Halloween on a college campus is no celebration without alcohol, and the holiday always results in a high number of DUI arrests and accidents.
Though driving while impaired is ultimately the fault of the drunken driver, certain inhibitory measures taken by police and administration are also to blame.
The best way to reduce drunk drivers on Halloween and other notable wet college events is to acknowledge that drinking will occur and focus efforts on preventing harmful actions like drunken driving, rather than attempting to tackle access to alcohol as a whole.
North Carolina was the fourth-highest state in 2009 for alcohol-related fatalities. A whopping 28 percent of total fatalities was due to motor vehicle accidents with at least one driver or non-occupant involved with a blood alcohol concentration of over the 0.08 percent legal limit.
Statistics show the most frequent concordant of alcohol-related deaths is a motor vehicle, which is why the majority of police efforts, as well as prevention programs, should attempt to limit driving after alcohol consumption, not alcohol consumption itself.
Teenagers are the number one age group associated with binge drinking. Young adults between 18-24 have the highest rates of alcohol consumption and hold the highest numbers of binge or heavy drinkers of any other age group.
There are various treatments and intervention programs that have been implemented by colleges to attempt to combat the issue of problem drinking. However, these programs have limited success.
AlcoholEdu scores average at 55 percent during pre-test and 85 percent at post-test, illustrating these students do learn something about alcohol use and abuse through the program.
Additionally, some prevention programs appear to target the wrong audience. Though there are significant numbers of deaths and other harmful consequences associated with alcohol that do not involve a motor vehicle, harmful consequences due to driving while intoxicated far outnumber these.
A much more prevalent problem is the target of police efforts on underage drinking.
It is well known in college, large parties are often busted by the police, and drinking tickets are often issued when these parties are invaded. For this reason, some students attempt to leave a party before it gets busted. Many enlist the help of a designated driver or call a cab, but others, especially if trying to flee the premises in a short period of time, simply get in their cars and drive to a different location.
Students also know that drinking in public will undoubtedly result in a ticket if caught by the police, so they drink in large amounts before going to parties, concerts, or clubs to maintain a buzz throughout the night.
A better measure by police, which would prevent the harms of drunken driving but not necessarily underage drinking, would be to create checkpoints in parking lots of apartment complexes or on popular roads. Only the driver of the vehicle should be breathalized , and if the driver is clean, the car should pass.
Both police and prevention should focus attention on the harms of drunken driving rather than underage drinking as a whole. Drinking in college is not surprising behavior, and it should not be treated as such unless it creates harm for the individual or other citizens. Students who drink but choose to do so safely should not be penalized, whereas students who put others in harm’s way definitely should.
Currently, police efforts and prevention programs are exasperating the problem by creating more of an incentive to engage in harmful behavior when under the influence of alcohol, like entering a motor vehicle to flee legal persecution, instead of seeking to reduce harmful behavior.
