Under 21 and charged in Durham County: DWI and driving after consuming

The two charges and how they differ

North Carolina has one impaired-driving charge for everyone and a second that exists only for drivers under 21. A stop in Durham can produce either, or both.

The general charge is impaired driving under G.S. 20-138.1. Age does not matter. The State proves it one of three ways: that you drove “while under the influence of an impairing substance,” that you had “at any relevant time after the driving, an alcohol concentration of 0.08 or more,” or that you drove “with any amount of a Schedule I controlled substance” in your blood or urine. The driving must be “upon any highway, any street, or any public vehicular area.” The charge is a misdemeanor, sentenced at one of the six levels under G.S. 20-179.

The under-21 charge is driving after consuming under G.S. 20-138.3, which people often call the zero-tolerance law. It is unlawful for a “person less than 21 years old to drive a motor vehicle on a highway or public vehicular area while consuming alcohol or at any time while he has remaining in his body any alcohol or controlled substance previously consumed.” There is no 0.08 threshold and no need to prove impairment. Two limits are written in: “the odor of an alcoholic beverage on the breath of the driver is insufficient evidence by itself,” and a prescription drug taken “in therapeutically appropriate amounts” is not a violation.

Both charges can be filed from one stop, and the statute then caps the total: when a person is convicted of both from the same transaction, “the aggregate punishment imposed by the court may not exceed the maximum applicable to the offense involving impaired driving.” Driving after consuming is “subject to the implied-consent provisions of G.S. 20-16.2,” so the breath test, the rights notice and the refusal rules work as they do for DWI.

G.S. 20-138.1 and G.S. 20-138.3, ncleg.gov, current through S.L. 2026-30.

Your license: the 30-day revocation and the one-year revocation

A driver under 21 loses the license twice: once at the jail, before any conviction, and once more if convicted.

1. At the jail: the 30-day civil revocation

   Under G.S. 20-16.5, the magistrate revokes the license of a driver charged with an implied-consent offense who “has any alcohol concentration at any relevant time after the driving and the person is under 21 years of age.” For an adult the trigger is 0.08; for you it is any reading. The rights notice read before the breath test puts it as “0.01 or more if you are under the age of 21.” The magistrate orders you to surrender the license, and the revocation does not end until you pay “a fee of one hundred dollars ($100.00) as costs.” The 45-day cases are on the license page.

2. Days 1 to 10: no driving at all

   A pretrial limited driving privilege is not available until the license “has been revoked for at least 10 days.” After that a judge may issue one if you held a valid license, have no other pending impaired-driving charge, and have “obtained a substance abuse assessment from a mental health facility.” The clerk collects a $100 processing fee under G.S. 20-20.2. People search for a “hardship license”; North Carolina's name for it is the limited driving privilege.

3. On conviction: one year under G.S. 20-13.2

   G.S. 20-13.2 is titled “Grounds for revoking provisional license,” but it reaches every driver under 21. For driving after consuming: “The Division must revoke the license of a person convicted of violating the provisions of G.S. 20-138.3.” For DWI: if “the offense occurs while he is less than 21 years old, his license must be revoked” under this section “in addition to any other revocation required or authorized by law.” A willful refusal while under 21 triggers it too, effective with the 12-month refusal revocation. In every case “the length of revocation under this section shall be one year,” and “revocations under this section run concurrently with any other revocations,” so the one-year revocation for a first DWI under G.S. 20-19 runs alongside it.

4. Getting the license back

   The DMV cannot restore a license revoked for either offense until it receives a certificate of completion under G.S. 20-17.6, whose title covers “driving while impaired or driving while less than 21 years old after consuming alcohol or drugs.” That means a substance abuse assessment at the $100 fee set by G.S. 122C-142.1, then the 16-hour ADETS class at $160 or treatment at a minimum fee of $75. The DMV restoration fee under G.S. 20-7 is $167.25 after a DWI conviction and $83.50 for other Chapter 20 revocations.

A limited driving privilege after an under-21 conviction

Under G.S. 20-138.3(d), a person “whose drivers license is revoked solely based on that conviction may apply for a limited driving privilege” if the person “is 18, 19, or 20 years old on the date of the offense” and has no prior conviction under that section. The judge decides, the hours and purposes of G.S. 20-179.3 apply, and the form, AOC-CR-312, titled in part “Underage Alcohol Violation,” requires a DL-123 insurance certificate. A 17-year-old is outside this rule. After a DWI conviction the privilege under G.S. 20-179.3 requires that “Punishment Level Three, Four, or Five was imposed” and that an assessment be filed with the court.

G.S. 20-16.5(b)(4)d and (p); G.S. 20-13.2; G.S. 20-138.3(d); G.S. 20-17.6; G.S. 122C-142.1; G.S. 20-7(i1).

