Mandatory alcohol detection for drivers

10,000 deaths a year and a million arrests for drunk driving.  You think that's important enough for us to stop it?  Do we do or do we don't want drivers on the road who are impaired by alcohol?  I'm not so concerned about the danger to them.  I am concerned with the danger they pose to others.

The technology is here now.  Using a built-in breathalizer that disables the ignition when alcohol is detected on EVERY new car sold in the US would go a long way to stop that. New technology involves a finger scan and would be even more effective.

There would need to be a stiff penalty for disabling the alcohol detector, such as lifetime revocation of driver's license and termination of all accident or liability insurance, for the first offense.  Second offense would need to be something like a lifetime sentence to a labor camp.

We could stop all those deaths and injuries if we chose to do it.  The added cost of the breathalyzer is minimal weighed against the deaths and damages incurred by drunken drivers.   Make the convicted drunk drivers pay for the installation in everyone else's car.  How about adding to the disabling of the ignition a red flashing light on the roof or automatic alert and tracking through gps?

There is no excuse for driving while impaired.  None.  We don't stop impaired driving  because it might inconvenience us sometimes.  Let's be honest. Enough already.  It is economic and human common sense to stop it now.

A possible solution to our drug problem

Not only do we spend a great deal of money on drugs, but a lot more is spent as a result of the huge amount of petty crime carried out in order to pay for drug usage.  Most of the money spent directly on drugs leaves the United States, and ultimately improves the standard of living for people in other countries at the cost of our own.

What if the government  took over the drug business?  Suppose that the US government bought directly from the drug manufacturers at their price, and distributed the drugs in the US to whoever wanted them for free and without legal consequences?  Drug kiosks could provide marijuana, cocaine, crack, heroin, opiates to anyone of age who wanted them.  The money would come from the huge amounts allocated now to fight drug importation and use.  And it would come from the reduction in prison costs and rehabilitation costs and reduction in drug police
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Since there is no cost there is no profit.  The gangs that control, distribute and sell  drugs  would go out of business.  The crime that supports drug habits would stop since it would be unnecessary.  There would be no motivation to encourage drug use or to  expand a drug market since there would be no drug market.

What would be the consequences?  Some people would probably overdose and die.  Many of them would eventually in any case, but there might well be an increase.  Fewer  people would die of contaminated or adulterated drugs since they would be pure.  Fewer people would die in gang wars over turf, which is always a war of the marketplace to some degree.  Fewer law enforcement people would be killed and fewer employed.

Whether or not drug usage would ultimately stop is not an answerable question.  People have always sought substances that provide certain experiences and sensations,  and there is no reason to think that easy access would change that.  But they would be healthier in the process and not at all  likely to descend into crime to support what would be a free product.

Would a drug craze sweep the nation, that is, more than it already has? In fact people already have nearly unfettered access to drugs now.  Does anyone doubt that they could obtain any drug they were interested in within the next few hours?  Free controlled access would only mean that there would be some ability to limit sales to the very young, but there is no way to prevent sharing of drugs once out of the drug kiosk, and there is no way to prevent inappropriate sharing, just as  happens now with alcohol, marijuana, and ... wait.   That happens now.

The problem would be that we are supporting drug manufacturing organizations in other countries.  Of course, we are now.  But it is possible that competition for our huge business would drive costs down over time.  Perhaps eventually drug manufacture would be no more of a major business that the manufacture of tennis shoes.  More money would stay in the US.  We would have a little more say about the quality of product.

There really is no way to predict a long-range outcome.  But what we see before us now is not very favorable, and seems to be getting worse.  What problems do you see with this proposal

Free will and addiction

The issue of whether or not human beings are able to exercise free will is as old as philosophy itself.  Are we simply the product of the various impulses and hormonal floods and conditioned responses?  Or are we capable of making decisions that are independent of our early experiences and that are truly an expression of free will?

It is quite possible, even likely, according to recent psychological experiments, that we only have the illusion of free will.  It is possible that our bodies and brains make decisions before our conscious awareness even weighs in.  Some studies have found that our choices are made several seconds before our conscious awareness is even involved.

But one answer to this problem continues to arise:  the consequences of believing that we do not have free will, of believing that we do what we do as a result of the operation of psychological and neurochemical operations about which we have no say, are quite  unacceptable.  Such an outcome means that as individuals we are not responsible for our actions.  It means that we are only able to carry out mechanistically determined choices. It means that as individuals we "can't help ourselves", that we are not accountable, that we have no choice but to act as we do, and that therefore punishment or consequences are equally useless in governing human behavior, which under this rubric is simply not governable. 

People who claim to be addicts of one kind or another are claiming that their errant, illegal or inappropriate behaviors are not their responsibility.  They are asserting that they do not have the capacity to make choices other than the ones they make, to do drugs, to commit crimes, even to engage in sexual activities of various kinds.  To someone attempting to hold them answerable and accountable for their "addictive behaviors" they respond "I can't help it", which is the philosophical equivalent of "The devil made me do it." 

Even when others, including the law, their spouses or their victims (in some cases the same things) do hold them accountable, in their minds they are the victims of forces over which they believe they have no control.  Thus, they are also blameless victims, no matter the cost to others.  The hormones, the impulses, the fates themselves have determined the outcomes, and the "addict" is just another victim. 

It is useful to notice the circularity of the above argument, which can be summarized easily in the following statement:  "An irresistible impulse is an impulse one chooses not to resist".  How do you know an impulse was the result of an irresistible addiction? Because you didn't resist it.  Could you have resisted it? If you claim you could not, you claim it because you did not.  Have you ever had an impulse belonging to your addiction that you did resist?  Then you can resist it.  You can't have it both ways.  If the impulse is irresistible, there is nothing to resist and no point in trying.  If it can be resisted, then resist it.

With such logic you can do anything you like, claim that you didn't like it but couldn't  help it, and reap the benefits (such as they are) of being an irresponsible child who is at the same time immune from consequences and punishment.  The world in which "addicts" live is uncivilized, animalistic, brutal and exploitive.  How can it be otherwise? They "can't help it".

This is an unworkable model for a civilized world.  Quite apart from whether or not  addiction is a valid concept, a world in which people are not considered to be in control of and accountable for their actions is not one in which we would choose to live.  The proof of the above statement is easily tested by simply observing and evaluating the world in which addicts live.

It is because their irresponsible, impulse-ridden and animalistic world has to exist in the same world as that of the rest of us that the conflict between us exists.  Those of us who are responsible and answerable for our behaviors have to deal with those who do not, and the results for both groups is what amounts to war.  The citizens have to protect themselves against the lawless, but no less do the lawless have to protect themselves against us.

The only way for coexistence to occur is for physical separation.  The addicted and their suppliers need a place of their own that has limited intersection with ours.  They need some things civilization can supply and the humanitarian principles that characterize civilization requires we help them with those things, such as medicine and food.  There is nothing they can easily give us in return,  but their absence improves the situation for both groups and probably saves money for the civilized to boot. 

Let's give them an island.