OK, so I was watching a news story the other night. The news story was detailing the efforts Amarillo, Texas police are taking to reduce drunk driving. Their newest efforts will involve sending undercover officers to bars to arrest any patron who happens to be drunk....whether they're driving home or not. As the police chief warned, being intoxicated in public is illegal and they intend to enforce it.

While this will be a fantastic revenue generator for the APD (and, apparently their newest answer to a quota system), it will serve no productive purpose except to make criminals out of honest individuals. And in one sense, it may actually INCREASE drunk driving, since it doesn't matter whether you have a designated driver or taxi fare for the trip home, if you are intoxicated, you're going to jail. Period. Plus, smarter drunks will soon realize that the solution is not to drink in Amarillo bars, and they may travel to outlying communities which will not police the bars so closely. This means a 20 to 30 minute drive over open highway, at highway speeds...meaning MORE citizens will be endangered.

We must not confuse the legitimate efforts to curtail drunk driving with the efforts to eliminate drinking altogether. That was tried once during Prohibition, and it failed miserably.