> I think that a far more telling statistic is this: in the United States in 2001, 1.4 million drivers were arrested for driving under the influence of alcohol or narcotics, that number being about 1% of the 120 million self-reported! episodes of alcohol-impaired driving. Those are a good number of bad choices regarding the use of alcohol.

Okay, first of all that category of "alcohol or narcotics" includes some things that are not precisely alcohol. For example, narcotics. So that tempers the number of such arrests involving alcohol somewhat. But, more tellingly, I'm not convinced statistics about DUI arrests are valid. States have wildly differing definitions about when precisely you are considered "under the influence," and some of them are asinine. If you happen to live in a state like this one, for example, you are driving under the influence if the officer who pulled you over says so. Period. No tests are required. It's entirely possible that you've never so much as had a wine cooler in your entire life, and you can get arrested for DUI in Massachusetts. It happened to a friend of mine, even (admittedly, he's been known to drink - somewhat heavily, as young males are prone to do - but on this occasion he was a designated driver and had had nothing).

Also, you're talking arrests. Convictions are another matter. One is led to wonder how many of those 1.4M arrests minus the number that were narcotcs-related were overturned in court.

> I thought that it would be worthwhile to note how serious this issue really is. It simply isn't enough to say "people can make better choices", because although they can, they very often don't. The fact is that alcohol is involved in a great number of terrible choices people make; I say that as a person who has made many such terrible choices. I, unfortunately, do not lack the experience that Howard does.
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> That is not to say that there is anything inherently wrong with drinking alcohol; there isn't. If I enjoyed it, I would. My dad does; many of my friends do; and none of those people make bad choices (in general) about alcohol or because of its influence. Some of them are models of good behaviour, and I admire them greatly. But I think that for all the people I can point to and say "they are doing the right thing" regarding alcohol, there are so many more that I know and have known of whom I can say no such thing.

I agree. People make bad choices. All the time. I don't have the impression that anyone's been denying that. But here's some spin for you. Bad decisions involving alcohol can be deadly when they also involve automobiles. Remove the automobiles, and the chances of a bad alcohol-related decision killing that family of four plummets. It's still possible, but hardly common. However, remove the alcohol, and you still see a lot of people killed because of bad decisions involving automobiles. An awful lot. This implies to me that, of the pair, the cars are the more dangerous, yet I don't quite see the outcry against them. If the primary issue is how many people are killed per year, cars are the single biggest danger I can think of. Would you have us outlaw them?