... for all this 'don't drive if you drink' talk, I find it amazing that every day when I work I see rooms full of people drinking alcohol, sometimes for hours on end - and then they all get in their cars and drive home.

As a musician when I drive home at 1, 2 or 3 in the morning, every night I see drivers on the road who are obviously drunk. And the bars full of people are all over town, and this same behavior occurs in every town in America. Let's face it; we don't practice what we preach! We don't really want 'no drink and drive' laws.

Reasonable blood alcohol level standards, and quick accurate tests (like the breath tests) should be one effective means of enforcing drunk driving laws ... but we must take drunk driving convictions very seriously and assign strong punitive punishments, we must press the criminality of accidents, injuries and deaths on those who drive drunk, and we must effectively prohibit habitual drunk drivers from the roads.

Because most Americans have some level of sympathy with drinking and driving, we allow too much leniency in the enforcement of the drun driving laws we have. We give too many second, third, fourth chances, juries too often and easily acquit drunk driving defendents, and we do not support very strict drunk driving legislation.

I don't drink, so it's easy for me to say; first drunk driving conviction is jail time, in a lock-up rehab program, loss of license for one year, no easy ways out. Subsequent convictions progress through harsher punishments.

But we are a very tolerant society, and we always hope the offender will learn, and if someone expresses regret for their actions, we want to treat them as kindly as possible. So we allow drinking and driving to be abused by many - and suffer the consequences when drunks kill us, our families or our police officers.

Most people enjoy a drink or few ... and most people are mindful of their drinking when they have to drive. The line of limit is a bit vague, and we do not always know if we've had too much or if we're OK - so we are sympathetic to those who are caught by strict drunk driving laws. But I know, because of years of experience in bars, pubs, festivals, that many people drink way too much and then drive ... they are NOT the ones with whom we should be sympathetic.