2004-03-17 - 1:02 a.m.
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Zero Tolerance Control Freak
"Eight states now have specific laws on "drugged driving," but their statutes are vague. None specifies an equivalent level to the 0.08 percent blood content that Congress established as the legal level for alcohol impairment.
That's partly because there's no roadside test to detect the presence of drugs in the body � no handy "breathalyzer" as there is for alcohol. And even if blood or urine samples taken at a hospital test positive for drugs, there's no standard for how high is too high to drive.
"Zero tolerance" is the level some lawmakers want Congress to establish. A motorist found to have any controlled substance in his or her system would be considered unlawfully impaired.
"Everyone who drives is affected by this," said Rep. Rob Portman, R-Ohio, citing a report last September by the Department of Health and Human Services (news - web sites) estimating that during the previous year nearly 11 million people drove at one time or another under the influence of drugs. The same survey said three times as many people � 33.5 million � drove under the influence of alcohol in 2002. "
-Taken from a Yahoo! news story. The possibility of this passing is nil to none. Think about it: did you take any medication that could pass on a drug test as a controlled substance? Could it still be in your blood? Maybe you smoked a joint three weeks ago and are completely and utterly sober now with absolutely no side effects still happening to you. There is no sort of effect it is still having on you yet it is in your system, hugging the inner lining of your body, leaving its mark for weeks at a time, even months. You are driving down the streets in your town, 2 in the morning, trying to get home and a little tired from visiting friends. Not one of you has had any drugs whatsoever that evening and none of you have been drinking anything. You accidentally roll through a stop sign in the sight of a cop car and he pulls you over, sees your bloodshot eyes that glare red from lack of sleep and he gives you a Zero Tolerance test. That one joint you smoked 3 weeks ago has just written you a ticket, just put your ass in jail, put your ass in prison or all of the above based on what whiny politicians believe we believe what is right but is terribly wrong. The greatest fact out of the entire article is that they tell you flat out that even more people are driving around drunk anyway - three times as many people - and regardless, they still do it despite alcohol being completely legal and despte driving drunk being completely illegal. You tell me. One law to prevent something that three times as many people are doing anyway despite there being rules against it. And to further compound the idiocy by making the Zero Tolerance (sorry Grandma, that medicine you've been taking for your heart murmurs contains chemicals on the controlled substance list. You're just as bad as a drunk driver now and if not, worse) takes this all to a new level of scariness, where your past transgressions, which hold no more threat to you now than the harshest memory could ever do, can get you in trouble. You could be sober and clean, just off of drugs. You quit 3 weeks ago and haven't turned back and are looking outwards towards a new life when the flashing red lights come behind you and tell you that you have been "drugged driving". Drugged driving. They didn't even try with that one. They just looked at what they did last time (drunk driving), replaced the proper terminology and left it as that. Bad enough we have the anti-drug commercial where the guys hit a girl on her bike speeding out of a burger place. You mean to tell me in this day and age of HONK HONK GO CAN'T WAIT 5 FUCKING MINUTES ENOUGH TO GO INTO A STORE AND BUY FOOD I HAVE TO DO IT FROM MY CAR AND GET THE FUCK OUT OF HERE that you think all you have to do is be high to do something like that? And even if it was a mark against your proper judgement and reaction times, you mean to tell me that people STILL will know how to drive well if you try to guarantee that there are no "drugged drivers" on the road? Your false sense of security shakes me at my foundation and your claim that this affects everyone on the road because they happen to be driving is ludicrous. That's like making so that when you watch TV AND eat food, you're really Fat Watching because the food will not be properly processed if you sit around and do nothing. You'll gain weight and eventually, after you eat enough deep fried buckets of lard cakes and watch Jenny Jones and the Real World until your mind rots and melts into your throat and you swallow it whole as well, you'll die of a heart attack from all of that TV watching while eating. All of that eating you did so long ago. Now that is illegal as well. Hell, let's not stop there. I'm sure people who ate paint chips as a kid and play physical contact sports are doing illegal things as well, seeing as they, at one time at least, did some harm to their bodies and possibly to others. We should put a stop to this immediately by banning sports as well as paint chip eating. And now you can see how ludicrous it all is and how, despite being wayyyy too overexagerrated, my examples still follow the same thinking track that a Zero Tolerance law for the PEOPLE! would be. It's for your own good to punish you for driving around with trace amounts of chemicals whose harm to your senses have long since abated. It's national security we're talking about here! Your rights as a citizen we're talking about here! THEY'RE JUST LOOKING OUT FOR YOU!
This is where my entry would have began if I wasn't already at a loss for words.
BMC
What did you just say? - What's he gonna say next?
