By way of being sure you're aware of a major Labor Day-weekend danger, New Mexican reporters Julie Ann Grimm and Jason Auslander have produced a couple of heads-up stories:

Grimm's story Friday brought the community up to date on the ongoing, often-frustrating effort toward meaningful reform of our state's laws against driving while intoxicated.

During the better part of two decades, since a holiday-time outrage was committed on an Albuquerque family in 1992, even the tamest of the liquor-lobby lapdogs have seen the need for more effective DWI laws. Many have been passed. Many more are needed.

With last year's holiday-season hit-and-run killing of a Santa Fe pedestrian, then this summer's deaths of four local teens, allegedly at the hands of a drunken driver, the cry for reform once again has been raised against a broad bunch of offenders: chronic drinker-drivers; blithe but potentially dangerous social drinkers driving on the edge of the legal blood-alcohol limit; teenagers who have no business with a bottle, and, of course, those teens' parents.

Yesterday's report, as distinguished from so many of our stories that follow tragedies fresh in Santa Feans' minds, outlined the legislative goals of a special committee convened by both city and county governments.

One we found especially intriguing: a call for local-option sales taxes on alcohol — with the money going straight to the county where it's purchased. This would give communities confronting DWI rashes, and short on law enforcement, a chance to save lives down on the street level while Roundhouse philosophers ponder policies for confronting the broader issue of alcohol and other impairments to sensible driving.

Another idea better implemented at the local level: sobering centers. Presumably a step up from the "drunk tanks" of days gone by, these would be secure and medically monitored places for treatment — no-nonsense treatment, we'd hope, with just enough aspects of jail to reinforce the therapy and lessons.

What's emerging from this committee, and from similar efforts around the country, is a sense that, if you're drinking and driving, you ought to go to jail; no electronic-bracelet "house arrest," but loss of freedom for enough time to make an impression on those for whom "one for the road" lacks the ominous sound that it should.

Incarceration is expensive, whether or not it's a long-term investment in fewer repeat offenses — so society should take advantage of the time a drunken driver's being held. And alcohol taxes, locally levied, would be a great way to raise revenue for an experiment in sobering centers. They seem to be working in other places, and there's been a proposal here; time to act on it.

Getting local-tax approval from a Legislature that's both jealous of its prerogatives and under liquor-lobby influence won't be easy — but some of our senators and representatives realize that one DWI death is one too many; that their negligence borders on the criminal.

Tomorrow's report wrestles with statistics, including those showing a decline in DWI arrests. Hooray, say some, who say it reflects changes in our drinking-and-driving culture. Don't be fooled, say others; drunks are still on the roads, escaping the clutches of our thin-spread law-enforcement agencies. This should make for good reading — and better discussion of the deep and broad issues raised by what appears to be an easily resolved problem, but isn't.