DUI

This is beer heaven. You know, the place where everyone is slim, sexy, happy and full of life.

Now back to reality. This is beer hell.

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Alcohol did NOT play a role in this incident. How often do you hear that statement!

While the last two are very relative to the TDA theme, I thought it might be fun to fill out the list a little bit more on unique ways to get fired from driving the school bus.

• Be convicted of PWD, practicing witchcraft while driving.
• Salute the President.
• Drive while out of uniform… and clothes.
• Make an illegal U-turn (while shooting up cocaine).
• Pass out drunk in middle of road with a full load of students.

There's probably a hundred different recovery topics that I could tee off on from this last story, but I'll stick with the simple one; alcoholism may not be contagious, but it can be deadly to those innocents who get exposed to it.

It’s not hard to find content for a site that concentrates on addiction and recovery topics, I just wish most of the news stories that got picked up on the radar were positive! As I run across relative news stories while surfing I usually just throw them in my favorites and move on, most of the time I either forget they have been saved or just have too many stories to choose from to write about.

With a cast of characters that sounds more like the start of a joke (a priest, movie star, and a drunk walk into a bar...), these stories would have made good topics, but for one reason or another just didn’t make it to my front page. There are quite a few here so I have forgone adding any comments, but I have placed them in sequence of how the mighty have fallen progressing to those falling mightily.

Priest Selling Cocaine from Rectory-

The Reverend Christopher Layden pleaded not guilty Thursday to two counts of delivery of less than 1 gram of cocaine within 1,000 feet of a church and one count of possession with intent to deliver 1 to 15 grams of cocaine near a church. The 33-year-old was arrested Wednesday at St. John's Catholic Newman Center after investigators found 3 grams of cocaine and drug paraphernalia while searching his home and office.

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See the old guy with the deranged grin pouring beer down the hot college chick’s throat? He is Robert Paxton, the now-resigned president of Iowa Central Community College, putting the recently announced Amethyst Initiative into practice by preparing these “young adults to make responsible decisions about alcohol use.” Yes, I'm being facetious.

I am amazed at the sacrifices being made by these stalwart warriors of academia like Mr. Paxton, who will risk career and dignity to make the less cerebral of us aware of how miserably the minimum drinking age limit has failed. Alright, no more jokes.

These higher education leaders have signed their names to a public statement that the 21 year-old drinking age is not working, and, specifically, that it has created a culture of dangerous binge drinking on their campuses… Amethyst Initiative presidents and chancellors call upon elected officials to weigh all the consequences of current alcohol policies and to invite new ideas on how best to prepare young adults to make responsible decisions about alcohol use. ~ Amethyst Initiative Statement

A previously mentioned, once this picture surfaced Mr. Paxton thought it best to turn in his resignation. Personally I wish he would have kept his job, although he was not a signee this is just as bad a cop-out as the Amethyst Initiative's surrender on the minimum drinking age law. The incident would have made an excellent topic for the “informed and unimpeded debate” that academics of Amethyst Initiative would like to have on the subject.

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Sixteen year-old Kayla Preuss of Highland, California died from head injuries after losing control of her vehicle and crashing on I-10. Phone records suggest that moments before the fatal accident she was sending a text message that may have been a contributing factor in her death. Fox News ran the following headline:

Girl in Fatal Wreck Sent Text Message Moments Before Crash

Her mother also went on the record warning others of the dangers of DWT, driving while texting.

Preuss' mother Kelly said she hopes the accident will make other people think before texting and driving. ~ Fox

Oh, by the way, did I mention she was also DRUNK!

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I am really impressed by the Pennsylvania DUI Association and its ongoing effort “to address the DUI problem in all of its many stages -- from prevention to enforcement up to, and including, adjudication and rehabilitation.” They produce there own public service announcements, raise public awareness though special events, and offer a huge range of training and certification courses. There is a massive amount of info and links available on the Team DUI website, but one of the coolest things you will find there is the Safety Bug.

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Yesterday I did a piece on the latest drunk driving support memo from Sarah Longwell of the American Beverage Institute. In this article she basically tries to minimize the damage caused by intoxicated drivers by saying that alcohol-related statistics are grossly exaggerated by activist groups.

The number of deaths that activist groups attribute to drunk driving is grossly exaggerated. Last year, federal statisticians classified almost 18,000 deaths as "alcohol-related." However, alcohol-related does not mean alcohol-caused. In fact, that figure includes anyone killed in a crash in which at least one person (driver, pedestrian, cyclist, etc.) was estimated to have had any trace of alcohol. ~ Tampa Tribune

Unfortunately it is Mrs. Longwell who is misrepresenting the statistics here, the average BAC of fatally injured drunken drivers is .16, that’s twice the legal limit. Just for the record, almost 80% of all alcohol-related traffic fatalities are caused by someone who is legally drunk. It has been my (considerable and relevant) experience that alcohol related accidents are actually underreported if anything. While on the topic I figured I would share just the latest exaggerated instance of an alcohol-related traffic death.

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Hat Tip and thanks to TDA reader AnnaZ for the heads up on this one!
Sarah Longwell is the managing director of the American Beverage Institute (ABI) in Washington, D.C. The ABI is an association of restaurants that just happen to make the majority of their profits not from food, but alcohol sales. So this puts her in the unenviable position of having to defend those that drink and drive to and from these particular profit centers.

I had dubbed her with the admittedly hyperbolic tag of Hitler’s cheerleader in past posts, but after reading her last rant about how the dangers of intoxicated driving are overblown I decided to promote her to one of Satan’s cheerleaders.

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HOT SPRINGS, Ark. — A woman with a blood-alcohol level more than three times the legal limit for driving allegedly backed over her mother and left the scene even though loved ones yelled, "You killed grandma," police said. ~ Fox News

When I first saw this headline I thought maybe it is just a joke or a lighthearted parody like the holiday’s “Grandma Got Run Over by a Reindeer”. Of course as you can see below, when the story is real the song loses its charm.

Grandma got run over by her own dear
Backing out of the driveway trying to leave
You can say there's no such thing as Satan,
But as for me an' Grandpa, we believe.

She'd been drinking too much beer
And we begged her not to go.
But she was intent on transportation,
How she staggered out the door we’ll never know.

When we found grandma in the driveway,
At the scene lying flat on her back
She had motor oil on her forehead,
And across her torso an incriminating tire track.

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