Critics Say District's DUI Policy Goes Too Far

Patrick O'Connor, president of Northern Virginia's Mothers Against Drunk Driving, said his group lobbied for years to get all 50 states and the District of Columbia to lower the legal limit for intoxication from .10 to .08. He said the only zero-tolerance law MADD has pushed is for young drivers under the legal drinking age of 21 -- which all 50 states and the District subsequently adopted.

"MADD's position is that you should drink responsibly and if you feel you're impaired, you should not drive," he said. "It's not MADD's position that if you have a glass of wine you shouldn't get into a car."

John Undeland, chairman of the Washington Regional Alcohol Program, with members as diverse as Anheuser-Busch and MADD, said his group's members agree that the greatest problems are drivers who are profoundly drunk and those who repeatedly drive drunk. "That's where resource-stretched law enforcement agencies need to focus their resources," he said.

Neither the D.C. police nor Superior Court prosecutors keep detailed records of low-blood alcohol arrests as a result of the zero-tolerance policy. But records do show that several hundred drivers each year are arrested for driving with blood alcohol lower than .08 percent.

This year, Annie Cefaratti, along with Debra Bolton, will be one of those statistics. One Tuesday night in August, she recalled, the 44-year-old real estate agent and Reston resident had a glass of wine with dinner at Sette Osteria, with a big bowl of pasta and espresso. Two hours later, as she drove home in her black Mercedes SUV, she quickly picked up her cell phone to answer her son's call.

The District bans use of handheld phones while driving, and she was immediately pulled over, she said. An officer asked if she'd been drinking. When she said she'd had a glass of wine with dinner, he asked her to get out of the car and put her through a series of sobriety tests. A breath test measured her blood alcohol at .04. She was handcuffed and arrested. Her case was later dropped, she said, because the officer never filed the paperwork. Now, the District's Department of Motor Vehicles wants her to either get alcohol counseling or prove she doesn't need it.

"I'm D.C.-born and -raised. My family goes back six generations here," she said. "And I'm never going to have another drink in D.C."

D.C.'s zero-tolerance policy goes back about seven years. In 1998, at the same time Schwartz introduced an amendment to lower the blood alcohol limit for intoxication from .10 to .08 with much media attention, then-Council member Sandy Allen introduced a provision that lowered to .03 the level that a driver could be presumed impaired by alcohol. Both measures passed.

Staff researcher Bobbye Pratt contributed to this report.