Alcohol Is A Factor In More Than OWI Incidents

Way back in another life, I wrote a series for the old Milwaukee Journal about alcohol's often unacknowledged role in mayhem other than vehicle crashes.

I worked with Medical Examiner records and other documents, and I recall that the year I researched - - 1986 - - every fatal fire in Milwaukee, for example, killed a person with a blood alcohol level above legal intoxication.

Same for the snowmobiler deaths, and drownings, and some odd falls or home 'accidents.'

Pretty revelatory, I discovered.

So when I see stories like that of the alleged gang rape of a UW-Madison coed in a frat house, or the senseless beatings inflicted at a southside bar-closing time in Milwaukee that injured several men and killed a father of five, it reminds me that intoxication is an underlying issue where it may not get the headline.

This is not a broadside in favor of Prohibition II. Just a note to raise a little awareness.