A new report issued last week by the National Academies of Sciences, Getting to Zero Alcohol-Impaired Driving Fatalities: A Comprehensive Approach to a Persistent Problem, urges a host of draconian measures in an effort to eliminate every alcohol-related driving death in the United States.
The NAS report suggests that policy approaches expand dramatically from their present focus, preventing drunk driving, “to also encompass reducing drinking to the point of impairment”—the latter, in other words, targeting all drunkenness.
Getting to zero, in the report’s estimation, means a host of nefarious, neo-Prohibitionist approaches to alcohol regulation, including “lowering state per se laws for alcohol-impaired driving to 0.05% blood alcohol concentration (BAC) [from 0.08%, the law today in most states], preventing illegal alcohol sales to… already-intoxicated adults, strengthening regulation of alcohol marketing, and implementing policies to reduce the physical availability of alcohol.” It also calls for stepped-up sobriety checkpoints, which can be constitutionally questionable. Food policy expert Baylen Linnekin weighs in.
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