Not sure where Joe is, but plenty of young kids have drinking competitions to see who can drink who 'under the table'. It was going on when I was a teen, it;s still going on now nearly 30 years later, only to a larger degree. Youngsters today don't know when to stop. Because they're involved in a competition, they don't want to be seen as the loser, so will just keep drinking. The incidences of alcohol overdose being brought into hospital is massive.
I did my nurses training in a small country hospital and I was on night shift one night and the ambulance people rang to say they were bringing in 6 teenagers from the 'Blue Light Disco". The Blue Light Disco was an underage disco that was manned by the police. It gave the underage a chance to get out and dance to some music without having alcohol involved. Anyway, when the teens arrives (average age 14), 2 of the girls hearts had stopped and they were doing CPR on them when they were coming through the door. One didn't make it. 3 of the others had to be tranferred to the city in an induced coma because they were gravely ill. The other stayed in my hospital for 2 days and then went home. The sad part about that was, not the fact that the kids were stupid and one died, but one of the ambulance people happened to be the parent of one of the kids that was transferred out. Imagine getting a call to an emergency, only to arrive and find one of the unconscious ones was your child.
I haven't seen people actually stand at the breathalyzer machines at the pub and have competitions through the night to see who has the highest reading, but I have seen them later blow into it and whoever had the lowest reading had to buy the next round of drinks. Apparently, those machines aren't that accurate anyway because once they're screwed to the wall, they're never calibrated again.
It depends on who you are, what day of the week it is, what judge you get in court as to what happens to you when you get caught drink driving. If you are a known figure, you'll get let off regardless of how many times you get caught. Our court system here is pathetic, so most judges let people off with a slap on the wrist. A work colleague got caught about 3 weeks ago and she lost her licence for a year, got a good behaviour bond for a year and a conviction recorded, plus a $2000 fine. The day her story made the paper, there was another story about someone else who'd been caught. The other person had already been caught 4 times before. They were unlicenced, the car wasn't registered, they blew a higher reading than my colleague (she went 0.18, he went 0.21) and had a rather lengthy criminal history. Same court, different judge, he got 6 months loss of licence, no good behaviour bond, no fine and no conviction. Go figure! I'm certainly not sticking up for my colleague, she deserves everything she got. I'm just trying to point out the differences between 2 almost identical cases.
If you get caught on your first offence and you are low to mid range, they make you do a driver education course. My understanding of that is, they try to teach you the road rules, plus go into the deadly consequences of drink driving. That includes showing graphic videos of dead people being removed from cars that had alcohol involved. I don't think it has any effect because people are used to seeing blood and guts these days, whether it's real or not. The 2 people I know that have done this course thing both celebrated the completion of it by going out and getting drunk and then driving home (not at the same time, these people didn't know each other and it was several years apart and in different cities)! Repeat offenders might get locked up, but that's rare, mostly because of our pathetic legal system. They have a softly softly approach to everything and they think everyone deserves a 2nd chance (and the 3rd, 4th, 5th and 6th chance) and that everyone can be rehabilitated. It's not just with drink driving, it;s with any offence, including drugs and murder.
I wouldn't say I'm a teetotaller, but I don't really drink either. I'd be lucky to have 1 or 2 drinks a year. On the rare occasion that we do go out with friends, I elect to be the designated driver. I do that because in the past I've had people buy me alcoholic drinks because I'd been drinking soft drink. At least if I;m the one driving them home, they don't do it anymore.
I get angry when we;re bombarded with how terrible illegal drugs are and how terrible smoking is, yet someone drinking alcohol is applauded. There are far more deaths a year in this country from alcohol than there are from drugs or smoking. It's widely accepted to drink 2 bottles of wine every night with dinner. Half the doctors I work with drink every single night and a few bottles at that, yet they're the first ones to have a go at me about smoking. At least I can get it the car and drive after smoking a pack of cigarettes. They can't get in the car and drive after a pack of wine. My colleague was one of these people that thinks it's acceptable to drink wine every night and now she's paid the price for it. Hasn't stopped her though, or any of the others. The sooner they get it through the heads that alcohol is a VERY dangerous DRUG, the better we'll all be. Every day we hear on the news about some violent act that has taken place because of alcohol. The youngsters are totally out of control as far as that goes. It's nothing for a 12yo to get smashed every night because that's what everyone else is doing. It's also surprising the amount of kids that are full blown alcoholic by the time they reach 18 (there are stats online). Some people have suggested upping the age limit to 21, but that will achieve nothing. 12yo's aren't legally allowed to drink, so upping the age to 21 isn't going to have any effect at all. Underage kids will still continue to drink because drinking is a widely accepted practice, regardless of the legal age.
Amazingly, if you commit a crime, saying you were drunk, will more often than not get you let off the crime. If the courts are letting people off because they were drunk, there's no hope of ever banning this DRUG. The really silly thing about alcohol and other drugs is, alcohol is legal and it's very addictive, yet something like marijuana is illegal and has no addictive properties in it at all. You can get psychologically addicted, but you don't get physically addicted. People that argue that point are usually the ones that mix tobacco in with their 'grass'. When they decide to stop, they get withdrawals, but it's not from the drug, it's from nicotine withdrawal. If they smoked it straight and then decided to stop, they might get crabby for 24 hours, but there's no withdrawals like you'd get coming of heroin, ice, tobacco or alcohol. No, I'm not condoning the used of marijuana, just pointing out differences. I can't work out why a non addictive drug is illegal, but an addictive one is not.
Gee Rhayden, you think you talk a lot!! I was supposed to be down town 15 mins ago LOL!!
Jane