Drunk Driving DUI Law

The recent Greenville News headline, “Drunken drivers to see stiffer penalties,” was right on the mark. And reporter Paul Alongi’s following story well described how the new South Carolina DUI law more often will result in convictions and emphatic punishment of those caught driving under the influence.

What’s behind this development is widespread public abhorrence and political anger at the bloody toll of drunk drivers on South Carolina highways.

During 2007, the last year for which complete numbers are available, there were 463 alcohol related deaths on our state roads, up 10.5 percent over the previous year according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.

That rising toll and the still higher numbers of injured and crippled and grieving survivors account for the harshness of the new law.

And harsh it is. First offenders may get off with a fine or brief stay in jail. But repeated convictions mandate — not allow, but require — time behind bars. Depending on a drunk driver’s blood alcohol reading and his number of offenses, the time ranges up to seven years in prison.

That’s time behind bars for conviction of driving under the influence without a chargeable accident.

What goes into the law enforcement process and what comes out of the judicial process frequently are different. For one thing, prosecutors often reduce charges in exchange for guilty pleas to unclog trial dockets. Even so, and even counting on increased defense lawyering, judges who are ordinarily faithful to their oath are going to send a rising tide of errant and hapless drinkers behind bars.

That said, and applauded by many, a single line in the recent news story needs more attention. Referring to those convicted of DUI, it added, “They will also be required to seek treatment.”

Treatment for what? For alcoholism, which is designated by the American Medical Association and the American Society of Addiction Medicine as a primary, chronic, progressive and fatal disease.

This disease, addiction to alcohol, is rampant among hard-core drunk drivers, those repeat offenders who regularly blow more than twice the legal limit on blood alcohol measuring devices. And even after they’re repeatedly caught and punished they still drink and drive.

That shouldn’t surprise. Alcoholics cannot not drink. Their addiction is medically evident in brain imaging, and more practically and almost as certainly by clinical assessment at one of South Carolina’s 33 state legislated alcohol and drug abuse treatment centers.

The number of this state’s drunk drivers who are alcoholic, who are not just irresponsible party goers or solo drinkers to occasional excess, isn’t known. But there should be a focused and compounded public interest in the difference between alcoholics and merely irresponsible drinkers.

Non-alcoholics punished for driving under the influence are usually impressed not to repeat the mistake. By contrast, alcoholics will drink and drive and menace others repeatedly, even after incarceration. They deserve not only punishment, they also need treatment for future protection of the public.

Thanks in large part to the persistence of Dan Sharpe, retired director of Pickens County Behavioral Health Services, the new law requires all who are convicted of DUI to now submit to clinical assessment and clinically determined treatment at one of the state approved treatment centers. The assessments will channel alcoholics into 3-to-4 months of intensive outpatient therapy, and into essential aftercare in the better treatment programs.

Alcoholism can’t be cured. But like diabetes and hypertension it can be arrested. Professional treatment can put alcoholics on the path to self-sustained abstinence. And serious support groups — the best known of which are found in the 12-step program of Alcoholics Anonymous — can help them continue that journey and perhaps never drink again.

There are nearly a hundred AA meetings a week in the Greenville area. All are open to people seeking a way to stop drinking. And more than a dozen weekly meetings are open to the public, with anonymity expected, at the non-profit Alano Club on Catalina Drive.

A concern for South Carolina’s public treatment services is that for budget reasons our Legislature may move them under purview of the mental health establishment whose federal treatment model addresses alcoholism chiefly with thinking skills development. This is a researched and evidently effective therapeutic approach, but in my opinion it lacks a serious moral component, and is without the spiritual dimension which animates 12-step programs and nurtures long-term sobriety.

There’s room for debate about treatment models. The test of their worth under South Carolina’s new DUI law is whether they result in alcoholic drivers getting sober, staying sober and not driving drunk again.
Source