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Personally I'm not a fan of dram shop laws, I think that they tend to shift responsibility away from where it belongs, to another person or a business often with deeper pockets. I think that the adults who drink should be the only person responsible for their drunken behaviour, because they were the people who by their own choice, got intoxicated. If they drive under the influence of alcohol, they, and only they, should be responsible for the consequences of their actions.
Dram shop laws, essentially make one adult responsible for the behaviour of another adult. What's a restaurant to do if a person who is clearly drunk refuses to listen to them, w/r/t driving a vehicle, or taking an offered ride? Sure the restaurant/bar can call the cops, but the cops take time to arrive, and by then the intoxicated person can leave. In addition some drunks are violent, and I wouldn't want to task (under the law) any adult, outside of law enforcement, with having to physically restrain another adult, especially if the adult that is offending is physically bigger/stronger, than the person who would be tasked with restraining them. Bars may also not necessarily know just how drunk that the person is in question, they may know how many they gave the guy, but they don't know what he got before he arrived, or after he left. They also don't necessarily know the tolerance for alcohol that any particular person has. Should bars & restaurants require anyone who had so much as 1 drink to blow into a breathalizer? Should they be required to take the keys? I think not. IMO the blame should go to the drunk driver, not the restaurant, so I would tend to oppose the dram shop laws that allow liability to be attached to the person selling the booze.
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