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Friday, November 15, 2002
States Fail To Stop Drugged Driving
By Kavan Peterson, Staff Writer
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If you get caught driving drunk in any state, you will almost certainly be arrested and prosecuted for drunk driving, but if you get caught driving under the influence of illegal drugs, you will probably get off scot-free.
A recent state-by-state analysis of laws restricting driving under the influence of drugs (DUID) found that in 42 states, "drugged drivers" are rarely detected, prosecuted or referred to treatment programs because of weak state laws and a lack of quick and reliable drug tests.
"Generally, there's a lack of uniformity and consistency in the way states approach drugged drivers," said Dr. J. Michael Walsh, president of the Walsh Group and lead author of the study issued yesterday by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. "The bottom line is that the current laws in most states do not provide adequate means to address what is a growing problem."
The report is the first comprehensive study of state laws regarding drugged driving, and calls on all states to adopt "zero tolerance" laws for DUID that prohibit driving with any measurable amount of illegal drugs in the system. In most states, prosecutors must prove that the drug caused the reckless conduct for which the person was arrested, which has been a difficult standard to meet, the report said.
Only eight states (Arizona, Georgia, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Minnesota, Rhode Island, and Utah) have passed laws in recent years that do not tolerate the presence of any forbidden substance in the driver's body. Eight more states (California, Colorado, Idaho, Kansas, Nevada, North Carolina, South Dakota and West Virginia) have zero tolerance laws that only apply to drivers under the age of 21, or to habitual drug offenders.
According to a self-reported survey on drug use issued by the federal government in 1999, nine million peole said they had driven a vehicle within two hours of consuming illegal drugs over a 12-month period. Marijuana was cited as the most abused drug, usually in combination wtih alcohol.
Walsh said that he believes this survey vastly underestimated the number of people actually driving under the influence of drugs. But there are no national statistics on the number of accidents caused by people driving under the influence of drugs and not alcohol, or the number of people arrested for DUID's. The reason for this, Walsh said, is because of an emphasis in traffic safety on drunken driving, and until recently, the technology needed to accurately measure drug use has not been widely available.
In 2001, 17,448 people were killed in crashes involving alcohol, representing 41 percent of the 42,116 people killed in all traffic crashes.
In most states, DUID laws require that a drug render the driver "incapable of safely operating a vehicle" or require the driver to be "under the influence or affected by an intoxicating drug."
The report, which was conducted by the Substance Abuse Policy Research Program and the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, found that in 42 states, these types of laws make it extremely difficult for a prosecutor to prove that the impairment of the driver was directly related to the drug ingested.
"Proving impairment in driving caused by a specific drug in many instances is a great challenge for prosecutors, because unlike alcohol, there is no universal correlation between the amount of a particular drug and driving impairment," said Jerry G. Landau, special assistant attorney in Maricopa County, Arizona.
In 1990, an Arizona man driving under the influence of cocaine drove his car into oncoming traffic on a highway and collided with a police car, killing two police detectives. Landau was the attorney in charge of determining if the cocaine impaired the defendant's ability to drive.
Later that year, Landau chaired a statewide committee that reviewed Arizona's DUID laws and unanimously recommended that the state adopt a zero-tolerance law, and Arizona became one of the first states to do so.
"It makes sense that if the drug is illegal to possess, than it should be illegal to drive with that drug in the system," said Landeu.
According to Walsh, who is a former executive director of the President's Drug Advisory Council, legal alcohol limits have been established based on extensive scientific and medical research specifying exactly how much alcohol it takes to impair the ability to drive. But scientists and health experts have found that there are too many extenuating circumstances to create similar standards of impairment for illicit drugs, officials find.
Drug levels in the blood, urine or saliva affect impairment depending on the dose, the way in which the drug was ingested, the pattern of frequency or use, and the metabolism of the user, said Walsh.
"The conclusion of the scientific community is that it's virtually impossible to set a level of a drug that would be indicative of impairment," said Walsh.
The recommendation for new state laws was issued by a group of 28 experts from fields like substance abuse, traffic safety, auto insurance, state and local law enforcement and representatives of advocacy groups like Mothers Against Drunk Driving.
Contact Kavan Peterson at kpeterson@stateline.org
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