one for the road

[mccutcheon]

PARIS - France's wine industry wants drivers to know: It's OK to have a drink for the road. Or three. The $18 billion-a-year wine industry is fighting back against a government campaign to discourage drunken driving.

It claims the government is scaring people away from ordering a glass when they go out and points to a 15 percent drop in wine sales at restaurants.

"People are so afraid of the police these days that they're not drinking any wine at all," Pascal Bobillier-Monnot, director of CNAOC national wine producers' association, said Friday.

Wine makers have always promoted moderate drinking to comply with the country's blood-alcohol limit of .05. But they say the government is overreacting when it tells drivers that the safest way to stay out of trouble is not to drink at all.