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Jackie Healy-Rae led the charge. Providing enough ammunition for the urban snobs to scoff at culchies well into the next decade, he proudly declared his stance against reducing thce drink drive limit. At 50 milligrams the new regulations will mean that a single pint would pit you against the garda's breathalyser in a game you were sure to lose. Tackle the boy racers, tackle the speedsters, tackle everyone but me - let me hop behind the wheel of a car after a drink please. One drink doesn't do any harm when driving according to Mattie McGrath, doing Fianna Fail and Tipperary proud in the process.

What they don't realise is that this is akin to a thief robbing a shop saying, "Don't go after me, bud! Get yer man over there robbing a bank". To wheel out that tired old cliche - two wrongs don't make a right - and it is wrong for a someone to ignore the irrefutable evidence that more fatalities occur after one pint than when stone cold sober.

In a 1979 clip from Reeling in the Years, a man being interviewed about incoming mandatory seat belt regulations shows his disdain for them saying, "Legislating for something like that is bad law". There's no doubt that thirty years from now, when we're looking back on the current outcry against reducing the limit to save lives, the negative reaction to its introduction will seem equally ridiculous.

On Newstalk recently, a public health representative from Sweden revealed that the blood alcohol limit there was reduced from 50mg to 20mg all the way back in 1990 to no great fuss. He followed up by saying that he understood however that there were cultural differences between Sweden and Ireland; that he could see why the same measure (if you excuse the pun) may provoke the reaction it did from some quarters in Ireland. He was being polite. It's not cultural, it's stupid. It is not responsible to drive impaired by alcohol - knowing that you're more likely to hit someone. We're adults for God's sake. Would you be happy if your dentist told you he was after a drink before taking to your gnashers? It's not responsible for a country to allow a higher blood alcohol limit knowing that it will lead to more deaths on the road.

On the same Newstalk episode a listener sent in a message saying that the same people who oppose the lower limit would have no trouble whipping together fifty people to put in an application for a grant yet those same folks cannot organise a car pool for four.

The destruction of a way of life argument wears a bit thin when pitted against the alternative - the destruction of real people's lives and those lives of those who knew them. Ironically, the victims will come from the same community that the likes of Jackie Healy-Rae and Mattie McGrath claim they are fighting to maintain a way of life for. Interestingly, those same campaigners are often publicans. Could the real issue be pints and profit before people? I'll be waiting for that next episode of Reeling Back the Years in 2039.

• drink
• drive
• ireland
• limit
• alchohol