BAC ISSUE BELONGS TO THE STATES, NOT TO FEDERAL FIAT

The U.S. Senate voted earlier this month to establish the first-ever national blood-alcohol standard for drunken driving.

Inserted into a $54.7 billion spending bill for highway, rail, aviation and Coast Guard programs is a provision that would require states to adopt a 0.08 percent blood-alcohol content level as their legal intoxication standard. Those failing to do so by 2004 would begin losing part of their highway trust fund money.

Eighteen states and the District of Columbia have 0.08 limits for being legally drunk, while 32 states (including Missouri) have less stringent 0.1 percent limits. The Clinton administration supports the 0.08 standard and has urged Congress to make it official policy. The Senate had attached the 0.08 drunken driving level to a highway bill in 1998, but it didn't survive negotiations with the House.

We deplore this latest act of federal pre-emption and urge House leaders to work hard to defeat it. Whatever position you take on the debatable issue of the 0.08 standard, no such position should be imposed by federal fiat.

Under our federal system of divided powers, the states are supposed to be "laboratories of democracy," in the memorable phrase of one eminent jurist. Establishing such a standard for driving is a classic state matter and certainly not a federal one.

In precisely the fashion the Founders established, some states are electing to adopt the lower standard, while to date a big majority aren't. It is simply no place of the federal government to come rushing into a sphere of state powers and decree its own standard, simply because forces favoring the lower standard haven't been able to convince the people's elected representatives in the states to do so.