westhawk
Quite so, but from what I've seen in real life it's usually more to do with the emotions than the intellect.
That's also mainstream thinking in the treatment of alcoholism and other chemical dependency (aside from nicotine which is different). The difference is important to the clinician treating the alcoholic but not an airline. The airline needs to ensure that its pilots turn up for work fit for work. Those who don't, particularly those with some long-term hard-to-treat illness need to be moved out of operational flying duty into some other role, or let-go. When it comes to large numbers of people at real risk, then due diligence demands a low-tolerance to such issues and in the case of alcohol the technology is so simple and affordable that the tolerance can be close to zero. As everyone here knows, for sure, everyone has some ethanol in their blood...it's never zero as in 0.00% but there is a level that can distinguish between nominal zero and zero zero.
Those whose emotions lead to the bottle without adequate time to throttle are not fit to fly airliners. They need to phone-in sick if they have a temporary problem...no need to mention drink at all.
All rules need boundaries or they are unenforceable. Why is the age of sexual consent in the UK 16 years? At 2345 UTC you've assaulted a minor whose birthday is tomorrow. What about DST? Or other time zones? Suppose the minor was actually born in a zone GMT - 6 hours? Have you still assaulted them? Is it the time of birth or the date of the certificate? Even those boundaries that seem straightforward are subject to argument
