Crime and Punishment: The Case of Alcohol

Economics Senior Honors Thesis 2 Introduction: Drinking and Driving is an important problem within the United States. In 2004, 16,694 drivers died in alcohol related accidents and some estimate that driving drunk increases the likelihood of an accident by over seven times. 1 National attention to this problem began early, around the time of prohibition. Modern regulations originated in 1964, when a study in Grand Rapids, Michigan first identified a link between Blood Alcohol Content (BAC) and automotive accidents. This study helped initiate the passage of numerous Driving Under the Influence (DUI) laws. These laws are classified as " per se " laws, which mean that one is a criminal by simply falling in a certain classification. That is by having a certain BAC and driving a car one is offending, regardless of any other actions. DUI laws were soon passed in every state. 2 DUI laws are associated with falling drunk fatalities across the United States, although it has been argued that their deterrence effect is outweighed by enforcement cost. 3 In 1984 congress passed the Federal Uniform Drinking Age, which raised the national drinking age to 21. This represented shifting political intentions and was also found to have a significant effect on drunk driving. 4 Yet most DUI laws still did not differentiate between drivers aged 21 and younger. Therefore, in 1995 an amendment was added to National Highway Systems Designation Act, in which states were required to adopt " Zero Tolerance " (ZT) laws for underage drunk driving by fiscal year 1999 or forfeit federal highway funds. Zero Tolerance laws make it illegal, as is, for any driver under the age of 21 to have any measurable amount of alcohol in their blood. The law was passed after a study compared states with zero tolerance laws and those without, and in which the authors 3 found a significant decrease in alcohol related youth fatalities at night. 5 Yet this study was essentially cross-sectional, and subject to confounding by regional characteristics. Although they attempted to alleviate this problem by comparing two neighboring states, this is a poor solution at best because regional characteristics depend on more than geography. They also only looked at the numbers of drinking fatalities, and while this variable seems relevant, it could reflect other factors. Carpenter (2004) tried to answer how these laws worked by finding a reduction in self reported heavy episodic drinking. …