September 23, 2003

Legal Alcohol Limit Lowers to .08 Today
Nevada joins most of the nation by dropping allowable amount of alcohol for legal driving.

By RICHARD LAKE

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Today is the day that police officers, state legislators and community activists have been working toward for more than a decade, and so they came together Monday morning to make sure everyone knew it would be historic.

"We have come a long way," said Sandy Heverly, executive director of Stop DUI. "It's a new day for Nevada."

Beginning today, Nevada joins most of the nation by lowering the allowable amount of alcohol someone can consume before driving a car. The legal blood alcohol limit drops from 0.10 to 0.08.

Two guys named Mike couldn't care less.

"Every time I've gotten a DUI, it's been way over point-one-oh," said Mike Smith, a concrete-layer who was enjoying a draft beer with a buddy Monday afternoon at a neighborhood bar. He said he'd been arrested for driving under the influence three times in the past nine years.

"Three. That's nothing," said his buddy, Mike Schum. "I've had 13 DUIs. I don't know anybody who's had as many as me."

The two Mikes, among a half-dozen people drinking at R-Bar near Charleston and Jones boulevards, said the new law won't change their behavior in the slightest.

"Some people have a high tolerance," said Smith. "I know I do."

Regardless, a host of people who pushed for the new law gathered at a local restaurant Monday morning and held a news conference to make sure the public is aware of the new law.

They said it would undoubtedly save lives.

"People have to be responsible," said state Assemblyman Mark Manendo, who pushed the new law through the Legislature this past session.

It was his fourth try in as many sessions to get the alcohol limits lowered.

Pushing legislators to pass the law this time was the prospect of losing millions of dollars in federal highway funding, which would have been pulled from Nevada if the state hadn't lowered its limit.

"Nevada, what took you so long," said Jerry Vesely, whose 11-year-old daughter, Cody, was killed by a drunken driver in 1998.

Vesely, who has worked with Heverly at Stop DUI, attended the news conference. He said he was pleased that Nevada had lowered the legal limit, and said he believed drunken drivers should face even harsher penalties.

"Point-oh-eight does kill," he said, noting that the woman who killed his daughter tested at 0.08 when she was tested at the hospital after the wreck. "So does point-oh-five. I personally believe in zero tolerance."

Zero tolerance won't come anytime soon, the authorities said. But neither will the police and prosecutors have patience for anyone who is driving with alcohol levels over the new limit, they said.

Las Vegas police Capt. Rick Bilyeu, who heads the department's traffic bureau, said the new law will make it easier for police officers to get suspected drunks off the streets.

In the past, drivers with blood alcohol levels below 0.10 usually were arrested only if they were obviously impaired. Now, the threshold to prove they were impaired is lower, he said.

"Obviously, we'll have more arrests," he said. The department won't change its procedures, he said. Officers will simply have another tool to stop people from driving drunk.

Gary Booker, the chief deputy Clark County district attorney in charge of DUI prosecutions, said the new law will help him secure convictions against drunk drivers.

Instead of having to prove someone was impaired with a 0.09 blood alcohol level, for instance, the law will now presume that the driver was impaired, he said. By convicting of DUI with a relatively low blood alcohol level, he said, it might keep them from becoming a more serious drunk later on.

"We can get to them before they become very severe alcoholics," he said.

That sort of thinking is ridiculous, a sampling of afternoon drinkers at the neighborhood bar said.

One man, who would give his name only as Joe, noted that the most serious DUI crashes always seem to involve drivers who were way beyond the 0.10 legal limit.

"I come here, I have two beers in an hour, and now I'm drunk?" he said. "I don't think so."

Down at the end of the bar, Julie Riggle, a house painter, had similar thoughts.

"I'm not really happy about it. I mean, look at me. I'm small," she said, noting that she weighed perhaps 105 pounds. "I go out and drink one or two beers, now I'm over the legal limit."

She said she'd continue drinking after a hard day's work, regardless.

Schum, the Mike who said he'd had 13 DUIs, said he'd do the same. He can't drive right now, anyway.

His license was revoked after his latest DUI, he said, and so he rides his bicycle wherever he goes.

"It's made me a lot more healthy," he said.

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