Kevin Drum (the blogger formerly known as CalPundit) now has the Political Animal blog at the Washington Monthly website. One of his inaugural posts discusses the idea of adding information to driver's licenses, such as Mark Kleiman's proposed drinking-privilege status indicator. Now, since I proposed such a think many years back on the old CompuServe Political SIG, I tend to agree with Mark here.
Kevin has qualms, as does Jane Galt, having mostly to do with privacy and slippery slopes -- is that (say) arrest 30 years ago for pot posession going to show up every time I get pulled over, or apply for a job or bank loan? Or want to buy a gun, say. This could be a problem.
But currently, the driver's license is used to deal with drunk driving offenses, so altering the way it is used doesn't seem such a big deal. Now, one loses ones license, and gets either a simple ID, or another license with BIG limitations stated on its face. Changing this to a simple checkbox that says (on all IDs) "may not purchase alcohol until [date]" isn't all that horrible as a punishment for a crime. We do it now for pre-adult drivers whoi have committed no crime save youth.
Now, here's the really funny thing: Given a choice of No Booze for a year, or No Car for a year, almost every "unlucky" casual drinker will choose "No Booze", think it a fair punishment, and be happy that they can still drive. And almost every chronic alcoholic will choose "No Car", as they can comprehend "No Car" a LOT better than "No Booze".
Considering this, one might reasonably argue that taking away the drinking privilege is, in all cases, a more reasonable approach that taking away the driving privilege, as it imposes a punishment directly proportional to one's abuse of alcohol, and it avoids the severe economic damage loss of driving can entail.