It’s very rare that I’m motivated to write a follow up column, but the dangers generated by alcohol’s sacred position in our society demands more attention. Nothing is better to use as comparison than the uproar about the private ownership of guns and the dangers of both.
To quote that Jan. 20 column:
“Did you know Arizona ranks at the top nationally in regards to youth drinking (U.S. Center for Disease Control, June 8, 2012)? Arizona high schools surveyed rank No. 1 ‘for alcohol use and binge drinking’ and No. 2 ‘for cocaine use and drinking alcohol on school property.’
“We yip and carry on about gun dangers, yet right in our own homes are the roots of not only death, some of them slow and torturous, but also the collapse of marriages, endless lost jobs and more sorrows than can be recounted in one little column.”
In response, I heard from retired Mesa Police officer Jim Boubelik who witnessed the issues I spoke about. His words carry far more weight than mine:
“The thing that frustrates me, as I heard you talk about in your article, is all the hype on gun control. So many people are up in arms about taking away guns or restricting certain types of guns but that isn’t going to make a difference. Yet according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration in 2010, one person died every 51 minutes in an alcohol related collision in our nation! This is crazy, but yet we are head over heels to ban guns.”
Boubelik knows something about this problem. He spent 12 years in the traffic unit and seven on the DUI squad. He was involved in more than 3,000 DUI cases.
Boubelik confirms that alcohol, a depressant, is a primary “gateway” into drug use. He talks about “chasing the dragon”: Users find the same dose eventually disappoints, thus the chase for the “high” pushes them down into the dark spaces of the next drug.
Alcohol: The door to emotional, spiritual and physical death; a social war against generations. To bring perspective into focus, compare it to gun deaths: The CDC reports for every gun related death, there are ten alcohol related deaths. Yeah. Let’s go after the guns; protect our social addiction.
How deadly is the stuff in your family room bars? Boubelik knows: “I had one case back many years ago of a 18 year old kid that was drunk and hit a pedestrian as he crossed the street. The kid was so intoxicated he didn’t even remember stopping his car and pulling the man’s dead body out of the front window of his car and then driving off.”
Boubelik, whose passion against alcohol has not receded with retirement, urges parents to educate themselves and then educate their children about the dangers of alcohol and drugs.”
And, don’t forget role modeling. Don’t use the stuff. Treat it like the poison it is.
“After being a cop and experiencing everything that I did in my career,” Boubelik says, “I am much more afraid of that DUI driver sitting behind the wheel of a 3,000-pound guided missile than I ever was with guns. I have tons of stories about close calls with DUI offenders than I do with incidents that involved guns.”
There you have it folks. It’d be a wonderful world if there were no killing machines of any type, but humans have proven, we’ll still find a way to do ourselves and others in. Shall we really get serious about saving our children?
East Valley resident Linda Turley-Hansen (turleyhansen@gmail.com) is a syndicated columnist and former Phoenix veteran TV anchor.
lunix posted at 9:48 am on Wed, Mar 27, 2013.
The NRA has a solution: Make alcohol more widely available. Make it available in private sales, where no ID is required. Make it available to everyone! We need to put drunks in the schools to protect the children from alcohol. Legislators must be encouraged to carry booze to the office. And, by all means, we need to sell alcohol in containers with larger capacity. The problem, you see is not alcohol, it's people who misuse alcohol. Get rid of the people and your problem goes away!
sockratties posted at 6:06 am on Wed, Feb 20, 2013.
Linda,
You try to mix two problems into one with rambling blather. Do you have a word quota you have to meet or something? You obviously know nothing about either which you view from your gated community. Guns, yep that's a problem... Addiction, another problem.
Try solving, rather than shoulda, coulda, woulda. Get your hands dirty and do something like volunteer at a shelter or a free clinic. Your rhetoric will change.
6thgenarizonian posted at 3:54 pm on Tue, Feb 19, 2013.
So you want to treat alcohol like the poison that it is???
We need to educate our children about the effects of alcohol and the impairment that it causes. BUT to lie to them and deceive them is part of the problem. If some teenager smokes weed and/or drinks alcohoal and realizes that it's not literally poison, then they'll lose trust in their parents.
