Drugs

            Thirty-Six Years of Changes in Impaired Driving Laws in North Carolina .
             A safe driving record is defined as "no conviction for any offense requiring the assessment of four or more driver's license points or no conviction that standing alone would require or authorize the Division of Motor Vehicles to revoke the person's license" (Loeb 63). The legal age for consumption of alcohol in North Carolina is twenty-one. The legal age is twenty-one and not eighteen due to the fact that drivers under the age of twenty-one drive irresponsibly after consuming alcoholic beverages. Impaired driving laws have changed significantly in thirty-six years.
             Impaired driving in North Carolina was defined in 1966 by the "drunken-driving" statute as "any person who is under the influence of intoxicating liquor or narcotic drugs, to drive any vehicle upon the highways within this State" (Loeb 101). The word vehicle applied to both horse and bicycle. The word highway applied to any drive, driveway, road, roadway, street, or alley upon the grounds and premises of any public or private hospital, college, university, school, orphanage, church, or any institutions maintained and supported by the State of North Carolina, or any subdivisions; or, upon the grounds and premises of any service station, drive-in theater, supermarket, store, restaurant, or office building, or any other business or municipal establishment providing parking space for customers, patrons, or the public (Loeb101). Being convicted of impaired driving law entailed a one-year revocation of license. Other convictions of impaired driving would entail doubling of the period of revocation. Impaired driving laws and consequences were less structured and stiff as the laws are today and this proves that the impaired driving laws have changed dramatically in thirty-six years. .
             In 1990, North Carolina passed the law that a person commits the offense of impaired driving when he or she drives a vehicle other than a riding lawn mower or a bicycle, with an alcohol concentration of 0.