College students are notorious for the consumption of alcohol, at least on the weekends. College bars’ business booms on Thursday, Friday, and Saturday nights, with the enormous influx of students looking to get fucked up.
The local colleges here in Buffalo are primarily commuter schools, leaving drunken students, both of age and under-age, with a leisurely drive home after a night of depravity. Luckily for those of us who have already celebrated our twenty-first birthdays, the policemen and judges in most college areas are a bit more lenient on students, with respect to the driving while intoxicated. A charge of this caliber can seriously affect one’s future, and we are, after all, the future of the nation.
For those of you unlucky enough to still be under-age, one offense will result in the suspension of your drivers’ license for one year, or until you turn twenty-one, when your case comes up for review.
This past week, President Clinton passed a revision to laws concerning Driving While Intoxicated (DWI) and Driving under the Influence (DUI), lowering the legal Blood Alcohol Content (BAC) from .10 to .08 The new level is lower than the limit used by over half the states in the nation. Clinton is likening himself to those great men a generation ago, who passed the national minimum drinking age, and hopes to see these new laws have as much effect on the statistics for alcohol related crashes as a minimum drinking age did.
This new statute was three years in the making, and is a much-welcomed addition to our federal laws for anti-drunk driving groups, such as Mothers Against Drunk Driving (MADD) and Students Against Drunk Driving (SADD. According to Clinton, "Alcohol is still the single greatest factor in motor vehicle deaths and injuries. This law, .08, is simply a common sense way to stop that."
There are thirty-one states in the U.S. that have held their standard at .10 for quite some time, leaving nineteen states that already comply with the new federal laws. In the interest of providing the more tolerant states with an incentive to follow suit, there has been a series of penalties set on states that choose not to change. By the year 2004, those states that have not adopted this new national statute will lose two percent of their federal highway money. This percentage will increase to eight percent for those states that have not complied by the year 2007. However, the federal government will reimburse all lost funds to these states if they do decide to conform by 2007.
In 1997, Illinois lowered its legal BAC from .10 to .08. In the first year that this new law was effective, fatalities related to drunk driving dropped by more than ten percent. Ironically, however, that figure remains the all time low. Furthermore, in 1999, the number of fatal accidents rose six percent. This may be because people were nervous the first year, and when they saw no toughening of enforcement policies, they said, "To hell with it!"
Many feel that this new legislation ‘unfairly targets’ social drinkers. What about the guy who likes to stop at the town tavern and have a couple of drinks for happy hour after a long day on the job. In the two miles that he needs to drive home from the bar, he could be stopped, blow through the tube (which it is your constitutional right to refuse), and end up going to jail because he had three drinks. The intended target for these new laws are the hardcore drinkers, who will get sloppy drunk and drive home no matter what anyone says.
According to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, a 170 lb. man can have up to four drinks in an hour, on an empty stomach, and just reach the new legal BAC of .08. A 137 lb. woman can have three drinks in an hour before reaching this limit. Myself, being a 177 lb. drinker and twenty-one to boot, I doubt the accuracy of these statistics. In my experience, having three drinks on an empty stomach over a two-hour period of time will raise my BAC to .069—just under the current DUI limit.
Drunk driving has been referred to as the most frequently committed violent crime in our country. Every thirty-three minutes, a drunk driver is involved in a vehicular fatality. This statistic is the primary reasons for the new legislation, as well as the idea that DWI and DUI-related accidents can be prevented. Unfortunately, regardless of the law, there will always be some slightly intoxicated person on the road.
A part of human nature is to do that which is forbidden; alcohol is a drug that causes an addiction, like many other drugs in the world, and there will always be people with a tendency to addiction and/or misuse. Most drunk driving accidents are caused by a driver with a .20 BAC or above. How does lowering the tolerance for BAC accomplish anything but catching more of the people that are hardly a threat to society? According to the Honorable Dennis A. Challeen of Southern Minnesota, in a 1995 essay published in NMA (National Motorists Association) News, what the new law means is a "reduction of our constitutional rights significantly in the area of privacy, self-incrimination, search and seizure, and, the freedom to be left alone….Tough sanctions work the best on responsible drivers, those who self-correct, are easily deterred, and restrict their behaviors with good common sense . . . people who are the least problem to society."
John Grela, the director of UB’s University Police, was kind enough to relate his thoughts on DWI, and what these new laws might mean to a University Policeman. On the UB campuses, there were only twenty-seven arrests for DWI the entire year of 1999. There have only been nineteen arrests made this year. According to Grela, these arrests involved students, faculty, and regular people driving on Min Street, in the Amherst are, or through campus as a short cut.
"It’s a big change, first of all," said Grela about Clinton’s new drunk driving laws. "There will certainly be more arrests made at checkpoints, and such."
Student response is a bit varied, as might be expected on the campus of any major university, but the overall consensus is one of indifference. "I ride the drunk bus home on Friday and Saturday nights," said Anita, a UB student. A group of cigarette smokers, who stood beside her outside of South Campus’s Acheson Hall, all nodded their heads in agreement.
Many other students agreed that it was a misdirected effort, and that three drinks in one hour does not necessarily mean that a person is drunk. Asked Kevin, a UB student and moderate drinker, "Why should the police be wasting their time with happy hour drivers when they could be out busting someone that might actually kill a little kid crossing the street?"