I'm recently purchased my first gun. It is very interesting to see peoples reaction when a brown guy is packin' but I get street cred whevever I'm in the hood.
DavidNichols posted at 1:14 pm on Tue, Feb 19, 2013.
Linda, do you think Extreme Violence Exposure to our Children through Video Games, and Hollywood Movies may contribute to our Nations "Gun Violence?!
But if you think it is all alcohol related, perhaps we could have alcohol interlocks built onto guns?
Shooters would have to blow clean down the barrel before firing?
I think if more people were on alcohol nobody could aim well enough to hit any one?
Funny how we are all looking for some one, or one thing to blame for "Gun Violence", which is actually a result of many many things?
Bluepoet posted at 8:46 am on Tue, Feb 19, 2013.
So, Linda, what is the point you are so desperately trying to make, that you have now "followed up" upon your previous column? Drinking is bad, mmmkay? Driving a car, and wielding a gun, while intoxicated is really, really bad? Join Teetotalers Anonymous? Become a Mormon?
"Gateway drug"--that's a term from forty years ago...you are right, about it being a depressant, and developing a tolerance for it, though. Everything else you blather on about is spoken from the perspective of someone who knows nothing about addiction, beyond a spew of statistics.
I suggest you devote your next column to the causes of these excesses in our society, although I'm sure it would be just another religious rant, coming from you...
Guns, alcohol, religious intolerance, capitalistic brainwashing, consumerism, ignorance, disease, pollution, hubris...these are all subjects that fall under the ills of the human race. Guess what? No one gets out alive!
ralpho posted at 8:22 pm on Mon, Feb 18, 2013.
Then you will pass a law that possession of a gun and an alcohol level of 0.01 is a minimum of 1 year in prison.
And if you have a gun you have to submit to breathalyzers because it is deadly like a car.
What hold people responsible have I lost my mind.
I knew what you were thinking.
lunix posted at 1:34 pm on Mon, Feb 18, 2013.
National Rifle Association Executive Vice President and CEO Wayne LaPierre has a solution to the serious problem this nation has with drunken driving and alcohol abuse: Make alcohol more widely available, and allow "private" sales to anyone, even without ID! It works with gun violence and suicide, after all. (Satire)
onepercent posted at 10:01 am on Mon, Feb 18, 2013.
Alcohol is indeed a very destructive force in our society, much moreso than guns, but as we learned in the 1920's: prohibition does not work. Those who wish to do the same thing to guns would be wise to remember this fact. Any attempt to outlaw the ownership of guns is going to result in a massive black-market and increased crime, while simultaneously stripping law-abiding citizens from the basic right of self-defense.
IAB posted at 9:33 am on Mon, Feb 18, 2013.
while i don't disagree with her assertion about the unfounded attacks on gun rights. I might also agree that alcohol is a bigger problem....but haven't we already tried the whole NO alcohol thing before??? It launched the black market and violence rose after prohibition. Our current drug war that has been going on for over 60 years with many of the same effects including filling our jails and ruining the lives of those incarcerated for minor drug charges and their families. if you want to "Save the Children" how about you focus on seat belts and pool fences???
AtotheZedHead posted at 9:23 am on Mon, Feb 18, 2013.
No matter what you do with the laws, teens will find ways to get alcohol, anyway. This isn't an alcohol problem; it's a people problem. Alcohol doesn't kill people; people kill people. I'm a law abiding citizen; why should criminals get in the way of my right to buy a drink? In fact, I think there should be wine coolers in the vending machines at schools because seeing a couple of friends get really drunk and embarrass themselves is really the only way to prevent teen drinking.
openureyes posted at 9:10 am on Mon, Feb 18, 2013.
So, to back up her assertion from her initial column that alcohol use is the country's real problem and rampant gun violence is just a political football, the author brings in someone who's studied the ill effects of alcohol use for years and... one gun violence statistic, rehashed from that initial column.
I hope she doesn't wonder why people scoff at her columns.