IT’S NOT OFTEN that you find such a diverse group as bars and restaurants, Mothers Against Drunk Driving, police and much of the state’s medical and business community supporting the same initiative. But they all have concluded that their sometimes-conflicting goals and their extremely different priorities would be served by a measure that faces a final, critical vote in the General Assembly as early as today.

That legislation is the first step toward repealing South Carolina’s minibottle law, which forces bars and restaurants to sell drinks that are at least 40 percent stronger than in the rest of the country — and, in the case of some mixed drinks, more than twice as strong.

This state mandate for stiff drinks kills, pure and simple. Obviously tourists are unprepared for what hits them when they buy a drink. But the extra alcohol sneaks up on lifelong South Carolinians as well. Little wonder, then, that our state leads the nation in the rate of alcohol-related highway deaths.

That’s why changing the constitution to allow bars and restaurants to sell liquor out of regular-sized bottles — and thus use a more reasonable amount of alcohol in each drink — is a priority for MADD, alcohol and drug abuse agencies and the S.C. Highway Safety Coalition, which is a Who’s Who of police agencies, insurance companies and doctors’ organizations.

Other problems with minibottles brought the tourism and hospitality industries and chambers of commerce around the state into the fight. The mandate for more alcohol also means more expensive drinks. S.C. businesses can’t carry as many different brands of liquor as those in other states, because variety is more expensive with the small bottles. The minibottles can’t be recycled. And many tourists see minibottles as just another example of how backward our state is.

In fact, about the only people who want to keep the minibottles are the people with a vested interest in them — the liquor distributors who sell them. The arguments of the distributors and their allies in the Legislature range from spurious to misleading.

They say the minibottle is the only thing standing between customers and watered-down drinks — as if it’s the job of the government to guarantee a stiff drink.

They say the state will lose money by abandoning a system that makes tax collections easy — offering up their own self-interested study in place of the projections of the state’s chief economist, who said one proposal would actually increase tax collections slightly. And that was before the Senate came up with another tax method designed by legislators who were worried the original method wouldn’t bring in enough money.

But as off-base as the arguments are, they still could carry the day. Last week, the House fell 11 votes short of the two-thirds needed to put the measure on the November ballot. That was surprising, since the House had earlier approved an identical measure (which is stuck in the Senate) with eight votes to spare.

Representatives will try again this week to muster those extra votes, perhaps this time with the active assistance of such longtime advocates as House Speaker David Wilkins and Richland Rep. Bill Cotty and the support of all the legislation’s sponsors.

Lawmakers don’t have a lot to show for this year’s session. This legislation is something they could brag about. More importantly, it’s something that could save a lot of needless deaths. No legislator who fails to vote for this measure can claim to care about reducing our highway death rate.