.
Sen. Jay Hottinger, a Newark Republican who sponsored the legislation, estimated the lower limit will save 30 lives the first year. The change also is expected to save at least $30 million annually in federal transportation funds as Ohio became the 42nd state to toughen its standard. The federal government threatened to cut off road-construction dollars starting in October for states that do not comply.
Hottinger was joined at the news conference by Maj. James H. Walker of the State Highway Patrol and Sgt. Brian Webster of the Newark Police Department.
"It's long overdue,'' Webster said. "Quite frankly, I would like to see it lowered even more.''
Using yellow crime-scene tape, officials from Mothers Against Drunk Driving of Ohio cordoned off 379 empty seats representing people killed in alcohol-related crashes last year in Ohio. More than 11,400 were injured.
"What a very sobering view that is,'' Hottinger said.
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