A second-grade teacher in Northern California has been arrested on allegations that she drove to work and was teaching class drunk.
The Sutter County Sheriff’s Office says, Monday morning, they got a report that a staff member at Nuestro Elementary School in Live Oak appeared to be under the influence.
Deputies soon showed up at the school and encountered 57-year-old Wendy Munson, who was in the middle of teaching her second-grade class. Deputies noted signs and symptoms of Munson-Swartz being under the influence.
I’m thinking about it being considered a medical condition. If for example a person were to acquire an injury that prevented them from working temporarily, they might be covered by short or long term disability insurance. I know that I pay extra into my LTDI coverage for 75% of my base salary in case I end up unable to work.
My point is twofold - the medical community has recognized addiction as a disease and not as a moral failing. We still struggle with that at the societal level but the science is pretty locked in.
The second part is that we allow alcohol manufacturers and distributors to externalize the costs associated with their products, in the same was we allowed tobacco manufacturers to dodge the effects of their products for so many decades. The Master Settlement Agreement helped finally break big tobacco and instituted a sea-change on the American cigarette industry. We should probably do the same thing with alcohol. We have to face the fact that the alcohol industry is externalizing the cost of alcohol abuse to the tax payers, rather than having to bear that burden out of their profits. They’re therefore driven to maximize alcohol consumption because for them, it’s pure profit with the victims of alcoholism and society itself picking up the bill.