SENATE OKS BILL TARGETING DRUG-USING MOTORISTS

Drug users who get behind the wheel of an automobile would face an
increased risk of criminal prosecution under a bill approved Thursday in
the Iowa Senate.

Lawmakers voted without dissent to extend provisions of Iowa's
drunken-driving law to users of heroin, cocaine, methamphetamines and other
heavy drugs. The effect, supporters say, is that prosecutors will have an
easier time charging drug-impaired drivers whose blood-alcohol content
measures below the 0.10 threshold for drunken driving in Iowa.

"We have drivers out there who are high on drugs and who are a danger to
the public," said Sen. Larry McKibben, R-Marshalltown, who managed the bill
in Senate debate. The bill, he said, would close a loophole that often
allows drugged drivers to escape punishment.

McKibben said it's possible but very difficult to prosecute a drug-impaired
driver under Iowa's current operating-while-intoxicated law. Because the
statute sets no legal threshold for non-alcohol drugs, prosecutors now face
the problem of proving impairment without an objective standard on which to
rely.

The Senate-approved bill would change that by outlawing any detectable
levels of what are known as Schedule I and Schedule II drugs - those that
state and federal laws already identify as the most likely candidates for
abuse.

If approved by the House and signed by the governor, Iowa would become just
the seventh state to adopt the strategy for dealing with the death and
destruction caused by drug-impaired drivers.

Iowa Department of Public Safety statistics show 34 percent of blood tests
on fatally injured drivers found drugs other than alcohol.

Among other problems with current law, McKibben said, is that a
drug-irnpaired driver can refuse a sobriety test without fear of penalty.
That differs from alcohol-impaired drivers, for whom the act of driving
implies consent to a sobriety test.

The Senate bill would close that loophole, he said.