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Katie Hollern
Mrs. Crist
Course
3/21/16

Yo Ho Ho and No More Bottles of Rum

On May 3, 1990, my Moms niece was taken from this world. She was only 21 years old at the
time; all she was doing was driving to the Pizza parlor to pick up dinner for herself and her
boyfriend when she was a hit by a drunk driver and was killed instantly. This is just one example
of the different types of death directly related to alcohol in the United States. The others include
alcohol related crimes such as homicide, robbery and rape and illnesses such as alcohol
poisoning, cirrhosis of the liver, and fetal alcohol syndrome. Alcohol emotionally and
financially affects the drinker as well as the family and the victims of the drinker. Furthermore,
as a portion of our government spending is used to offset the cost of workplace losses, legal
expenses, medical costs, emergency medical services and property damage due to alcohol abuse,
it also financially affects the community as a whole. Thus, by reducing the consumption of
alcohol, we can reduce the emotional and financial cost to all those involved either directly or
indirectly. Alcohol should be made illegal in the United States.
The prove of alcohol related deaths in motor vehicle crashes is revealed in the stats, In 2014,
there were 9,967 fatalities in motor vehicle traffic crashes involving a driver with a BAC of .08
g/dL or higher; this was 31 percent of total traffic fatalities for the year( (2015, Traffic Safety
Facts.). The evidence of the cost to our communities for these fatalities is also reflected in the
stats, The estimated economic cost of alcohol-impaired-driving crashes in the United States in

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2010 (the most recent year for which cost data is available) was $44 billion (2015, Traffic
Safety Facts). And this is just a drop in the emotional and financial bucket of alcohol abuse.
According to the Center for Disease Control and Prevention, Drinking too much can harm
your health. Excessive alcohol use led to approximately 88,000 deaths and 2.5 million years of
potential life lost (YPLL) each year in the United States from 2006 2010, shortening the lives
of those who died by an average of 30 years.1,2 Further, excessive drinking was responsible for 1
in 10 deaths among working-age adults aged 20-64 years (2016, Alcohol and Public Health.).
The evidence of the cost to our communities is even more outrageous than that of alcohol
impaired driving crashes, The economic costs of excessive alcohol consumption in 2010 were
estimated at $249 billion, or $2.05 a drink (2016, Alcohol and Public Health.). But still, the
emotional and financial bucket of alcohol abuse is still not full.
In 2008, the Pew Center on the States informed us that an astonishing, 5.3 million adults were
drinking at the time of their conviction. 40% of state prisoners convicted of violent crimes were
under the influence of alcohol at the time of their offense and 25% of state prisoners given a
standard questionnaire to screen for alcoholism tested positive (2016, Alcohol and Crime.). In
addition, according to the Pew Center on the States, In 2000, U.S. agencies surpassed the $100billion-a-day barrier in spending to incarcerate individuals with serious addiction problems.
Rehabilitating and managing offenders who misuse alcohol has proven to be extraordinarily
difficult. Despite traditional sanctions and ever-increasing terms of incarceration, addiction
drives many of these offenders to continue committing crimes, resulting in a revolving door
(2016, Alcohol and Crime.). The emotional and financial bucket of alcohol abuse is now
overflowing with valid and heartfelt reasons why alcohol should be made illegal in the United
States.

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If you know someone who was hit by a drunk driver, dropped in on someone who was in the
hospital due to an alcohol related illness or visited someone in jail because they committed a
crime while they were intoxicated then I hope that this paper motivates you, once again, to join
the cause to make alcohol illegal in the United States. If you have never done any of the above
then I hope that this paper makes you realize the full extent of alcohol abuse in your community
and how it can indirectly affect you financially and make the choice to join the cause to make
alcohol legal in the United States. If you choose to ignore all of these truths then I hope that you
never become a either a victim of alcohol abuse or an abuser of alcohol.

MLA Work Cited

"Traffic Safety Facts." Nhtsa.dot.gov. NHTSAs National Center for Statistics and Analysis, Dec.
2015. Web. 21 Mar. 2016. <http://www-nrd.nhtsa.dot.gov/Pubs/812231.pdf>.
"Fact Sheets - Alcohol Use and Your Health." Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 04 Feb. 2016. Web. 21 Mar. 2016.
"National Partnership on Alcohol Misuse and Crime." Alcohol and Crime. 2016. Web. 21 Mar.
2016. <http://www.alcoholandcrime.org/issues/alcohol-and-crime/>.