Small point
It's a small point and one that is generally overlooked, and there are, indeed, reasons for that:
Not to piss on your parade, but the government does have a responsibility to protect the lives of its citizens, which is why there are DUI laws, which is why there are murder laws, which is why there are all sorts of laws, because we as human beings have the right to live.
Indeed, indeed, indeed. But substance laws are the sort of thing where the Bill of Rights goes straight into the trashcan.
We could start with evidentiary inequalities: Alcohol affects people differently; it is cause to charge someone below the legal limit with DUI, but not cause to defend oneself by. But this is debatable: are the legal limits set below intoxication as a preventative measure, or broadly enough that if you meet it, you're drunk? We're always given a practical comparison, but never an actual one. (E.g.--The DUI car, which police departments like to show off every now and then: you enter your body weight and a number of drinks into a computer, and then it electronically slows down the reaction time of the car to emulate driving under the influence. If alcohol affects everyone differently, the simulation is inaccurate if the result is uniform.)
However, a more necessary issue to point out: The prior note on evidentiary inequality is a side consideration. I find it of academic interest, but have no real basis upon which to mount a practical examination as of yet.
More importantly is the nature of substance-related enforcement, which assumes a person to be guilty.
DUI laws, like drug prohibition laws, are unconstitutionally founded on the presumption of harm. It is the only case in which a defendant is guilty of having done something without actually committing the crime. We have DUI laws to prevent people from killing one another on the road and so forth. Fine: let's have that. But this whole thing about revocation of driving privileges, about prison terms, and so forth are ridiculous. The basis of the DUI law is the
potential to do harm.
Riomacleod mentioned
murder. What is the criteria by which we measure the
potential for murder? If someone owns a weapon?
I find it interesting that I can get a stiffer penalty for the potential of hurting someone while driving my car drunk than I can for actually killing someone while handling my gun drunk. How do we prosecute the
potential for harm? In the case of a DUI, you're sending a guy to jail for breaking a law to prevent something he might not have done. Statistical odds may be one thing, but substance enforcement itself--that is, the environment in which these laws are designed--does not recognize trends within statistical odds as valid, so why should the lawmakers apply them here?
It is both unconstitutional and unprincipled in my opinion.
I almost got nailed the other day crossing a street in Ballard. No headlights, dark skies, turning left against the light, and the driver was busy whining on his cel-phone. Sure, states are moving to pass laws against cel-phones, but again we have to look at the potential of harm. As much as this guy annoyed me, I can't rightly take a piece out of him for making me think I'm about to get wiped out. Accidents are accidents. What I'd rather see than a crackdown on the potential for harm is the crackdown on the harm itself. Kill someone driving drunk? Spend your life in prison. Kill someone while on your cel-phone? Again .... But to prosecute people based on the potential of doing harm is stretching the limits of the Constitution. If I collected all the statistics reflecting the number of child abusers who also happen to claim to subscribe to faith in God, could we pass laws against religion based on the potential for harm to others? While I think the numbers would warrant such an act in a more barbaric culture, I also think that to legally prosecute the potential for harm in a religion is tantamount to persecution.
Riomacleod, while I accept the basis of your point, I merely wish to point out that this principle is not consistent in the culture. I think it would do us well to make that principle consistent or to throw it out. It does us poorly to continually set precedents whereby one is prosecuted not for what they have done, but what we are afraid they might do.
thanx much,
Tiassa