Fewer people are reaching for a glass of wine or a cocktail. Yet, the roads aren’t necessarily getting safer; keeping them safe is getting more complicated.
Now, law enforcement agencies in North Carolina are trying to catch up to the changing landscape of impaired driving.
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A change in preferences
A 2025 Gallup survey found 54% of US adults consume alcohol. That’s a dip from 64% just ten years earlier.
WRAL Investigates went through state crash data dating back to 2018. Alcohol-related crashes are still happening more often than drugged-related crashes. However, more than 2,500 crashes involved drugs in 2020.
“They're…using less alcohol in addition to co-ingesting other drugs,” explained Kenny Benfield, the program manager for forensic tests for alcohol in North Carolina.
The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration released a drug prevalence study in 2022.It looked at the toxicology results of more than 7,000 seriously or fatally injured road users from seven Level 1 trauma centers – including one in Charlotte. Nearly 20% of the road users tested positive for two or more categories of drugs. Researchers found active THC to be the most prevalent drug category, followed by alcohol, stimulants and opioids.
Researchers found THC to be the most prevalent drug category, followed by alcohol, stimulants and opioids.
While not considered a classified drug or controlled substance, WRAL Investigates previously reported on the popularity of alcohol alternatives, like kava.
Da Kine’s Kava owner Zoey Best said the substance “takes the edge off.” Others have described the feeling of a “buzz” while consuming kava.
WRAL Investigates asked Best if kava can impact impairment.
“It is possible to impair you by consuming kava; you just have to consume a lot more than you would with alcohol, because it's affecting your body differently,” she explained. “It's not as measurable compared to like our .08 [blood-alcohol concentration], like we were talking about, but it's just important to listen to your body, see how you're feeling.”
The .08 threshold and lack thereof
The 0.08 threshold applies to alcohol, not cannabis or other drugs, so law enforcement must look for signs or symptoms for impairment.
“It's a real challenge,” said Belal Elrahal, an assistant professor of public law and government at the UNC School of Government. “Without something like a .08 [blood-alcohol concentration], it can be hard for people to know, necessarily, what that means.”
However, he said the broad nature of the language in North Carolina DWI law means that an officer does not need a specific measurement to establish impairment.
“A different way to be guilty of DWI, even by alcohol, is not necessarily to look at a number at all but to just see, is this person appreciably impaired by an impairing substance,” Elrahal explained. “While there are a lot of ambiguities right now about the legality of possession or sale or creation of certain substances. If any of those substances impair a person's physical and mental faculties, then it can still subject a person potentially to a DWI charge.”
Right now, law enforcement agencies rely on their own observations of suspected impairment, standard sobriety tests and drug recognition experts.
Those specialized experts are few and far between, especially in rural areas. North Carolina has fewer than 200 certified DREs among roughly 34,000 law enforcement officers statewide.
Benfield said the current process takes time.
“Sometimes it may take two, three hours before they're able to get that blood test,” Benfield told WRAL Investigates.
Roadside tools to help detect impairment
Travel-sized oral fluid testing kits, like SoToxa, could be the tool to help law enforcement be more efficient, according to Benfield. He showed WRAL Investigates how the test kits work.
“It can be used roadside or at a test site,” Benfield said.
A person suspected of impairment swabs the inside of their mouth for 1-2 minutes and inserts it into the kit. Within a few minutes, the device tests the sample for amphetamine, benzodiazepines, cannabis, cocaine metabolite, fentanyl, methamphetamine, and opiates.
The test is currently limited to those specific drug classes, so unregulated substances like kava would not yield a result.
“While this doesn't cover everything, it covers those main drugs that we do see, because even with kava and kratom and some of those other drugs, we do see co-ingestion of some drugs that would test positive with this,” Benfield said.
WRAL Investigates asked Benfield how officers can prove impairment beyond a reasonable doubt and look out for false positive results.
“This is a screening device. That's why we need that training,” he said. “This is just an extra step to give more information for that officer to make an informed decision. So, we want them to have that impairment first and collect that, then they'll get this, then they'll collect the evidential that will then come in later to help beyond a reasonable doubt. So, this should be to help with the probable cause part.”
Several other states already utilize this technology, including Tennessee, Kentucky, and Massachusetts.
In North Carolina, this tool must be approved by state lawmakers. The state’s department of health and human services would also need to set regulations
“My sense is that we really should get with the times on this now,” Rep. Eric Ager said.
He sponsored the DWI Modernization Act, a bill he does not believe will pass before the end of the short session.
“I'm not very hopeful for the short session, because there's just a lot of other things floating around, and we don't have a lot of time to deal with these things, but I wanted to get it out in the short session, so that I could begin to have these conversations, let people actually see what the bill looks like, and talk to us about how we can make it better, or things that we need to fix,” Ager explained.