Word: alcoholic
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...highway bill pending before Congress would instruct all 50 states to require all motorists convicted of driving under the influence to equip their cars with interlock systems that shut down a vehicle when a measured amount of alcohol is detected. (See the most important cars of all time...
States wouldn't have to abide by the ruling, but there would be heavy pressure to conform, since states that don't adopt the mandate could lose their highway funds. "The national 21 minimum drinking age and the .08% law [for allowable alcohol in the bloodstream] both resulted from federal highway sanctions. History tells us that this approach works," says Laura Dean-Mooney of MADD. So far only 11 states require interlocks for anyone with one conviction who is currently driving on a DUI-restricted license...
...article did include a hopeful caveat to this dire picture, however. As Rehm says, "We [now] know more than ever about which strategies can effectively control alcohol-related harms." The most cost-effective of these methods, he says, is simply to raise the price of alcohol. There's already evidence that this works. In France and Italy, for example, alcohol consumption has steadily plummeted over the past 25 years as the price of drinks has gone up relative to income compared with other countries. "Despite all stereotypes, Italy now has the lowest consumption of any European country," Rehm says...
Rehm also says that governments put too much faith in treatment programs for alcoholics as a way of combating excessive alcohol consumption. "If you start pumping money into treatment systems, that's helpful for those with alcohol-abuse disorders, but that group is a very small minority of those who suffer as a result of alcohol," he says. "If you die of alcohol-related breast cancer, you may never have been an alcoholic, but still it's an alcohol-related disease...
Rehm adds that while an end to deaths and disability caused by alcohol is in sight, it is a frustratingly difficult goal to reach. "The solution can only be to reduce the overall amount of drinking," he says. "But that's pretty hard to do - to get humanity to learn to drink one or two units a day, and never more...