GROWING DANGER: DRUGGED DRIVING

Ohio Highway Patrol Trooper Leonard Gray had stopped to direct traffic
around a jackknifed truck in December 2002 when a car, traveling about 50
mph, hit him. Gray, 53, was flipped into the air, his head crashed into the
car's windshield and he landed - unconscious, with his legs broken and head
bloodied - on the pavement.

The driver who hit Gray, 61-year-old Ronald Hamrick, had been convicted of
drug possession previously and had cocaine in his system when he was tested
seven hours after the accident, Hocking County assistant prosecutor David
Sams says.

If Hamrick had been drinking alcohol and had registered a blood-alcohol
level of 0.08%, the case against him would have been open and shut, Sams
says: aggravated vehicular assault, with drunken driving as a factor in the
charge.

But Ohio, like most states, has no legal standard for determining what
level of drugs in a person's system makes him too impaired to drive. The
lack of such a guideline often makes it difficult for prosecutors to prove
cases of "drugged driving."

In Gray's case, Sams spent several months reconstructing the crash and
getting analyses from drug specialists to show that Hamrick had been
impaired by cocaine. Eventually, it worked: Hamrick pleaded guilty to
aggravated vehicular assault in September and will be sentenced today. He
faces up to five years in prison.

"It's a felony under Ohio law to possess, much less use, cocaine," Sams
says. "Yet we had to spend thousands of dollars on these experts to
extrapolate back to the time of the accident to prove (Hamrick) had enough
cocaine in his system that he shouldn't be driving."

More than 1.5 million people were arrested in the USA last year for driving
drunk. Police departments and public health specialists estimate that at
least as many people drive under the influence of drugs each year - and
rarely are prosecuted for it.

Now, in an effort that is similar to the movement that began inspiring
anti-drunken-driving laws a quarter-century ago, a growing number of
government and law enforcement officials are pressing for laws that target
drugged driving.

Congress, encouraged by White House anti-drug czar John Walters, is
considering proposals that would use the lure of federal transportation
money to push states to adopt what Sams wants in Ohio: "zero-tolerance"
laws that would make it a crime for anyone to drive with any amount of
illicit drugs in their system.

Only 11 states - Arizona, Georgia, Indiana, Illinois, Iowa, Michigan,
Minnesota, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Utah and Wisconsin - have such laws
now. Nevada has a law that sets impairment guidelines for blood and urine
testing for certain drugs, including marijuana, marijuana metabolites,
heroin, methamphetamine and cocaine.

The bill in Congress, which passed both the House and Senate as part of
transportation packages and is now being considered in a conference
committee, is modeled after the federal anti-drunken-driving laws that are
widely credited with making American roads safer. The law required states
to adopt the 0.08% blood-alcohol standard by 2004 or lose federal
transportation money.

States with zero tolerance Eleven states make it a crime to drive with any
amount of illicit substance in one's system. The states with so-called
zero-tolerance laws:

Arizona

Georgia

Indiana

Illinois

Iowa

Michigan

Minnesota

Pennsylvania

Rhode Island

Utah

Wisconsin

In 2003, 17,013 people died in alcohol-related traffic crashes, a 3% drop
from 2002. In 1982, 60% of the traffic fatalities across the nation were
linked to alcohol; federal studies say alcohol is a factor in 40% of the
traffic fatalities today.

No Simple Test

But it's clear that fighting drugged driving will be considerably more
complicated than the war on drunken driving:

* For now, there is no widely available roadside testing device that can
quickly detect drugs in a person's body, as the Breathalyzer does for alcohol.

Researchers are developing saliva and urine tests that eventually could
make roadside drug tests as easy as a Breathalyzer. But the wide variety of
illegal, prescription and over-the-counter drugs that can impair drivers -
and the countless ways in which drugs can affect the body - make such tests
a more complex challenge.

* Zero-tolerance laws for drugged driving likely would spur a wave of
lawsuits over individual rights.

The Drug Policy Alliance, the Marijuana Policy Project and other groups
that push for more liberal drug laws say they agree that people should not
drive when they're high. But the groups say that the push for
zero-tolerance laws is misguided and unfair because it would punish people
for private behavior rather than for actions that harm others, such as
driving impaired.

The groups say, for example, that the proposed laws could ensnare a
recreational drug user who smokes marijuana at a party on a Friday and
still has residues of the drug in his urine when he drives to work Monday -
without showing any sign of being impaired.

The critics say that police could use zero-tolerance laws to target types
of drivers, particularly young adults, whom the police believe are most
likely to use drugs. And, the critics say, the proposed laws would have no
effect on people who become impaired on legal drugs such as prescription
tranquilizers or over-the-counter cold medicines.

"They are going to end up taking people with a Grateful Dead bumper sticker
and dragging them down to the (police) station for a drug test," says Bill
Piper, national affairs director for the Drug Policy Alliance, a non-profit
based in New York City. "It's just a matter of time before they say you
have to pass a drug test before you can get a driver's license."

