"Ethyl alcohol (alcohol) kills every day in Chicago, Los Angeles, New York, Paris, and virtually every other city in the Western World."1 One of the principal ways in which it kills is by accidents, especially those involving motor vehicles. On Oct 12, 1984, we published an editorial about ethyl alcohol in which we set forth ten proposals. One was that "We as a society should make an abrupt change from our current practice of socially promoting so-called moderate drinking and driving as a norm and should, instead, by policy and example, simply not drive after drinking alcohol at all."1
It is a source of great satisfaction to publish in this issue a report from the Council of Scientific Affairs2 of the American Medical Association entitled "Alcohol and the Driver," which was adopted by the AMA at its Annual meeting in Chicago in June 1985, becoming official policy. This