Part of my attitude comes from growing up in New Hampshire. For example, if you are a consenting adult, and you are only harming yourself, then that is your prerogative. Why you don't need to wear a seatbelt if you are over 18, or a motorcycle helmet. The risk you are taking on is not against other people, like drunk driving, but mostly only to your own health.

Now an effective part of that comes down to knowledge, but certain ideas can be ingrained in a society over time. Like put on a seatbelt or be thrown through the windshield like a crash test dummy.

This still won't stop people from trying to sue companies that try to sell them something that knowingly harms them. Hell, even fast food restaurant chains have been sued in the US for making someone fat.

My problem is that the same people that want drugs legalized then want the tax payers to pay for an addict to get clean.

Most people aren't born addicted to drugs. You have to make the decision to start taking drugs. I have no problem allowing anyone to have the freedom to put whatever the hell the want into their body as long as it doesn't affect other people. This includes leaching off of the government.

This may seem harsh. But if you take the risk you also need to be prepared for the consequences (good or bad).

I personally don't buy the cost argument. You do have a point that America is litigation happy, not really sure how to solve that. :)

This is crazy talk. In some cases it might be true, but the idea of applying such a broad judgment on an entire class of crimes would be a huge injustice.

Severity of punishment is not a good way to reduce the incidence of crime. Do you think someone who's judgment is so impaired that they're ready to drive while drunk is really going to stop and think, hey this is extra illegal, maybe I shouldn't do it? They're already putting their own lives in severe danger, so I doubt it.

The solution is better education, not increased punishment.

Without commenting on the question of a person's criminal liability for drunk driving...

How do you think education will help? Do you really think that today, in 2010, there is anybody who hasn't spent at least an aggregate 24 hours hearing the "don't drink and drive" message?

It seems to me that too often, people attempt to address problems with a knee-jerk "we need more education". But at least here in the USA, I've got to believe that we've all heard the messages about drunk driving, your brain on drugs, AIDS, domestic abuse, etc., ad nauseam. What more education do you want?

I'm not sure exactly how to best go about educating people, or I would be out doing it.

Coming from Sweden where we have relatively high punishments and low legal limits, I was shocked about how cavalier most people I met in the States where about getting in their car after a nights drinking. If you want to lower drunk driving relates deaths you have to change peoples attitudes towards drinking and driving.

I fully agree with permanently barring someone from driving after they kill someone while drunk driving, but tacking on 'pre-meditated' to the original crime is nonsense.

Education doesn't really get us there, people know it is bad and do it anyway. Look at the repeat stats on DUI, suspended licenses don't deter as much as people wished.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Felony_murder_rule

Unfortunately drunk driving is a misdemeanor and doesn't qualify.

Just to clarify, by nonsense I'm referring specifically to the idea of arbitrarily applying legal terms to situations where they aren't valid for punitive purposes. I disagree with harsher punishment as a crime deterrent, but I don't think harsher punishment itself is 'nonsense'.

Are you suggesting that in 100% of the cases where killing someone (and I assume this includes manslaughter) is premeditated?

Because if you are not, then it should not be considered premeditated. That's dishonest. Simply give the judge some additional window to affect sentencing for a set of crimes committed while intoxicated.

If you want to punish something more strongly because doing so would lead to beneficial behavior from citizens, then by all means do so. But call it what it is, don't hijack other unrelated factors for your own means.

That being said, I believe if you knowing impair your ability to make judgements and then kill or injure someone, you made a conscious decision.

Now, if you frame this in some "mandatory minimum" debate, I am definitely not going there. I still believe judges need their leeway, but prosecutors need to charge the crime as something more than a simple "he was drinking and an accident happened".

I have a good friend who was smart enough not to get into the drunk guy's car (leaving a fraternity party) and followed on his own. Thus, he was the first person on the scene after the accident. He wound up being a witness against the driver in a homicide trial.

So at least in the State of New York, you can be tried for manslaughter when your drunk driving results in someone's death.

I agree.

> Some of the current drugs out there need to stay illegal. Not because they get you high, but because they are toxic.

OK, I'll replace 'toxic' with 'potentially more addictive and dangerous than weed, alcohol, and nicotine' (Tobacco is damned addictive but it doesn't seem to cause antisocial behaviors.), because otherwise what you said makes no damned sense.

Go back to the late 1800s: People could buy cocaine and opium over-the-counter at drugstores. Laudanum (also called tincture of opium), a common patent medicine, was made from 10% opium and 1% morphine dissolved in alcohol. This, too, was available over-the-counter. America was prosperous, growing, and certainly not universally addicted to drugs.

So, why do you think going back to that regime would be dangerous? What evidence do you have that contradicts my historical analysis?

I wasn't contradicting your historical analysis.

Right. Well, legalization will help that as it is, in fact, illegal for a legitimate company to sell some unknown poison when it is claiming to sell drugs of a given composition and purity. Also, meth labs as we now know them will become economically impossible if it's possible to get meth legally: They are the perfect, absolutely perfect example of the kind of high-risk/high-reward behavior that is only worthwhile if you have gigantic margins subsidized by the DEA and local police.