Eight Dollar Beer Rant

One draft beer at a Titans game is going to set you back eight bucks!

Actually, I don't have a problem with that. ER doctors and nurses hate drunk people. There is no way to sugar coat it. It's just that simple. Let me start with the guy who had "two beers”, every drunk patient I have ever cared for has only had “two beers”. Mr. Two Beers climbed a utility pole in an attempt to turn a city street light so that it would shine more directly on his lawn so he could cut his grass at night. Funny right?

Not so funny when he was electrocuted and fell 20 feet.

How about the young lady who was in Nashville celebrating her bachelorette party on the eve of her wedding; she didn’t have to pay for her drinks that night and everyone was buying. The ladies made it to see me that night in the ER. A night of fun ended up with me on the phone with this young girls parents telling them she had stopped breathing and was now on life support. Party over.

How about the fraternity pledge who passed out drinking, regained consciousness and then was required to participate in one more “brotherhood building” event consisting of dropping shots of whiskey into mugs of beer and drinking the entire thing. He passed out again but this time didn’t wake up.

Alcohol is the drug involved in more accident deaths than all the others combined. More than cocaine and heroin by far. Marijuana doesn't even make the list. The beauty is that not only is alcohol legal, it is marketed more than any other drug in the world.

Where is the FDA?
The FDA sends out frequent warnings about drugs that may cause you harm. Pediatric cold medicines and vomiting medicines recently made the list. You can't buy them over the counter and I can't prescribe them to you if you are under six. So tell junior he better just learn to love the taste of boogers. A certain arthritis medicine, later deemed unsafe, triggered a class action law suit. From reading their advertisements, I am not sure if Viagra is going to make me have sex or cause me to have a heart attack. Look at the lawyer speak heaped on drug company commercials. When is the last time you heard a declaimer on Budwiser commercial? Viagra should be so lucky.

Don't drink? Well you're not safe either. Overwhelmingly the number of fatal car accidents in the United States are alcohol related. Domestic violence, alcohol related. Child abuse, alcohol related. Assaults, alcohol related. My unofficial estimate is that alcohol cost our health care system in the hundreds of millions of dollars.

Now, I’m not a pariah either. I enjoy a nice glass of wine with dinner or sharing a beer with a friend. But what I am saying is that alcohol is a mind altering depressant and must be treated as such. I’m not proposing a new era of prohibition, but the ideas of prohibition were not misguided. Like all medications there should be strict regulations on its distribution. Abuse of this medication cannot be tolerated. Not only should you have to have a license to sell alcohol it should also be required for individuals to have a license to buy and consume alcohol.

Primarily our parents, high school principles and college presidents should completely crack down on underage drinking. It is absurd that one can purchase a six pack of beer for less than ten dollars. Our DUI laws are advertised as strict but how common is it for someone to get 2 DUI’s? Public intoxication is considered a misdemeanor and maybe gets a citation. How can we all be offended by the evil tobacco and let alcohol have a free pass? Where are our class action lawyers when we need them? Our law enforcement in Tennessee should take this crime much more seriously. It’s also time for our insurance companies to consider alcoholism as dangerous a diagnosis as cancer.

So next time you are at a Titans or Predators game and have to fork over eight dollars for a beer, you should think in a more intelligent world this price is about right.