‘It’s Kinda Getting Communist’: Some Folks Really Didn’t Drunk Driving Laws In The 1980s

Drunk driving was apparently a big part of American culture all the way up to the 1980s, so you can imagine some folks probably didn’t take too kindly to the fact the gat damn gubment was trying to infringe on their rights to get lit up behind the wheel. That’s exactly what we’re looking at in this partial news clip out of California.

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The clip in question has been making the rounds for some time now, and it shows two people — a man and a woman — talking about the evils of restricting drinking and driving. Actually, forget “evils.” These folks are talking about how further limited drinking and driving is downright un-American.

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“It’s kinda getting communist when a fella put in a hard day’s work — put in 11-12 hours a day, and then get in your truck and at least drink one or two beers,” the unidentified man says in the news clip.

Okay, a couple of things about that. One, how far is your commute that you’ve got time to knock back a couple of beers? Brother, move. Second, this is Califonia, why does this man sound the way he does? I am baffled. Anyway, to be fair, he’s not the wildest one in the video. No, sir. That’s reserved for the next woman to speak.

“They’re making laws where you can’t drink when you want to, you have to wear a seatbelt when you’re driving,” the woman says. “Pretty soon we’re gonna be a communist country.”

She was right actually. We are a communist country. Honestly, the wildest part of her little spiel isn’t what she said — it’s the fact she said these things with a fucking baby in the front seat with her. Good God.

But what exactly changed here? What’s the context? Well, according to a Now This video on YouTube, this clip comes from a story about California dropping its legal driving limit from 0.15 to 0.10. Yes. I know. That is, if you somehow didn’t know, higher than what it is right now, and these folks are losing their goddamn minds over it. What a world we once lived in.

Now This points out that California has actually had drunk driving laws on the books since 1911, but through the 1970s they weren’t really enforced like they are today. They added that by the 1980s, drunk driving was a bit of a phenomenon with more than a quarter-million drunk driving deaths occurring between 1973 and 1983. It led to the birth of anti–drunk driving organizations like Mothers Against Drunk Driving.

Listen, I’m no fan of drunk driving, but I absolutely hate communism, so I’m going to have to side with the people in this video. Sorry, that’s just the way it is. (Please know I am joking — if you ever drink and drive you’re an ass who I hate.)