ALL COUNTIES: Law enforcement officers made more than 4,300 arrests during a holiday campaign to catch drunken drivers.
State figures released Tuesday show that between November 30 and January 2, officers conducted nearly 13,000 sobriety checkpoints.
They made 4,367 arrests for driving while impaired, or DWI, and issued more than 155,000 traffic and criminal citations statewide.
Gov. Mike Easley said the "Booze It & Lose It" campaign is sent a message that drunken driving "will not be tolerated in North Carolina."
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From Previous Reports
ALL COUNTIES: North Carolina schools will target students as young as 10 with an aggressive anti-drinking campaign that teaches them to understand how advertising drives their decision-making.
The 10-lesson project was launched Wednesday by Mary Easley, wife of Gov. Mike Easley, and acting U.S. Surgeon General Kenneth Moritsugu. It's meant to discourage middle school students from drinking by teaching them how marketing can manipulate their choices.
"We can control and enhance our children's ability to deconstruct and critically think about the messages they receive in commercial advertising," Mary Easley said.
The program encourages students to ask critical questions about advertisements they see and hear: Who paid for the ad? Who is the target? What was left out of the message?
North Carolina education officials will implement the program in all middle schools by January.
Moritsugu said alcohol is the substance most abused by young people in the United States, with an estimated 11 million underage drinkers, and has called for a nationwide effort to fight it.
He said while other schools and states have used similar literacy programs, North Carolina's is the first backed by scientific research.
"This is really something that has a great potential to springboard around the country," Moritsugu said.
Researchers found that the program's "brief intervention" helped students increase media deconstruction skills and helped boys decrease their intention to use alcohol in the future. Two media literacy studies found no affect on middle school girls.
Alex Moore, 13, said the curriculum helped him better understand the messages he saw every day.
"It gives us a lot more confidence to decode and handle these ads," said Moore, who took the class in its pilot form two years ago and is now in the eighth grade at Phillips Middle School in Chapel Hill.
A 2005 survey conducted by the Centers for Disease Control found that 35 percent of North Carolina middle school students report having had a drink of alcohol, other than just a few sips. Twenty-one percent of high school students said they had their first drink before age 13.
"That's the age when boys and girls really start getting hooked into popular culture," Easley said.
She said the critical thinking course can help young people make decisions not only about drinking and tobacco, but about other major issues such as who to vote for in a presidential election.
"These are skills that will help them better negotiate 21st century life," she said.
ALL COUNTIES: Chapel Hill-Carrboro police along with the NC Alcohol Law Enforcement Agency have launched a campaign to crack down on underage drinking across the UNC Chapel Hill-Carrboro area.
From bars, restaurants and various stores around the area, 36 people were cited for alcohol-related violations. Out of 51 total charges, 19 people were under 21 were charged with possessing alcohol and 10 for having fake id’s.
According to the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism, each year approximately 5,000 young people under the age of 21 die because of underage drinking. From this figure, 1,900 deaths are from motor vehicle crashes, 1,600 as a result of homicides, 300 from suicide, and hundreds more from other injuries like falls, burns, and drownings. Studies show three-fourths of 12th graders, more than two-thirds of 10th graders, and about two in every five 8th graders have consumed alcohol. Statistics also reveal that when young people drink, they often consume four to five drinks in one sitting.
With high school and college students back on campuses across the nation, law enforcement is working to regulate underage drinking in hopes of preventing these numbers from continuing to rise.
Back in August, 18-year-old Christopher John Palmeri plead guilty to involuntary manslaughter in connection with the death of a 18-year-old Sadiki Young – both students at Wakefield High in Raleigh. Police say Palmeri was drinking at an underage party and was driving home when he lost control of his car, spun sideways and rolled down an embankment. Though excessive speed was a factor, investigators say Palmeri had a blood-alcohol level of .06. That’s below the state’s .08 legal level of intoxication for adults, but he wasn’t of legal drinking age.
This incident came only 10 months after four other students at Wakefield High were killed in an alcohol-related wreck on US Highway 64 bypass just east of Raleigh.
ALL COUNTIES: Drunken driving fatalities increased in 22 states in 2006 and fell in 28 states, the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico, federal transportation officials said Monday.
The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration released data showing there were 13,470 deaths in 2006 involving drivers and motorcycle operators with blood alcohol levels of .08 or higher, which is the legal limit for adults throughout the country. The number was down slightly from 2005, when 13,582 people died in crashes involving legally drunk drivers.
The overall number of deaths involving drivers and motorcycle operators with any amount of alcohol in their blood was 17,602 last year. That was up from 17,590 in 2005, according to spokeswoman Heather Ann Hopkins.
"The number of people who died on the nation's roads actually fell last year," U.S. Transportation Secretary Mary Peters said at a news conference in this Washington suburb. "However the trend did not extend to alcohol-related crashes."
Transportation officials announced the new figures as they unveiled a $11 million nationwide advertising campaign as part of a Labor Day weekend campaign "Drunk Driving. Over the Limit. Under Arrest."
"This crackdown is very, very, very important because it's the penalties that are imposed when someone chooses to ignore the law that really have the ability to make changes," Peters said.
Among states, Arizona, Kansas and Texas had the greatest increases in number of drunken driving deaths last year. But Utah, Kansas and Iowa had the largest percentage increases compared with 2005. Texas had the largest actual number drunken driving deaths with a total of 1,354.
Florida, Missouri and Pennsylvania had the greatest decreases in numbers of drunken driving deaths last year, while the District of Columbia, Alaska and Delaware had the largest percentage decreases compared with 2005. The District of Columbia had the smallest actual number of drunken driving deaths with a total of 12.
