Common sense is once again conspicuous by its absence

I'm rapidly approaching a slow burn about the sheer stupidity of law enforcement and elected officials in dealing with the problems of life. It was reported today in my local newspaper:

A growing number of heavily medicated Americans get behind the wheel every day. Drugged driving is especially acute in Tennessee, where the number of traffic crashes involving the use of drugs has nearly doubled since 2003, and may be an even larger problem than statistics suggest. Officials said the state lacks enough police officers trained to recognize drug impairment and the tools to effectively prosecute cases.

The Tennessee District Attorneys General Conference will ask state lawmakers to strengthen DUI laws next year to make it easier to catch and convict drugged drivers, an effort that is supported by federal officials. The Office of National Drug Control Policy has made curbing prescription drug abuse and drugged driving a priority in the 2010 National Drug Control Strategy.

"There's no question that impaired driving from the use of drugs in general, but prescription drugs specifically, is on the rise," said Jim Camp, a traffic safety resource prosecutor with the district attorneys conference.

There's more at the link.

Trouble is, we already have laws on the books making it illegal to drive a vehicle while impaired. The actual substance doing the impairing is irrelevant. Why pass more laws to address a specific substance or circumstance? What good will they do? If drivers aren't obeying the existing laws, which already forbid such conduct, what makes you think they'll obey more of the same?

I see this sort of reaction in so many areas it's nauseating. New rules and regulations are passed to address an issue, but do little more than make our lives difficult and/or demand more of our money in the form of taxes. No maintaining a motor vehicle in your own driveway - it might leak oil and cause pollution; no allowing your grass to grow longer than a certain length - and let's employ civil servants, at taxpayer expense, to walk around and measure it for compliance; no firearms to be carried in certain places - but no, there's no duty for the police to ensure your safety when you're forced to disarm in order to enter them . . . the list goes on and on. What's the good of passing more and more and more laws when all they do is create an ever-growing list of ways in which each and every one of us is guilty of breaking one or more of them?

I quoted Alexis de Tocqueville a few days ago:

"After having thus successively taken each member of the community in its powerful grasp and fashioned him at will, the government then extends its arm over the whole community. It covers the surface of society with a network of small, complicated rules, minute and uniform, through which the most original minds and the most energetic characters cannot penetrate, to rise above the crowd. The will of man is not shattered, but softened, bent, and guided; men are seldom forced by it to act, but they are constantly restrained from acting. Such a power does not destroy, but it prevents existence: it does not tyrannize, but it compresses, enervates, extinguishes, and stupefies a people, till each nation is reduced to nothing better than a flock of timid and industrious animals, of which the government is the shepherd."

If we allow our elected representatives to get away with this constant multiplication of laws, rules and regulations, we invite de Tocqueville's prophecy to come true in our own lives.

Peter