This week, the Ohio House Finance Committee is preparing to adopt the federally-suggested 0.08-percent blood-alcohol level as part of a $5.8 billion two-year transportation budget.

The reinvigorated push for 0.08 percent is not being made out of sympathy for drunk driving victims and anti-drunk driving special interest groups, but from pressure by the federal government, in the form of a threat to withhold highway funds should the new blood-alcohol level fail to pass.

According to the Columbus Dispatch, “If Ohio does not conform to 0.08, it stands to lose $11.9 million a year in federal highway funds starting in October.” However, if 0.08 passes within four years, the state can regain money withheld until then.

The change from a 0.10 percent blood-alcohol level to 0.08 — a reduction of about a drink for an average-height, average-weight male — would have saved 30 lives (about 7 percent of Ohio’s 495 fatalities in alcohol-related crashes) in 1999.

While any legislative measure to save lives should be applauded, the recent surge to lower the legal blood-alcohol level is too little and for the wrong reasons.

If 30 lives could have been saved by the difference of one drink, many more could have been saved by enforcing legislation that would prohibit people from driving under the influence of any significant alcohol content. At the same time states are passing laws prohibiting drivers from using cell phones unless they are hands-free — to keep as much of the driver’s attention on the road as possible — it would stand to reason that laws should be made that would also stop people from driving even after one or two drinks, which can be more than enough to reduce focus on the road.

And to keep people from being unfairly charged with having illegal blood-alcohol level, the laws could set the limit to 0.02 percent — the legal blood-alcohol level for anyone under 21 years of age — to compensate for medication containing trace amounts of alcohol.

However, Ohio’s primary concern in this matter is not saving lives — it is the $11.9-million-per-year rope the federal government is dangling over the state’s head to make it conform to a 0.08 blood-alcohol level. Lives will only be saved as a biproduct of the compromise our financially-cramped state is willing to make because it is already scrounging for money to build and repair roads.

If Ohio officials want to do as much in their power to stop alcohol-related fatalities as they can, they would institute a zero-tolerance stance on blood-alcohol limits. Until then, the move to 0.08 and the subsequent lives spared can only be viewed as bargaining chips in the struggle between state and federal power.