DRUG-IMPAIRED DRIVING GETS A HARDER LOOK

If results of blood tests show that UC Santa Barbara freshman David
Attias was under the influence of drugs the night he allegedly ran
down five people, killing four, it will serve as another grim reminder
that drugs and driving are lethal.

Witnesses' accounts of Attias' wild behavior after his speeding Saab
slammed into pedestrians on a crowded Isla Vista street Feb. 23
indicate he may have been on drugs. If so, his name will be added to a
long and growing list of drivers whose drug use had fatal
consequences. Last week, Attias, 18, pleaded not guilty to 13 criminal
charges, including four counts of murder.

Incidents like this, and the widespread availability of illicit drugs,
have prompted law enforcement officials, substance abuse experts and
doctors in the United States, Europe and Australia to take a harder
look at how to deal with the problem of drug-impaired driving, says
Michael Walsh, who headed the Drug Advisory Council under former
President George Bush and is research director at the National
Institute on Drug Abuse.

The problem "is getting worse not only in the U.S. but around the
world," says Walsh, who heads a committee on illegal drugs and driving
for the International Council on Alcohol, Drugs and Traffic Safety.

In fact, a 1996 survey found that "more than a quarter of the 166
million American drivers age 16 and older occasionally drive under the
influence of alcohol or a combination of alcohol and marijuana."

Other studies have found that, after alcohol, marijuana is the drug
most frequently found in the bloodstreams of drivers involved in crashes.

Statistics on drug-involved accident injuries and fatalities are
unavailable because most agencies do not routinely track them.

But Walsh, working with Tampa, Fla., police under a federal grant,
recently determined that about 30% of suspected impaired drivers given
breath and urine tests had one or more illegal drugs in their systems.
Marijuana and cocaine accounted for 99% of the drugs found in the
drivers. Additionally, most of the drivers tested were legally drunk,
with an average blood alcohol concentration of about twice the legal
limit, he said.

The study involved the use of new rapid drug detection kits that
enable police to test suspects in the field and get immediate
results--a tool Walsh and others believe could help police in nabbing
drug-impaired drivers. Researchers are studying a variety of drug
testing techniques, including the testing of saliva, which has a
shorter window of detection and would better pinpoint how recently an
illegal substance had been used, Walsh said.

Though parole and probation officers use similar rapid detection kits
to check their charges for drugs, they are not currently used by
police other than in research studies, according to Walsh.

Determining whether a drug actually contributed to an accident can be
tricky because some substances stay in the body longer than others,
and it would be difficult to determine if the suspect was impaired by
the drug at the time of the accident.

But Walsh and others hope that, as detection techniques evolve, the
kits will come into routine use.

The magnitude of the problem in the United States is so disturbing
that Walsh's organization recently urged all states to consider
establishing legal standards for defining when a driver is criminally
drug-impaired, as now is done with alcohol.

The group also recommended stiffer penalties for drug-impaired
drivers.

Law enforcement officers currently trained in an intensive drug
recognition program can assess drivers for drug use by monitoring
blood pressure, body temperature, short-term memory functions and by
looking for a host of other symptoms, according to Ron Newton, an
assistant chief with the Los Angeles County Office of Public Safety.

It is critical that more officers be trained in specific drug
recognition techniques so they can make judgment calls in the field,
Newton says.

Southern California will be the site of two important conferences on
the issue this year.

Prosecutors, police, toxicologists and emergency medical doctors will
meet in Pasadena later this week to learn drug detection techniques
and ways to deal with judicial system issues. In June, the
International Assn. of Chiefs of Police will meet in Long Beach to
discuss the problem of drugs and driving.