New Mexico, led by Gov. Bill Richardson, has made a concerted, multifaceted effort in recent years to combat drunken driving, a scourge that has always afflicted the state.
Last week, the state received its first real confirmation that its efforts are paying off.
In 2006, for the first time, New Mexico wasn’t among the 10 worst states in drunken-driving and other alcohol-related deaths on its roads, according to rankings released last week by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. New Mexico had the 17th-highest rate of drunken-driving deaths in 2006 – deaths involving people with a blood alcohol level of 0.08 or higher – and ranked 14th in overall alcohol-related fatalities on its roads.
New Mexico had the highest rate of alcohol-related fatalities in the nation in 1982 and has competed for that distinction every year since. In 2000, drunken driving was the leading cause of injury and death for New Mexicans between the ages of 1 and 44.
Preliminary numbers indicate that New Mexico might have improved even more in 2007, with 176 alcohol-related fatalities on its roads compared to 191 in 2006.
How did it happen?
Terry Huertaz, executive director of New Mexico’s Mothers Against Drunken Driving chapter, praised Richardson at a Friday news conference for his “kitchen-sink approach.” Though he certainly doesn’t get all the credit, the governor has led an effort that has included:
• tougher penalties for repeat DWI offenders.
• tougher penalties for bars and others who sell or provide alcohol to minors and intoxicated people.
• increased resources for sobriety checkpoints.
• mobilizing a special investigative team of the state’s Liquor Control Board.
• requiring those convicted of drunken driving to have ignition interlock devices installed in their vehicles.
• a public-service campaign that included TV, radio and billboard messages, often delivered by Richardson himself.
• a “DrunkBuster” hotline motorists can call when they encounter suspected drunken drivers.
Shift leads to closing of Las Cruces bars
I grew up in New Mexico and know its historic culture of tolerating alcohol abuse and drunken driving. I was 14 when a drunken Gordon House killed a woman and her three daughters on Christmas Eve in 1992 in a head-on collision on Interstate 40. He drove the wrong way for 12 miles before the crash.
As a teen, I had friends whose family owned a bar, and they were allowed to access alcohol without even sneaking around. As a journalist, I covered in 2004 and 2005 the binge-drinking deaths of two New Mexico State University students.
Covering the death of Steven Judd, who died after being served approximately 18 drinks at two Las Cruces bars after midnight on his 21st birthday, helped me realize this was a problem at which the state needed to throw everything, including the kitchen sink. In my opinion Judd, his fraternity brothers who took him out to drink, the bar that served him most of the drinks and the university that allowed its Greek community to foster such a drinking tradition shared responsibility, if not legally, at least morally, for his death.
When the state enacted the tougher penalties for serving minors and intoxicated people – in part a response to Judd’s death – four Las Cruces bars closed rather than trying to adapt. The state is trying to shut down a fifth – the one where Judd drank most of what killed him on his birthday.
And sixth Las Cruces bar – one owned by state Sen. Mary Jane Garcia – is in the process of being sold, Garcia told me last week. She’s been in the business for a long time, and she said customers just aren’t coming because they’re afraid of the new, “unfair” regulations. So she’s getting out of the business.
Garcia’s bar was cited last year for serving an intoxicated person. Soon thereafter, more than 50 alcohol-industry representatives and several lawmakers attended a meeting in Mesilla called by Garcia, and there they ripped Richardson Administration officials for the enforcement of the new rules, which they called unfair.
I don’t think the new rules are unfair. The kitchen-sink approach puts the responsibility on everyone – those who drink too much, the bars that serve them and the state’s citizens who spot suspected drunken drivers – to take an active role in changing a damaging culture in New Mexico.
The proof is in the pudding. For once, New Mexico is showing significant movement away from the top of one of the nation’s worst lists. Let’s hope it means that New Mexico is finally making a cultural shift that has been needed for generations.
A version of this article was published today on the Diary of a Mad Voter blog published by the Denver Post’s Politics West and the independent Web site NewWest.net.
