Columnist Susan Snyder: Shot No. 7 at .08 is on the level

Tuesday, Dec. 10, 2002 | 8:21 a.m.

Sandy Heverly hopes seven is a lucky number.

The 2003 Legislative session will mark the seventh time a measure to lower Nevada's legal intoxication level to .08 has been proposed, said Heverly, who is executive director of Stop DUI.

"We're talking 14 years," she said. "Thirty-two states plus the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico have it."

In Nevada a motorist's blood-alcohol level must be .10 percent for the driver to be considered legally intoxicated.

In past years, associations for resorts, restaurants and bars and other tourism-based industries have opposed the lower level, saying it would discourage visitors and hurt owners of smaller bars.

"When was the last time you planned your vacation around what the blood-alcohol levels were?" Heverly asked. "Thirty years ago, the limit was .15 before we lowered it. Does Las Vegas look like it has gone out of business?"

She has a point. Utah has some of the most ridiculous alcohol purchase and consumption laws on the books, and officials still managed to snare the 2002 Winter Olympic Games. Liquor laws didn't seem to keep people away.

Though not mentioned directly, the upcoming legislative battle undoubtedly was on the minds of those gathered outside University Medical Center Friday to kick off the annual You Drink, You Drive, You Lose holiday campaign. The event encourages people who drink to let someone sober drive them home.

The .08 level can do that year-round, Heverly said. Under the lower level, the number of drivers considered drunk would be 10 to 11 percent higher. A stricter standard probably won't keep people from drinking. But it might be enough to keep some people from getting behind the wheel.

"People can drink as much as they want," she said. "We're just asking them not to drive."

State Assemblyman Mark Manendo, the Las Vegas Democrat sponsoring the .08 bill in 2003, says he has sponsored or supported it so many times he has "lost count."

"We have a very alcohol-tolerant state, even though it kills people," Manendo said. "People don't think it's that big of a deal."

It's the kind of issue that doesn't hit people until it hits them personally, he said. Outrage comes after a relative or friend is injured or killed. The sad part is, most people probably know someone whose life was altered by a drunk driver, he added.

"A lot of us think, 'It'll never happen to me.' But every-other day in the newspaper you see something about it," Manendo said.

Las Vegas's most famous drinker, Mayor Oscar Goodman, told Friday's crowd of the Sunday morning earlier this year when he and his wife were taken to the UMC trauma center after their car skidded into a wall on the Summerlin Parkway.

A woman was brought into the center and placed in the bed on the other side of the curtain from him. She had been seriously injured in a car crash.

"It was alcohol-related, and it was an absolute waste," Goodman said. "How easy it is to die. Sometimes we're having such a good time, we forget how easy it is to blow it all."

Blowing a .08 could make it harder to die and easier to live, Heverly said.

"We're talking about one drink less," she said.

For the seventh time.