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DUI blood test costs: North Carolina prices the laboratory work at $600 a line

Most DUI pages stop at the breath test. But where the state proves its case with a blood draw, someone pays for the laboratory — and in North Carolina the convicted driver does, at rates fixed in the costs statute itself. General Statutes section 7A-304 prices the State Crime Laboratory's work, a local laboratory's equivalent work, and the analyst's day in court at $600 each, and section 7A-313 prices the jail days around the case. This page prices those components from the statutes, in the state whose own sentencing structure is laid out in our North Carolina breakdown.

The two $600 laboratory fees: state lab and local lab

Section 7A-304(a) lists the costs assessed on conviction in every criminal case, and subdivisions (7) and (8) carry the chemical analysis fees. Where the North Carolina State Crime Laboratory performs a chemical analysis of the defendant's blood under section 20-139.1 as part of the investigation leading to conviction, the judge shall order payment of $600, remitted to the Department of Justice for laboratory purposes. Where the analysis is instead performed by a local laboratory facility — a hospital or local agency laboratory doing the same forensic work — subdivision (8) assesses the same $600, payable to the general fund of the local law enforcement unit that operates the laboratory or paid for the laboratory services, provided the court finds the local work equivalent to the State Crime Laboratory's. The fee follows the analysis, not the arrest: a case proved entirely on a breath test does not carry it, and a case that is dismissed carries no costs at all, because section 7A-304 assesses its costs on conviction or a plea. The statute also gives the court a narrow release valve — costs under subdivisions (7) and (8), among others, may be waived or reduced only on a written order supported by findings of fact and conclusions of law determining that there is just cause — which makes the $600 a default with a documented exception, not a negotiable estimate.

The second $600: paying for the analyst's testimony

Subdivisions (11) and (12) price a different event from the analysis itself. Where an expert witness employed by the State Crime Laboratory completes a chemical analysis under section 20-139.1 and provides testimony about that analysis in the defendant's trial, the judge shall order a further $600 for the laboratory — expressly in addition to any cost assessed under subdivision (7). The local-laboratory mirror in subdivision (12) applies the same $600 where the local analyst testifies. The practical consequence is a fork defendants rarely see explained: a blood case resolved by plea carries one $600 laboratory line, while the same case tried to a verdict with the analyst on the stand carries two, $1,200 of laboratory-related costs before the fine, the $100 impaired-driving cost in subdivision (10), or anything else in the judgment. That fork is arithmetic on the statute's own figures — two published $600 lines triggered by two different events — and it is one of the few places in DUI economics where the decision to go to trial has a price the legislature itself wrote down in advance.

The jail meter in section 7A-313

North Carolina also prices confinement itself. Section 7A-313 sets the fees a convicted person pays for time in the local confinement facility: $10 per day for pretrial confinement credited against the case, and $40 per day for imprisonment served under a split sentence — the active days a judge imposes as a condition of probation in an impaired driving sentence, a structure our North Carolina breakdown describes across its sentencing levels. These are per-day statutory rates, so the total is the rate multiplied by the days actually served; this page states the rates and does not multiply them into a supposed typical total, because the day count is the individual sentence, not a schedule. Hospital charges for the blood draw itself — the phlebotomy, the kit, the facility's own billing where a draw is done at a hospital rather than by law enforcement — are not in sections 7A-304 or 7A-313 and are not published in any state schedule; they are billed as medical charges and are named here as an unpriced component, the same treatment our evaluation and treatment page gives provider-billed services.

How the lab lines sit inside the whole North Carolina judgment

The University of North Carolina School of Government's worked example of a Level Five impaired driving bill — the closest thing to an official model judgment in the state's literature — builds the same stack this page itemises: the fine under section 20-179, the standard court costs, the $100 impaired-driving cost, probation supervision at its statutory monthly rate where imposed, the $100 assessment fee, and then, called out separately as charges assessed in some cases, the $600 laboratory fee, the $600 analyst fee and the section 7A-313 jail fees. Read together, sections 7A-304 and 7A-313 explain a pattern defendants notice but rarely have explained: two drivers with identical fines can leave court owing amounts hundreds of dollars apart, because one case was a breath case and the other was a blood case, and one was pleaded and the other was tried. None of that variation is discretion or error. It is the costs statute pricing the proof.

Sources: North Carolina General Statutes §§ 7A-304(a)(7), (8), (10), (11), (12), 7A-313, 20-139.1, 122C-142.1(f); UNC School of Government, North Carolina Criminal Law Blog, "The Bill for Driving While Impaired." Last verified: November 2026.

The boundary this page keeps

These are North Carolina's figures because North Carolina is the state that publishes them in this form. Other states fund forensic toxicology through court-cost schedules with different structures or absorb it as an agency cost, and no figure here should be carried into another state's case — the cross-state habit of quoting one state's laboratory fee as a national blood-test price is exactly what this site's component rules prohibit. Within North Carolina, the checkable claims are the four $600 lines, the $100 cost, the $100 assessment fee and the two per-day jail rates, each with its subdivision cited above.

Sources: N.C. General Statutes §§ 7A-304, 7A-313, 122C-142.1. Last verified: November 2026. This page is educational information about costs only — not legal advice. Laws and fees change; confirm current figures with your court and your state's driver-licensing agency.