should drinking while driving be legal?

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

I believe it is in Montana and Wyoming.

I'm not sure if I would favor that in populated states considering how many bad drivers there are in urban areas and how many people would be just as bad at measuring their alcohol, but I would definitely say it should be legal for passengers.

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

Despite the somewhat valid concerns the US's drunk driving laws are still some of the most lenient in the world.



And hell, a decade ago the states that hadn't dropped the limit yet were basically the only places in the world where you could blow 0.099 and keep your license. And getting your license back after 60 days and completing some treatment class is far more lenient in most places too.

And as Lewis pointed out even though a lot of the mandated alcohol treatment classes for first time offenders might be unnecessary, it does help create jobs and get funding for something that is needed in plenty of cases, and serves as a good deterrent against drunk driving without throwing on draconian penalties and potentially life crippling long term license suspension.

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

And as Lewis pointed out even though a lot of the mandated alcohol treatment classes for first time offenders might be unnecessary, it does help create jobs and get funding for something that is needed in plenty of cases,

there's somewhere between little and no evidence that the sort of 'treatment' that gets handed out to DUI (or low-level drug) offenders is effective, even when the offender actually meets the diagnostic criteria for substance abuse/addiction, which oftentimes is not the case.

Lewis hasn't posted in this thread, so you're presumably referring to a post he made about coerced treatment a few months back:

Coerced therapy is useless to its nominal aims and not really any sort of therapy at all, but it feeds a lot of people (and feeds them well) out of the public purse without officially swelling the ranks of government employees. Besides, it's cheaper than jailing middle class offenders and preserves their respectability. From the point of view of bourgeois democracy, it's a win-win-win-win.

so he actively disagrees with your first point, that certain people coerced into treatment a) need it and b) are helped by it.  the rest of the post I interpret to be an ironical/cynical commentary.  the inclusion of the statement "from the POV of bourgeois democracy" implies that the author is not coming from the POV of bourgeois democracy, allowing some space between the author and the analysis.  we refer to that space between author and narrator as irony.

Ironic or not I agree with his second sentence. And I most certainly don't believe most people sentenced to such treatment for a first DUI need it either. I'm just saying it as he does that it creates the jobs and gets the funding for the people who do need it when it might go underfunded otherwise. It's kind of an awkward setup, but it's preferable to either giving out draconian fines/sentences and license suspensions to offenders or just freely allowing drunk driving.