Walters counters that authorities have to draw the line somewhere, and that
a simple, clear guideline - like that used to determine alcohol
intoxication - is needed to combat drugged driving. And besides, Walters
says, drugs such as cocaine and marijuana are illegal, so a driver who
tests positive likely has broken the law.

U.S. Rep. Rob Portman, R-Ohio, is a sponsor of the zero-tolerance bill,
known as the Drug Impaired Driving Enforcement Act of 2004. If the bill
does not get all the way through Congress this year, Portman and other
lawmakers say they will reintroduce it next year.

"For years, we have properly focused on drunk driving as a problem in this
country," Portman says. "We have focused on it to a point where there has
been a change in people's attitudes and behavior, and that has saved
people's lives. Now we have to do that with drug use."

Tough Cases to Prove

In one way or another, every state makes it illegal to drive under the
influence of drugs. But successful prosecutions on such charges are more
difficult than they are for drunken driving because most states require
police and prosecutors to prove that the drugs affected the driver to the
point that he was unable to drive safely.

In a drunken-driving case, prosecutors can present the results of a
roadside Breathalyzer test. But without a standard for impairment, most
drugged-driving cases are based largely on the arresting officer's
observations of the driver.

Defense attorneys usually can undermine an officer's testimony by focusing
on how much expertise the officer has - or doesn't have - in recognizing
signs of impairment from drug use. That's why, if a driver is arrested on
drug and alcohol charges, prosecutors almost always build their case around
the alcohol charge.

The lack of a nationwide standard for determining when a driver is impaired
by drugs has prevented the U.S. government from figuring the precise number
of drugged drivers nationwide each year, says Richard Compton, director of
the Office of Research and Technology for the National Highway Safety
Administration in Washington, D.C.

Using U.S. Census data and Monitoring the Future, a national survey of high
school students conducted in 2003 by the University of Michigan, the White
House anti-drug czar's office concluded that one in six high school seniors
had admitted to having driven while they were high on drugs.

Compton says that in one study of fatal crashes in seven states,
researchers tested drivers for about 50 commonly abused substances. They
found that more than half the drivers had used alcohol and about 18% had
used drugs.

Drivers taking legal drugs can be as dangerous as drivers who use cocaine
or marijuana, Compton says. "A lot of people like to focus on illegal
drugs," he says. "I'm more concerned about what's causing crashes. It could
be illegal drugs. It could be over-the-counter drugs. It could be
prescription drugs, or people who are ill. They feel rotten, they are
tired, they buy something over the counter or maybe you have a drink or two
and now you have a triple whammy. We don't want them on the road."

New Detection Devices

Tougher laws, more training for police officers and newly developed
roadside tests would bolster cases against drugged drivers, says Scott
Burns, deputy director for state and local affairs in Walters' office and a
former county prosecutor.

Promising new roadside tests that use saliva from a driver's mouth are
being tested in five states, Burns says.

The National Institute on Drug Abuse, National Highway Traffic Safety
Administration and the anti-drug czar's office are paying $1.5 million over
three years to evaluate six devices that are now available, says J. Michael
Walsh of The Walsh Group, a substance abuse research and consulting firm in
Bethesda, Md., that is coordinating the research. Most of the devices are
simple.

In one, a saliva sample swabbed from a driver's mouth is inserted into a
machine, which analyzes the sample for several types of drugs.

Another device resembles a thermometer and is placed under a suspect's
tongue for 60 seconds. It can be used to test for up to six drugs. The
devices have not been reviewed by the Food and Drug Administration for
accuracy.

Almost all police officers in the USA are trained to spot signs of alcohol
impairment.

But just 3% of officers nationwide are certified as drug recognition
experts, known as DREs. With only 5,500 trained DREs in a nation with
18,000 police departments, most departments don't have any drug recognition
experts. The DREs can be certified as experts by courts, giving extra
weight to their testimony, Burns says.

Citizens Against Drug Impaired Drivers, based in Milwaukee, is pushing
Congress and state legislators for more money to train officers as DREs,
president Karen Tarney says. "Drugged driving is underreported because it's
under-recognized by law enforcement," she says.

But Gray, who is still recovering from his injuries, says that governments
must go beyond new laws to educate the public and make drugged driving
unacceptable in the same way it became unfashionable to drive drunk.

Gray says that some drug users become adept at tricking the system. Young
adults, aware of the stiff punishments for drinking and driving and of the
shortcomings of the Breathalyzer tests, sometimes drink a small amount of
alcohol after they smoke pot, Gray says. If they are stopped by police,
officers then will smell the alcohol and give a Breathalyzer test. The
motorists will test below the legal limit for alcohol in their system, and
get off the hook.

"It scares me because it seems like the kids are not afraid" of driving
high, says Gray, who was a trooper for 25 years before he had to retire on
disability because of the accident. "They are more willing than ever to try
the drugs. They don't drink. They won't try cigarettes because they know
all about lung cancer. (But) they don't seem to know it's not a joke to
drive on drugs."