I am writing today to announce the closure of the New Mexico Independent. After three and a half years of operation in New Mexico, the board of the American Independent News Network, has decided to shift publication of its news…
While environmental activists played their part yesterday during demonstrations at the capitol building, going so far as to dress up as solar panels and to sing the tune of “You Are My Sunshine,” their counterparts, the anti-cap-and-trade contingency who has…
Roughly one quarter of University of New Mexico students are unimpressed with the state’s flagship public school, according to a survey that questioned college students about their higher education experiences.
Though New Mexico has seen one of the more infamous drunk driving cases in its history last Sunday, the Los Angeles Times reports that New Mexico may have turned the corner on our state’s notorious drunk driving problem.
But an article two months ago from the Santa Fe Reporter says otherwise.
The Los Angeles Times writes:
New Mexico, home to high rates of alcohol abuse and miles and miles of open road, is now ranked 25th among the states in alcohol-related fatal crash rates and is expected to place lower when the latest rankings are compiled later this year. Between 2004 and 2008, the number of DWI [Driving While Intoxicated] fatalities here dropped 35%, from 219 to 143.
However, the Santa Fe Reporter pointed out that these numbers have a lot to do with high gas prices (less driving), safer cars (airbags) and better driving habits (seatbelt use) than any actual anti-DWI program.
Still, New Mexico is being hailed around the country for the use of ignition interlocks to help stop drunk driving.
However, the attitudes when it comes to drunk driving are the hardest things to change. Both articles mention the “culture” in New Mexico when it comes to drinking.
The LA Times:
Kenny Martinez, 43, agrees that alcohol is a part of New Mexican culture. Martinez was first convicted of drunk driving in 1992 and racked up four more convictions over 15 years.”When someone’s born, we drink. When someone dies, we drink,” he said. “We drink at baptismals, at birthdays. Oh, work’s off, let’s drink!”
The Santa Fe Reporter:
“I have mixed feelings,” DWI Czar O’Connor says. She thinks safe-ride programs, while probably effective in cities, are no substitute for keeping people sober: “You can’t serve somebody as much as you feel like [just because] they have a safe ride.”This attitude is revealing. Because when anti-drunk driving activists talk about “changing the culture,” they often mean promoting alcoholic abstinence.
America tried that before. “Prohibition didn’t work. We have to look at how we use alcohol,” Santa Fe Sobering Center Manager Richard Lucero says. In Europe, he notes, alcohol is “a family ritual at dinnertime, where teenagers are introduced to alcohol, and they use it responsibly.”
So are there any easy answers to solving the DWI problem in New Mexico? Probably not — or they would have been done already.
