WI Right To Confront Heroin, Wrong To Ignore Alcohol

The state's initiative against rising heroin use is a good use of public dollars and political capital.

But the cost in lives and resources in and to the state from alcohol abuse and addiction is far greater, and you can't help noticing that the same legislators who worked hard to get the heroin program funded backed away from even modest changes to the state's notoriously weak drunk driving statutes.

It's a testament to the continuing power of major beverage and 'hospitality' lobbies and also to the widespread denial about the damage  - - an estimated 1,500 deaths annually here - - done by a legal drug in Wisconsin.

So it goes.