We all have duty to fight underage drinking, DUI

WE’RE GLAD TO SEE federal highway safety officials turning their attention to drunken driving, with a major crackdown that involves thousands of state and local police agencies — including our own Highway Patrol — and a record $11 million ad blitz targeting young men with the message that they’re going to jail if they drive under the influence.

The campaign marks a major turn away from the Federal Highway Traffic Safety Administration’s focus on seat belts. Of course, that’s still a problem in South Carolina, which lags the nation. But so is drunken driving; even though our overall highway fatality numbers are finally declining, our alcohol-death rate is still among the worst in the nation.

More good news: Attorney General Henry McMaster has launched a two-pronged radio campaign aimed not only at drinking and driving, but at underage drinkers in particular. But we won’t lick the problem until everyone joins in the fight.

Consider the news from last week. Just a day after federal officials announced their crackdown, Lexington County officials learned that friends of three young men who were killed in two separate alcohol-related wrecks on the same day were planning to remember them with a kegger.

We’re sure the tragic deaths served as a wake-up call to some of the young men’s friends, and to teens across the Midlands. But the fact that even a few could even consider such a grotesque response tells us our community has winked at the problems of under-aged drinking and drunken driving for far too long.

If you’ve bought alcohol for someone younger than 21, you’re part of the problem. If you’ve pretended you didn’t know your teenage children — or anybody’s children — were going to parties where alcohol was being served, you’re part of the problem. If you’ve let a friend — of any age — get behind the wheel after a couple of drinks, you’re part of the problem.

And of course if you’ve been that friend behind the wheel, or that teenager, you’re part of the problem.

So are the legislators who refuse to toughen our laws, which are among the friendliest in the nation to drunken drivers. And so is every one of us who tolerates our legislators’ refusal to make our laws tougher.

How would we do that? First we’d close the giant loopholes that make it virtually impossible for police to use our “illegal per se” law, forcing them to rely on an older law that doesn’t even have an absolute limit for drunkenness. Then we’d set higher penalties for drivers who won’t take a breath test and set tougher drunkenness standards for people who have already been convicted once of DUI. Finally, we’d look at what’s working in other states, and try it out here.

The New York Times reports that New Mexico cut its alcohol-related fatalities by 9 percent last year through education, tougher enforcement and new penalties that actually protect offenders and society: Drunken drivers have to pay to have devices installed that disable their cars if the driver’s blood-alcohol level is too high; first-offenders must use the device for a year, fourth-offenders for a lifetime. There’s no good reason we shouldn’t have a similar law here.

But the lack of tough laws certainly is no excuse for the rest of us, who can all do more than we’re currently doing to keep our kids away from alcohol and anybody who’s drinking alcohol away from the driver’s seat.