If you’re in high school and have a cold, don’t take cough medicine or drive to school. Or at least have your DUI lawyer on hold if you do. Because chances are, if you’re pulled over by the police, you could be charged with driving under the influence of a minor (and by minor, I don’t mean minor, I mean under 21).

In many states across the country, legislatures have enacted statutes to make anyone under the age of 21 who drives guilty of driving while intoxicated if they have an alcohol concentration between .02 and .08. This effectively makes it illegal to drive after you’ve had too much cough syrup to treat your cold.

So, for example, let’s say you’re 18 and you decide to go to one of those Seattle high school proms that have a little bit of beer. In the interest of socializing, he decides to have a beer later in the evening. As night falls, you get in your car without thinking about a thing and head home. But you didn’t know the police were policing the party (really they often have nothing better to do than policing high school parties) and you got pulled over for not using your turn signal within three blocks of the turn (I’m making that up, not an actual traffic violation). Once they see you’re not drunk, they decide to give you a PBT anyway, and blammo, you spend .02 and your mom is hiring a Seattle DUI attorney.

There is one good thing about the minor DUI, at least in our Seattle Washington example. In that case, the guy who gets arrested, assuming his attorney can’t beat the DUI for him, is not required to be charged with a full DUI for the rest of his life. If he gets another one after he turns 21, the prosecutor can’t use the lesser DUI against him. So he at least has that going for him.