There are two things about rights that make them special. First is you get to exercise them without penalty. Second, if they’re violated, there is a remedy. If either of these is lost, then so too is the right. But rarely is the point driven home as clearly as it is in this video.



Peachy. While the right to refuse to blow into a breathalyzer is scrupulously honored, the price of exercise is that you will be arrested, at least in the legal sense of being seized while the police obtain a warrant for the forcible withdrawal of blood. They will strap you into a gurney, stick a needle into your body, and then seek to obtain evidence to be used to justify post-hoc the arrest and assure conviction. That’s how they roll in some counties in Georgia, United States of America.

The rationale is that drunk driving is a terrible thing, and children are killed and injured by people who drive drunk, breaking the law and putting children at risk.  It’s certainly true, though whether it’s as true as the claims say is a matter of methodology.  And nobody would argue that they neither care about the welfare of children nor want to see children harmed.  Nobody wants to children to be harmed.

But that gross rationale, based on the oft-abused logical fallacy of an appeal to emotion, misses the mark. The use of forced blood draws isn’t about finding, stopping, arresting drunk drivers, but about gathering evidence to assure convictions.

Before there was such a thing as a breathalyzer, or forced blood drawers, there were laws against drunk driving. There are people arrested and prosecuted, and they were convicted or not upon the testimony of the police officer, who would describe how they were driving before they were pulled over, their slurred speech, blood shot eyes and the odor of alcohol emanating from their bodies.

Granted, the use of technology, even if it’s about a magic black box, makes conviction far easier. No longer does it matter that they drove erratically, swerved across lines or, at its worst, hit something or someone. They might drive perfectly, without the hint of risk to anyone, but between their breath or blood, the proof of drunk driving condemns them to conviction. 

But this is America, the greatest nation on earth where we will fight to protect our freedoms, including the freedom to refuse to blow into a tube to create evidence for the sole purpose of convicting us.  And upon the exercise of that right, at least in certain counties of Georgia for now, this is the price paid for that freedom.  A cop asks a judge for a warrant to do this to a person, and that’s that. The finest legal system ever.

And lest you think the images of how a forced blood draw happens are barbaric, no video has yet emerged on even  less savory methods of evidence collection. If a forced blood draw makes your skin crawl,  forced catheterization is going to make you wretch. All to collect evidence to assure conviction. Isn’t it great to have rights?

While it’s hardly an answer to respond with images of beautiful children who died at the hands of a drunk driver, most of us will let our emotions overcome reason so that lesser harms to adults can be ignored for what we perceive to be a higher purpose.  Things like logical connections rarely play a role in such emotional games.

Yet, the person who isn’t drunk gets the same needle as the person who is. Take one for the team? The person whose crime is contempt of cop gets a special strap down and needle, to teach ’em not to mouth off to Officer Friendly. The person who is diabetic, or really suffering from any sort of medical condition that doesn’t fall within a police officer’s personal experience or empathy (because cops know all there is to know about humankind), gets strapped down just like the stone drunk.

And this is what it looks like to exercise the right to refuse to blow.

It’s not like it would ever happen to you or anyone you love, right?