Letter to the Editor

Go after chronic alcohol abusers

To the editor:

Rather than frightening responsible adults who may have had a beer at a restaurant by setting up roadblocks this holiday weekend, the Cape Girardeau police should be focused on arresting drunk drivers.

As Mothers Against Drunk Driving has stated, today's drunk driving problem is "down to a hard core of alcoholics." These chronic alcohol abusers know when and where police will be stopping drivers because roadblocks must be highly publicized to receive federal funding. Not surprisingly, drunk drivers "used their knowledge of checkpoints to avoid arrest by selecting alternate routes," according to a landmark government study of roadblocks.

This same government report found that the best way to get habitual drunk drivers off the road is with roving police patrols, which net nearly three times the drunk driving arrests as roadblocks.

Let's go after drunk drivers with law enforcement methods that work.

JOHN DOYLE, Executive Director,

American Beverage Institute, Washington, D.C.