by Katherine Green

Sitting in a hot and sweaty basement, with beer cans half full and red solo cups scattering the cave-like room, the conversation of thirty other high schoolers who’ve been herded together is like white noise in the background. The kid you’re talking to notices you uncomfortably eyeing the cup in his hand. He follows your gaze and offers you some of his drink. The metal keys at the end of your STA lanyard seem to dig a little deeper in your hand. You look back and forth from your keys to the cup. You drove to this party so drinking was definitely out of the question, right? Just one beer won’t hurt though, and there’s like a 1 in a million chance of you getting pulled over, so might as well. You take the cup and drink it, even having a few more. Later when you leave, you decide to be nice and offer some of your friends a ride home.

Arriving home, you make it up to your room, forgetting there even was a chance of getting charged with Driving Under the Influence, a DUI, or Driving While Intoxicated, a DWI, that night. That stuff only happens on the news, anyways. Besides, drinking is “part of the high school experience,” as everyone says.

Even if you haven’t been in this situation, or maybe you’ve been one of the friends getting a ride home, this scenario is more realistic than you might think. Although it may be illegal, alcohol is prevalent during the four short years spent in high school. According to “In The Know Zone,” a website created to inform and prevent substance abuse, 88 percent of high school seniors said they have tried alcohol at least once.

Although drinking is rampant in high schools, and sometimes even excused by parents despite it being illegal, one thing I’m sure anyone can agree with is that drinking and driving is never okay.

Everyone gets the classic drinking and driving talk, the one saying that you could kill yourself or someone else by driving under the influence. Although everyone knows and agrees against it , I don’t think anyone actually takes into consideration the extent. The “don’t drink and drive” talk has the same effect as the “don’t get in the car with a stranger” lecture, everyone knows it’s common sense, but when it comes down to it, nobody thinks anything of it. I have personally witnessed a girl going to a person’s car with them when they met only 2 minutes before.

The issue is that teenagers in our generation and where we live don’t ever hear or experience the bad effects of drinking and driving, so they think that it can’t and won’t ever happen to them. For example, according to Mothers Against Drunk Driving, an average drunk driver has driven drunk 80 times before their first arrest. That means if you were driving drunk both days during every weekend, it would take you about 10 months before getting a DUI.

If the girl in the earlier scenario had gotten stopped or pulled over, she would have been charged with a DUI, and her friends in the car, if they had been drinking, could have all gotten Minor In Possessions (MIPs) or Minor In Consumptions (MICs). Also, being in high school, with drinking already being illegal, DUI charges would be more severe. In Mo., the consequences for the first offense of underage DUI/DWIs may include being imprisoned for up to 6 months, receiving a fine of up to 500 dollars, and having their license suspended for 30 to 90 days. On top of all this, depending on your situation, you could be charged with distributing alcohol to other minors if your passengers are drunk, minor in possession, soliciting alcohol, child endangerment law violations, possession of false identification if you used a fake ID to get the alcohol, and maybe even moving and vehicle maintenance violations depending on what the cop sees. These charges may make getting a job, getting into a fraternity/sorority, or even getting into college much more difficult for you.

Even with all those consequences added up, there is still a chance you can hit and kill someone. Cars already have the capability of being a deadly weapon, even for sober drivers, and being a drunk operator can make them that much more dangerous. Teenagers are not invincible and should not just hope to make it past the 80th time to realize that drinking and driving is not “part of the high school experience.”