Students at Duke, NC Central and Durham Tech

Durham is a college town: Duke reports 17,325 students for fall 2025, NC Central 9,160, and Durham Tech serves more than 18,000 a year. Three campus police departments make arrests here.

Duke University Police is at 502 Oregon Street, non-emergency (919) 684-2444, with “roughly 70 officers on staff.” Duke officers worked the October 2015 Durham checkpoint at North Duke Street and Trinity Avenue that produced 11 DWI arrests. NCCU Police is at 1801 Fayetteville St., (919) 530-6100, with sworn officers who hold “full law enforcement authority.” Durham Tech's Campus Police and Public Safety office is in Building 20 at 1637 East Lawson Street, 919-536-7255, ext. 5555. The NC 147 Durham Freeway runs through Duke, “forming the boundary between East Campus and Central Campus,” so a student can be stopped by the State Highway Patrol, Durham Police or Duke Police at the edge of campus. Whoever makes the stop, the case goes to the same courthouse.

What the campus crime reports show

Colleges publish arrest counts under the Clery Act. NC Central's 2025 Annual Security and Fire Safety Report lists the liquor-law arrests and the referrals for campus discipline below; they are campus liquor-law figures, not DWI counts. Duke's 2025 Annual Security Report exists, but its statistics tables could not be read for this guide, so no Duke figure is stated. Neither university page fetched says what its conduct office does with an off-campus DWI charge.

Out-of-state licenses

Many Duke and NCCU students carry a license from another state. This guide could not confirm from a primary source how North Carolina reports a revocation or a conviction to another state's licensing agency, so it does not describe that process; a lawyer can tell you what your home state will do. The statutes do say that a conviction “in another jurisdiction which prohibits substantially similar conduct” counts as a prior here. Statewide, the 2025 Operation Firecracker campaign produced 917 DWI arrests, and “77 of those arrests were for drivers under the age of 21,” according to NCDOT.

The jail and the magistrate for a young driver

After the breath test you go to the Durham County Detention Facility at 219 S. Mangum St., where the criminal magistrates sit on the first two levels.

The magistrate sets the conditions of release, enters the 30-day civil revocation order and takes the license, and decides whether you can leave. Under G.S. 15A-534.2, an impaired driver must be held if there is “clear and convincing evidence that the impairment” of the driver “presents a danger” of “physical injury to himself or others or damage to property.” The hold ends when the driver is no longer impaired to that extent, or when “a sober, responsible adult is willing and able to assume responsibility for the defendant,” and it cannot last more than 24 hours. A driver below 0.05 is treated as no longer impaired, and that jail test result cannot be used against you in court.

That sober-adult rule is why a parent or a roommate gets a call from the jail at 3 a.m. The criminal magistrates' number on the court's contact directory is (919) 560-6826. Durham's bail and pretrial release policy, effective December 1, 2025, presumes release on a written promise or an unsecured bond unless one of those “will not reasonably assure the appearance” of the defendant; for a Class 2 misdemeanor such as driving after consuming, its bond range is $200 to $500 if a secured bond is set at all. The road from the release order to the first court date is on the court page; if a parent is paying for a lawyer, what a DWI lawyer costs covers the fee models and the $75 appointment fee for court-appointed counsel.

The record: what can and cannot be expunged

A DWI conviction stays. G.S. 15A-145.5 says that “an offense involving impaired driving as defined in G.S. 20-4.01(24a) is not eligible for expunction,” and that definition covers impaired driving under G.S. 20-138.1, commercial DWI, habitual DWI, and death or serious injury by vehicle based on impaired driving. Age makes no difference; a 19-year-old's Level Five conviction is permanent.

Driving after consuming is not on the G.S. 20-4.01(24a) list. Whether a G.S. 20-138.3 conviction can be expunged under the general rules for nonviolent misdemeanors, which carry a wait of “three years after the date of the conviction” for a single misdemeanor, is a question this guide could not confirm from the statute text. A lawyer can answer it.

A charge that is dismissed or ends in a not-guilty verdict is different. Under G.S. 15A-146, charges disposed of on or after December 1, 2021 that are “dismissed without leave, dismissed by the court, or result in a finding of not guilty” are “expunged by operation of law not less than 180 days and not more than 210 days after the date of final disposition,” with no petition and no fee, and the clerk sends the order to the DMV “for the expunction of a civil revocation.” Those are the two ways a DWI charge goes away; the charge itself is rarely reduced, a deferred prosecution is not available for DWI, and a judge cannot continue prayer for judgment on one. How a first-offense DWI usually resolves is its own page.

G.S. 15A-145.5(a1); G.S. 15A-146(a4) and (b), as amended by S.L. 2024-35; UNC School of Government, Limits on PJCs (2018).