Last week the National Transportation Safety Board called on North Carolina and the other states to dial back the blood-alcohol limit used by police and the courts to determine whether someone is too impaired to be allowed to drive. The NTSB recommends .05 percent, much more strict than the current DWI standard of .08 percent.

Here is an early look at Bob Wilson's column in Sunday's Durham News. Tell us whether you agree or disagree with Bob at editor@newsobserver.com.

By Bob Wilson

Cheap alcohol and mini-marts are one and indivisible, as those who live in Durham’s troubled north-east central quadrant will attest. These quick-stop vendors of malt liquor are in effect legal shot houses, and they are perennial thorns in the side of city planners, the police and community reformers.

Yet mini-marts needn’t be such a fret. With modest effort and good will from owners and community activists alike, mini-marts can be part of the solution.

Now, no one reasonably expects these small stores to stop selling malt liquors and “alcopops,” amped-up concoctions such as wine coolers. Both are legal products, no matter the dismal social pathology fed by their easy availability.

Minister Paul Scott has waged a campaign against cheap brew in North East Central Durham for decadeds, arguing that big-name brewers skillfully exploit low-income blacks and Hispanics.

Scott’s right. You need only peruse advertising for, say, Colt 45 malt liquor to get a fix on its intended audience. Sometimes black celebrities – Billy Dee Williams and Snoop Dogg come to mind – hawk malt liquors, lending them an aura of glamor well removed from reality.

I go both ways on this. One argument goes that a lower drinking age would actually lead to more responsible drinking. If young people were allowed to drink at 18, they would be less likely to binge drink. (Read one example of this argument here.)

Our local Coalition for Alcohol and Drug Free Teenagers takes the other view. Its members argue the consequences of underage drinking, including the impact of alcohol on the developing brain, are too great to take risks and that existing laws must be more strongly enforced.

In a guest column appearing in this Sunday's Chapel Hill News, retired judge and coalition member Ron Bogle says it's time the community gave as much attention to the underage drinking problem as, say, cellphones. Here is an excerpt.

Gabrielle Acevedo, Nazareth College; Stephen Adelipour, Boston University; Matthew Ainsworth, Villanova University; Molly Ammon, University of Florida; Justin Anderson, University of South Carolina; Connie Blount, University of Kentucky; Mark Davis, NC State University; Matthew Grape, Duke University; Meaghan Bosch, Southern Methodist University; Victoria Cheng, Ithaca College; and Cortland Smith, University of North Carolina.

This random sampling of collegians all died from causes associated with alcohol use. In Chapel Hill, there are many more stories of alcohol-related death, injury, emergency medical care, crime, and academic harm. But does anyone really care?

While cellphone-distracted drivers are a public safety risk, it’s certain far more deaths and injuries here relate to misuse of alcohol. Even more, excessive alcohol use by collegians poses both short- and long-term health and safety risks.

Unfortunately, too many college towns like Chapel Hill have a long history of alcohol complacency, making them passive contributors to the short- and long-term consequences. Instead, ignoring the known health dangers, some even defend excessive use of alcohol, an addictive drug responsible for killing more teens than all other drugs combined, as some mythical “rite of passage.”Like cellphones, Chapel is a small town, but with lots of very alcohol-impaired young people. And like the cellphone, it should be a “big, big concern.” The question is, what’s being done about it?

Look for Judge Bogle's full column Sunday in The Chapel Hill News and let us know what you think.     

Los Primos, a Durham grocery store, has reapplied to get their ABC permit to sell alcohol.  Check out the full story at

http://www.thedurhamnews.com/2011/06/22/207317/store-alcohol-permit-opposed.html

Starting Wednesday, new North Carolina drivers under 21 will receive driver’s licenses in a new vertical shape — to remind store clerks that they’re too young to smoke or drink.

Young drivers now receive horizontal licenses that are color-coded with red or yellow borders to reflect the driver' age. The old horizontal licenses remain valid until the driver gets a new one.

The new vertical licenses issued by the state Division of Motor Vehicles will add explicit birthday details in to show when the driver will turn 18 — when tobacco sales are legal — and 21 — when alcohol sales are legal.

Last week, we reported on a  push by college presidents, including Duke President Richard Brodhead, to get a national discourse going on lowering the drinking age in an attempt to combat binge drinking.

Here's an interesting column from someone who doesn't think it's such a good idea. 

Thomas Szigethy, who instituted a number of innovative substance abuse programs at the University of Connecticut, is Duke's new associate dean and director of the Alcohol and Substance Abuse Prevention Center.

As the new school year begins at Duke, Szigethy will begin meeting with students, parents, faculty, staff and other interested groups on and around campus to discuss issues surrounding alcohol and substance use on Duke’s campus.