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"Of course this leads to the fundamental issue of trust between the company and its employees."
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You haven't been listening! There is no trust between company and pilots. The answer isn't to legislate against pilots; it is to make airlines and regulators do their job properly in the first place and obey current legislation themselves. Then fatigue and coping mechanisms such as alcohol will be reduced.
Sideloader started this thread with, "You just got a brand new job as an F/O flying a big iron, the airplane is loaded and ready to go , and your captain's breath smells of alcohol. What do you do?." Several responses gave good practical advice. Others picked up on health concerns. Your response does nothing to address what is fundamentally wrong - management neglect of duty of care and abuse of health and safety guidelines.
Anyway, how exactly do you propose to quantify "insistence by the public"? As far as I can tell the public has respect for pilots - despite the well publicized breaches of bottle to throttle rules. I note you don't mind pilots flying while fatigued - NOW THAT IS something over which the American public has demonstrated concern.