There's a new anti-drunken-driving catchphrase, and it has bar patrons all, um, abuzz.

Actually, the slogan - "Buzzed Driving Is Drunk Driving" - is only semi-new. Back in early 2006, the U.S. Department of Transportation's National Highway Traffic Safety Administration launched the campaign to replace its since-retired "Friends Don't Let Friends Drive Drunk" initiative, which started in 1983 and was widely credited for reducing the rate of alcohol-related traffic fatalities nationwide.

With its "Buzzed Driving" campaign, NHTSA looks to ramp up the pressure on would-be drunken drivers by erasing the distinction between falling-down drunkenness and borderline impairment. The slogan seems to say: "Sorry, pal - no longer will we allow you to hide behind your benign frat-house colloquialism."

"The power of the campaign is that it basically ambushes the viewer," the slogan's inventor, Michael Ancevic of Massachusetts-based ad agency Mullen, said in 2006. "We need to suck you in with laughter and then make you feel that oh-man-I've-done-that lump in your throat."

The problem I have with the slogan is that it's not necessarily accurate. It's a sophism, a specious argument. It clumps all levels of consumption together as if there really were no legal or moral difference.

It all hinges on the word "buzzed." What is it? Is it the warm nimbus of one beer or the hot, gassy corona of six? I can have one or two drinks at happy hour and feel slightly mellowed out. Does this mean I'm a hazard behind the wheel?

Not according to any law in existence. A 200-pound man can consume two standard alcoholic drinks over the course of an hour and have a blood-alcohol content of .03 - well below the legal limit of .08 and so far removed from the practical realm of drunkenness that I would literally laugh in someone's face if they tried to take my keys. Laugh soberly, I might add.

You 100-pound females don't have that luxury. According to a BAC calculator I found on a Web site called Beerboozebooks.com, the same amount of alcohol will render you unfit for driving with a BAC of .09. And 15 drinks will give you a .76, at which point you won't be able to inhale air, let alone start your car.

None of this is meant to trivialize the serious issue of drunken driving. Certainly, it's something we need to keep in mind anytime we have a beer and consider operating a vehicle. And I suppose if a catchy if apocryphal slogan such as "Buzzed Driving Is Drunk Driving" does that, then it validates itself.

But is buzzed driving really drunken driving, always, irrespective of how much alcohol thousands of responsible Valley diners and drinkers consume every day while keeping their BAC low and driving carefully home? If it is, we might as well resurrect 1920s temperance maniac Carrie Nation and smash up the bars.