.08%, A DEADLY NUMBER BY DORIS AIKEN, RID FOUNDER
The recent rejoicing over passage of a reduced entry level for DWI from .10% BAC (blood alcohol count) to .08% as a national standard means that a 170 lb. man can quaff 4 beers or shots in an hour on an empty stomach to become legally intoxicated. Would you want to be a passenger in a car with such a driver? Not me!
In 1988, former Surgeon General Koop stated unequivocally that everyone is impaired to drive at .04% BAC. Why was it so excruciatingly difficult for years to get this small improvement to the national DWI safety standard? Because the alcohol industry feared (with some justification) that drinkers, as they should, will think BEFORE THEY DRINK RATHER THAN “when they drink”. Making that idea a part of the drinking culture may very well cause folks to drink less, or at least not before driving. That, in my opinion, will be the main, lasting benefit of this initial timid step toward a sane, national alcohol policy.
Now, or not now, since this reform takes effect 4 years down the road, another wimpish part of this law, the U.S. will still have a higher entry level for DWI than Australia, Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, Spain, and Turkey, all at .05% BAC with Japan, Russia & Sweden at .00%-.02%.
Will .08% Save Lives? Did the DWI fatalities drop when Belgium & France lowered their limit to .05% in 1994 and 1995 respectively? YES! A 14% and 4% reduction the following year.
North Americans imbibe less alcohol per year than drinkers in other countries, half as much as the French do, for example, but have higher rates of alcohol-related fatalities. How can that be?
The U.S. & Canada are in the grip of a car culture, as well as an alcoholized environment, without the benefit of serious public transportation.
Visiting an English pub some years ago, enjoying my pint of bitters at a crowded bar filled with business people with bowler hats, briefcases & black stick umbrellas, the last call came at 10 PM. We all filed out in the rain to the nearby underground & bus stations. I walked to my cheap B&B.
A week later, I scrounged an early breakfast at a local pub in Paris. My orange juice was carefully squeezed by a wax-moustached bartender. A row of construction workers seated at the bar were wolfing down omelettes, dipping their baguettes into ice tea glasses filled with white wine. The bread-crumbed wine was downed in a few gulps before leaving the pub to climb aboard a city bus stopped outside the door at 7:30 AM.
The French die “naturally” of liver failure, mostly, while thousands of young Americans die in DWI crashes and in binge drinking events. The French have severe limits on alcohol advertising even though the wine industry is a prime economic staple. We Americans allow free rein for alcohol ads on our chief culture conveyor radio and TV. No pro-health ads are mandated to follow these ubiquitous promotions. Billions of tax dollars are allocated for PSAs against doing drugs but not a penny for alcohol counter-ads of any kind. Isn’t alcohol a drug too? And the most devastating of all drugs combined in terms of loss of potential years of life, family trauma, property destruction, business failure, addiction? OH YES!
I know not one person who died from smoking a cigarette, at any age: I am aware of more than 4000 (mainly teens) who died unexpectedly in a matter of hours after downing fast a bottle of vodka, or a quart pitcher of beer poured down the throat via a tubular funnel.
So, no, I can’t dance with joy at a .08% BAC reform that won’t even take hold for 4 years, and not be enforced for 6 years when States who don’t comply begin to lose their Federal highway funds. It’s a small but necessary move which may cause the thinking driver to be more careful. Some studies have shown that even the addicted drinking drivers have been more careful under the .08% law. Studies also show that in States which have had .08% for 2-3 years, alcohol sales did not. go down. Folks just drank differently..at home, or with a designated driver.
A last ditch effort by the National Restaurant Asso. to kill the .08% mandate launched a news advisory to their members in late September, stating that “a .08BAC mandate violates States’ rights and will not solve the problem of drunk driving”.
Driving in every State is not a right; it is a guarded privilege. Drivers move around this Nation all the time. The DWI laws must be uniform, understood and enforced. We have a much better chance to deter drunk driving & illegal alcohol sales as national crimes, than we do to deter illicit drug sales, although almost all the billions of tax dollars are allocated to the latter with no good results.
But back to the National Restaurant Asso. claims. They are right that the .08% reform won’t solve the DWI problem. It isn’t designed to do that. No single measure could. In fact, if plea bargaining out-of-alcohol is permitted, NO LAWS will make a difference since everyone arrested could hire a lawyer, take a plea to bald tire or parking on the pavement, pay a $50 fine and their lawyer thousands of dollars, and drive home with a valid license.
When RID-NYS (Remove Intoxicated Drivers) enabled passage of a “no plea out of alcohol” law in 1980, DWI lawyers’ fees plummeted. On Long Island the fees dropped from $1000 to $250 for a first time offender. The DWI deaths dropped swiftly too, saving more than 6000 motorists’ lives from 1981-1991. New York and Utah are STILL the safest States in which to drive. The alcohol-related deaths are under 25% of all highway fatalities, the lowest in the Nation for six consecutive years.
BACK TO THE DRAWING BOARD, LEGISLATORS! We need a workable SNAP (sane national alcohol policy) from lawmakers, not an insane ineffective illicit drugs’ war policy. We need PSAs countering those cute alcohol promotions on the air waves, we need warnings on alcohol products that have a lethal dose when binged, (name that poison), we need limitations on where and when the drug alcohol can be promoted, and we need the Fairness Doctrine re- introduced in the national FCC (Federal Communications Commission) guidelines, after being vetoed by Reagan, veto-threatened by Bush and ignored by Clinton and the Congress. And we need a .05% DWI entry level with a .03% impaired standard, .02% for a repeat offender.
As for me, I’ve inched my deck chair on the Titanic a bit above the sink line with a .08% national standard. I’m grateful for small favors.