Paracab - you've been listening to Radio 5 Live as well have you?
I appreciate your sentiments are well meant, but if you test all pilots, then surely you should also test Air Traffic Controllers, Engineers, Refuellers, Despatchers, Baggage Handlers, Marshallers and anyone else involved with the operation of an aircraft.
Come to that why not breathalyse every bus driver, coach driver, van driver, car driver, train driver & ship's officer before each journey.
Or even emergency service or military personnel or doctors or surgeons or teachers or bank staff or building site workers or anyone at all before they clock on for their shift.
By law of averages, at least a few people from the above categories will be suffering from alcohol impairment to one degree or another - when did you last have a teensy bit of a hangover when going to work? Did you drive? Were you fit to?
Now, I'm not condoning the behaviour at all, but I suspect that a lot of 40-something or even 30-something pilots will remember the (not so?) old days when the subject was treated with a degree of light heartedness, along with drink driving.
Times and attitudes have changed and it is not acceptable, (it never was, but even more so now); however, a knee-jerk reaction such as breath testing before each flight is not the answer.
What is required is even more education, encouragement and large doses of correctly applied peer pressure, alongside effective and timely medical treatment of those who genuinely have a dependency.
I don't know for sure, but I bet that aviation in general and pilots in particular, are less affected by alcohol related work-incidents than most other industries - it's just that the profile is much higher and the reporting is therefore much more sensational.
There's nothing the media like more than a bit of pilot-bashing - unfortunately we give them the ammunition to do it.