Under a federal mandate to toughen its drunken driving threshold or face the loss of millions in highway funds, North Dakota has passed a law lowering the state’s legal blood-alcohol limit from 0.10 percent to 0.08.

Gov. John Hoeven signed the legislation, HB1161, into law. The new limit will go into effect Aug. 1.

A 2000 federal law requires each state’s legislature to adopt the 0.08 limit by 2004 or lose 2 percent of its highway money. If the state had failed to lower the limit, it stood to lose $32 million in federal road funds in the next four years, The Forum reported.