Let’s talk about the esophagus; an organ I’ve yet to address in this column. About 15 years ago I was called to treat an aged, toothless, mare choked on sugar beet tailings. Apparently, a Ford pickup filled with sugar beet tops was mistakenly parked in the corral with this old mare. The sweet taste was irresistible and for about three hours this horse ate like a kid sitting in a wheelbarrow of gummy worms. When she was so full she could no longer swallow or walk, the owner called for assistance. I hopped in my pickup and zipped over to see the mare.

Amazingly, her stomach and esophagus were so stuffed with beet tops she could not move. She froze like a saw horse, and I quietly shook my head and thought, “There is no way to fix this. The esophagus is not amiable to surgery; especially in a mare nearing her thirties.” The mare’s owner was a very nice, but distraught, young lady. I explained the hopelessness of trying to dislodge the choke, thinking she would understand euthanasia was our only option. She didn’t, and she asked me to try. So I did.

I sedated the mare, snaked a stomach tube up her nose and began lavaging and massaging the mare’s esophagus. No luck. One hour and two bloodied nostrils later, I decided we had asked this poor old mare to suffer enough and I more forcefully explained to the young lady, “We can’t save this mare. The esophagus and stomach are packed full and are near rupture. This is hopeless. We should put her down.”

Either she didn’t, or she refused to understand, and she meekly offered, “Maybe we could give her some salt water.” I shook my head in disbelief and wondered where exactly she wanted me to put the salt water. The only open port to the digestive system was under the tail and it was probably full of beets too. Our approach would never fix this situation, so simply doing more of the same was insane, and this brings me to my point.

Montana’s legislature is tasked with finding the silver-bullet to cure the DUI problem. Twelve legislators have spent 18 months hunting for the answer and nearly 20 different bills have popped from the hopper. Implementing each bill is supposed to create the magical combination of higher fines and longer jail time to make DUI yesterday’s problem. They will fail because they are simply more of the same futile solution we attempted 15 years ago. If something isn’t working, doing more of it does not lead to success. Unfortunately, politicians fearing the “soft on DUI” label, dutifully support every single bill which remotely appears to be tough on drunk driving. As a result, the cost to taxpayers grows to astronomical levels. For example, on Friday we heard HB299 making the third DUI a felony complete with 13 months in prison. The price to the taxpayer is a massive $48 million over ten years; an expensive exercise in futility.

Montana leads the nation in DUI fatalities and the Department of Corrections spent $167.3 million in 2010 taking a bite out of crime. Obviously, we need to approach this from a different perspective—hence my support of Attorney General Steve Bullock’s 24 / 7 Program, HB106. (For readers who disregard my opinions as hopelessly partisan, please note Mr. Bullock is a Democrat and I am a Republican. I will reach across the aisle anytime they offer a constitutional solution not requiring me to empty my wallet.)

The 24 / 7 program is the out-of-the-box solution which amazingly shifts the responsibility of DUI to the individual offender. (South Dakota has used this program since 2005 with phenomenal success.) For the cost of $4 per day, second DUI offenders report to law enforcement at seven o’clock each morning and evening to blow in the tube. If they remain dry for the length of their sentence, they continue working and supporting their families and communities. Blow wrong once, or miss a test, and they go to jail. Offenders with a 10th, 12th or 127th DUI are a different beast entirely, and the goal of 24 / 7 is to stop the DUI death spiral at number two. We can either do this…or give DUI offenders some salt water. Which would you swallow?

Authors note: Our entire criminal justice system is a failure and repeat DUI is merely a symptom of a greater problem. Readers wishing to challenge the conventional wisdom should google the C.S. Lewis paper “The humanitarian view of punishment”. Caution: This writing is not for the faint of heart as you will question things previously accepted as fact. Read it. It’s great conversation fodder while you are waiting for a heifer to calve.