How can I make this more persuasive?I am writing a letter to a high school student (this is one of the paragraphs) A shocking number of teens have...

I recommend locating some examples of people's lives that were affected by drunk drivers.  There are sites were you can obtain true stories.  You can just shorten them but chose  some that would be of more interest to teens.

Teens often think about the people who are killed by drunk drivers not those who live with permanent disabilities due to drunk drivers.  When I lived in California I knew about a 17 year old girl.  She was a beautiful chestnut haired intelligent student who was looking forward to going to Berkley.  She went to a friend's house one afternoon and they decided to sneak and try some wine.  The girl only had a glass and a half when she realized she was due to get the car back so her brother could take it to work. 

The girl jumped into the car and pulled out of the driveway.  She was two houses down when a child ran in front of her.  She hit the child and hit a tree.  The child and the girl were both at the nursing home where I volunteered.  The girl had her 30th birthday celebration and the boy had recently been admitted as a transfer from a facility that had housed children. 

The girl was severely brain damaged and had to have all her needs cared for but she would cry for her mother all the time.  The boy was unable to move from the neck down and he had been brain damaged although not as severely.  He was a happy young man and he cheered people up.

I wish that the story ended there, but it did not.  The little boy who was now 20 had a father who became an alcoholic and one night his brother who was 15 and his friends swiped his father's beer.  They hung out at a river and drank and laughed and swam.  On their way home the car flipped.  The brother wasn't driving but he was thrown from the car and lost both of his legs and suffered brain damage that made him so aggressive that he was institutionalized.  The other three teens walked away with out any physical damage, but the teen that drove the car hung himself two months after the accident.

I know this is a very dramatic story, but it is a true one that I have shared with my children and my friends.  I knew the mother's of the boy and the young woman.  It taught me just how much pain can travel at the hands of a little bit of alcohol and driving.